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30 Krestovaya: This is a mountain, the name of which translates as “Mountain of the Cross.”

31 Nightingale-Robber: A figure from Russian folklore who wrought havoc and was able to render people immobile by whistling.

32 lezginka: A folk dance of the Lezgin people.

33 sazhen: An obsolete Russian measurement equal to seven feet.

34 thermalam: Fabric used for lining, usually linen or cotton.

II. MAXIM MAXIMICH

1 dolman: A Hungarian jacket.

2 Balzac’s thirty-year-old coquette: This refers to Honoré de Balzac’s novel La Femme de Trente Ans (1834).

PECHORIN’S DIARIES

FOREWORD

1. Rousseau’s confessions: This refers to Les Confessions by Rousseau.

1. TAMAN

1 izba: A traditional Russian log house.

2 fatera: This word means quarters.

3 slobodka: A settlement exempted from normal State obligations.

4 On that day the dumb shall cry out: A reference to the Bible, Isaiah 35:5-6: “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart and the tongue of the dumb sing.”

5 uryadnik: A Cossack NCO, a noncommissioned officer.

6 rusalka: A water nymph, frequently demonic, who lives underwater, often at the bottom of rivers.

7 La Jeune-France: A group of young French writers of the 1830s who are known to have exaggerated the theories of Romanticism. They looked up to Victor Hugo.

8 Mignon: A character in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.

2. PRINCESS MARY

1 The opening line of a short poem by Alexander Pushkin titled “The Cloud” (1835).

2 whist: A trick-taking card game played by four players. It was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

3 fichu: A triangular scarf worn around the neck.

4 à la moujik: This means “in the peasant style.”

5 “Mon cher, je haïs les hommes pour ne pas mépriser, car autrement la vie serait une farce trop dégoutante”: “My dear friend, I hate men in order not to despise them, otherwise life would be a most repulsive farce.” (French)

6 “Mon cher, je méprise les femmes pour ne pas les aimer, car autrement la vie serait un mélodrame trop ridicule”: “My dear friend, I despise women in order not to love them, otherwise life would be a most ridiculous melodrama.” (French)

7 cherkeska: A Circassian tunic, worn over the beshmet.

8 Beshtau, Zmeinoi, Zheleznaya, and Lisaya: The translation, from Turkish and Russian, of these names: Five-mountains, The Snake, The Iron One, The Bare One.

9 “Mon dieu, un Circassien!”: “My God, a Circassian!” (French)

10 “Ne craignez rien, madame—je ne suis pas plus dangereux que votre cavalier.”: “Fear not, madam—I am no more dangerous than your cavalier.” (French)

11 Nogay wagon: The Nogays are an East Caucasian people.

12 C’est impayable!: “That’s priceless!” (French)

13 This is a reference to Pyotr Pavlovich Kaverin, a friend of Pushkin’s who served in the same regiment as Lermontov, and who is mentioned in the first chapter of Eugene Onegin.

14 Library for Reading: A journal of the 1830s and 1840s (Biblioteka dlya Chteniya), which published memoirs and foreign novels, among other things.

15 souls: Serfs in Russia were counted as “souls.”

16 From act 3, scene 3 of Woe from Wit by Aleksandr Griboedov. It is slightly misquoted by Lermontov here.

17 The cold observations . . . : A fragment from Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin.

18 vampire: The vampire referred to here is the hero of a story by John Polidori called “The Vampyre,” about a young man who negotiates society by wreaking havoc on the virtuous and encouraging the sinister.

19 son coeur et sa fortune: His heart and his fortune. (French)

20 arkhaluk: A Caucasian coat.

21 “É finita la commedia!”: “The comedy is finished!” (Italian)

3. THE FATALIST

1 stanitsa: A large Cossack village.

2 Boston: A card game.

3 faro: A card game that was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, involving an entire pack of playing cards and any number of players.

4 stuss: A variant of the card game faro.

5 chikhir: A young red wine from the Caucasus.

6 uryadnik: This is a Cossack NCO, a noncommissioned