concept
"The Dark Kingdom" (Tyomnoye tsarstvo)
the dark kingdom
also: Тёмное царство, Dark Kingdom
A phrase drawn from Nikolai Dobrolyubov's influential 1859 essay "The Dark Kingdom" (on Alexander Ostrovsky's plays), which cast the tyrannical, superstition-bound world of the Russian merchant class as a figure for social and political stagnation under autocracy; the tag became a stock label for benighted provincial merchant life in Russian criticism and journalism.
Reading notes
- Before the Eclipse §16 A dark kingdom!
"Тёмное царство" ("the dark kingdom") is a direct pull from Nikolai Dobrolyubov's landmark 1859 critical essay of that title on Alexander Ostrovsky's plays, which used the phrase to characterize the tyrannical, superstition-ridden world of the Russian merchant class as an emblem of the country's broader political and social stagnation. By 1887 the tag had become common journalistic shorthand -- Chekhov has the Sun deploy it with mock-solemnity as he plots to snub Zamoskvorechye, Moscow's historic merchant quarter across the river from the Kremlin, leaving it in darkness while sparing the rest of the city.