When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Literary and Philosophical References
Aristotle (1.4)
Shakespeare (1.4)
Hamlet (1.10)
Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven (1.10)
James Fenimore Cooper (1.10)
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote/ (1.12)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1.12)
Gestalt Psychology (1.12)
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (2.4.4)
Confucius (3.5.2)
Franz Kafka (4.1.6)
Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel (4.1.6)
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (4.2.2)
Hans Christian Anderson (4.3.1)
Johann Gottfried von Herder (5.5.16)
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (5.5.16)
Christoph Martin Wieland (5.5.16)
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (5.5.16)
Stéphane Mallarmé (6.1.1)
Simone de Beauvoir (6.1.2)
Stendhal (6.1.2)
John Galsworthy (6.1.2)
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (6.1.2)
Thomas Mann (6.1.2)
The Romantic Movement (6.3.1)
François-René de Chateaubriand (6.3.1)
Victor Hugo (6.3.1)
Existentialism (6.3.2)
Romain Rolland (6.3.2)
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (6.3.2)
Saint George (6.7.2)
Horatio Alger, "Tom the Bootblack: Or, The Road to Success," (6.11.5)
Ernest Thompson Seton, Rolf in the Woods (6.11.5)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes (7.7.1)
Historical References
Louis Pasteur (1.4)
Thomas Edison (1.10)
Harry S. Truman (1.10)
Napoleon Bonaparte (1.3.3)
World War II (2.2.4)
Adolf Hitler (2.2.4)
Buddha (2.4.5)
Nansen Passport (2.5.3)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (3.1.3)
Richard Wagner (3.5.2)
Sigmund Freud (4.2.2)
Buchenwald concentration camp (5.5.16)
Georges Ernest Boulanger (6.3.2)
Joseph McCarthy (6.7.7)
Pop Culture References
Pauline Viardot (2.4.5)
Charlie Chaplin (3.7.3)
André Deed, a.k.a Henri André Chapais, a.k.a Glupishkin (3.7.3)
Max Linder (3.7.3)
Gertrude Käsebier (4.5.2)
Arthur Schnitzler, Liebelei (7.2.1)
Russian Literature, History, Culture
Literature
Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1.5)
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1.5)
Alexander Ostrovsky (1.6)
Nikolai Leskov (1.5)
Alexander Pushkin (1.3.3), "Brozhu li ia dvol' ulits shumnykh" (3.3.5), "Thoughts" (3.6.3)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (2.4.5)
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, "How Fair, How Fresh Were the Roses" (2.4.5)
Anna Akhmatova (2.5.3)
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, "The Mermaid" (2.7.20)
Nikolai Gogol (3.6.21)
History
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1.2)
The Russian Revolution (1.2)
The Great Moscow Fire of 1812 (1.2.42)
The Iron Curtain (1.3.2)
The Cold War (1.3.2)
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (1.3.3)
The Russian Civil War of 1918 (5.5.15)
Fyodor Fyodorovich Raskolnikov (5.5.17)
Culture
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (3.1.2)
Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev, a.k.a. Constantine Stanislavsky (5.5.17)
Art References
Salvador Dalí (4.5.3)
Norman Rockwell (4.5.3)
Vincent Van Gogh (4.5.3)
Pablo Picasso (4.5.3)
Edgar Degas (4.5.3)
Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini Wedding (4.5.4)
Petrus Christus, Saint Eligius The Goldsmith (4.5.4)
Hans Memling, Our Lady with the Child and Maarten van Nieuwenhove (4.5.4)
Claude Monet (4.5.5)
Leonardo Da Vinci (4.5.6)
Jan Van Eyck, "Madonna with Canon van der Paele" (6.7.2)