Creating Anna Karenina

by Bob Blaisdell

  Our vile literary profession is corrupting. Every writer has his own atmosphere of flatterers which he carefully surrounds himself with, and he can have no idea of his own importance or the time of his decline. I wouldn’t like to lose my way and have to turn back further on. Please help me in this.

  [P.S.] And don’t be inhibited by the idea that your stern criticism might upset the work of a man who has talent. Far better to stop at War and Peace than to write The Watch [by Turgenev], etc.LXXIV

  He really let himself out to Strakhov about the novel—he could always complain at length to him and press Strakhov and get a response; he didn’t have to be jolly, as he usually chose to be with Fet. He told Strakhov, his best reader, not to flatter him. This letter is just one more example of their interchange throughout the writing of the novel—Strakhov praising, Tolstoy disparaging the work.

  Tolstoy was in Moscow sometime in the period of April 9–13. Perhaps he was proofreading those April galleys, perhaps he was visiting friends. There are no details of his activities.

  Back at Yasnaya Polyana, he responded defensively to Alexandrine’s March 28 letter questioning him about his beliefs:

  You say you don’t know what I believe in. Strange and terrible to say: not in anything that religion teaches us; but at the same time I not only hate and despise disbelief, but I can see no possibility of living, and still less of dying, without faith. And I’m building up for myself little by little my religious beliefs, but although they are all firm, they are very undefined and uncomforting. When questioned by the mind, they answer well; but when the heart aches and seeks an answer, they provide no support or comfort. With the demands of my mind and the answers given by the Christian religion, I find myself in the position, as it were, of two hands endeavouring to clasp each other while the fingers resist. I long to do it, but the more I try, the worse it is; and at the same time I know that it’s possible, that the one is made for the other […]LXXV

  The search that he describes in Confession seems to have been going on now; he was terrified, but this confession was as far as he could go with a friend in describing his situation. In Confession Tolstoy plunges deeper and more terrifyingly into his state of mind. Here, for example, from Part 5:

  “But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something?” said I to myself several times. “It cannot be that this condition of despair is natural to man!” And I sought for an explanation of these problems in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I sought painfully and long, not from idle curiosity or listlessly, but painfully and persistently day and night—sought as a perishing man seeks for safety—and I found nothing.

  I sought in all the sciences, but far from finding what I wanted, became convinced that all who like myself had sought in knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing. And not only had they found nothing, but they had plainly acknowledged that the very thing which made me despair—namely the senselessness of life—is the one indubitable thing man can know.LXXVI

  Tolstoy dramatizes in Confession the feeling in a way that keeps us inside that despair and doesn’t comfort us with the thought that it is all going to be okay.

  At the same time in real life, he had the real comfort and hope of thinking about horses, which kind of idle activity he belittles in Confession. But these thoughts really did engage him. Thus Tolstoy falsified his own life, and we biographers falsify it if we decide that his craze for horses doesn’t really count.

  The despairing philosopher still got a thrill out of horses.

  He wrote Fet (about a week after his letter to Alexandrine) to ask him to send him the coveted stallion to Nikol’skoe. He wrote that he was grateful for the Fets’ visit in mid-April and for their conversations, which he was still “chewing over.”LXXVII There are no details, but by his letter later in the month to Fet, it seems that they discussed his difficulties in finding the purpose of life.

  Strakhov in the meantime tried to buck up Tolstoy, reminding him:

  We all have our woes. Yours, esteemed and envied Lev Nikolaevich—meanwhile—the torment of childbirth. You’re losing your usual coldbloodedness, and, it seems, you desire from me the advice to stop the publication of Anna Karenina and leave in the most cruel confusion thousands of readers, those who wait for and are always asking how this is going to end. Are you really going to fall into humiliation that you make a few mistakes, that the bride had to leave after the groom, that after the wedding they had to bow to the icon, and something else. All the same, the wedding description with all its spirit and color appears in our literature for the first time.LXXVIII

  Tolstoy was chagrined by a couple of mistakes of fact about the fictional wedding ceremony; he fixed those errors for the book publication. He didn’t grant himself artistic license about these kinds of facts.

  Then Strakhov, having properly girded himself, accepted Tolstoy’s challenge:

  So, fine—I’ll criticize your novel to you. The primary deficiency—the coldness of the writing, so to say the cold tone of the narration. That which, strictly speaking, is called tone is not yours, but the whole current of the narration I could hear the coldness. But apparently this is only for me, a person who is reading it who can almost hear your voice.LXXIX

  Tolstoy’s usual narrative mode—the detached omniscient voice—was a deliberate artistic choice, but Strakhov reacted to what he called its coldness and regretted its not having Tolstoy’s warmth—Tolstoy’s actual speaking voice. Is it that Tolstoy as a writer of this novel couldn’t have proceeded with a warm, connected voice (in the manner of, for example, Dickens, Hugo, or Trollope)? I think Tolstoy had to detach himself emotionally. But Strakhov was bothered by the tone that readers ever since have been impressed by—that clarity and assuredness of an unseen, irrefutable god-artist. Tolstoy made most scenes seem as if they belong to the characters and not to their creator.

  Strakhov’s letter is one of the most provocative and penetrating (that word is appropriate here) responses to the novel ever written—and it was composed to its author:

  Because—or as a consequence—the descriptions of the strongest scenes are somewhat dry. After them, one involuntarily asks for language somewhat revealing or thoughtful words, but you choose not to give those understanding and quietening sounds that usually conclude the finale in music. Further—the funny parts are not very merry, but if one laughs, ones laughs terribly.LXXX

  Strakhov was unhappily affected by the strictness, or the withholdingness, but he was accurately describing Tolstoy’s way. He didn’t favor it, but he noticed it. As for “the funny parts,” the funniest for me is when the calculating lawyer, whose chairs are moth-ridden, interviews Karenin:

  “Won’t you sit down?” He indicated an armchair at a writing table covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed his former attitude.LXXXI

  I acknowledge there are scenes where Tolstoy is sarcastically presenting the aristocrats and that he may have imagined that they were funny, but because those portrayals are colored by his prejudices and not by his love or interest, the characters appear flat. He was superior to those contemptible aristocrats… and even Tolstoy couldn’t create living characters if he felt superior to them. He did not identify with them, not at all the way Dickens so delightedly identified with his comic and sometimes wicked characters.

  Further words from Strakhov:

  I follow you and see all the reluctance, all the struggle with which you, the great master, do this work; and all the same it brings out what has to be brought out by a great master: everything is true, everything lives, everything is deep. Vronsky for you is the most difficult, Oblonsky easiest of all, but the figure of Vronsky is still unrooted. Having read through the last part, I took it up agai
n and read it from the beginning. The suicide of Vronsky, his meeting with Karenin—how good and strong!LXXXII

  As loyal and respectful as Strakhov was, he couldn’t let Tolstoy accuse him here of overpraising him about Anna Karenina or saying anything false or flattering. Another of Strakhov’s observations helps us imagine the pleasure and excitement of awaiting a new installment of this novel:

  But here I said everything that I was able to; I said directly that in it nothing is hidden, nothing is exaggerated. War and Peace in my eyes (I’m convinced in yours too) grows with each year; I’m convinced that this is happening with Anna Karenina, and that for a long long time readers will remember about the time when they impatiently awaited the issue of the Russian Herald, just as I cannot forget the time of the appearance of War and Peace.LXXXIII

  Strakhov was right: readers of his time would or should one day have remembered their excited experience of waiting for the next installment of Anna Karenina. But that’s true for us, too, reading it after its time. If we’re really taking it in, we do so as eager, anxious readers. Then, as today, we feel: A stupendous work of art is happening before my eyes! In April 1876, maybe a few thousand Russians realized that this was a memorable time. But it can also happen when we read or reread Anna Karenina now.

  Strakhov began winding up the letter:

  I ask you to write me how you find my judgments. [Tolstoy immediately did so.] I keep thinking over Karenin. I’m afraid I’m completely mistaken in thoughts of details, and in understanding of the technique I’m always weak. And so I wrote you only about the general pieces. But apparently you—I’m convinced—are at a low point because you’re struggling with the technique and are weary.LXXXIV

  Tolstoy must have irritatedly exclaimed, “Technique? Technique?” He had just written and proofread the scenes involving Mikhailov:

  “Yes, there’s a wonderful mastery!” said Vronsky. “How those figures in the background stand out! There you have technique,” he said, addressing Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation between them about Vronsky’s despair of attaining this technique.

  “Yes, yes, marvelous!” Golenishtchev and Anna assented. In spite of the excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had sent a pang to Mihailov’s heart, and looking angrily at Vronsky he suddenly scowled. He had often heard this word technique, and was utterly unable to understand what was understood by it. He knew that by this term was understood a mechanical facility for painting or drawing, entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the coverings; but there was no art of painting—no technique of any sort—about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, it or she would have been able to peel the wrappings off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the wrappings—faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.LXXXV

  After all, Tolstoy didn’t let loose at Strakhov with Mikhailov’s irritation, but in less than two weeks Strakhov would read this chapter for himself.

  As Strakhov concluded the end of his long, difficult but admiring letter, he seemed to sigh:

  Well, what will be, will be! I would be glad to help you, but I don’t know with what? I say only that you drove me into agitation, as if I had to write the end of the novel. That you would fail in the effort—this I’m not afraid of; but that you would delay the end of the novel—this perhaps comes from you.

  [P.S.] Art is the everything, you write; and just so thinks Ap. Grigoryev, and he so thinks only. It’s possible to say that his book was written against criticism.LXXXVI

  Strakhov even conceded Tolstoy that point—that Strakhov need not have written the introductory essay to Grigoryev’s book, an introduction Tolstoy couldn’t bring himself to finish reading.

  Tolstoy, however, would concede almost nothing to his friend.

  There are great critics—Tolstoy himself, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson—who can sometimes seem to say more than the author himself wanted to say, but Strakhov, as well as anybody has, presented a living response to Anna Karenina. And why shouldn’t he have? Strakhov was excitedly, intelligently reading the novel in its stages, watching its development. He had the best seat in the house and he made responsive, fine judgments. He wasn’t even trying to do what Tolstoy and Lawrence do as critics—express the essence of what the author wanted to say. Strakhov did better than any of the rest of us mortals could do as critics, and Tolstoy became annoyed because Strakhov’s primary point was right, that this was a brilliant, unprecedented novel, and this meant that Tolstoy had to go on with the hard work.

  Tolstoy responded to Strakhov’s letter with his own long letter on April 23 (and postscripted on April 26):

  You write: do you understand my novel correctly, and what do I think about your opinions? Of course you understand it correctly. Of course your understanding heartens me beyond words; but not everyone is bound to understand it as you do.

  Tolstoy had the bad habit of having to correct Strakhov. Even if Strakhov was right, he had to be checked and his opinion picked through:

  Perhaps you are only an amateur at these things, just as I am. Just like one of our Tula pigeon-fanciers. He rates a tumble-pigeon very highly, but whether the pigeon has any real merits is another question. Besides, the likes of us, as you know, are constantly leaping without any transition from despondency and self-abasement to inordinate pride.

  Quite true, as far as despondency and self-abasement go, for Tolstoy.

  As for Strakhov’s correct assessment of Anna Karenina, oh, please! Strakhov was no pigeon-fancier. Tolstoy was teasing, a little, and trying to restrain his own pride, but he also just wanted to undercut Strakhov, his friend, supporter, and admirer, and keep him in his place. I’m offended for poor earnest Strakhov:

  I say this because your opinion about my novel is true, but it isn’t everything—i.e., everything is true, but what you said doesn’t express everything I wanted to say.

  Our most esteemed Lev Nikolaevich, did Strakhov ever claim that he had?

  For example, you speak about two sorts of people. I always feel this—I know—but I didn’t intend it so. But when you say it, I know that it’s one of the truths that can be said. But if I were to try to say in words everything that I intended to express in my novel, I would have to write the same novel I wrote from the beginning. And if short-sighted critics think that I only wanted to describe the things that I like, what Oblonsky has for dinner or what Karenina’s shoulders are like, they are mistaken. In everything, or nearly everything I have written, I have been guided by the need to gather together ideas which for the purpose of self-expression were interconnected; but every idea expressed separately in words loses its meaning and is terribly impoverished when taken by itself out of the connection in which it occurs. The connection itself is made up, I think, not by the idea, but by something else, and it is impossible to express the basis of this connection directly in words. It can only be expressed indirectly—by words describing characters, actions and situation.

  You know all this better than I do, but it has been occupying my attention recently. For me, one of the most manifest proofs of this was Vronsky’s suicide which you liked. This had never been so clear to me before. The chapter about how Vronsky accepted his role after meeting the husband had been written by me a long time ago. I began to correct it
, and quite unexpectedly for me, but unmistakably, Vronsky went and shot himself. And now it turns out that this was organically necessary for what comes afterward.

  This, about Vronsky’s attempted suicide, is one of the only times Tolstoy discussed an artistic moment of decision. Tolstoy said all sorts of general things in retrospect, but the Vronsky incident is one that we would not have known if he hadn’t told us:

  That’s why such a nice clever man as Grigoryev interests me very little. It’s true that if there were no criticism at all, then Grigoryev and you who understand art would be redundant. But now indeed when 9/10 of everything printed is criticism, people are needed for the criticism of art who can show the pointlessness of looking for ideas in a work of art and can steadfastly guide readers through that endless labyrinth of connections which is the essence of art, and toward those laws that serve as the basis of these connections.

  And if critics already understand and can express in a newspaper article what I wanted to say, I congratulate them and can boldly assure them qu’ils savent plus long que moi [that they know further than I].