The day before I had seen The Queen of Spades, a 1949 British film based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 short story. It concerned a Russian officer who, in his desperation to win at cards, murdered an elderly Russian countess while trying to learn her secret method of picking cards in the game of faro. He seemed uninterested in having me recount the plot, which he must have known well, but his head shot up when I said in conclusion that it reminded me of Dead Souls. Vera also turned around and stared directly at me. Peering intently at me, he asked, “Why do you think that?”
This quote is from the same article as the tale of the train station from Anna Karenina.As it happens, I was recounting the story of Pikovaya Dama at our seder last week and one little boy was particularly fascinated (precocious chess player, beats everyone who takes him on) and wished to know how the game was played. I came up with a possibility, a variant of the children's game 'war', but had to admit I didn't really know. How can you win with a tuz after all? (that's a deuce).By googling I got a variety of explanations. The clearest, done by some Civil War re-enactors, was clearly not the game described in P.D.Does anyone know how faro was played in Pushkin's time? It is interesting that although I could not recall the name of the game at the seder table, I kept imagining a pyramid. Well, I put that down to the fact that we were of course talking a lot about Egypt. However, it does turn out that faro was derived from pharaon, the original name given to the original game as played at the court of Louis XIV at Versailles.Carolynp.s. Is faro pronounced with end stress? which you would expect.All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.