Chapter 3.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 104:
Venevitinov, a young poet whose few poems showed the greatest promise. He died at the age of seventeen.
Footnote 105:
The members of the Petrashevsky group, of whom Dostoevsky was one, were condemned to death, and led out to the scaffold. At the last moment their sentence was transmuted to penal servitude in Siberia.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 106:
_I.e._, of supervision by the secret police, whose light-blue uniform was worn with a white strap.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 107:
The dynasty of kings of Poland from 1386 to 1572.
Footnote 108:
Karl Sand, a student of Jena University, who in 1819 assassinated the German dramatist Kotzebue, because he threw ridicule on the Burschenschaft movement.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 109:
In 1844, I met Perevoshtchikov at Shtchepkin’s and sat beside him at dinner. Towards the end he could not resist saying: ‘It is a pity, a very great pity, that circumstances prevented you from taking up work, you had excellent abilities.’
‘But you know it’s not for every one to follow you up to heaven. We are busy here on earth at work of some sort.’
‘Upon my word, to be sure that may be work of a sort. Hegelian philosophy perhaps. I have read your articles, there is no understanding them; bird’s language, that’s queer sort of work. No, indeed!’
For a long while I was amused at this verdict, that is, for a long while I could not understand that our language really was poor; if it were a bird’s, it must have been the bird that was Minerva’s favourite.
Footnote 110:
Among the papers sent me from Moscow, I found a note in which I informed my cousin who was in the country that I had taken my degree. ‘The examination is over, and I am a graduate! You cannot imagine the sweet feeling of freedom after four years of work. Did you think of me on Thursday? It was a stifling day, and the torture lasted from nine in the morning till nine in the evening.’ (26th June 1833.) I fancy I added two hours for effect or to round off the sentence. But for all my pleasure, my vanity was stung by another student’s winning the gold medal. In a second letter of the 6th July, I find: ‘To-day was the prizegiving, but I was not there. I did not care to be second at the giving of the medals.’
Footnote 111:
St. Just was a member of the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, a follower of Robespierre and beheaded with him at the age of twenty-seven.
Footnote 112:
Hoche and Marceau were generals of the French Revolutionary Army. Both were engaged in the pacification of La Vendée. Both perished before reaching the age of thirty.
Footnote 113:
Desmoulins was one of the early leaders of the French Revolution, and headed the attack on the Bastille; afterwards accused of being a Moderate and beheaded together with Danton at the age of thirty-four.
Footnote 114:
Escousse (b. 1813) and Lebras (b. 1816) were poets who wrote in collaboration a successful play, _Farruck le Maure_, followed by an unsuccessful one called _Raymond_. On the failure of the latter they committed suicide in 1832. Béranger wrote a poem on them.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 115:
_I.e._, Nikolay Pavlovitch Golohvastov, the younger of the two sons of a sister of Herzen’s father. These two sons are fully described in Vol. II. Chapter 31.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 116:
This is the earliest record of Russian history. It begins with the Deluge and continues in leisurely fashion up to the year 1110. Nestor, of whom nothing is really known, is assumed to have been a monk of the twelfth century.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 117:
Enfantin, a French engineer, was one of the founders of Saint-Simonism.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 118:
Familiar to all English school-girls of the last generation in the French as _La Jeune Sibérienne_ by Xavier de Maistre. I cannot discover whether the Russian version is the original and the French the translation or vice versa.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 119:
Translated by Juliet Soskice.
Footnote 120:
J. S. Bailly (1736–1793), one of the early leaders of the French revolution, and an astronomer and literary man of some distinction, was Mayor of Paris after the taking of the Bastille, and executed in 1793.
Footnote 121:
Fieschi, the celebrated conspirator, executed in 1836 for the attempt with an ‘infernal machine’ on the life of Louis-Philippe.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 122:
The League of Public Welfare was formed in the reign of Alexander I. to support philanthropic undertakings and education, to improve the administration of justice, and to promote the economical welfare of the country. The best men in Russia belonged to it. At first approved by Alexander, it was afterwards repressed, and it split into the ‘Union of the North,’ which aimed at establishing constitutional government, and the ‘Union of the South’ led by Pestel, which aimed at republicanism. The two Unions combined in the attempt of December the Fourteenth.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 123:
See Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 124:
A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 125:
Philip Wouverman (1619–1668), a Dutch master who excelled in drinking and hunting scenes.
Footnote 126:
Jacques Callot (1592–1635), a French painter and engraver.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 127:
The epithet in the last line is left to the imagination in Russian also.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 128:
Among those who have distinguished themselves in this line of late years is the notorious Liprandi, who drew up a scheme for founding an Academy of Espionage (1858).
Footnote 129:
I need not say that this was a barefaced lie, a shameful police trap.
Footnote 130:
Marlinsky (pseudonym for Bestuzhev) (1795–1837), author of numerous tales, extremely romantic in style and subject. Readers of Turgenev will remember that he was the favourite author of the hero of _Knock, Knock, Knock_.
Footnote 131:
Zagoskin (1789–1852), author of popular historical novels, sentimental and patriotic.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 132:
The _Prisoner of the Caucasus_, _Voynarovsky_, and the _Fountain of Bahtchisaray_ are poems of Pushkin’s. The line quoted is from the last of the three.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 133:
The Votyaks are a Mongolian tribe, found in Siberia and Eastern Russia.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 134:
Jean-Baptiste Carrier (1756–1794) was responsible for the _noyades_ and massacre of 1600 people at Nantes, while suppressing the counter-revolutionary rising of La Vendée.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 135:
Pun on the Russian word for ‘translate,’ which also means ‘transfer from place to place.’—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 136:
In 1802, Alexander I. ordered a report to be sent him concerning the management by Major-General Izmailov of the latter’s estates in Tula, where serfs were tortured and imprisoned by their owner on the slightest provocation. By the connivance of the local authorities, Izmailov was able to retain control and persist in his brutal practices till 1830. Even then he was only punished by being deprived of the management of his estates and interned in a small town. Both Izmailov and Tolstoy ‘the American’ are referred to in Griboyedov’s famous play, _Woe from Wit_.
Footnote 137:
Mamonov was one of the lovers of Catherine II., declared insane for having married against her wishes.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
Footnote 138:
Minih was a minister and general prominent under Peter the Great and Anna. On the latter’s death he brought about the downfall of Biron, was exiled by Elizabeth, and finally brought back from Siberia by Catherine.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 139:
Simon Konarski, a Polish revolutionary, also active in the ‘Young Europe’ (afterwards ‘Young Italy’) movement, lived in disguise and with a false passport in Poland, founding a printing press and carrying on active propaganda till he was caught and shot at Vilna in 1839. His admirers cut the post to which he was tied into bits which they preserved as relics of a saint.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 140:
Speransky, a leading statesman of the early period of the reign of Alexander I., banished in 1812 on a trumped-up charge of treason, recalled by Nicholas. He was responsible for the codification of Russian laws. See Tolstoy’s _War and Peace_ for sketch of him.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 141:
This gave Count Rastoptchin occasion for a biting jest at Pestel’s expense. They were both dining with the Tsar. The Tsar, who was standing at the window, asked: ‘What’s that on the church, the black thing on the cross?’ ‘I can’t distinguish,’ observed Count Rastoptchin. ‘You must ask Boris Ivanovitch, he has wonderful eyes, he sees from here what is being done in Siberia.’
Footnote 142:
I see with great pleasure that the New York papers have several times repeated this.
Footnote 143:
Seslavin was a famous leader of the guerilla warfare against Napoleon in 1812.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 144:
An epigram of Pushkin’s contains the two lines:—
‘“I’ll buy all,” said Gold. “I’ll take all,” said Steel.’—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 145:
All their prayers may be reduced to a petition for the continuance of their race, for their crops, and the preservation of their herds.
‘May Yumala grant that from one sheep may be born two, from one grain may come five, that my children may have children.’
There is something miserable and gloomy, the survival from ancient times of oppression, in this lack of confidence in life on earth, and daily bread. The devil (Shaitan) is regarded as equal to God. I saw a terrible fire in a village, in which the inhabitants were mixed Russian and Votyak. The Russians were hard at work shouting and dragging out their things, the tavern-keeper was particularly conspicuous among them. It was impossible to check the fire, but it was easy at first to save things. The Votyaks were huddled together on a little hill, weeping copiously and doing nothing.
Footnote 146:
A similar reply (if Kurbanovsky did not invent this one) was made by peasants in Germany when refusing to be converted to Catholicism.
Footnote 147:
Cyril and Methodius were brothers who in the ninth century evangelised in Thrace, Moesia and Moravia, invented the Slav alphabet, and made a Slav translation of the Bible. They are saints of both the Greek and the Catholic Churches.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 148:
In the Province of Vyatka the peasants are particularly fond of forming new settlements. Very often three or four clearings are suddenly discovered in the forest. The immense waste lands and forests (now half cut down) tempt the peasants to take this _res nullius_ which is left unused. The Minister of Finance has several times been obliged to confirm these squatters in possession of the land.
Footnote 149:
Zhukovsky (1786–1852), the well-known poet, was tutor to the Tsarevitch, afterwards Alexander II. He was a man of fine and generous character. His original work is not of the first order, but as a translator from the European and classical languages he was of invaluable service in the development of Russian culture.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 150:
Leroux, a follower of Saint Simon, of the first half of the nineteenth century.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 151:
Gebel, a well-known musical composer of the period.
Footnote 152:
I thought fit, I don’t understand why, to write these scenes in verse. Probably I thought that anybody could write unrhymed five-foot iambics, since even Pogodin[153] wrote them. In 1839 or 1840, I gave both the manuscripts to Byelinsky to read and calmly awaited his eulogies. But next day Byelinsky sent them back to me with a note in which he said: ‘Do please have them copied to run on without being divided into lines, then I will read them with pleasure, as it is I am bothered all the time by the idea of their being in verse.’
Byelinsky killed both my dramatic efforts. It is always pleasant to pay one’s debts. In 1841, Byelinsky published a long dialogue upon literature in the _Notes of the Fatherland_. ‘How do you like my last article?’ he asked me, as we were dining together _en petit comité_ at Dusseau’s. ‘Very much,’ I answered, ‘all that you say is excellent, but tell me, please, how could you go on struggling for two hours to talk to that man without seeing at the first word that he was a fool?’ ‘That’s perfectly true,’ said Byelinsky, bursting into laughter. ‘Well, my boy, that is crushing! Why, he is a perfect fool!’
Footnote 153:
Pogodin, chiefly known as an historian of a peculiar Slavophil tinge, was co-editor with Shevyryov of the _Moskvityanin_, a reactionary journal, and wrote historical novels of little merit.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 154:
The reference is to the ‘Arzamass,’ a literary club of which Karamzin, Batyushkov, Uvarov, this Bludov and some others were members. The town Arzamass is noted for its geese.—(_Translator’s Note._)
Footnote 155:
_Il a voulu le bien de ses sujets._
Footnote 156:
The name means ‘not a woman.’—(_Translator’s Note._)
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160 they used to keep them for going they used to keep them for going walks, that strangers on walks, that strangers
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