Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1873
Questions on the text, each answered in the book’s own words, with the minute you hear it.
Challenge a friend: 123BookWarThe text
Answer Whether he will ever be sober
“Why, will you ever be sober, Ivan Ivanovitch? Tell me that, pray.”
Answer That his face suggested insanity
“I read: "Go and look at that morbid face suggesting insanity.”
Answer Translates from the French for the booksellers
“For the most part I translate from the French for the booksellers.”
Answer Forty
“The letter I sent last week to an editor's office was the fortieth I had sent in the last two years.”
Answer Bobok
“'Bobok, bobok,' but you see that an imperceptible speck of life is still warm within him.”
Answer A distant relation, a collegiate counsellor
“I went out in search of diversion, I hit upon a funeral. A distant relation--a collegiate counsellor, however.”
Answer Fifteen
“There were fifteen hearses, with palls varying in expensiveness”
Answer A grey day, but dry, and cold
“it was a grey day, but dry. It was cold too, but then it was October.”
Answer Green water
“I looked into the graves--and it was horrible: water and such water! Absolutely green”
Answer A quarrel over a card game
“You led hearts, I return your lead, and here you play the seven of diamonds.”
Answer Fifty-seven
“Passed away in August of this year ... fifty-seven.... Rest, beloved ashes, till the joyful dawn!”
Answer Oh-ho-ho-ho
“Oh, here he is hiccupping again!" cried the haughty and disdainful voice of an irritated lady”
Answer The third grade
“For we can always do that--pay for a tomb of the third grade.”
Answer Since January
“We haven't seen the colour of your money since January. There's a little bill against you at the shop.”
Answer I should like a taste of life
“Yes, I should like a taste of life! Yes, you know ... I should like a taste of life.”
Answer Since April
“he has been here since April; and then all of a sudden 'I should like a taste of life!'”
Answer Swept him out from under a married couple's bed
“how a man-servant swept you out from under a married couple's bed one morning.”
Answer Seventy feet
“As it is, they are all last year's for seventy feet round.”
Answer Schultz
“Only the evening before, Schultz said to me, 'There's a complication,' and I died suddenly before morning.”
Answer Three roubles
“he only asks three roubles, and he makes such an examination”
Answer Lower court councillor
“Semyon Yevseitch Lebeziatnikov, lower court councillor, at your service”
Answer A baron
“And I am not a count but a baron, only a baron.”
Answer Four hundred thousand
“he left a deficit of four hundred thousand government money from the fund for widows and orphans.”
Answer Five days
“She has been here for five days, and if only you knew,”
Answer Platon Nikolaevitch
“If you want an explanation, baron, Platon Nikolaevitch could give you one better than I.”
Answer Two or three months, sometimes half a year
“goes on for two or three months ... sometimes even for half a year....”
Answer Cast aside all shame
“Gentlemen! I propose to cast aside all shame.”
Answer Kudeyarov
“For that we'll wait for Kudeyarov who was brought here yesterday.”
Answer Six brass buttons
“Here you will rot in the grave and six brass buttons will be all that will be left of you.”
Answer The diarist sneezes
“And here I suddenly sneezed. It happened suddenly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking”
Answer His portrait
“the editor there has had his portrait exhibited too. Maybe he will print it.”
“Bobok,” first published in The Citizen (Grazhdanin), 5 February 1873, in A Writer’s Diary; translated by Constance Garnett in An Honest Thief and Other Stories (Heinemann, London, 1919). This text follows the Project Gutenberg transcription (#40745). Public domain.