Evdokim Zakharovich Zhigalov

Reading notes

• The Wedding §68 Shall we have another, then?

  "Повторим, что ли?" -- Zhigalov's refrain for proposing another round of drinks with Dymba, repeated later at loc. 83; his running interrogation of Dymba about Greece (tigers, lions, sperm whales, lobsters, mushrooms) is fueled by, and punctuated by, this same drinking refrain throughout the scene.

• The Wedding §83 the same as Armenians or Gypsies

  It is presented as part of Zhigalov's own coarse, tipsy comic characterization -- delivered instants after he has been loudly insisting there is no "swindling" on his own side (locs. 70, 169, 184) -- rather than as authorial endorsement. The translation renders the slur as spoken, without euphemism or omission, consistent with the source.

• The Wedding §99 not some cerebral kind

  Zhigalov demands "real natural fire...not some cerebral kind" -- "не умственный" ("not mental/intellectual") in the source -- a nonsensical objection to electricity that comically conflates a physical technology with abstract thought, part of his blustering, half-informed suspicion of anything modern.