1
1. A slightly amended version of a line from the poem “My heart is aflame, burning with love for you,” by the Arabic poet Al-Mutanabbi (915–965). In the original the line reads “The worst of regions is where no true friend is found.”
2. Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (602–661), who was believed by Shia Muslims to have been appointed by God as Muhammad’s successor, was assassinated by Ibn Muljam from a rival faction. On January 26, 661, during Ali’s morning prayer, the assassin struck him on the head with a poison-coated sword. The life and brutal assassination of the caliph has been the subject of religious performances and paintings.
3. A kuror was 2 million rubles in silver money at the time.
4. Don’t display too much zeal. (Fr.)
5. Paris is worth a Mass. (Fr.)
6. Literally freehand; here, aimlessly or without purpose (Ger.).
2
1. Condottieri were the leaders of the professional military mercenaries contracted by Italian city-states and the papacy in the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance. Condottiero means “contractor” and is synonymous with the modern English title of mercenary captain.
2. The St. Petersburg Imperial Bolshoi Theater was built in 1783 to Antonio Rinaldi’s neoclassical design as the Kammeny (i.e. Stone) Theater; it was rebuilt in 1802 and renamed the Bolshoi, but it burned down in 1812. The building was restored in 1818 and modified between 1826 and 1836 by Alberto Cavos to accommodate more modern machinery.
3. Until 1833, Russia had no national anthem and used the British one, composed by Handel.
4. You are mad (Fr.). This is impossible (Ger.).
5. The Buzan River is a river in the Astrakhan region in Russia, a distributary of the Volga. The Volga Delta was subject to territorial disputes between the Nogai Horde and the Russian-annexed Astrakhan Khanate in the 1550s. Negotiations between Ismael Beg and Ivan IV established the river as the boundary between the two realms, but Russia proceeded to push the horde back farther out of the fertile delta region.
6. This was another name for the secret police.
7. Semiramis was the legendary wife of King Nimrod, and later King Ninus, succeeding him to the throne of Assyria. In some Armenian mythology, she is portrayed as a homewrecker. According to the legend, Semiramis had heard about the fame of the handsome Armenian king Ara and lusted after him. After Ara refused to marry her, she gathered the armies of Assyria and marched against Armenia.
8. Pyrrhus of Epirus (319/318–272 BC) was a Greek general and statesman, one of the strongest opponents of early Rome. Some of his battles, though successful, caused him heavy losses, from which the term Pyrrhic victory was coined.
9. That is, Catherine the Great.
10. Double escapement action allows the piano to repeat a note quickly without fully releasing the key
11. A folk song, “From beyond the wooded island” describes Stenka Razin yielding to the pressure of his discontented band and throwing his new wife, a Persian princess into the waters of the Volga.
12. This is a piece of male clothing, something in between a robe and a caftan, with little hooks on the left side and loops on the right, which is popular with Turkic peoples.
13. This is a cartridge belt or bandolier attached to the chest of a piece of clothing.
14. This is male-peasant clothing worn in Russia since at least the thirteenth century, taking the shape of a long, warm, woolen gown with a colorful belt.
15. The Russian term for date fruit is finik (from Phoenix dactylifera).
16. The family name griboedov in Russian means “the son of a mushroom eater.”
17. This is an English-language equivalent of a crude joke: in the original the name of the town Igdir sounds like ikh dyr, meaning “their holes.”
18. Skalozub and Molchalin are characters from Griboedov’s play Woe from Wit. Colonel Skalozub’s name is an inversion of the Russian zuboskal, either a dim-witted man or a man with primitive social graces (literally, “one who bares his teeth a lot”). Molchalin (from the Russian “he who is silent”) is secretary to Mr. Famusov. Molchalin never puts forth his own opinion, instead ingratiating himself with all and sundry, including his patron’s daughter, with an eye toward his own advancement.
19. “But having exalted himself in power and glory, however, he is very far from acquiring the vices of an upstart.” (Fr.)
20. My friends of the fourteenth. (Fr.)
21. Speaking between ourselves. (Fr.)
22. This is a collective name for well-educated young men from the nobility who in the 1820s served at the Moscow Archive at the College of Foreign Affairs, which was an excellent starting point for a future diplomatic career. Mostly graduates of Moscow University, they treated their service as an aristocratic club that they attended two days a week, and where they spent their time discussing literary and philosophical issues.
23. Dear sir, you are too perspicacious. (Fr.)
24. The man of the moment, a celebrity. (Fr.)
25. Lines from Pushkin’s poem “The Talisman.”
26. Dazhbog is the god of thunder, one of the major gods of Slavic mythology, and most likely a solar deity. He is mentioned in a number of medieval manuscripts.
27. Tmutorokan was a medieval Kievan Rus principality and trading town that controlled the Cimmerian Bosporus, the passage from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. Its site was the ancient Greek colony of Hermonassa. The Khazar fortress of Tamantarkhan was built on the site in the seventh century and became known as Tmutarakan when it came under Kievan Rus control in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
3
1. A quote from Griboedov’s Travels from Tabriz to Tehran (February–March, 1819).
2. Nicholas of Myra was a fourth-century Christian saint and Greek bishop in Asia Minor. Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker.
4
1. Avlabari is a neighborhood of Old Tbilisi, on the left bank of the Kura River.
2. A zurna is a wind instrument played in central Eurasia, ranging from the Balkans to Central Asia. It is usually accompanied by a bass drum in Anatolian folk music.
3. That dreadful old man. (Fr.)
5. This is a primary administrative division of the Ottoman Empire, each governed by a pasha.
6. A rechbar is a serf working for a khan or a bek. Rechbars would give between half and two-thirds of the harvest to their masters.
7. Iuz-bashi are military leaders in Persia and Turkey in charge of military detachments.
8. A panagia is a small icon with the image of the Virgin Mary worn by an Orthodox bishop. Such icons can be very simple or extremely elaborate.
9. How magnificent! Our general! Charming! (Fr.)
10. Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (1473–1524) was a French soldier known as the “knight without fear and beyond reproach.” His contemporaries called him le bon chevalier (“the good knight”) for his gaiety and kindness.
11. So many girls … Without underwear. (Fr.)
12. Look out, my friend. (Fr.)
15. O luckless bark! New waves will force you back
To sea. O, haste to make the haven yours! (trans. from Latin by J. Connington)
5
1. This was a secret investigatory department in Imperial Russia.
2. How words change their meanings. (Fr.)
5. Hence, therefore. (Latin)
6. Come with me, I have something to tell you. (Fr.)
9. The ill-fated ones. (Fr.)
10. The ancestral estate of Nino Chavshavadze in Georgia.
11. Vanka is the diminutive of Ivan. Also meant “a cabbie.”
12. This was a highwayman who made fun of the police, a folk rogue. The personal dash and exploits of Vanka Cain were featured in folk songs and popular prints, his literary image approximately similar to the French robber Cartouche.
13. The Battle of Larga was fought between 65,000 Crimean Tatar cavalrymen and 15,000 Ottoman infantrymen under Kaplan Girey, against 38,000 Russians under Field-Marshal Pyotr Alexandrovich Rumyantsev on the banks of the Larga River for eight hours on July 7, 1770.
14. The Battle of Rymnik on September 22, 1789 took place in Wallachia during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792. The Russian general Alexander Suvorov and the Habsburg general Prince Josias of Coburg attacked the main Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Cenaze Hasan Pasha. The result was a crushing Russo-Austrian victory.
15. Prince Grigory Potemkin-Tavrichesky (1739–1791) allegedly erected fake portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to fool the Russian empress Catherine the Great during her journey to the Crimea in 1787. The structures, which often consisted of painted façades to mimic real villages, full of happy, well-fed people, would be disassembled after she passed and reassembled farther along her route to be viewed again as if new. The term Potemkin village came to denote a show of prosperity that covers up an unseemly state of affairs.
16. This was a term referring to red wine infused with garlic.
17. Our Caesar is too brutal. (Fr.)
18. I will walk this earth always a dreamer, always alone. (Fr.)
19. The play is full of wit … complete failure. (Fr.)
20. From Stanisław Trȩbicki’s poem “Anakreontyk”. Hekla is a volcano in Iceland. The fiery pit of gray Hekla is covered with snow. (Pol.)
21. Its peak is under ice, its foothills green, it feeds its ceaseless fire. (Pol.)
22. You’ll be hanged from a tree like Judas. (Pol.)
23. Paragons of kindness, ladies, queens, goddesses grace with their presence our gathering. (Pol.)
24. Down with Ferdinand the Seventh! (Fr.)
26. I am filling up this cup in your honor. (Pol.)
27. Long live beautiful Florenze! (It.)
28. National banners. (Pol.)
29. Safe journey, your Excellency, our dear and highly esteemed Vazir-Mukhtar. (Fr.)
6
1. Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the second century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a lengthy work based on his first-hand observations.
2. My gratitude and my sincere friendship are yours forever. (Fr.)
4. Which requires testing. (Lat.)
5. Literally: “a black moor,” a luxuriously bearded wizard dwarf from Pushkin’s long fairytales in verse Ruslan and Liudmila and The Tale of Tsar Saltan. His beard was the source of his power.
1. I swear to God, no. (Ger.)
2. She’s already forgotten her family name. (Ger.)
3. The cost of your upbringing. (Ger.)
4. Your Excellency. (Ger.)
5. A mekhmendar is an official responsible for accompanying and looking after foreign ambassadors and noble travelers.
6. My dear friend … because I don’t have a penny in my pocket. (Fr.)
7. This reference alludes to the famous fable by Ivan Krylov about partners who cannot agree, and their joint labors therefore come to naught.
8. That which is requiring to be proved. (Lat.)
9. A balakhane is a balcony over the only gate to the caravanserai (a hotel) with rooms for noble visitors. The term balakhane literally means “above stairs.” It is a gallery on top of the house, an upper chamber.
10. Oh my God, how romantic: a honeymoon in that picturesque land! (Fr.)
11. Discord, or squabble. (Fr.)
8
1. One of the derivations of the Amazons is Iranian ha-mazan—“warriors.”
2. A secret sect, the Skoptsy practiced male castration and female mastectomy in accordance with their teachings against sexual lust and bodily beauty. The movement originated as an offshoot of the sect known as the People of God and was first noted in Russia in the late eighteenth century; its followers were persecuted by the government.
9
1. These are lines from a facetious and indecent poem by Mikhail Lomonosov “An Anthem to the Beard,” from 1756.
2. The Palace of the Facets is a building in the Kremlin in Moscow that contains what used to be the main banquet hall of the Muscovite tsars.
3. Sublime (Ottoman or High) Porte—the central government of the Turkish Empire. Under Peter the Great, Russia expanded southward and fought Turkey unsuccessfully in the Pruth River Campaign in Moldavia in 1710–1711, as well as in the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–1718.
4. Nicholas I’s successful Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 ended in the Treaty of Adrianople, as a result of which the Ottoman Empire guaranteed the previously promised autonomy to Serbia, promised autonomy for Greece, and allowed Russia to occupy Moldavia and Walachia, Greece, and the eastern coast of the Black Sea.
5. This is a title meaning “the pillar of the state.”
1. Our affairs are going very badly. (Fr.)
2. Aristophanes’s drama The Birds (414 BC) features an Athenian who in order to gain control over all communications between men and gods persuades the world’s birds to create a new city in the sky to be named Nephelokokkygia.
12
1. These scoundrels. (Fr.)
2. Mercifiul Lord! Alexander is dead! (Ger.)
3. Bereiters are masters of dressage.