Crime and Punishment (98 page)

1.
the reforms
: The judicial reforms undertaken in Russia after 1864. These had the effect of limiting the powers of the police, encouraging a less formal interpretation of the criminal law and opening the courts to the public. Porfiry is a representative of the ‘new order’.

2.
the Battle of the Alma
: It was after the defeat of the Russian armed forces at the River Alma on 8 September 1854 that the Anglo-French troops began the siege of Sebastopol.

3.
the Austrian Hofkriegsrat
: Reference to the surrender of General Mack to Napoleon at Ulm in 1805. The first part of Tolstoy's
War and Peace
(‘1805’), which deals with this event, among others, had begun to appear in the Russian press in 1865. (The chapter concerned appeared in the
Russian Messenger
, 1866, No. 2, in between the first two parts of
Crime and Punishment
.)

1.
Knop
'
s or the English Shop
: Haberdasher's on Nevsky Prospect. The English Shop was situated on Malaya Millionnaya Street, and sold various items of foreign-made haberdashery.

2.
a new and soon-to-be-established
‘
commune
’: Communes inspired by the ideas of Fourier and Chernyshevsky had begun to spring up in St Petersburg.

3.
the kissing of hands
: Reference to the words of Vera Pavlovna in Chapter 2, XVIII, of Chernyshevsky's
What Is To Be Done?
: ‘Men should not kiss women's hands. My dear sir, it cannot but be offensive to women; it means that men do not consider them the same as themselves.’

4.
the free access to rooms
: ‘We shall have two rooms, one yours and one mine, and a third in which we shall drink tea, dine, receive guests… I shall not dare to go into your room, lest I disturb you… and you will not likewise enter mine…’ (
What Is To Be Done
?, Chapter 2, XVIII).

5.
Raphael or Pushkin
: Reference to the utilitarian arguments of the nihilist D.I. Pisarev, who considered that a pair of boots was preferable to the poetry of Pushkin.

6.
“
Horns
” –
that
… “
Pushkinian
”
expression
: Reference to some lines from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:

7.
My dear
…
making a protest
: Parody on Lopukhov's words to Vera Pavlovna when he discovers she has been having an affair with Kirsanov: ‘After all, you won't stop respecting me, will you?… don't feel sorry for me: my fate will by no means be made pitiable by the fact
that you have not deprived yourself of your happiness because of me’ (
What Is To Be Done
?, Chapter 3, XXV).

1.
pani chorazyna
: Madame Ensign (Polish).

1.
Gott der Barmherzige
: Merciful God (German).

2.
A General Treatise on the Positive Method
: Symposium of articles on psychology and social statistics that appeared in 1866, edited and translated by N. N. Neklyudov.

3.
Piederit
'
s article
: ‘The Brain and its Functioning, A Popular Outline of Physiological Psychology’, by the German physiologist Theodor Piederit (1826–82). See
note 6
to Part One, Chapter IV on A. Wagner.

4.
panie lajdak
: ‘The gentleman is a scoundrel’ (Polish).

1.
There are these tubercles
…
medicine
: According to Dostoyevsky's physician, Dr S. D. Yanovsky, the writer had during his youth been interested in diseases of the brain and the nervous system, and had read a good deal of scientific literature on the subject, including the work of the Austrian anatomist Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828). The theory of the ‘tubercles’ is, however, probably derived from the writings of a later researcher, the French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813–79).

2.
“
The Hussar Leaned On His Sabre
”: Well-known song ascribed to Vielgorsky, set to words by Batyushkov (his poem ‘Parting’,
Razluka
).

3.
“
Cinq sous
”: The beggars’ aria from
Grâce de Dieu
, a well-known play by Gustave Dennery and A. P. Lemoine, which enjoyed a huge success in Russia.

4.
Du hast Diamanten und Perlen
…
was willst du mehr
: Lines from the poem by Heine, in Schubert's setting.

5.
In heat of noon
,
in Dagestan
'
s deep valley
: The poem ‘Dream’ by Mikhail Lermontov, probably in the setting by Paufler.

1.
I went to see B
—: This is most probably Dr S. P. Botkin, a St Petersburg physician who treated Dostoyevsky himself.

2.
“
Smoke
…
in the mist
”: An inexact quotation from Gogol's
Diary of a Madman
.

3.
umsonst
: In vain, for nothing (German).

4.
a Raskolnik
…
there were
“
Runners
”: ‘Raskolnik’ is a name for a religious dissenter, one of those involved in the schism (
raskol
) that took place in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century (see
Introduction
). The ‘Runners’ (
beguny
), most of whom were peasants, artisans or runaway soldiers, were a sect that came into being at the end of the eighteenth century. They regarded the established Russian Church as a representative of the Antichrist and refused to be considered subjects of the Tsar. For them, the only salvation was in ‘running’, or fleeing from society, authority, the family and civil laws. They spent their lives on the road, wandering and begging.

5.
a fashionable sectarian
: Dostoyevsky probably has in mind V. I. Kelsiyev, who in 1862 declared himself an
emigre
and went to London, where he began to publish material about the
raskol
.

6.
Warrant Officer Dyrka
: Someone of this name is mentioned in Gogol's play
The Marriage
(Act I, Scene 16), but Dostoyevsky seems to have confused him with Warrant Officer Petukhov in the same play (Act II, Scene 8).

1.
the pesenniki
:
Pesenniki
were male peasant choral singers.

2.
manservants
’
ditty
': In Russian,
lakeyskaya pesnya
(literally ‘lackeys’ song’) is a vulgar, hybrid blend of folk-song and drawing-room romance, often with somewhat ‘dubious’ words, usually sung by a falsetto male voice to the accompaniment of a guitar (the manservant Smerdyakov sings one in
The Brothers Karamazov
, Book Five, Chapter 2). Sung here by a woman, such a song acquires an added dimension of moral impropriety.

1.
“
dark-eyed Parasha
”: Paraphrase of the beginning of Derzhavin's poem ‘To Parasha’: ‘Fair-haired Parasha, silver-pink of face…’

2.
Où va-t-elle
…
nicher
: Remark ascribed to Moliere, in reply to a beggar, who thought Molière had given him a gold coin by mistake.

1.
a
‘
Vauxhall
’:
Vakzal
– from the English ‘Vauxhall Gardens’. The Russian word
vokzal
now means a railway station.

2.
Vladimirka
: The region surrounding the town of Vladimir, through which the gangs of convicts bound for Siberia were dispatched.

3.
—
kov Bridge
: Tuchkov Bridge, across the Little Neva from Vasily Island.

4.
—
oy Prospect
: Bolshoy Prospect, on the St Petersburg Side.

5.
a tall watchtower
: The watchtower of the St Petersburg Side Fire Station.

6.
a brass
‘
Achilles
’
helmet
: Russian firemen's helmets usually bore a representation of Achilles.

1.
to be aware
…
in myself
: An echo of ‘Nekrasovian’ civic and public sentiment – by now alien to Dostoyevsky.

1.
shchi
: Cabbage soup (Russian).

2.
kalatches
: White bread rolls (Russian).