figure
Noah
also: Ной
The patriarch of Genesis who built the ark and sorted clean and unclean animals aboard it (Genesis 7:2-8); invoked here in the drowned-man performer's comic remark that even Noah could no longer sort clean merchants from unclean now that they dress like gentlemen.
Reading notes
- To Ye. M. Shavrova, 16 September 1891. Moscow. §3 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and, I believe, Japheth
Genesis 9:20-27: after the flood, Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and lies uncovered in his tent. His son Ham sees his father's nakedness and tells his two brothers, Shem and Japheth, who instead walk in backward and cover Noah without looking. When Noah wakes and learns what happened, he curses Ham's line (through his son Canaan) to servitude, while blessing Shem and Japheth. Chekhov's "I believe" ("кажется") before Japheth's name is a deliberate touch of the plainspoken, half-remembering register he uses throughout the letter -- he is not quoting scripture as scripture but reaching for its best-known shorthand for a son who exposes a parent's shame instead of honoring what the parent achieved.
- The Drowned Man §9 Noah himself could not sort the clean from the unclean
An allusion to Genesis 7:2-8, where Noah is instructed to bring clean and unclean animals aboard the ark in different numbers. The figure's joke is that merchants have taken to dressing so plainly ("in mufti") that not even Noah, expert sorter of clean from unclean, could tell a merchant from a gentleman by his clothes. It is a stock biblical figure of speech for a fine, now-impossible distinction -- not a slur or a comment on any group's purity, simply an old idiom for "impossible to tell apart."