Take a drink when:
- the hero looks up at the night sky
- a fashionably westernized Russian has a debate with the hero
- the institution of marriage is criticized
- someone doesn’t understand what’s going on at the theater
- someone’s at the theater but is only staring at the audience
- a peasant imparts simple wisdom
- a very beautiful person is also very bad
- French is spoken
- a child has the same name as a close relative
- an unsuccessful marriage proposal is made
- the hero stutters or otherwise speaks poorly
- somebody is always mentioned by one of their body parts, e.g. “white hands”, “little mustache”, and the like
- doctors are being useless (take an extra drink if they’re German)
- a woman falls gravely ill after a personal trauma
Finish your drink when:
- a successful marriage proposal is made
- a child is born
- all the families are related to one another by the novel’s end
Bibliotheca Yalenskaya 