The Adolescent

44. This combination of terms goes back ultimately to such eighteenth-century treatises as A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, by the Anglo-Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). The Russian phrase, replacing “sublime” with the less rhetorical “lofty,” became a critical commonplace in the 1840s, but acquired an ironic tone in the utilitarian and anti-aesthetic 1860s. The narrator of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground makes much sarcastic play with it.

45. See II Samuel 11. Uriah the Hittite was the husband of Bathsheba; King David arranged for him to be killed in battle, so that he could take his wife.

46. A line from the poem “Vlas,” by Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–1878), an old acquaintance and longtime ideological opponent of Dostoevsky’s, editor of the journal Notes of the Fatherland at the time that The Adolescent was appearing in it. The poem describes a greedy and pitiless peasant who ends his days as a wanderer collecting money for churches. Dostoevsky wrote about the poem in his Diary of a Writer for 1873, quoting many passages, including this same line, which he describes as “wonderfully well-put.” Incidentally, Vlas wore iron chains “for his soul’s perfection” as he went on his wanderings.

47. Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades,” published in 1834, is one of the key works of Russian literature; in its atmosphere and in the character of its hero, Herma

48. The reference is to the equestrian statue of Peter the Great by the French sculptor Etie

49. An allusion to shares in the “Brest-Graev” railway, referring to an actual forgery scandal of the day, involving shares in the Tambov-Kozlov line. The forger, Kosolov, prototype of Dostoevsky’s Stebelkov, was prosecuted by A. F. Koni (see note 14).

50. The quotation is from Pushkin’s poem “The Black Shawl” (1820).

51. It was indeed possible to rent not a whole room but only a corner of a room, which would be partitioned off by a hanging sheet or the like.

52. See Hamlet’s soliloquy about the player (Act II, Scene ii, ll. 553–563): “Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect / A broken voice, and his whole function suiting / With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! / For Hecuba? / What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba / That he should weep for her?” The comparison does not quite fit Kraft’s case.

53. See Luke 15:11–32, the parable of the prodigal son. Arkady totally confuses the meaning of the parable.

54. Rurik (d. 879), chief of the Scandinavian rovers known as Varangians, founded the Russian principality of Novgorod at the invitation of the local populace, thus becoming the ancestor of the oldest Russian nobility. The dynasty of Rurik ruled Russia from 862 to 1598, when it was succeeded by the Romanovs.

55. Court councillor was seventh in the table of ranks established by Peter the Great, equivalent to the military rank of major.

56. A condensed quotation of Matthew 5:25–26 (King James Version).

57. Céladon, the hero of the pastoral novel Astrée, by Honoré d’Urfé (1607–1628), is a platonic and sentimental lover.

58. See Luke 15:32 (King James Version). This is now Arkady’s third reference to the parable of the prodigal son. In the parable, however, these words are spoken of the son by the father; Arkady reverses the relations.

59. The lines are from Pushkin’s poem “The Hero” (1830).

60. The fig (figue in French, fica in Italian) is a contemptuous gesture made by inserting the thumb between the first and second fingers of the fist; also used in verbal form, as in the saying, “I don’t care a fig.” Obsolete in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary , its use has continued in Russia, where a special covert form known as “a fig in the pocket” was developed, especially among intellectuals, as a sign of dissent during Soviet times.

PART TWO

1. Borel’s restaurant in Petersburg, named for its French founder, was already famous in Pushkin’s time. The plural implies “Borel and the like.”

2. Titular councillor was ninth in the table of ranks, equivalent to the military rank of staff-captain. The type of the titular councillor entered Russian literature in the person of the wretched copying clerk Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, hero of Gogol’s story “The Overcoat.”

3. That is, under the emperor Nicholas I (1796–1855).

4. The Duma referred to in this case is the city council, elected from the nobility.

5. The first railway in Russia, the Tsarskoe Selo line from Petersburg to Pavlovsk, was opened in 1838. Tsarskoe Selo (literally “Tsar’s Village”) was an aristocratic suburb about fifteen miles south of Petersburg; Pavlovsk, named for the emperor Paul (1754– 1801), who had a palace there, is slightly further south.

6. The Cathedral of St. Isaac in Petersburg was begun in 1819 and completed in 1858, on plans by the French architect Auguste Ricard de Montferrand (1756–1858).

7. Alexander Suvorov (1729–1800), who served under Catherine the Great (1729–1796), was the only Russian military man to bear the title of generalissimo until Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) awarded himself the title during World War II. Suvorov’s successes against the French revolutionary army in Italy gained him the additional titles of count of Italy and prince of Rimini, but they were not hereditary.

8. Zavyalov was a Russian merchant and manufacturer.

9. King Charles XI of Sweden (1655–1697) was said to have had a vision of an assembly in a brightly lit hall in which unknown men were cutting the throats of a great number of young people under the eyes of a fifteen-year-old king seated on his throne. The vision was spread through the Russian court under Alexander I (1777–1825) by the Swedish ambassador, a freemason by the name of Stedding.

10. See Part One, note 7. According to a popular anecdote, the “somebody” was in fact the emperor Alexander I himself.

11. Pavel Bashutsky (1771–1836) was an officer who fought in the campaigns against the French, was promoted to general, and from 1814 until his death served as military commandant of Petersburg.

12. Alexander Chernyshov (1785–1857), who distinguished himself at Austerlitz and as a partisan leader in 1812, went on diplomatic missions for Alexander I, was made a count by Nicholas I, and served as minister of war from 1827 to 1852.

13. A quotation from Luke 8:17 (King James Version).

14. See Matthew 4:3, Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, where the devil asks him to prove he is the son of God by turning stones into bread.

15. See Part One, note 33.

16. According to legend, during the reign of the third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius (seventh century B.C.), the three sons of Horatius fought for Rome against three champions of the city of Alba Longa, in the presence of the two armies, to decide which of the two peoples would command the other. The only survivor of the six was one of the Horatii, who thus gave the victory to Rome.

17. See Part One, note 11.

18. Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848) was the most influential liberal critic and Westernizer of his time, an advocate of socially committed literature. He championed Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk (1845), and exerted a strong influence on the young writer, but they soon disagreed and parted ways. Dostoevsky’s i