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[32]The fool hath said . . .: Psalms 14:1, 53:1.
[33]Princess Dashkova ... and ... Potiomkin: Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (1743-1810), writer, president of the Russian Academy, and a close friend of theempress Catherine. Grigory Alexandrovich Potiomkin (1739-91), general and statesman, the most famous and influential of Catherine’s lovers.
[34]Blessed . . .: Luke 11:27.
[35]Teacher ... what should I do ... :see Luke 10:25, Mark 10:17, Matthew 19:16.
[36]father of a lie ... son of a lie ...: see John 8:44, where the “father” refers to the devil. The phrase and its correction may be a first hint at later developments concerning Ivan.
[37] some holy wonder-worker ...: the reference is to St. Denis of Paris (third century ad); the source, however, is not the Lives of the Saints, but Voltaire, who tells this jesting story about St. Denis in the notes to his play The Maid of Orleans (1774).
[38]read from the Lives of the Saints . . .: Miusov and his French informant are unaware (which is the point) that saints’ lives are not read in the Orthodox liturgy.
[39]three months short of three years old. Dostoevsky’s son Alexei died at this age in 1878.
[40]Rachel of old . . .: Matthew 2:18 (quoti’ jjeremiah 31:15).
[41]Alexei, the man of God: St. Alexis, a Greek anchorite who died around 412 a.d., is much loved in Russia, where he is known as “Alexei, the man of God.” There is a folk legend of his life, from which Dostoevsky may have drawn. Alexei Karamazov is referred to several times as a “man of God.”
[42]And there is more joy ...: see Luke 15:7.
[43]Lise: Madame Khokhlakov often uses this French form of her daughter’s name, as do the narrator and Alyosha.
[44]burdock ...: words spoken by Bazarov, the atheist hero of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862).
[45]ecclesiastical courts: set note 2 to page 16 in section 1.1.3 above.
[46]Ultramontanism: the doctrine of absolute papal supremacy favored by members of the Italian party in the Roman Catholic Church, who were “across the mountains” (ultramontane) from their French opponents, the “Gallican” party. The controversy dates to the 1820s.
[47]a kingdom ...: see John 18:36 for the true sense of these words.
[48]holy gifts: the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist.
[49]timesand seasons: see Acts 1:7,1 Thessalonians 5:1-2.
[50]Pope Gregory the Seventh: pontificate 1073-85; canonized. One of the greatest and most powerful of the popes of Rome, known for his struggle against the emperor Henry IV, whom he humbled at Canossa.
[51]thirdtemptation of the devil: the devil’s third temptation of Christ; see Matthew 4:1-11. A foreshadowing of Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor.
[52]December revolution: the coup d’état in 1851 that ended the French Second Republic; a year later Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was made emperor.
[53]to set. . . in heaven: a conflation of Colossians 3:2 and Philippians 3:20.
[54]regierender Graf von Moor: “reigning Count von Moor.” Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) wrote his historical drama The Robbers in 1781. There are references to Schiller’s plays and poetry and to the notion from The Robbers of “the great and beautiful” all throughB.K.
[55]A
[56]across a handkerchief: alludes to Schiller’s play Cabal and Love (1784), in which such a challenge is made.
[57] her who loved much: see Luke 7:47. The passage is grotesquely misinterpreted by Fyodor Pavlovich.
[58] the Church calendar: a yearly listing of saints’ and feast days; in this case it would not prove anything.
[59] obedience: the term for a task imposed on a monk by his superior or spiritual director.
[60] what’s the meaning of this dream: a journalistic commonplace of the 1860s and 1870s, used by Dostoevsky’s ideological adversary M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin among others; a paraphrase of a line from Pushkin’s “The Bridegroom”. “Well then, what is your dream about?” It betrays Rakitin as a “liberal.”
[61] Pushkin . . .: several of Pushkin’s poems celebrate women’s “little feet,” for which the liberals of the 1860s censured him. Rakitin himself will soon “sing” of a woman’s feet (B.K. 4.11.2 and4.11.4).
[62]On the one hand . . .: Rakitin borrows this phrase from Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Unfinished Conversations, pt. 1 (1873);again he labels himself (see Terras, p. 162).
[63] archimandrite: superior of a monastery; now often honorary.
[64] your noble reverence: an absurdly incorrect way to address the superior of a monastery.
[65] von Sohn: see note 2 to page 36 in section 1.2.1.
[66] plus de noblesse que de sincérité: “more nobility than sincerity.” And vice versa.
[67] the Holy Fathers. Fyodor Pavlovich apparently believes that “secret confession” was instituted by the early fathers of the Church, which it was not.
[68] flagellationism: the practice of self-flagellation as a way of purification from sin; never accepted by the Church.
[69]Synod: a council of bishops instituted (contrary to canon law) by Peter the Great (1672-1725) to administer the Russian Orthodox Church, answerable to the tsar himself, who thus became the de facto head of the Church.
[70] Robbers: see note 2 to page 71 in section 1.2.6.
[71] Eliseyev Brothers: famous Petersburg provisioners. The shop has survived intact, is still a provisioners’, and is often still referred to as Eliseyevs’.
[72]seven councils a hyperbolic reference to the seven “ecumenical councils” that were held between 325 and 787 A.D.
[73]six fingers: such malformations, to some minds, implied the work or even the presence of “unclean spirits.” Hence Grigory later calls the child a “dragon.”
[74]the Book of Job: references to the Book of Job appear frequently in B.K. and are a key to one of its themes: the “justification of suffering,” i.e., theodicy.
[75]Isaac the Syrian: see note 7 to page 27 in section 1.1.5.
[76] Flagellants: see note 5 to page 88 in section 1.2.8.
[77]state councillor: rank of the fifth grade in the civil service, corresponding to the military rank of colonel.
[78]Smerdyashchaya: “Stinking [woman]” in Russian. Smerdyakov’s name thus means roughly “(son) of the stinking one.”
[79] Glory ...: the verses are by Dmitri Fyodorovich himself.
[80]Do not believe . . .: from “When from the Darkness of Error”(1865) by Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-78); one of Dostoevsky’s favorite poems, about a rescued prostitute.
[81] the golden fish ...: allusion to the well-known folktale about the magic fish, of which Pushkin made a poetic version, “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” (1833).
[82]Oman . . .: the line is Goethe’s, from “The Divine” (1783).
[83]An die Freude: Schiller’s famous ode “To Joy” (1785), from which Dmitri will quote a little further on.