1. Suchan: A town in eastern Siberia, about sixty miles east of Vladivostok. An important coal-mining centre.
2. Captain Kopeykin: Character from Gogol’s Dead Souls, part I (1842), whose story is told by the postmaster.
3. Midshipman Dyrka: A comic midshipman of this name is mentioned by Zhevakin in Gogol’s two-act play Marriage (1842).
The Duel
First serialized in New Times (1890), then published in a complete edition, with corrections and new chapter divisions in 1892. When he first started the story Chekhov was not satisfied with it, telling Suvorin that there was ‘no movement’ and that it was ‘rather complex’. At this time Chekhov was having frequent discussions with the zoologist V. A. Wagner (Vagner) on Darwinian and Nietzschean themes. Chekhov’s brother Mikhail wrote that he would often debate with Wagner: ‘… the then fashionable subjects of degeneration, the rights of the strong, natural selection and so on, which were the basis of von Koren’s philosophy… During these conversations Anton Pavlovich was always of the opinion that man’s spiritual strength can always overcome any inherited shortcomings.’22
1. Superfluous Men: Characters in the tradition of Werther, Childe Harold, René who see themselves (and are seen) as disillusioned and at odds with society. A prime example is Lermontov’s Pechorin (A Hero of Our Time, 1837–40). The term gained currency after the publication of Turgenev’s Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850).
2. Spencer: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English radical thinker, founder of an evolutionist philosophy and a laissez-faire social policy.
3. Vereshchagin: V. V. Vereshchagin (1842–1904), Russian painter famous for his Central Asian themes.
4. Abkhazians: Natives of Abkhazia, an autonomous republic in Georgia.
5. Prince Vorontsov: Prince M. S. Vorontsov (1782–1856), appointed viceroy of the Caucasus in 1844.
6. Onegin, Pechorin [Byron’s Cain], Bazarov: Eugene Onegin, eponymous hero of Pushkin’s narrative poem Eugene Onegin (1831); Pechorin, hero of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time (1840); Bazarov, hero of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1852). All these characters are types of ‘Superfluous Men’ (see note. 1).
7. Schopenhauer: See ‘The Name-day Party’, note 4, p. 364.
8. Dorpat: Modern Tartu. Chief cultural centre of Estonia, about 100 miles south-east of Tallin, famous for its university.
9. tussore: See ‘The Steppe’, note 16, p. 360.
10. Pushkin’s Ukrainian Night: Reference to second canto of the narrative poem Poltava (1828).
11. His beaver collar sparkles silver with frosty dust: From the first chapter of Eugene Onegin.
12. manu militari: By military force.
13. Stanley: Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), explorer of equatorial Africa.
14. Arakcheyev: See ‘A Dreary Story’, note 19, p. 366.
15. ‘But whoso shall offend one of these little ones’: Matthew 18:6.
16. kalium bromatum: Potassium bromide.
17. aqua foeniculi: Fennel water.
18. Rudin: Eponymous hero of Turgenev’s novel (1856) – another type of ‘Superfluous Man’.
19. Danila: Character from N. S. Leskov’s short story ‘The Legend of Just Danila’ (1888).
20…. a crowd of oppressive thoughts…: From Pushkin’s Remembrance (1828).
21. And in Turgenev, Bazarov had a duel with someone or other…: Reference to Bazarov’s duel with Pavel Petrovich over Fenichka in Fathers and Sons. Significantly, Bazarov, Pechorin and Onegin all fight duels.
22. M. P. Chekhov, Vokrug Chekhova (Around Chekhov), published Moscow/ Leningrad in 1933.