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Pora moi drug, pora

Time to go! Time to go! [Pora! Pora!]: The title of chapter 30 alludes to a poem by Alexander Pushkin, "Pora moi drug, pora" (1834). The poem is particularly appropriate, since it deploys the crucial term peace [pokoi] in the very first line:

It's time, my friend, it's time! the heart asks for peace [pokoi] --
Days fly after days, and every hour carries of
A bit of existence, and we two
Plan to live, and look--just then--we die.
There is no happines in the world, but there is peace [pokoi] and freedom.
Long since I have dreamed of an envious lot--
Long since, tired slave, I have planned escape
To the distant refuge of labor and pure delights.

Several themes important to the end of the novel come into play in Pushkin's poem, which Russians know by heart: peace, death, escape from this tiresome world, and flight to a refuge where one can work.