NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

he original publication dates of the stories included in T this volume are:

“The Lost Letter” [Propavshaia gramota], in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka [Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki], 1831, book 1. “Viy” [Vii], in Mirgorod, 1835; revised version in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. “The Portrait” [Portret], in Arabesques [Arabeski], 1835, part 1; revised version in The Contemporary [Sovremennik], book 3, 1842, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. “Nevsky Avenue” [Nevskii prospekt], in Arabesques [Arabeski], 1835, part 2; revised version in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. “Diary of a Madman,” originally “Scraps from the Diary of a Madman” [Zapiski sumasshedshego, originally Klochki iz zapisok sumasshedshego], in Arabesques [Arabeski], 1835, part 2, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. xxii \ Notes on the Translation

“The Carriage” [Koliaska], in The Contemporary [Sovremennik], vol. 1, 1836, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. “The Nose” [Nos], in The Contemporary [Sovremennik], vol. 3, 1836, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. “Rome” [Rim], in The Muscovite [Moskvitianin], no. 3, 1842, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842. “The Overcoat” [Shinel’], in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia N. V. Gogolia], 1842.

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The endnotes to this edition are indebted to the following:

N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 14 vols. (n.p.: AN SSSR, 1937–1952). Abbreviation: Academy PSS. N. V. Gogol’, Sobranie sochinenii, 7 vols., ed. S. I. Mashinskii and M. B. Khrapchenko (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976–1979). Abbreviation: SS Mashinskii. N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati trekh tomakh, ed. Iu. V. Mann et al. (Moscow: Nasledie/Nauka, 2001–). Abbreviation: PSS Mann. N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v semnadtsati tomakh, ed. I. A. Vinogradov and V. A. Voropaev (Moscow-Kyiv: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, 2009). Abbreviation: PSS 2009. I. A. Vinogradov, Gogol’ v vospominaniiakh, dnevnikakh, perepiski sovremennikov, 3 vols. (Moscow: IMLI RAI, 2011–13). Abbreviation: Vinogradov. The translations of “The Lost Letter” and “The Portrait” are based on the text in PSS Mann, vols. 1 and 3. Other stories are based on SS Mashinskii, collated with Academy PSS and PSS 2009. Note: I have approached PSS 2009 with caution, as it is presented as “a joint Russian-Ukrainian project [ . . . ] called upon to be of service to the Christian enlightenment of people as well as the unification of the Slavic peoples,” and has appeared “with the blessing of the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ Kirill and the Most Blessed Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine Vladimir.” I have consulted this edition for its factual information and not for its interpretations.

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Russian names consist of a first name, a patronymic, and a last name. The patronymic is formed from the father’s first name plus the suffix -ovich/-evich for men or -ovna/-evna for women. Russian also uses a wide array of diminutives for the first name. In “The Overcoat,” the main character’s name is Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, which signi- fies that his father’s first name was Akaky. Bashmachkin, not Akakievich, is his last name. People are referred to either by their first names (or nicknames like Vanya for Ivan), first names plus patronymic, or last names. Only in rare cases is a person (usually a peasant or someone of the lower classes) referred to only by their patronymic, as is the case with the tailor Petrovich in “The Overcoat.” We learn that his first name is Grigory, but we never learn his last name. “Little Russia” was the term used in the Russian Empire to refer to what is now Ukraine. The term “Ukrainian” referring to the ethnic group living in the area and its language did not come into wide use until the end of the nineteenth century. In this transla- tion, I have preserved Gogol’s use of the term “Little Russia” and “Little Russian.” Ukrainian place names are given in Ukrainian, not Russian, transliteration. There is no precise English word for the Russian chukhonets“ / chukonka,” a derogatory term for people of Finno-Ugric origin living in St. Petersburg. I have translated it as “Finn” or “Finnish.”

Notes on the Translation \ xxiii xxiv \ Notes on the Translation

Gogol sprinkles his texts with foreign words (Ukrainian, German, Italian). Sometimes he provides translations in the text, sometimes not. When the translations provided are Gogol’s, they are given in parentheses. Translations provided by me are provided in the notes: simple glosses as footnotes; more elaborate informa- tion in the back matter. The transliteration is a greatly simplified version of the Library of Congress system (although for citations of scholarly works I have used the Library of Congress system). When dates are men- tioned that are from the Julian calendar used in Russia before the Revolution, they are noted as “OS” (“Old Style”). An earlier version of my translation of “The Portrait” was published in 2006 by Pegasus Publishers in Amsterdam as a deluxe limited edition with artwork by Leon Steinmetz.