“Mevisto as Nikita was the paradigm of the moujik: savage and ferocious, boorish and churlish. When drunk, he was scurrilous and obscene, his foulness reaching unheard-of proportions.”
“The poem criticizes the noble or prince, making the point that the man who should be generous, an aristocratic patron of poetry, is instead stingy and churlish.”
