Part 38 (1/2)

10. a second crown: The first crown is the wedding crown.

11. barin: Squire or landowner.

12. penates: (Latin) guardian deities of the household.

13. Ochakov medal: Ochakov, on the Black Sea, was seized from the Turks in 1788 by Suvorov, under whom Larin served. The commemorative medal was given to all officers taking part in the campaign. Brigadier (a general's rank) Larin might have expected the more ill.u.s.trious 'order'. Pushkin might have wanted thereby to keep Larin ordinary.

14. Lethe: River of fortgetfulness in Greek mythology.

15. Aonia's maids: The Muses in Greek mythology. Aeonia was a region of ancient Boeotia, containing the mountains of Helicon and Cithaeron, sacred to the Muses.

16. will pat the old man's laurel crown: Alongside the ignoramus, Pushkin addresses his future devotee. In the 'old man' Pushkin optimistically envisages his own future. A Latin teacher at Pushkin's lycee, when introducing a cla.s.sical text, would always remark: 'Let's pat the old man on the head.'

CHAPTER III.

1. Elle etait fille... Malfilatre: 'She was a girl, she was in love.' A line from Narcisse, ou l'ile de Venus (Narcissus, or the Island of Venus, 1768), a posthumous poem in four cantos by the second-rate French poet Jacques Charles Louis Clinchamp de Malfilatre (1733a67), probably taken by Pushkin from Laharpe's anthology of ancient and modern literature used at Pushkin's lycee.

2. Jam in small dishes: Home-made preserves a cherry, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, red and blackcurrant a were presented to guests in small gla.s.s dishes on a tray. In a variant Pushkin has with but one spoon for all'. The guests would transfer their helpings (by means of that spoon) on to their respective saucers and then would eat the jam with their teaspoons or mix it with their tea.

3. board: Pushkin omitted the rest of the stanza in the final version, though it exists in his fair copy.

4. Svetlana: Heroine of Vasily Zhukovsky's ballad of the same name (1812). Zhukovsky (1783a1852) was Russia's outstanding Romantic poet, a friend and protector of Pushkin and a mentor of Nicholas I's son and heir. Svetlana was a free adaptation of Gottfried August Burger's (1747a94) ballad Lenore (1773).

5. The lover of Julie Wolmar: St Preux, hero of Rousseau's Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise (Julie, or the New Heloise, 1761). Julie and St Preux are lovers, but only until she marries and a.s.sumes her husband's name, Wolmar.

6. Malek Adhel: Hero of Mathilde, ou Memoires tires de l'histoire des croisades (Mathilde or the Crusades, 1805), a novel by Sophie Cottin (1774a1807), described by Pushkin in his note as mediocre'. Malek Adel is a Muslim general at the time of the Third Crusade who falls in love with Princesse Mathilde, sister of Richard Lionheart.

7. de Linar: 'Hero of baroness Krudener's delightful tale,' notes Pushkin. The tale in question is Valerie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar a Ernest de G. (Valerie, or Letters from Gustave de Linar to Ernest de G., 1803). Mme von Krudener (1764a1824) was a German novelist and mystic who wrote in French. De Linar, a dark-haired and violent young Swede, is the unrequited lover of Countess Valerie (probably from Livonia), who, like Julie in La Nouvelle Heloise (see note 5 above), remains faithful to her older husband. She marries at fourteen and meets de Linar at sixteen.

8. Werther: Hero of Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774). Werther commits suicide after failing to win the love of Lotte, who is married to his friend.

9. Grandison: Hero of Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison (1754).

10. Delphine: Eponymous heroine of Mme de Stael's novel Delphine (1802). It has been suggested, but not accepted, that the Delphine mentioned by Pushkin belongs to a story by Marmontel, L'Ecole de l'amitie (School of Friends.h.i.+p, 1792), translated in 1822 by Nikolai Karamzin (1766a1826), an important predecessor of Pushkin. In Mme. de Stael's novel Delphine is a widow of twenty-one whose admirer she gives up out of consideration for his wife.

11. Clarissa: Heroine of Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe (1748).

12. The British Muse's tales: Romanticism was in Russia largely taken to be an English trend in European literature.

13. the pensive vampire: Pushkin comments in his note: 'A tale wrongly attributed to Lord Byron.' During a stay in Switzerland in 1816 Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Mary Sh.e.l.ley and Byron's physician Polidori competed in writing horror stories of which the most successful and famous was Mary Sh.e.l.ley's Frankenstein. Byron composed a fragment, The Vampyre, which Polidori later turned into a novel (1819).

14. Melmoth: Pushkin's note: 'Melmoth, Maturin's work of genius.' Charles Robert Maturin (1782a1824), an Irish clergyman, wrote Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a long Satanic horror tale.

15. The Wandering Jew: The legend of the Wandering Jew was common at the time. Pushkin's sources are probably Mathew Lewis's (1775a1818) The Monk (1796) and Jan Potocki's (1761a1815) enormous novel The Ma.n.u.script Found in Sara-gossa, published between 1803 and 1814.

16. the Corsair: Hero of Byron's poem of the same name.

17. Sbogar: Hero of Charles Nodier's (1780a1844) Jean Sbogar (1818). Sbogar is the Dalmatian chief of a robber band who redistribute wealth in favour of the common good'.

18. Coquettes... more a.s.suredly: An imitation of the French poet Evariste de Parny's 'La Main' ('The Hand'). Parny (1753a1814) was renowned for his elegant love poetry. See lines 13a14 of stanza 29.

19. The Well-Meaner: Pushkin's note reads: 'A journal edited by the late A. Izmailov in a rather slipshod way.' Pushkin and his friends treated the journal as a joke and privately read line 4 as With a phallus in their hand'.

20. seminarist... in yellow shawl: In this case a seminarist is a learned woman.

21. Bogdanovich: Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich (1743a1803), poet, author of Dushen'ka (1783a9), based on the story of Cupid and Psyche; regarded as the founder of light poetry' and valued by Pushkin for opening up poetry to popular speech. His influence on Pushkin is felt in Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820).

22. tender Parny's: Evariste Desire Desforges, Chevalier de Parny (1753a1814) French poet. He used the word tendre profusely in his elegies.

23. Bard of The Feasts: Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800a1844), an outstanding poet of Pushkin's period. The Feasts was written in Finland in 1820, where he was serving as a private in the army, having been expelled from military school for theft. It evokes the ebullient days spent in St Petersburg in 1819, when he got to know Pushkin. But he was more famed as an elegiac poet.

24. Der Freischutz: Opera by Carl Maria von Weber (1786a1826), a popular import when Pushkin was writing his third chapter.

25. The rosy seal: A round piece of sticky paper used to seal envelopes.

26. Song of the Girls: Invented by Pushkin, but adapted from folk songs he heard on his family estate at Mikhailovskoye. This is a wedding song where the bridegroom is symbolized by cherries and the bride by berries. It has the double effect of keeping the girls from eating the fruit and adding to Tatiana's situation.

CHAPTER IV.

1. La morale... Necker: 'Morality is in the nature of things.' Jacques Necker (1732a1804) was a politician and financier, minister in Louis XVI's government at the beginning of the French Revolution and father of Mme de Stael, who quotes Pushkin's epigraph in her Considerations sur les Princ.i.p.aux Evenements de la Revolution Francaise (Considerations on the Princ.i.p.al Events of the French Revolution, 1818).

2. Chateaubriand: Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768a1848), French Romantic writer and politician, author of the novel Rene (1802).

3. Qu'ecrirez-vous... Annette: 'What will you write on these tablets?'... Ever yours, Annette.'

4. Tolstoy: Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783a1875), artist.

5. a madrigal: In this context is a complimentary poem written for society alb.u.ms.

6. And, river-like... verities: A rare example of a two-rhyme octet resembling the Italian sonnet, which I render imperfectly a ababaabb. A similar, but less exact version is to be found in Chapter V, stanza 10.

7. Yazykov: Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov (1803a47), Romantic poet.

8. an awesome critic: The critic is Wilhelm Kuchelbecker (1797a1846), who in an essay of 1824 denounced the elegy and praised the ode.