The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

  9. a certain bishop …: The bishop in question is thought to be Metropolitan Filaret Drozdov (see note 3 to “The Enchanted Wanderer”).

10. of the earth, earthy: See 1 Corinthians 15:47 (“The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven”).

A Robbery

(1887)

  1. “With the pure … froward”: Psalm 18:26.

  2. the famous fires … Trubetskoy: Pyotr Ivanovich Trubetskoy (1798–1871), governor of Orel province, is mentioned frequently in Leskov’s work. For the “famous fires,” see note 1 to “Deathless Golovan.”

  3. churchly faith … Father Efim … Old Believers: For “churchly faith” and Old Believers, see note 6 to “Lady Macbeth.” For Father Efim, see note 9 to “The Spook.”

  4. Kamensky … Turchaninov … Molotkovsky: For Kamensky, see note 4 to “The Toupee Artist.” After Kamensky’s death, the theater was taken over by the entrepreneurs Turchaninov and Molotkovsky.

  5. rebaptized girls: See note 13 to “Deathless Golovan.”

  6. the great martyr Barbara …: Little is known about the third-century St. Barbara, known as “the Great Martyr Barbara” in the Orthodox Church. An akathist is a special prayer service.

  7. our deliverance from the Gauls: That is, from the Grande Armée of Napoleon, which was driven out of Russia in 1812.

  8. Tula … samovarniks …: See note 12 to “Lefty.”

  9. ‘Many Years’ … ‘Memory Eternal’: Well-known Orthodox hymns wishing long life for the living and peace and God’s memory for the dead.

10. ‘Except the Lord … but in vain’: A conflated variant of Psalm 127:1 (“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain”).

11. Alfred … in people’s houses: The reference is probably to the eighteenth-century folk drama Of King Maximilian and His Disobedient Son Adolph. Either Misha or Leskov has mistaken the name.

12. “It is meet and right” … “Rest Eternal”: Various phrases from the preparation of communion, the reading of the Gospel, and the commemoration of the dead.

13. wailing woefully: An imprecise quotation from the seventeenth-century “Tale of Woe and Grief and How Woeful-Grief Drove a Young Man to Monkhood.”

14. “Lord, save us … Arid”: See Psalm 59:2 (“Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men”). It is not clear whom the aunt means by Arid. It has been suggested that she means Jared, a fifth-generation descendant of Adam, but he is distinguished only by his longevity. She may mean Herod.

15. the marshal of the nobility:

See note 34 to “The Enchanted Wanderer.”

16. zertsalo: See note 16 to “Singlemind.”

A Note About the Author

Nikolai Leskov was born in 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo in Russia. He began his writing career as a journalist living in Kiev, and later settled in St. Petersburg, where he published many short stories and novellas, including The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865), The Sealed Angel (1873), The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), and Lefty (1882). He died in February 1895.

Together, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov, and Pasternak. They were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for their versions of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy’s

Anna Karenina), and their translation of Dostoevsky’s Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France.

Other titles available in eBook format by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky:

The Adolescent • 978-0-307-42811-0

The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol • 978-0-307-80336-8

Crime and Punishment • 978-0-307-82960-3

Dead Souls • 978-0-307-79781-0

The Death of Ivan llyich and Other Stories • 978-0-307-27332-1

Demons • 978-0-307-43486-9

Doctor Zhivago • 978-0-307-37996-2

The Double

and The Gambler • 978-0-307-27971-2

The Duel • 978-0-307-74296-4

The Idiot • 978-0-553-90189-4

Notes from Underground • 978-0-307-78464-3

War and Peace • 978-0-307-80658-1

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