person
Pyotr Kireyevsky
Kireyevsky
also: Киреевский, П. В. Киреевский
Pyotr Vasilyevich Kireyevsky (1808-1856), Slavophile folklorist whose vast posthumously-published collection of Russian folk songs (issued in numbered 'vypusk'/issue volumes) was the standard scholarly reference of the era; the magistr's pedantic citation of 'issue seven, category three, song eleven' while the servants' dinner goes cold satirizes academic folklore-collecting as detached from the living people it studies.
Reading notes
- The Whistlers §30 Kireyevsky, issue seven, category three, song eleven
The magistr's precise bibliographic citation, offered while the peasants' own dinner grows cold in front of him, satirizes a certain kind of academic folklore study that treats living peasant culture chiefly as specimens to be catalogued and cross-referenced.