Читать книгу The Inspector-General - Nikolai Gogol - Страница 5

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1 ↑ His last fable, The Velmozha (Grandee), was published in 1843. It described a faineant magnate as being sent to Paradise on the ground that he would only have done mischief if he had concerned himself with the duties of government. This satire on the authorities was accordingly pigeon-holed by the censors. Krilov, however, found means of reading it to the Tsar Nicholas, who was greatly amused, and embraced him, with the words, "Write away, old man, write away! He died, however, the following year.

2 ↑ The word gogol is the Russian name for the "golden-eye," a kind of wild duck (fuligula clangula) called in German die Schelle Ente from the bell-like sound of its flight.

3 ↑ Literally, beyond tinthe porogi, the granite ledges or rapids of the Dniepr. The Zaporozhtst were so called to distinguish them from the Cossacks of the Don, and of the Yaik, or Ural. They formed originally a military republic, with their Syech (head-quarters), on an island at the confluence of the Dniepr and the Samara, below Yekaterinoslav. Disbanded in 1777, they emigrated to Turkey and the Caucasus. Gogol's father at one time held the honorary post of Military Secretary to the Zaporozhian Cossacks.

4 ↑ Gogol excised two scenes from Act IV., one a dialogue between Anna and Marya, the other between Khlestakov and Rastakovski.