Creating Anna Karenina

by Bob Blaisdell

  And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance—all told him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they understood each other.

  “I quite understand that,” Levin answered. “It’s impossible to give one’s heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that’s just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.”

  She was silent for a while, then she smiled.

  “Yes, yes,” she agreed; “I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez large [I don’t have a big enough heart] to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m’a jamais reussi [I could never work like that]. There are so many women who have made themselves une position sociale in that way. And now more than ever,” she said with a mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, “now when I have such need of some occupation, I cannot.” And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject.V

  By the time Tolstoy wrote that scene, sometime late in 1876, he had renounced the confident opinions he expressed in “On Popular Education.”

  He had been hoping for and expecting a strong response on its publication, hence his requirement that Nekrasov publish it within two months.

  To continue with Tolstoy’s busy August 15, he wrote Golokhvastov to ask him to thank Madame Golokhvastova for her help in trying to find the Tolstoy children a governess and, by the way, he was passing along to Golokhvastov Anna Karenina, “as much as isn’t hateful,”VI to read through for corrections. (Imagine Johannes Vermeer in 1658 writing a friend to come over to look at his painting of a young woman pouring water from a pitcher, or at least glance at as much of it as “isn’t hateful.”)

  He wrote to Alexandrine to thank her for her help in having found him and Sofia a Swiss governess and also to tell her the latest about his money-draining farm in Samara:

  […] This year there was a very abundant harvest throughout the whole Samara province, and, as far as I know, the only place in the whole Samara province that was missed by the rains was my estate, and I had again sowed a big area and again suffered a big loss. I went there and couldn’t believe my eyes, and I felt hurt, as though I’d been put in the corner when I’d done nothing wrong. […]VII

  We should be grateful that his financial losses in Samara may have compelled him to keep writing Anna Karenina. But perhaps he felt some cynicism about the novel for its being driven, in part, by financial considerations.

  Finally, he wrote his sister about their financial business and asked for her help in finding a classically educated governess who could speak French or German.VIII

  At the end of August he traveled with his sister-in-law Tatyana to the D’yakovs’ Cheremosh estate. What a sociable man! But is it the way Tolstoy writes—from his own singular viewpoint—that makes us forget how sociable he was? In Anna Karenina, even as singular and isolated as Levin sometimes seems, old friends and acquaintances pop up everywhere, at every turn. Levin knows the peasants, the officials, the real estate sharks, everybody. Tolstoy was not a writer who sat in his den and rarely ventured forth. His writing, at times, was simply a duty, not the task that defined him. That is why there can be so many autobiographical details in common between him and Levin. Levin himself is working on a big, long complicated book on Russian farming that he too keeps finding excuses to break off from. Where Tolstoy and Levin most importantly do differ is that Tolstoy could create Levin, but Levin could not have dreamed up Tolstoy.

  Tolstoy sent “On Popular Education” to Notes of the Fatherland on August 30, with instructions to send the corrected copy to Strakhov. He worried to Nekrasov that the censor would get at it. In fact it escaped censorship and suffered no changes.

  The same day, he anxiously wrote to Strakhov to ask him if he would have time to look over the essay’s galleys for corrections. He had to apologize as well for not having responded to Strakhov’s last letter because, “Believe me, ever since that day I haven’t had a free minute. I only just got back from Samara, where there was an amazing event: there was growth everywhere, except for mine; I had to go to Novosil’skiy District in the south, to buy more land! [“How Much Land Does a Tolstoy Need?” could have been the title of this unfateful trip], and then I returned and found a house full of guests [the Kuzminskiys and Golokhvastovs], and only yesterday I saw off the difficult guests and felt the freedom of thought. It’s a terrible shame I missed the chance of seeing you. I’ll try to arrange this trip to Petersburg in winter, which for various circumstances I might need to do.”IX

  Strakhov always accommodated Tolstoy’s requests, and yet writing to Strakhov for favors also seemed to require that Tolstoy update his admiring friend with apologies and, usually, excuses about the state of Anna Karenina: “My novel’s not moving, but thanks to you I believe that it’s worth finishing, and I hope to do so this year.”X

  Somewhere near September 9, according to Gusev, Tolstoy went to Moscow on his continued hunt for a governess; he also brought a manuscript copy of Anna Karenina to the Notes of the Fatherland’s printer and asked that the typeset copy be sent to Strakhov.XI Had Tolstoy been sneaking in some work on Anna Karenina? Was it brand-new revised work that he brought to the printer or was it what was left over from his attempts to work on it during and immediately after Strakhov’s July visit? I’m inclined to believe that it was old material Tolstoy wanted to see freshly in type. Neither he nor Sofia mentioned him having done any writing on it, and after all Gusev says the purpose of the trip was not the delivery of the manuscript but the hiring of a governess.

  But can we imagine Tolstoy interviewing potential governesses? Wherever the meetings in Moscow took place, Tolstoy could have interviewed French, English, Swiss, or German women in their native languages, and even if they knew he was a well-known writer in Russia, they would have had no idea of the future worldwide stature of this intense gray-eyed man. Was he alarmingly serious? Awkward? Stiva Oblonsky, we know, would be eyeing them for a potential liaison. Tolstoy would not have seriously thought of philandering with his daughters’ governess, would he?

  He also saw P. M. Leont’ev at the Russian Herald about the novel and about his desire to receive the payment ahead of publication, a negotiation that, according to Gusev, was not settled, but Tolstoy needed the money.

  On September 10, he wrote Strakhov to ask him if it was okay to have the corrected copy of the new Anna Karenina chapters sent to him. “I wait with impatience and agitation for your answer,” he wrote, though he couldn’t have doubted Strakhov would do it, as he had already asked the printer to send it to his friend. “I don’t dare ask you to set the compensation, but if you could set it, I would count myself even more obliged to you. You encouraged me to publish and finish this novel, and you’re saving it from disfigurement.”

  Of course Strakhov came through again, but there is no evidence in their correspondence of Strakhov actually being financially compensated by Tolstoy.

  In mid-September “On Popular Education” came out. Strakhov would write from St. Petersburg: “The noise from your article is tremendous.”XII

  Tolstoy was happy with the noisy article. Through “On Popular Education,” he “established thinking on pedagogical questions,” says Gusev, “even among people that never before thought about them.”XIII

  Tolstoy wrote to Fet that he had been buying mares and that he and Sofia were leaving for the D’yakovs’ the next day and that he would go hunting with Obolenskii. As for Anna Karenina, Tolstoy announced, “That Tolstoy who writes novels has still not come, and I expect him with particular impatience. He’s also a downcast person.”XIV

  Even when he was gloomy, going hunting invigorated him, and he hunted wolves during the September 17–24 week at the D’yakovs’. There are, curiously, no wolves or any wolf-hunting expeditions in Anna Karenina.

  Strak
hov sent him a letter that must have been awaiting him when he returned to Yasnaya Polyana. It continued a plea that the world’s readers would have joined in had they only known: “Write, write, inestimable Lev Nikolaevich! This is my primary request.”XV

  Tolstoy’s annual fall excuses for not working on Anna Karenina popped up whenever he mentioned the novel at all. Sofia didn’t understand or believe his excuses; Strakhov was more sympathetic about his difficulties with resuming work but also more emphatic about his need to do so anyway.

  Tolstoy didn’t see it as making excuses. He needed to know what life’s purpose was. He describes this philosophical dilemma in Confession:

  Before occupying myself with my Samara estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management which greatly occupied me at that time, the question would suddenly occur: “Well, you will have 6,000 desyatinasXVI of land in Samara Government [district] and 300 horses, and what then?…” And I was quite disconcerted and did not know what to think. Or when considering plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: “What for?” Or when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I would suddenly say to myself: “But what does it matter to me?” Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I would say to myself, “Very well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Molière, or than all the writers in the world—and what of it?”

  And I could find no reply at all.XVII

  Tolstoy knew but didn’t mention in Confession that part of the “What of it?” of writing Anna Karenina was because he wanted the money. When he was down in the dumps, he, like many people, bought things. (He never mentions Anna Karenina by name in the final draft of Confession. He deleted his one mention of it from a draft when he published the tract in 1882, as if it were the name of an old shameful liaison.)

  His vacation at the D’yakovs’ did not settle him down enough to work on the novel. On September 26, he wrote to Strakhov: “I am out of sorts with tasks and the children, for whom we still don’t have teachersXVIII, and (my) health, and so I look at this novel as if at someone else’s business.”XIX

  In mid-October, he requested the Krapivensky regional school board to supply teachers for the new peasant schools. At the end of October he resumed work on a grammar book for the schools.

  When Tolstoy wrote to Fet it was to apologize for not having answered Fet’s last letter; he wanted to go visit him, but he had been busy with farm business, the schools, and his family. He also needed to ask his friend for a loan: “An indispensable purchase of land in Nikolskoe has come up, for which I must borrow ten thousand for a year on the security of the land. It may be, perhaps, that you have money that you have to invest.”XX As Tolstoy seemed to half-expect, Fet turned him down.

  Craving sympathy, Tolstoy explained in a letter to his relative Alexandrine how overwhelmed he was:

  I have not answered you […] for so long because the more I live the more I feel that I’m turning like a squirrel in a wheel, and there is less and less time. There is so much bustle, worry, business, activities, which keep me from you.

  You, probably, feel the same, even without a family.

  My novel, really, is starting printing. But it is surely going to take four months, and I do not have the time to continue correcting it. Besides bringing up and teaching the children, whom I occupy myself with (and with remorse, I think, when I gave them paid teachers), besides work (I am writing—you will be amazed—a grammar); besides school business, which I teach in my school and in the district, and fights with members, money business (the purchase of land, which was necessary), besides all of this, the family adversity. My wife was feverish while breastfeeding, which is her torment, and a few days ago, my oldest daughter was running to me on the parquet, and tumbled, and broke her collarbone. But we only now have begun to think about and worry about the fractures. The striking of her head was so strong that the doctor and we were frightened for her life and sanity.—It is true that the autumn is always a heavy time for me. I hope that when the snows begin falling on us, I will write again of that happy situation of peace, the hard growth of life that I so love.XXI

  A parent’s life is fraught, and Tanya’s accident (dated by Sofia as October 27) would continue to cause anxiety for another two weeks.

  Sofia’s account of Tanya’s accident is more scattered but more medically observant and detailed:

  … I was sitting downstairs in the children’s room and breastfeeding Nikolushka when all of a sudden someone came running up, saying that Tanja had fallen on the parquet floor and severely injured herself. I ran upstairs. Tanja had just been lifted up and laid down {on a bed}. She was cross-eyed and her face looked frightening. She soon began vomiting.

  Tanja had been sliding over the parquet as though on ice-skates, in her silly Tula boots with copper heels (as was the cheap provincial fashion of the time), and had fallen flat on her back. These boots had been bought on impulse, as we always bought footwear for both ourselves and the children at Shumakher’s in Moscow. And in this case, as though on purpose, nobody had been to Moscow for a long time, and a servant had picked up these clogs in Tula.

  When the vomiting started, I realised right off that there had been a concussion of the brain, and we sent for Doctor Knertser, who had always treated our family, and while waiting for him we applied ice to her head. Upon his arrival the doctor also ordered us to place leeches behind her ears. By nighttime she was running a high fever and showing signs of delirium.

  I can no longer describe the horror we went through that night. I recall my hands shaking and my heart pounding as I took a leech in a towel and tried to place it in the exact spot the doctor had indicated.

  Apart from the concussion of the brain, the doctor also found a fracture in the left collarbone and applied a bandage.XXII

  The only good news of the time was that on October 29, the Teaching Committee of the People’s Ministry approved for school use the New Azbuka, which was now on its way to continuous success.XXIII

  While still at Yasnaya Polyana Tolstoy wrote to Golokhvastov:

  We’re tormented with bustle, worries, but mainly illnesses in the family: now the wife, now the children. My daughter Tanya a week ago fell on the back of her head on the parquet and was near death. Now she is out of danger, but her collarbone is broken and tomorrow I’m taking her to Moscow. […] As for the novel, I am not working on it.XXIV

  In sum, he was busy with everything except Anna Karenina.

  “From letters of 1874 one might think that Anna Karenina had been abandoned forever,” calmly observes the Soviet critic Boris Eikhenbaum. “But early in November, during a sojourn in Moscow, the thought of printing the novel appears anew. From all indications the cause of this new decision was simply the need of money.”XXV Though Anna’s fate is unavoidable, the fate of the novel seems to have come down to fluky circumstances; if Tolstoy hadn’t needed the money, he may well have given up on Anna Karenina as he had on the Peter the Great epic. Perhaps Sofia was nudging him, reminding him: We’re strapped for cash! Levochka, write the novel!

  Catching up on correspondence, apologetic, he wrote Strakhov:

  I’m guilty only that you are doing so much for me. But this guilt you can forgive, because I so highly value your help. I’m also guilty that I’m not sending you the corrections of the novel. I cannot, and I cannot take it up. […] My cares now are the family—all of them one after the other, children, wife, are sick, and financial business. I have to buy the land surrounding my estate and I need to borrow money, and petition the courts, and raise the children (for six months we haven’t been able to find a governess and tutor), and the Krapivensky district schools […]

  He went on to describe his duties as a school board member and the preparations he had needed to do for the New Azbuka, which would come out at the end of May 1875. In Moscow, he s
aid, where he was going with his daughter the next day, he needed to negotiate with the Russian Herald for Anna Karenina at 500 rubles a printer’s sheet and a 10,000-ruble advance that he needed for his land purchase.XXVI

  Sofia remembered that on November 4, “Once Tanja had recovered, got up and was in fairly good spirits, Lev Nikolaevich took her along with the Englishwoman [Emily Tabor, the governess] to see a fine surgeon in Moscow, who set the bone […]”XXVII

  Imagine them on the train: Tolstoy trying to cheer up Tanya. Perhaps he made small talk in English with Emily. With his wife ill, his daughter injured, and his mind as preoccupied as Stiva’s in his quest for money, did he listen to Tanya and Emily’s English chatter? During Tolstoy’s days in Moscow he was on a quest to raise money and sell a novel that he didn’t want to write, but he had to comfort Tanya and have her looked after.

  When they returned from Moscow on November 7, Tolstoy resumed his correspondence about selling the novel.

  Sofia wrote her sister that despite their tight circumstances, it had become necessary to pay debts; they had decided to cut down the Zakaz wood near Yasnaya Polyana and sell it. This is one more instance where it is useful to remind ourselves that there is something of Tolstoy in Stiva Oblonsky, the spendthrift who always needs more money—including, to his embarrassment, needing to sell off a portion of his wife’s inherited property.XXVIII Sofia also told her sister:

  Levochka is selling his novel in a magazine, is asking for 500 rubles a sheet, and they will probably give it. But he doesn’t occupy himself with it; he passionately takes up the school and is busy with all the business; I almost never see him, either he’s in the school, or on the hunt, or downstairs in his room with the teachers, whom he teaches how to teach.XXIX