Creating Anna Karenina

by Bob Blaisdell

  The next two obstacles, the water course and the barrier, were easily crossed, but Vronsky began to hear the snorting and thud of Gladiator closer upon him. He urged on his mare, and to his delight felt that she easily quickened her pace, and the thud of Gladiator’s hoofs was again heard at the same distance away.

  Vronsky was at the head of the race, just as he wanted to be and as Cord had advised, and now he felt sure of being the winner. His excitement, his delight, and his tenderness for Frou-Frou grew keener and keener. He longed to look round again, but he did not dare do this, and tried to be cool and not to urge on his mare so to keep the same reserve of force in her as he felt that Gladiator still kept. There remained only one obstacle, the most difficult; if he could cross it ahead of the others he would come in first. He was flying toward the Irish barricade, Frou-Frou and he both together saw the barricade in the distance, and both the man and the mare had a moment’s hesitation. He saw the uncertainty in the mare’s ears and lifted the whip, but at the same time felt that his fears were groundless; the mare knew what was wanted. She quickened her pace and rose smoothly, just as he had fancied she would, and as she left the ground gave herself up to the force of her rush, which carried her far beyond the ditch; and with the same rhythm, without effort, with the same leg forward, Frou-Frou fell back into her pace again.

  “Bravo, Vronsky!” he heard shouts from a knot of men—he knew they were his friends in the regiment—who were standing at the obstacle. He could not fail to recognize Yashvin’s voice though he did not see him.

  “O my sweet!” he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he listened for what was happening behind. “He’s cleared it!” he thought, catching the thud of Gladiator’s hoofs behind him. There remained only the last ditch, filled with water and five feet wide. Vronsky did not even look at it, but anxious to get in a long way first began sawing away at the reins, lifting the mare’s head, and letting it go in time with her paces. He felt that the mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her neck and shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops on her mane, her head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than enough for the remaining five hundred yards. It was only from feeling himself nearer the ground and from the peculiar smoothness of his motion that Vronsky knew how greatly the mare had quickened her pace. She flew over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it like a bird […]XLVI

  The first many times I read this thrilling chapter I didn’t think of sex. And then the first time I did think of it, I didn’t want to. Now I’ve given up resisting. It is a horserace, but it’s also like sex. And I eventually couldn’t help wondering: Did Tolstoy really overlook the obvious sexuality?

  And now I can’t help concluding: Yes, he was unconscious of its obvious sexuality. Vronsky is not responsible for confusing horseracing with sex; Tolstoy is.

  Let’s imagine a Tolstoy who wasn’t ashamed of human sexuality. That Tolstoy couldn’t have written this without blushing and realizing, “Oh, yeah, that is like…” But if this unashamed Tolstoy had been able to write about sex as frankly as writers a hundred years later, what a marvel that could have been: Tolstoy describing sex would have been as gorgeous and thrilling as this race. We would all recognize something about our consciousness in the act. His unconscious description survives, and we do know something that he didn’t know he was making us conscious of.

  Vronsky’s excited race ends terribly; he has to shoot the horse to put it out of its misery. Tolstoy knew just what would most pain a horse-lover, and we are upset for Vronsky.

  After Vronsky falls and curses himself for his maiming of Frou-Frou (and his therefore necessary destruction of her), we switch to Anna’s point of view, back at her house earlier in the day, on her husband’s return. We learn of their spoken and unspoken arrangements for keeping up appearances. Karenin means to take her to the race, but Betsy calls for her and whisks her away herself. At the races, Karenin finds himself watching Anna instead of the horses. When she hears that Vronsky has fallen she becomes almost hysterical with worry, and Karenin insists that she return home with him. In the carriage, when he scolds her for her reaction, he suddenly wants her to lie and tell him that it’s nothing. Instead, she tells him that she in fact loves Vronsky and is his lover.

  * * *

  “How annoying, dear friend Tanya, that it’s impossible to write without letters, without paper and ink, or you would have received every day long letters from me, especially this winter,” Tolstoy wrote his sister-in-law Tatyana at the end of March. “How often I remember you and so want to see you, in both good and bad moments.—I’m terribly busy this year, and except for one woe and now another, some sort of doubtful condition of Sonya’s health, I would be very happy myself this winter. I received your long letter, Tanya, at the time of the heaviest illness of Nikol’inka, but I appreciated it. As for Anna Karenina, if only I had your talent of description. I would pay someone to put in the commas. […] No, no joke, you won’t believe how I read, with such great joy, your so very descriptive letters. […] Judging by your silence about your health, I suppose and am glad that it’s fine. […] So don’t think you’re right or think that if I don’t write I don’t love you. I love you very much and am not an egotist, as you, I know, swear I am.”XLVII

  In Confession Tolstoy paints with a broad bold brush a picture of his mood during this time as continuously frighteningly gloomy. But there he was, in the letter above, lively and playful with his sister-in-law, and in a letter around the same time to Strakhov he was unusually friendly and newsy. Tolstoy wished him a good trip to Rome, and believed his friend must be as excited as a boy: “I would very much like to see you. You think that I only think about myself. Not at all. I feel for people whom I love, and I feel for you […]”XLVIII Then Tolstoy recounted for Strakhov the conversation he had had with Yury Samarin about the scene that he couldn’t possibly modify: Anna and Vronsky having murderously miserable sex.XLIX

  Unusually, Tolstoy mentioned his actual effort on the book, though unfortunately he didn’t pinpoint which chapters he had in mind:

  In the last installment a few chapters came to me which I put in and about which I really struggled. Tell me what you think about them.L

  Tolstoy was finished for now with his work on Anna Karenina. For the next eight months he would at first deliberately put it off and then, in the midst of composing the first draft of Confession, uselessly try to proceed with the novel. His attention went at first to the New Azbuka and educational issues.LI Tolstoy wrote his assistant Nagornov at the beginning of April and gave him three choices for the new title of the revised Azbuka: “Children’s Azbuka, “New or Children’s Azbuka,” or “New Azbuka.” We have Nagornov’s choice.LII

  Tolstoy wrote the editor of the Notes of the Fatherland, Nekrasov, to ask about the journal’s interest in another education article as well as expressing hope that Nekrasov would give the New Azbuka some serious notice; and though Tolstoy seemed full up with arguments about education, and assured Nekrasov that the article would be ready for the May issue, nothing would come of it, except perhaps Nekrasov’s consternation and the beginning of the end of their correspondence.LIII

  But horses! From late March through April Tolstoy continued an anxious correspondence with Fet about the logistics of getting a stallion that he was buying from Fet brought to Yasnaya Polyana in time to mate with a special mare: “Please don’t be mad at me for my impatience.”LIV

  He was busy, as he kept saying. He was worried about what the censors would do with the New Azbuka; Tolstoy told Nagornov: “I won’t be able to make all the necessary changes before the trip to Samara [in early June].”

  At the end of April, Tolstoy wrote three drafts of a letter promoting the New Azbuka.LV Promotion was another one of those things that Tolstoy did that does not seem characteristic of him, yet with characteristic focus and skill he did it well. He contacted a dozen journals and newspapers.
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br />   For some reason, though, he had the hardest time hiring tutors for his older children. His eagerness to do so was clear when a tutor came into range. He wrote to May Perrot, a Swiss to whom (on Alexandrine Tolstaya’s recommendation) he had asked for help finding a tutor and governess: “We’re awaiting an answer concerning Rey. We’re leaving June 7.”LVI

  * * *

  On May 2, the April issue of the Russian Herald appeared; it contained the fourth installment of Anna Karenina: Chapters 28–31 of Part 2 and Chapters 1–10 of Part 3 (corresponding in the book edition to Chapters 30–35 in Part 2 and Chapters 1–12 in Part 3).

  Here, in summary, is what we could have devoured that early May day:

  The Shcherbatskys are at a German spa, and Kitty becomes attracted to the selfless, saintly, slightly older Varenka, the foster daughter of a mean old Russian invalid, Madame Stahl, who lives in that town. Kitty’s mother arranges an introduction, and the young women become friends. In Kitty’s effort to be “good” by emulating Varenka, she helps a sickly Russian painter and his family. The painter, to her embarrassment and the wife’s anger, falls for her, which mishap shows Kitty that she is not cut out for Varenka’s saintly selflessness. In frustration and envy, she blows up at Varenka, but Varenka understands and forgives her. Kitty’s spirits are restored, and the family returns to Moscow.

  Part 3 opens with Levin’s half-brother Sergei Ivanovich Koznishev, the academic philosopher. He goes to visit Levin to unwind, even though for Levin it’s the farm’s busiest time. Sergei wants to chat and argue, but Levin just feels oppressed. Levin breaks free by announcing his intention to take up a scythe and mow a meadow with the peasants.

  No one can read these mowing scenes without joy. Who has communicated as potently as Tolstoy the ecstasy of rhythmical athletic movement?

  Another row, and yet another row, followed—long rows and short rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well cut as Tit’s. But so soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.LVII

  The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most blissful moments.LVIII

  Meanwhile, Stiva has sent his wife and children to their dilapidated house in the country, not so far from Levin. Dolly, with the help of her servant woman, gets the place organized and habitable. Stiva writes from Moscow to ask Levin to go help Dolly. Levin travels there one day and does indeed help. His feelings are confused, though. He is attracted by the family life but put off by some of the upper-class pretensions. He is thrown way off by Dolly’s significant hinting to him that Kitty is back, and due to visit, and available again. He becomes cranky with her and her handling of the children (why teach them French?!), and he abruptly, unhappily leaves. He meets a wealthy peasant on his way back; the peasant’s son has married and Levin sees how happy the young man and his lively wife are. Levin thinks maybe he ought to marry a hardworking, unpretentious peasant woman, but by chance that very next early morning he glimpses from afar a sleepy Kitty in a carriage on her way to Dolly’s and he realizes that he can’t, because “I love her.”

  * * *

  Readers of the April issue of the Russian Herald didn’t know that they would have to wait until the end of January 1876 for the next installment. Tolstoy didn’t know it would be quite that long, either.

  He must have resolved to get off some letters on May 5 before his and Sofia’s two-day trip to Moscow. He was in a tender and repentant mood. He not only wrote to Nagornov to apologize if his last, pushy letter had angered the young man, he wrote a note to Fet anticipating Fet’s visit to Yasnaya Polyana. That same day he also wrote a letter to his sister-in-law Tatyana and her husband Sasha Kuzminskiy, wherein at first he sounds like the incarnation of Stiva Oblonsky: “Still I’m very glad that you’re pregnant. This is divine.” And then Tolstoy sank back into his weird, sex-averse self: “But to me there’s something unpleasant.”LIX He informed his sister-in-law of “Our important family business—concluding dealings with the Swiss Monsieur Rey for 5,000 francs.” Rey would be “master, teaching Latin, Greek, mathematics, German and French. […] His [that is, Rey’s] sister will come to Tanya after August.” Tolstoy thought that Rey was twenty-three, but according to the Jubilee editors, Rey, born in 1848, was twenty-seven. Rey would work for the Tolstoys from June 1875 until January 1878. As for Anna Karenina, Tolstoy told Tatyana and Sasha, “until fall I won’t write or publish anymore.”

  Not working on the novel was a promise that was easy for him to keep. Meanwhile, his printing of the New Azbuka cost him only 2,000 rubles.LX It would continue to earn him money through twenty-eight editions in his lifetime.LXI

  Finally, having written all of those necessary business and personal letters, he concluded with one to Strakhov that may make Tolstoy, the model usually of literary consciousness, seem unconscious:

  Don’t be angry, dear Nikolay Nikolayevich, because this letter will be short. I’ve already written 8 letters and this—intimate—letter to you I was putting off to the end. And now there’s no time. Still, better a short one than nothing at all. I know how nice it is when abroad to get letters from Russia.

  I particularly want to reply to what you write about yourself. The state of your soul has been partly revealed to me, but that is all the more reason for wanting to penetrate further into it. And my wish is a legitimate one; it isn’t based on intellectual interest, but on heartfelt attraction toward you. There are souls whose only doors lead straight into living rooms. There are big doors and small ones, open doors and closed ones, but some are at the end of entrance halls, back and front staircases and corridors. You have winding corridors, but your apartments are good, and the main thing is, I love them. And I always wanted to penetrate them. You always speak, think, and write about the general—you are objective. And we all do this, but really it is only deceit, legitimate deceit, the deceit of decency, but still deceit, like clothing. [So Tolstoy’s naked strolling in Samara may have seemed to him a freedom from “deceit”?] […] And you wear too much objectivity, and so spoil yourself, at least for me. What criticism, judgments, or classifications can compare with an ardent, passionate search for a meaning for one’s life? […]LXII

  With almost everything Tolstoy wrote, the distance between our life and his seems to disappear. We know exactly what he means because he knows and conveys exactly what he means. Even if we don’t like what Tolstoy is saying, we know what he’s saying. No evasiveness, no hinting, no special obscure personal meaning.

  Except there in that second paragraph.

  Tolstoy was in an elated mood, as we see from the letters that he wrote earlier that day to Fet and Tatyana. He was wanting the doctor in Moscow to assure him and Sofia that her health could handle another pregnancy. The trip was unusual, if not unprecedented, in that the two of them, absent the children, went together to Moscow.

  How can we explain, though, Tolstoy’s expression of “heartfelt attraction” to Strakhov and his wish for penetrating his friend’s private spaces? Why all that about the “deceit” of clothing?

  It’s not that we need care if Tolstoy had homosexual feelings. All power to him! But if he didn’t know it, that’s what brings us back into Tolstoy’s blind spot. The letter continues:

  Objectivity is decency, as necessary to the masses as clothing. Venus de Milo can go about naked, and Pushkin can talk frankly about his personal impression of h
er. But if Venus goes about naked and an old cook does as well, it will be disgusting. And so people decided that it would be better for Venus to be clothed, too. She doesn’t lose anything, and the cook will be less ugly. This compromise seems to me to exist in things of the mind, too. Extremes, ugliness, surcharge of clothing often do harm, but we are used to them. And you wear too much objectivity, and so spoil yourself, at least for me.LXIII

  So, really, Tolstoy was just asking his friend to not cover up, to reveal himself, right?—as Tolstoy, unconsciously, was revealing himself here, and as Tolstoy consciously reveals himself in almost every other instance.

  Tolstoy continues: “What criticism, judgements, or classifications can compare with an ardent, passionate search for a meaning for one’s life?”