Sketches from a Hunter's Album (51 page)

4
.
To die, to sleep: Hamlet
, III.1; other – slightly garbled – quotations are from Hamlet's soliloquies in
Hamlet
I.2 and II.2.

1
.
sideburn-ites
: by a decree of April 1837 Tsar Nicholas I forbade the wearing of beards and whiskers by officials in the civil service. The interdiction also extended to students. This explains the reference to ‘the distant past', since
Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District
is known to have been written in 1848, and it also explains the ‘ravening hunger' of disapproval with which the dignitary later glances at Prince Kozelsky's beard. It must be assumed that the prince was not in the civil service.

2
.
With my fate is no one very much concerned
: from ‘Testament' (1840), a poem by M. Yu. Lermontov.

3
. Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre: from a dramatic poem, ‘Coupe et les livres' (1832), by A. de Musset (1810–57).

4
.
encyclopedia of Hegel
: a reference to Hegel's
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissen-schaften im Grundrisse
(1817). Turgenev possessed a copy of this work in its third edition (Heidelberg, 1830).

5
.
Moscow sages
: a reference to the Slavophiles.

6
. Gefahrlich ist's den Leu zu wecken: a slightly inaccurate quotation from Schiller's
Das Lied von der Glocke
.

7
.
Awaken her not till dawn has broken
: from a lyric by A. A. Fet (1820–92), supposed to have been set to music by A. E. Varlamov.

8
.
In one of Voltaire's tragedies
: the reference is possibly to Act II of Voltaire's
Mérope
(1743).

1
.
Orbassan
: a character in Voltaire's tragedy
Tancrède
, translated into Russian in 1816.

2
.
Marlinsky
: A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (1797–1837), popular writer of romantic tales, whose ‘Ammalat-Bek' dates from 1832.

1
.
Time of youth, time so lovely
: a Moscow gypsy song, composed by A. L. Gurilev (1802–56) to words by N. M. Konshin (1793–1859).

2
.
Malek Adel
: hero of the novel by the French authoress Sophie Cottin (1770–1807),
Mathilde, ou Mémoires tirés de l'histoire des Croisades
(1805).

3
.
Shakespeare
: the reference is presumably to Richard Ill's cry ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!' from
Richard III
, V. 4.

1
.
Homeland of longsuffering… Russia
: from the first stanza of a short poem of 1855 entitled ‘These wretched hamlets'. F. Tyutchev (1803–73), a remarkable philosophical and nature poet, was first brought to the notice of a wide reading public through a collection of his lyrics that Turgenev prepared for publication in
The Contemporary
in 1854.

1
.
The robber's axe, despiséd thing
: a line from a poem on the death of Field-Marshal Count Kamensky by V. A. Zhukovsky (1783–1852), leading exponent of Russian Romanticism and well-known for his translations of German and English Romantic poetry.

1
. Since
Gogol's time
: a reference presumably to the Little Russian (Ukrainian) extraction of Nikolay Gogol (1809–52), whose first successful work
Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka
(1831) was devoted to stories about life in Little Russia. Gogol's descriptions of life in Little Russia have been compared with – or, more aptly, contrasted with – Turgenev's description of life in the Russian countryside in his
Sketches
.

*
In the Oryol Province large solid masses of bush are known as ‘plazas'; the local Oryol dialect is noted for a wide variety of original, sometimes very apt, sometimes rather ugly, words and turns of phrase.

*
These terms are familiar to nightingale lovers: they denote the best ‘figures' in a nightingale's singing.

*
‘Bityuks', or ‘of Bityuk stock', were a special breed of horses that came from Voronezh province, in the famous ‘Khrenov' region (the former stud belonging to Countess Orlova) –
Author's note
.

*
A flat boat made of old barge boards.

*
‘Rolling-rooms' or ‘dipping-rooms' are terms used in paper factories to describe the place where the papers are baled out in the vats. It is situated right by the mill, under the mill-wheel.

*
‘The Keep' is the name used in our region for the place where the water runs over the wheel.

†
The net with which the paper is scooped out.

*
The name given by the local peasants to an eclipse of the sun.

*
The superstition about ‘Trishka' probably contains an echo of the legend about Antichrist.

*
A ‘narrow file' is a sharp turn in a ravine.

†
A ‘tarn' is a deep hole filled with spring water remaining after the spring torrents, which does not dry up even in summer.

*
In the province of Oryol a man of solitary and gloomy character is called a Loner.

*
A ‘Ridge' is the name for a ravine in Oryol province.

*
A horse will quickly grow fat on salt and malt dregs.

*
In peasant speech the town of Mtsensk is called Amchensk and the inhabitants are called Amchenians. Amchenians are boisterous. It's no wonder that among us we tell people we don't like that we'll ‘send an Amchenian to live with you'.

*
In 1840 there were most cruel frosts and snow did not fall before the end of December; all the foliage was frozen to death, and many fine oak forests were destroyed by this merciless winter. It is difficult to replace them; the fertility of the earth is obviously declining; on waste lands that have been ‘reserved' (that is to say, which have had icons carried round them) birches and aspens are growing up of their own accord in place of the noble trees which used to grow there; for we know no other way of propagating our woodlands.

*
Krasnogorié=Red Hills.

*
The Welcome is the name given to any place where people gather willingly, any kind of shelter.

*
People of the Orlov region refer to eyes as ‘peepers', just as they call mouths ‘eaters'.

*
‘Woodies' is the name given to inhabitants of the southern forest areas
(poles'ye)
, a long forest belt which originates on the boundary between Bolkhov and Zhizdra counties. They are distinguished by having many peculiarities in their way of life, habits and speech. They are called twisters owing to their suspicious and tight-fisted disposition.

†
‘Woodies' add the exclamation ‘Ha!' and ‘Bah-gum!' to almost every word. ‘Harry-on' instead of ‘hurry-on'.

*
Fearful it is the lion to waken, And dreadful is the tiger's tooth, But most awful of all things together taken – Is man in his madness and lack of truth!

†
Is a students' circle in the city of Moscow!