concept
"Verkhniye-Zaprudy man of standing"
verkhnezapyrudsky intelligent
also: верхнезапрудский интеллигент
A wry local honorific -- "intelligent" here does not mean the educated professional class but simply a person of substance and standing in a small village -- applied to Andrei Andreich to mark his self-important status among the Verkhniye Zaprudy peasantry, and undercut by the narration's irony.
Reading notes
- The Requiem §2 verkhnezapyrudsky man of standing
Chekhov's coinage from the fictional village name Verkhniye Zaprudy plus "intelligent": not the educated professional class the word usually denotes, but a purely local, self-appointed eminence -- the story's opening irony, since this same self-regard is what makes Andrei Andreich so certain of his own theological reasoning.