person
Gavrila Severov
Forty Martyrs
also: Gavryushka, Сорок Мучеников, Гаврила Северов, Гаврюшка
A dissolute former footman nicknamed 'Forty Martyrs' (after the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste) in the story 'Fear'; of clerical/gentry descent but sunk into drink and servant work, he trails the narrator and Silin through the story as a lower, comic-grotesque double of Silin's existential dread.
Reading notes
- Fear §9 Forty Martyrs
"Сорок Мучеников" (Forty Martyrs) is a literal Russian nickname referencing the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, an Orthodox feast commemorating forty Roman soldiers martyred for their faith in 320 AD. Applied ironically to a dissolute, begging former servant, the nickname's incongruity is part of the joke; it is translated rather than transliterated to preserve that effect for an English reader.