7 Also known as a name day. Orthodox Russians celebrate the day of the saint after whom a person was named more commonly than they celebrate the person’s birthday. St. Irina’s day is May 5 in the Orthodox calendar.
8 “Don’t pull a sorrowful face in any of the acts. Angry, yes, but not sorrowful. People who go about with inner sorrow a long time and are used to it only whistle and often grow pensive. So you may every so often grow pensive on stage in the course of the dialogue” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, January 2 [15], 1901).
9 Letter of Olga Knipper to Chekhov (September 12, 1900): “I’m going to give you a wonderful remedy to keep hair from falling out. Take 1⁄2 bottle of methylated spirits and mix in 8 grams of naphtalin and rub it in regularly—it’s a big help. Will you do it? Because it’s not a good idea to come to Moscow bald—people will think I pulled your hair out.”
10 Nikolay Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov (1836–1861), Russian journalist of the radical democratic camp and proponent of realistic literature. He invented the concept of the “superfluous man.”
11 Masha is quoting from the opening lines of the famous poetic fable Ruslan and Lyudmila, by Aleksandr Pushkin, a classic love story. On her wedding night, Lyudmila is abducted by a wizard and Ruslan finds her only after many adventures. The lines are: “On the curved seashore a green oak stands, / A golden chain wound round that oak; / And night and day a learned cat / Walks round and round upon that chain. / When he goes right a song he sings, / When he goes left a tale he tells.” An English equivalent might be Edward Lear’s “The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea, In a beautiful pea-green boat . . . A beautiful pea-green boat . . .”
12 Merlekhyundiya, instead of melankholiya. A favorite word of Chekhov’s, often used in private correspondence, as well as in “The Examining Magistrate” and Ivanov. “ . . . your nerves are in bad shape and you’re under the sway of a psychiatric semi-ailment, which seminarians call melan - cholera” (to A. A. Suvorin, August 23, 1893).
13 Quotation from the fable “The Peasant and the Farmhand,” by Ivan Krylov (1768–1844), which Chekhov also quotes in the story “Among Friends” (1898): “He had a habit, unsettling for his interlocutor, of pronouncing as an exclamation a certain phrase which had no relation to the conversation, while snapping his fingers.”
14 A samovar was traditionally given by a husband to his wife on their silver or golden anniversary.
15 “When I played Vershinin, Chekhov said: ‘Good, very good. Only don’t salute like that, it’s not like a colonel. You salute like a lieutenant. You have to do it more firmly, more confidently’ ” (Vasily Kachalov, Shipovnik Almanac 23 [1914]).
16 Graveyard attached to the historic Moscow “New Virgin” convent, where many celebrities of politics, society, and culture, including Chekhov and his father, are buried.
17 The opening of Taisiya’s “Russian aria” in the old opera-vaudeville Reversals by Pyotr Kobryakov (1808): “For love alone did Nature / Put us on this earth; / As comfort to the mortal race / She gave the gift of tender feelings!”
18 Tusenbach further explains his German ancestry in Act Two. In Chekhov’s notebooks, Tusenbach’s patronymic is Karlovich (son of Karl), which was later changed to Lvovich (son of Leo, a more Russian name).
19 “You wear the tailcoat only in Act One; as to the bandolier (a polished black strap) you are quite right. At least until Act Four you should wear the uniform such as it was before 1900” (Chekhov to Aleksandr Vishnevsky, January 6 [18], 1901).
20 Latin: I have done what I could, let those who can do better. A paraphrase of Cicero, when the Roman consulate conferred his powers on his successors.
21 Latin: “A healthy mind in a healthy body,” quotation from the Satires of Juvenal.
22 Vodka is traditionally flavored with herbs and spices, such as buffalo grass, cardamom, and peppercorns.
23 “Natasha” is the usual diminutive of “Nataliya” and is used throughout by the sisters.
24 American though this sounds, the turkey would have been stuffed with liver and walnuts, sliced, and served with a Madeira sauce. The open-face apple pie would contain almonds, cherry jam, and raisins.
25 Maslennitsa, or Butter Week, the week preceding Lent, was traditionally devoted to eating and carousing. The consumption of pancakes (blini) and the invitation of musicians into homes were traditional activities. Evidently a year and nine months have passed since Act One.
26 Natasha is being pretentious but gets it wrong. An English name such as Bob was fashionable in high society, but at this time Bobik was usually applied to dogs.
27 Ryazhenye were well-behaved amateur performers in carnival costume who, after dusk, would go from house to house at Shrovetide, dancing and receiving food in return. Trick-or-treaters and carolers combined, they might be joined by professional bear leaders, storytellers, and beggars. For a description, see Tolstoy’s War and Peace, II, part 4, ch. 10.
28 The classical dish for Butter Week is pancakes made of raised flour or buckwheat dough, fried in plenty of butter and filled with cottage cheese. The round shape was to represent the sun, since this was originally a pagan holiday.
29 A city on the Volga.
30 Paraphrase of the famous line from Shakespeare’s Richard III: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (Act V, scene 4).
31 French: Come here.
32 Masha is quoting the last sentence of Gogol’s “Story of How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich Fell Out” (1832): literally, “It’s boring in this world, gentlemen.” Like Gogol’s heroes, Tusenbach and Vershinin will never agree.
33 The French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) married the Polish landowner Ewelyna Hanska in Berdichev a few months before he died. Berdichev, a city in the Kiev guberniya in Ukraine, was almost entirely populated by Jews, hence the incongruity.
34 Spoken by Julius Caesar on crossing the Rubicon, as related in Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
35 Or Tsitisar or Qiqihar or Ho-lung-kiang, a province of Chinese Manchuria.
36 Impressions cellulaires, by Charles Baïhaut (1834–1905), French Minister for Panama, who was condemned to two years in prison in 1893. Chekhov had read this book during his stay in Nice in 1897. The bankruptcy in 1888 of the company organized to build the Panama canal resulted in the conviction of several French politicians for fraud.
37 French: Please, forgive me, Marie, but you have rather rude manners. French was common in Russian intellectual circles, but it is pretentious on the part of Natasha, who makes frequent mistakes. Correctly, it would be “je vous en prie.”
38 Bad French: It seems my Bobik is already not asleep.
39 Quotation from the classic comedy Woe from Wit by Aleksandr Griboedov, a line of the protagonist Chatsky (Act V, scene 1), who is in opposition to Moscow’s high society and its blind Francophilia.
40 Aleko is the hero of the romantic verse tale “The Gypsies,” by Aleksandr Pushkin (1824), heavily influenced by Byronic romanticism. A Russian depressed by civilization, Aleko turns his back on elegant Petersburg and lives with gypsies; he falls in love with a gypsy girl and commits a murder out of jealousy. Rachmaninov turned it into an opera (1892).
41 Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814–1841), after Pushkin the most important lyric poet of Russian Romanticism. As an officer, Lermontov was twice exiled to the Caucasus, then killed in a duel. “Actually, Solyony does think that he looks like Lermontov, but of course he doesn’t—it’s ridiculous just to think of . . . He should be made up to look like Lermontov. The resemblance to Lermontov is enormous, but only in Solyony’s mind” (Chekhov to I. A. Tikhomirov, January 14, 1901).