1 All biographical and bibliographical material about Lobanov cited or referred to in this article were taken from: Novyj enciklopedicheskij slovar', izdanie aksionarnago obshchestva, Petrograd [n. d.], Vol. XXIV, col. 773.

2 The Slovar” (loc. cit.) states that “a year after the appearance of Pushkin's Boris Godunov he [Lobanov] published his own Boris Godunov.” Since Pushkin's play first appeared in 1831, Lobanov's work ostensibly came out a year later, that is, 1832.

3 The original of this passage may be found in: M. E. Lobanov, Boris Godunov (St. Petersburg, 1835), p. 1. The excerpts quoted in this article, whether in prose or in blank verse, have been rendered into English by the author.

4 Lobanov, loc. cit.

5 In Tolstoy's play the Prince dies as a result of poison administered to him by the evil and treacherous Maria Skuratova, who hated him as a foreigner and “unbeliever.” In Heiseler's version he takes poison himself after learning that the father of his intended bride is a murderer. In both cases the death of the Prince is an outgrowth of the characters and the actions of the personages involved. In Lobanov the death of the Prince seems purely accidental, something like the stroke of a dais ex machina.

6 Lobanov shared the Slavophiles’ distrust and fear of the West. In fact, in this respect he appears to have gone farther than many of his contemporaries. His anti-Western and generally reactionary views prompted Pushkin to polemicize against him. See Slovar', loc. cit.

7 Cf. the following pronouncement of Joseph Nadler: “Heiseler has neither Westernized Eastern life nor given a Slavic tinge to the Western spirit. In his work … the cultures of East and West are presented not as a conflict … but in a translucent unity where each of the elements identifies itself at all times completely with the other.” (This quotation from Nadler's Henry von Heiseler appears in Professor Andre von Gronicka's Henry von Heiseler, a Russo-German Writer [King's Grown Press, New York, 1944] p. 1.)

8 Original may be found in Lobanov, op. cit., p. 104.

9 Ibid.

10 ” … and in my heart where the purest fire had been burning the Lord put the fear of losing Ksenija's love.” Henry von Heiseler, DU Kinder Godunofs in Gesammelte Werke, Band III, DU Dramen, (Leipzig, 1938), p. 274.

11 “They all turned in terror away from me; and as piece after piece was torn out of my bleeding heart—O—there came to me the fear to see in thee the same horror. This fear drove me away from thee and madly fed upon my waning strength.” von Heiseler, op. cit., p. 278.

12 Ibid., p. 104.

13 Ibid., p. 140.

14 Ibid., p. 147.

15 Ibid.

16 “Another peculiarity of the manner in which Lobanov treats this character is that only once, in a passage spoken by a minor character (Mstislavskij), does he refer to him by his right name (Ioann); Lobanov, op. cil., p. 13. Everywhere else he is called the Danish Duke (gertsog datskij) or simply the Duke (gertsog), e.g., pp. 17 and 23. Since a single cunory mention of the character's real name may be easily overlooked, one may be justified in calling him “an unnamed Danish Prince who figures in the play as Ksenija's fiancé.”

17 Voo Heiseler'i knowledge of Russian literature'seems to have been prodigious. See Andre van Gronicka, op. cit., especially pp. 181-98. Of course, no one will question A. K. Tolstoy's competency.

18 Lobanov, op. at., p. 110. Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov was sixteen years old when he was crowned tsar.

19 The extent to which the author has been forgotten may be gauged by the fact that the twenty-two volume Jouzhakov's Bol'shaja encyclopedia (St. Petersburg, 1903) does not even list his name.