13. See note 10 above. Bogdan Khmelnitsky (1593-1657), hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, rose up against the Poles in 1648.

14. That is, Stefan Batory, a Hungarian prince who was king of Poland from 1575 to 1586.

Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt

1. Pirozhki (plural of pirozhok) are small pastries with sweet or savory fillings.

2. A tax farmer was a private person authorized by the government to collect various taxes in exchange for a fixed fee.

3. Latin for "knows," meaning that the student has learned the lesson.

4. A concentrate produced by allowing wine to freeze and then removing the frozen portion.

5. See note 1 to "St. John's Eve."

6. Adult male serfs were known in Russia as "souls." Censuses for tax purposes were taken at intervals of as much as fifteen years, between which the number of souls on an estate might of course increase (or decrease).

7. The feast of Saint Philip falls on November 14 and marks the beginning of the Advent fast.

8. A book entitled The Journey of Trifon Korobeinikov, an account written by the Moscow clerk Trifon Korobeinikov of his journey to Mount Athos with a mission sent by the tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible"). First published in the eighteenth century, it went through forty editions, testifying to its immense popularity. Korobeinikov also wrote Description of the Route from Moscow to Constantinople after a second journey in 1594.

Old World Landowners

1. Mythological symbol of conjugal love, Philemon and Baucis were a Phrygian couple who welcomed Zeus and Hermes, traveling in disguise, when their compatriots refused them hospitality. In return, they were spared the flood that the divinities sent the Phrygians as a punishment. Their thatched cottage became a temple in which they ministered, and they asked that one of them not die without the other. In old age they were changed into trees.

2. Ukrainian (Little Russian) names frequently end in 0, which would be Russified by the addition of a v.

3. Peter III (1728-62) became emperor of Russia in 1762 and was assassinated at the instigation of his wife, the empress Catherine II, who thereafter ruled alone.

4. Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess of La Valliere (1644-1710), was a favorite of Louis XIV. She ended her life as a Carmelite nun.

5. A volunteer defense force in the Ukraine during the war with Napoleon in 1812.

6. See note 1 to "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt."

7. A dish made from grain (wheat, buckwheat, oats, rye, millet) boiled with water or milk.

8. See note 1 to "St. John's Eve."

9. The armies of Catherine II fought successfully against the Turks in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

10. It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table until the coffin was prepared.

11. See note 5 to "St. John's Eve."

12. The final hymn of the Orthodox funeral service.

13- "Small open," a French card-playing term.

14. Patties of cottage cheese mixed with flour and eggs and fried.

Viy

1. Russian seminary education was open to the lower classes and was often subsidized by state scholarships; seminarians were thus not necessarily preparing for the priesthood.

2. Herodias, wife of Herod the tetrarch and mother of Salome, ordered the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:1-11); Potiphar, an officer of the Egyptian pharaoh, bought Joseph as a slave and made him overseer of his house; his wife falsely accused Joseph of trying to lie with her (Genesis 39).

3. See note 7 to "Old World Landowners."

4. See note 8 to "St. John's Eve."

5. Earlier of the two summer fasts (see note 3 to "The Night Before Christmas").

6. "Master" in Latin.

7. Thus in the original. The French bon mot means a clever or witty saying.

8. See note 14 to "The Night Before Christmas."

9. See note 4 to "The Night Before Christmas."

The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich

1. A word of Hungarian origin meaning a frock coat, caftan, or jacket lined with fur.

2. A Tartar word referring, in different regions, to different sorts of jackets- here, probably a simple caftan trimmed with leather on the hem, cuffs, and front.

3. Moscow printers and publishers of the early nineteenth century.

4. In Russian, the godfather and godmother of the same person call each other kum and kuma, as do all others thus related through the same baptism.

5. A zertsalo was a small three-faced glass pyramid bearing an eagle and certain edicts of the emperor Peter the Great (1682-1725) that stood on the desk in every government office.

6. A special dorsal section of flesh running the entire length of a salmon or sturgeon, removed in one piece and either salted or smoked; considered a great delicacy in Russia.

7. The fourth-century saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom, sometimes venerated together by the Orthodox Church.

8. St. Philips Day marks the beginning of the six-week Advent fast (see note 7 to "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt").

9. In chapter I his last name is Pupopuz, meaning something like "bellybut-ton." Golopuz means "bare belly."

10. See note 14 to "Old World Landowners."

PETERSBURG TALES

Nevsky Prospect 1. The Neva River divides into three main branches as it flows into the Gulf of Finland, marking out the three main areas of the city of St. Petersburg: on the left bank of the Neva is the city center; between the Neva and the Little Neva is Vasilievsky Island; and between the Little Neva and the Nevka is the Petersburg side. The Vyborg side, Peski ("the Sands") and the Moscow gate, neighborhoods well within the limits of present-day Petersburg, were once quite remote from each other.

2. Ganymede, the son of King Tros, after whom the city of Troy was named, was the most beautiful of young men and was therefore chosen by the gods to be Zeus's cupbearer.

3. An extremely tall, needle-shaped spire topped by a figure of a ship on the Admiralty building, one of the landmarks of Petersburg.

4. The reference is to the image of the Madonna in the fresco The Adoration of the Magi, in the chapel of Santa Maria dei Bianchi in Citta della Pieve, painted by the Italian master Pietro Vannucci, called II Perugino (1446-1523).

5. The star figured on the decoration of a number of Russian military and civil orders.

6. The cemetery in Okhta, a suburb of Petersburg on a small tributary of the Neva.

7. An amusingly ironic assortment of names: F. V. Bulgarin (1789-1859) and N. I. Grech (1787-1867), journalists and minor writers of much influence in their time, were editors of the reactionary and semiofficial magazine The Northern Bee, and at least one of them (Bulgarin) was also a police informer. They were archenemies of Russia's greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), who enjoyed mocking them in epigrams. A. A. Orlov (1791-1840) was the author of primitive, moralistic novels for 'a popular audience, derided by Bulgarin and Grech, though, as Pushkin pointed out in an article, Bulgarin's novels differed little from Orlov's.

8. The reference is to vaudevilles about simple folk popular in the 1830s, featuring a character named Filatka.

9. Dmitri Donskoy is a historical tragedy by the mediocre poet Nestor Kukol-nik (1809-68), a great success in its day. Woe from Wit, a comedy in verse by Alexander Griboedov (1795-1829), stands as the first real masterpiece of the Russian theater.