5
cavalier of St Anne:
originally a Holstein military decoration, included in the Russian list of honours by Paul I in 1797.
6
White Eagle:
a Polish military honour, included in the Russian list of honours in 1815.
7
likhach:
a smart cab and its driver.
8
bogatyr:
a hero in Russian folklore.
9
My devachanic friend:
in Sanskrit, Devachan is ‘the place of the gods’ – for theosophists, the name of heaven.
10
opoponax:
an aromatic resin with a musky odour, obtained from the plant of the same name.
11
and from the kingdom of necessity create the kingdom of freedom:
these words originate from a passage in Friedrich Engels’s
Anti-Dübring.
12
Noble, slender, pale:
there is an obvious similarity between Varvara Yevgrafovna’s poem and Pushkin’s poem ‘Once a poor knight there did live’ (
Zhil na svete rytsar’ bednyi,
1829), in its revision of 1835:
Full of a pure love,
Faithful to a delightful dream,
A.M.D. [Ave Mater Dei, tr.] with his blood
He traced upon his shield.
Dostoyevsky makes much play with these lines in his novel
The Idiot,
and they were also used by Blok as the epigraph to one of his poems (‘A.M.
Dobrolyubov’, 1903).
13
Apperception:
a Leibnizian term, denoting the transition from a lower to a higher state of consciousness.
In Russian,
appertseptsiya
(apperception) and
perets
(pepper) sound very close to each other.
14
Cohen’s
Theorie der Erfahrung:
the book
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung
(1871) by the German philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), founder of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism.
15
Kant, Comte:
in Russian, the two names differ by only one letter (Kant =
Kant,
Comte =
Kont
).
16
Mill’s
Logic:
John Stuart Mill’s
System of Logic
(1843) was a formative influence on nineteenth-century Russian social thought.
17
Sigwart’s
Logic:
the two-volume work (1873–8) by the German Neo-Kantian philosopher Christoph von Sigwart (1830–1904).
18
professor of the philosophy of law:
an allusion to the life of Pobedonostsev, who graduated from the Imperial Law School in 1846 and subsequently occupied the chair of Civil Law.
19
Bundist-socialist:
the Bund was a national Jewish political organization.
20
Sow the useful:
an inexact quotation from Nekrasov’s poem ‘To the Sowers’ (
Seyatelyam,
1876).
21
a mystical anarchist:
the doctrine of ‘mystical anarchism’ was developed by the writer Georgii Chulkov in his book
On Mystical Anarchism
(1906), and had a certain following among the Russian Symbolists, though Bely was firmly opposed to it, seeing in it a ‘profanation’ of Symbolist tenets.
22
Tam:
a ‘musical’ exclamation – but the word also means ‘there’ in Russian.
23
Gazing at the rays of purple sunset:
a romance by the composer A.A.
Oppel, to words by Kozlov.
In the original, the second line reads ‘We stood upon the bank of the Neva.’
24
The Queen of Spades:
Tchaikovsky’s opera, based on Pushkin’s short story, with its hero, Hermann.
25
the Code of Laws:
The Code of Laws of the Russian Empire,
a systematic code of pre-1917 Russian law, published in sixteen volumes.
26
tabes dorsalis:
a form of neurosyphilis, affecting the spinal cord.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
1
Grant God that I may not go mad:
the epigraph is the first line of an untitled poem by Pushkin (1833) that was never published in the poet’s lifetime.
2
a statue by Irelli:
there is no such statue in the Summer Garden.
Bely
may have inadvertently written Irelli instead of Rastrelli – whose equestrian statue of Peter the Great (1743–4) is to be found on Horse Stable Square, near the main entrance of Mikhailovsky Palace.
3
Maison Tricotons:
possibly the ladies’ fashion shop, Maison Annette, at No 25 Nevsky Prospect.
4
Krafft’s:
Krafft’s chocolate factory was situated at No 10/5 Italyanskaya Ulitsa.
5
Ballet’s:
a confectioner’s shop at No 54 Nevsky Prospect.
6
rust-red palace:
the Winter Palace in Petersburg, built 1750–61.
The palace’s original blue-white tint was replaced in the nineteenth century by a dark brown one.
7
Yelizaveta Petrovna:
daughter of Peter the Great, Empress Elizabeth of Russia (1741–61).
8
Aleksandr Pavlovich:
Tsar Alexander I (1801–25).
9
Aleksandr Nikolayevich:
Tsar Alexander II (1855–81).
10
zemstvo
official:
a
zemstvo
was an elective district council in pre-1917 Russia.
11
the editor of a conservative newspaper, the liberal son of a priest:
apparently a reference to the essayist, writer and publisher Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin (1834–1912).
12
Charleston:
Charleston, Virginia, USA, where an influential Masonic lodge was based.
Its head was called the ‘antipope’.
The reference here is to Léo Taxil (see note
17
).
13
liberal professor:
the ‘professor of statistics’ is, by Bely’s own admission, a caricature of the Constitutional Democrat politician Peter Struve, though in his memoirs Bely claimed that he had not consciously intended to reproduce Struve’s features.
14
the Boxers in China:
a reference to the Boxer rebellion of 1900, a revolt by the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, encouraged by the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi against foreign domination.
15
Who art thou:
this quartrain, like the entire scene being described, is closely connected with Bely’s poems ‘Masquerade’ (
Maskarad,
1908) and ‘The Festival’ (
Prazdnik,
1908), which depict the appearance of a fateful red domino at a festive masquerade.
16
a rustling stream of confetti:
Bely appears to have confused
konfetti
(
confetti
) with
serpentin
(paper streamers).
17
Taxil:
Léo Taxil, a French anticlerical writer; his real name was Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès (1854–1907).
He ‘exposed’ devil-worship among the Freemasons, but later confessed that his activities had been a hoax.
18
Palladism:
the highest circle of Freemasonry, and supposedly also of devil-worship.
19
terrible vengeance:
an allusion to Gogol’s story of the same name.
20
like a sheaf of ripe grain:
this entire passage presents an image of the white domino as a symbol of Christ, standing in opposition both to political terror (the red domino) and to autocracy (the Bronze Horseman).
21
Vanka:
a familiar name for a cab driver (short for Ivan).
22
And the light did not shine:
there are overtones here of the Gospel according to St John (1:5).
23
Word and deed!:
this expression meant, from the fourteenth century until the reign of Catherine II, that the person who uttered it had an important matter to relate concerning a person of state.
Thereupon he became involved, as an informer, in the investigation of a political plot by the Secret Chancellery.
24
From Finland’s icy cliffs to fiery Colchis:
a quotation from Pushkin’s poem ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’ (
Klevetnikam Rossii,
1831).
25
It’s time, my friend:
the words are loosely taken from Pushkin’s poem of the same title (1831).
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
1
When morning and its star doth gleam:
the epigraph is taken from Pushkin’s verse novel
Eugene Onegin
(Chapter 6, Lensky’s poem), with a slight alteration in line 3.
2
Aa-ba-a-ate un-re-est of the paa-aassions:
the words are from Glinka’s romance ‘Doubt’ (
Somnenie,
1838), and form a leitmotif in Bely’s ‘Fourth Symphony’.
3
Allasch:
a clear spirit flavoured with thyme.
4
Oh, do not suppose that those ties … shedding of blood:
there is an evident allusion here to the conversations between Raskolnikov and the investigator Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
– one of the many instances in
Petersburg
where Bely invokes that novel.
5
Illegitimate … seamstress:
there is perhaps a hint here of Part IV, Book 11, Chapter 8 of Dostoyevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov,
where Smerdyakov tells Ivan about the murder.
6
Colours of a fiery hue:
the verses are Bely’s own.
7
a lawless comet:
an echo of a line from Pushkin’s poem ‘The Portrait’ (
Portret,
1828).
8
arshin, vershoks:
1 arshin was equal to 0.71 metres, 1 vershok was equal to 4.4 centimetres.
9
petit-jeu
:
parlour games – charades, forfeits, epigrams, et cetera.
10
Karolina Karlovna:
the name of Bely’s first nursery-governess, who spoke German, and looked after him in January 1884.
11
the logic of Dharmakirti with a commentary by Dharmottara:
Dharmakirti was a seventh-century Indian philosopher, and Dharmottara a ninth-century one.
Bely read Dharmakirti in the Russian translation of F.I.
Shcherbatskoy, published by the Academy of Sciences in 1904.
12
a
Chronic
aspect:
a pun on chronic and Chronos.
13
Turanian:
Turanians were non-Semitic and non-Aryan nomads who supposedly came to Europe and Asia before the Aryans.
Rudolf Steiner believed that logic was invented during the supremacy of the Turanians and Mongols.
14
Saturn:
according to Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical teaching, the first stage in the evolution of the cosmos.
15
bogdykhan
:
the traditional Russian name (derived from Mongolian
bogdokhan
) for the Chinese emperors.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
1
Behind him always:
the epigraph is taken from Pushkin’s
The Bronze Horseman
(V, 148).
2
insect powder:
in Russian,
persidskiy poroshok,
literally ‘Persian powder’.
The ‘Persian’ theme is established here.
3
Serafim of Sarov:
an elder at the Orthodox monastery of Sarov who lived from 1760 to 1833.
He imposed penances of awesome severity on himself, once standing for a thousand nights in continuous prayer.
4
on the corner of Anichkov Bridge:
a reference to the sculpted groups of young men with horses that adorn the Anichkov Bridge in St Petersburg.