Becoming Mikhail Lermontov: The Ironies of Romantic Individualism in Nicholas I's Russia

Notes to the Reader

Notes to the Reader xi I have used common anglicized versions of Russian names in the text when such versions exist. I have further anglicized certain other names in the text proper that seemed awkward in rigorous transliteration, but all bibliographic matter in the notes, and all transliterated Russian quotes throughout the book, follow the Library of Congress scheme. In Russian quotations, both Cyrillic and transliterated, I have restored the capitalization of “God-terms” lowercased for ideological reasons in Soviet editions, and indicated this with square brackets, for example, [B]og and [M]ater’ [B]ozhiia instead of the Soviet bog and mater’ bozhiia. Titles of narrative poems (poemy) are italicized, whether or not they were published as freestanding works in the author’s lifetime. This is to distinguish them from titles of lyric poems (stikhotvoreniia), which are given in roman type and enclosed in quotation marks. Translations are my own throughout, except where indicated. I have tried to echo rhythm and Xavor in the English renderings where possible, but when push came to shove sense always took precedence over style, as is appropriate in a scholarly book. It was difWcult to decide how to handle the inclusion of Lermontov’s original Russian texts, especially since I cite quite a bit of his early poetry purely for thematic content, and since much of this juvenilia has little else to recommend it as poetry. In the end, I opted to provide translations for all texts but to give the Russian only where I deemed it necessary either because the poetry itself deserved it or because my analysis required it. Where the Russian is included but not quoted in the text, it can be found in the appendix, where it is keyed to the text by numbers indicating chapter and sequence: 1.1, 1.2, and so forth. Finally, as an experiment, the Russian originals of all literary works I cite in English, whether I have also included the Russian here or not, can be found at http://www.powel stock.org, where they are keyed to the page numbers of their appearance in translation in this book. I hope that readers will Wnd it pleasant and convenient to read the Russian texts online with Becoming Mikhail Lermontov in hand. Notes to the Reader xii Throughout the text, the dates I give for literary works refer to when they were written, except where explicitly indicated otherwise. In cases where two or more poems have the same title, I have included the poem’s Wrst line in parentheses, without ellipses and within the same set of quotation marks, thus: “To *** (Say not by the lofty alone).” In giving the dates of literary texts, a dash indicates that the work was written over the course of the indicated dates, while a slash indicates an approximate dating. Thus, 1830–31 indicates that the author worked on the poem over that span of time, while a text dated 1830/31 was written in 1830 or 1831, to the best of my knowledge. When no other edition of Lermontov’s works is speciWcally cited, references—for example, II:124—refer to volume and page in the sixvolume Academic Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1954–57). In addition, the following abbreviations are used throughout the notes to refer to frequently cited sources: MLVS M.I. Gillel’son, ed., M. Iu. Lermontov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1989). LE V.A. Manuilov et al., eds., Lermontovskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1981). PSS(2) M.Iu. Lermontov, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii v dvukh tomakh, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich et al., eds. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1989). Pushkin(19) A.S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 19 vols. (Moscow: Voskresen’e, 1994–97). This is the expanded reprint edition of A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich et al., eds., 17 vols. (Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1937–59). ZS E.A. Khvostova [née Sushkova], Zapiski, 1812–1841, edited and annotated by Iu. G. Oksman (Leningrad: Academia, 1928). Becoming Mikhail Lermontov ...