The Chanting of Lazarus

Reading notes

• Ivanov §662 singing Lazarus's tune

  "Петь Лазаря" ("to sing Lazarus") is a set Russian idiom for a plaintive, self-pitying wail, drawn from a traditional beggars' spiritual verse ("The Song of Poor Lazarus," based on the biblical parable of the beggar Lazarus, Luke 16:19-31) that itinerant beggars would chant to solicit alms. Ivanov uses it here of himself, bitterly, to describe his own decline into a figure of pity -- the same idiom recurs at \S666, \S830, and \S838, becoming one of the play's key recurring images for his self-disgust at his own collapse.

• The Cat §7 the chanting of Lazarus

  A byword in old Russian speech for a plaintive, wheedling wail, from the mournful spiritual verse ('the song of poor Lazarus') that blind beggars traditionally sang while begging alms -- hence the comic guess that the noise might be human lamentation rather than cats.