ellauri072.html on line 204: The problems of Dante's treatment of the punishment of homosexuals in Hell and of his more surprising salvation of still other (unnamed) homosexuals in Purgatory have had two recent responses that restore a central fact: cantos 15 and 16 of Inferno and canto 26 of Purgatorio are in fact concerned with this issue. Boswell's pages insisting on the identity of the sexual sin punished in Inf. 15-16 and the lust repented on the seventh terrace {"Dante and the Sodomites," 65-67} are convincing. "Soddoma" is used clearly to identify homosexual activity in Purg. 26 (vv. 40 and 79) and thus makes clear its meaning in Inf. 11.50 and therefore the nature of the sin encountered in Inf. 15 and 16.
ellauri110.html on line 308: Sofia Prorokova, the author of Isaak Levitan's biography, suggested that the house with a terrace and a mezzanine in question might have been the one belonging to Anna N. Turchaninova, whose Gorka estate in the Tver Governorate Chekhov visited in the summer of 1895.According to Prorokova, the story might have been based upon the difficult relationship Levitan had with the Turchaninova sisters (hence the similarity in surnames), of whom the younger one, Varvara, the possible prototype for Zhenya (Missyuss), had a bizarre diminutive nickname, Lyulyu. This view was shared by the literary historian Leonid Grossman.
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