Creating Anna Karenina

by Bob Blaisdell

  I didn’t sleep at night and I’m angry and my head is weary and so this letter is confused, but I hope you understand me and forgive me.VIII

  Tolstoy wrote Sofia from Moscow: “I was completely angry and poured it out to Lyubimov [Katkov’s editor in chief at the Russian Herald], who I met in the carriage coming to Moscow. But I didn’t get too angry. I remembered: ‘The spirit of patience and love.’ […] If I was angry, now it’s gone.”IX

  He said that on the advice of Strakhov’s May 26 letter he would publish Part 8 separately, “without censors.” It did after all go to a censor because it didn’t reach 160 pages, the minimum for a book to get around a publishing law.X In the separate edition of Part 8 of Anna Karenina there are 127 pages.XI

  Tolstoy, back home, wrote Strakhov to tell him never mind about getting the corrections in Petersburg, to just come to Yasnaya Polyana as soon as possible, which Strakhov did, on June 10.XII On that same date, Tolstoy published his angry letter, “To the Editor of New Times,” about Katkov’s rejection of Part 8 of Anna Karenina:

  Dear Sir,

  In the May issue of the Russian Herald, on page 472, there is a notice in the form of a completely inconspicuous footnote about the non-appearance in that issue of the last chapters of the novel Anna Karenina. This notice is so striking in its dutiful attitude toward the subscribers of the Russian Herald, its consideration toward the author of the novel and its masterly exposition, that I consider it would not be out of place to draw the attention of the public to it.

  “In the previous issue, the words ‘to be concluded’ were inserted at the foot of the novel Anna Karenina. But with the death of the heroine the novel proper finished. According to the author’s plan a short epilogue of a couple of printer’s sheets were to follow, from which the readers would learn that Vronsky, in grief and bewilderment after Anna’s death, left for Serbia as a volunteer, and that all the others were alive and well, but that Levin remained in the country and was angry with the Slavonic committees and volunteers. The author will perhaps develop these chapters for a special edition of his novel.”

  The dutiful attitude towards subscribers was expressed by the fact that, having refused to publish the ending of the novel, the editor, in his concern to satisfy the curiosity of his readers, told them the content of the unpublished part, and tried to assure them that the novel proper was finished and that there was nothing important to follow.

  The consideration towards the author was expressed by the fact that the editor not only did not allow the author to express harmful ideas, but indicated where his novel ought to end, and, without publishing the ending he wrote, artificially extracted and revealed to him and others the essence of that ending.

  The masterly exposition of the last, unpublished part of Anna Karenina makes one regret the fact that for three years the editor of the Russian Herald gave up so much space in his journal to this novel. With the same gracefulness and laconicism he could have recounted the whole novel in no more than ten lines.

  But there is an error in this notice. It omits the fact that the last part of the novel was already set up and ready for printing in the May issue, but was not printed only because the author did not agree to cut out certain passages from it as the editor insisted, while the editor for his part did not agree to print it without their omission, although the author suggested that the editor might make any reservations he found necessary.

  These last chapters of Anna Karenina are now being published separately.

  I have the honour to be your obedient servant.

  Count Lev TolstoyXIII

  What I didn’t appreciate until I typed up his letter is that Tolstoy suggested that Katkov simply publish his disagreement with Tolstoy’s Epilogue. That would have been the perfect compromise: point (the Epilogue), counterpoint (Katkov’s nationalistic nonsense).

  Sofia, however, would contend that “while Katkov did have the right not to publish in his magazine a work that he did not agree with, he did not have the right, after reading it, to steal the author’s composition and present his own version to the magazine’s subscribers. The ending of Anna Karenina had to be published and sold as a separate booklet. But Lev Nikolaevich’s views did not ring true with every man. The public had a strong consensus as to the Serbo-Turkish war and the Russian volunteers’ {participation in it}, and Lev Nikolaevich’s denial of the whole scenario irritated the general public.”XIV

  At first I thought Sofia’s was a fair representation of the dispute, but I was wrong. She seems to have been wanting to lay her husband out for criticism from two angles: one, he had been exposing his usual overconfidence in his own opinion; and two, as he had a blockbuster novel going, why alienate half the audience by criticizing the war?

  But back to June 10 and Strakhov’s arrival.

  We can wish that Strakhov had kept a record of the conversations that he and his friend had over the next month. But Strakhov, as much as he loved and revered Tolstoy, was a discreet man and did not write about personal matters or his and Tolstoy’s private conversations. He was more like Levin’s half-brother Sergei in his dispassionate professional attitude. He repeatedly proved a devoted friend, and though he appreciated as well as anyone ever has the novel that he helped not only encourage but to bring into the world, he didn’t like attracting attention to himself. Chekhov later worried that the world was going to miss out on Tolstoy’s everyday characteristics and conversations because he and his fellow Russians were too lazy or thoughtless to do what the English did concerning their great men, but by the late 1890s the Tolstoy house would be awash with quoters and noters.XV

  Fortunately for the sake of the literary record, in an 1880 “memo,” Strakhov went as far as briefly describing his and Tolstoy’s work at this time on the complete Anna Karenina manuscript:

  This volume is the copy of Anna Karenina from which the separate edition of 1878 was printed. It consists of sheets torn from Russkij vestnik [the Russian Herald] and includes corrections and changes in the author’s own hand. But since my own hand is discernible in this too, I feel obliged to explain.

  In the summer of 1877 (June and July) I was visiting Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and suggested a review of Anna Karenina, with a view to preparing it for a separate edition. I set about a preliminary reading to correct punctuation and obvious errors, and to point out to Lev Nikolaevich places which for one reason or another seemed to be in need of improvement, mainly—almost exclusively, in fact—involving lack of clarity and incorrect use of language. Thus it came about that I did my reading and corrections first, and then Lev Nikolaevich did the same. It went on this way until halfway through the novel, but then Lev Nikolaevich got more and more involved in the work, overtook me, and I ended up doing my corrections after his. I would always take a look at his corrections first to make sure I had understood and interpreted [the text] in the right way, since afterward I would have to do the proofreading.

  Each morning, after a full discussion over coffee (which was served at noon on the terrace), we would part and sit down to work on the tasks at hand. I would work in the study, downstairs. It was agreed that an hour or a half-hour before dinner (5:00 o’clock) we should set out for a walk to refresh ourselves and work up an appetite. As pleasant as the work was for me, I, with my customary accuracy, rarely missed the appointed time and, after getting ready myself for the outing, I would go to summon Lev Nikolaevich. He almost always took his time and sometimes it was difficult to tear him away from his work. In such cases signs of stress were all too evident. I would notice a rush of blood to the head, Lev Nikolaevich would be distracted and eat very little for dinner.

  That was our daily routine for more than a month. The toilsome work bore its fruit. As much as I loved the novel in its original form, I was fairly quickly persuaded that Lev Nikolaevich’s corrections were always done with amazing mastery, that they illuminated and deepened characteristics which had seemed clear enough before, and invariably blended in with the tone
and spirit of the whole work. In respect to my corrections, almost all concerning language, I noticed another peculiarity which, while it did not surprise me, was quite conspicuous. Lev Nikolaevich was firm in his insistence on even his least significant turn of expression and would not agree to even the most innocent changes. From his explanations I was persuaded that he had a particular fondness for his language and that in spite of any apparent brusqueness or unevenness of flow, he carefully considered each of his words, each turn of phrase, in the same way as the most sensitive poet.

  Indeed, I always marvelled at how much he thought, how much his mind worked, it struck me as something new each time we met, and it is only by such an amplitude of soul and mind that the power of his works can be explained.

  St. Petersburg, April 18, 1880XVI

  I’m inclined to take Strakhov’s word for Tolstoy’s “amazing mastery” in revising. When I review the list of revisions made by restoration editors of the Jubilee Edition, who decided that they should delete any inserted words made by Strakhov’s pencil or Sofia’s pen, I’m in an area where my Russian isn’t good enough to judge the superiority of the corrections and clarifications in grammar and phrasing. In A Karenina Companion, the most significant stylistic changes that Professor C.J.G. Turner could find result only in moments of slightly higher definition or slightly different focus. For example, in Part 6, Chapter 32, the version Strakhov and Tolstoy completed reads:

  “… that unavoidable business could crop up. Now, for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow about the house.… Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable?”XVII

  The restoration editors, V. A. Zhdanov and E. E. Zaidenshnur, replaced Strakhov’s editings and, despite the likelihood that Strakhov was following Tolstoy’s directions and despite that Tolstoy approved of the change, preserved this instead:

  “… that things could crop up, something unavoidable. Now, for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow about the house.… Oh, Anna, why do you get so irritated?”

  One more example—and I remind myself that these two are about the biggest Turner could find:

  but there was no culprit. She suffered,

  Restored:

  but there was no culprit. Even if there were no culprit, was it not possible simply to help her, to rescue her, but this too was not possible, was not necessary. She suffered,XVIII

  That “restored” version is not better, is it?

  All the same, in the little refinements, it can be a pleasure to see Tolstoy’s care and fussing. And it’s useful for us to know that the language that he left us is exactly the language that he wanted. Professor Turner’s point is that Tolstoy reviewed and accepted the tiny revisions and alterations made by Strakhov and Sofia only when they conformed to his own language, so efforts by the Soviet editors to purge the novel of Strakhov’s and Sofia’s emendations seem to have been mistaken. As Strakhov explained: “Lev Nikolaevich was firm in his insistence on even his least significant turn of expression and would not agree to even the most innocent changes.”XIX And while Strakhov was impressed by the changes Tolstoy made from the Russian Herald serialized edition into the “final form,” they seem to me only a last scrubbing before presentation, except possibly in his intensifying of the final moments of Anna’s life.XX

  * * *

  The publication of Part 8 as a booklet was dated Moscow, June 25, 1877. On page 3 was the following plainspoken note: “The last part of Anna Karenina comes out in a separate edition and not in the Russian Herald because the editors of that journal did not want to publish this part without deletions to which the author did not agree.”XXI

  Ever since May 2, 1877, when excited readers read the end of Part 7, there had been the question: What could possibly follow Anna’s death?

  If it’s 1877, we would have to buy this continuation of the novel from our bookseller. It’s a little longer than the journal installments, but we are not going anywhere until we finish it.

  As we begin Chapter 1, Tolstoy places us in the consciousness of… Sergei Ivanovich? Readers, no matter how attentive, have to pause and remind themselves who “Sergei Ivanovich” is (no mention even of Sergei’s last name to give us a clue). That’s how third-string Levin’s half-brother is. His drama? The most important thing that has happened to him recently is the loud silence that greeted his scholarly book that took him six years to write. This never happened to Tolstoy. When he wrote, readers were sensibly excited to see what he had come up with. Anna Karenina had cost him four years, but by the time Tolstoy wrote about Sergei’s disappointment, he knew that his novel was, and would be for some time, a sensation. Poor Sergei! His book vanishes as soon as it appears. Just as it usually happens for the rest of us.

  What was Tolstoy thinking in starting the last part of his famous novel with a peripheral character who is known mostly for his intellectual and emotional conventionality and coolness? Or perhaps that summation explains it?

  Unlike Trollope, who is famous for addressing us, his readers, on among other topics the process of writing the very novel that he knows we are holding in our hands, Tolstoy never explains why he chooses to describe one scene or character at any given moment over another.

  Almost everybody (due only partly to Katkov’s dismissive summary in the journal) did think that Anna’s death was the end of the novel. Tolstoy restarting it with Levin’s half-brother gives us the feeling that it could have restarted with anybody; everybody’s life has gone on, even as Anna’s has been extinguished. As Sergei advocates for Russian military involvement in Serbia, we return to her story, as if by accident.

  In Chapter 2, Sergei and an unnamed princess are talking at a Moscow train station when Stiva comes along. Stiva is his usual social self—but we know, that is, remember, that though he is caught up in the public enthusiasm for the war, he is still conscious of his dear sister. He is distracted:

  But the fact that Sergey Ivanovitch and the princess seemed anxious to get rid of him did not in the least disconcert Stepan Arkadyevitch. Smiling, he stared at the feather in the princess’s hat, and then about him as though he were going to pick something up.XXII XXIII

  The princess mentions to Stiva that Vronsky is leaving on this train. Now watch this: he is affected for a moment but then forgets his suffering over Anna. I do not and never did—I think—believe it:

  For an instant Stepan Arkadyevitch’s face looked sad, but a minute later, when, stroking his mustaches and swinging as he walked, he went into the hall where Vronsky was, he had completely forgotten his own despairing sobs over his sister’s corpse, and he saw in Vronsky only a hero and an old friend.XXIV

  If I had been in Strakhov’s shoes, I would have squawked: No! That’s not true, my most esteemed Lev Nikolaevich! Stiva has not forgotten! You know that Anna Pirogova’s mangled body that you saw in the local station has been haunting you ever since January 1872! Stiva could not have forgotten his dear sister’s fate.

  Anna’s autopsy is sharply recalled in Stiva’s imagination, but then—by Tolstoy’s pen—immediately purged. I refuse to believe it, but Stiva, the golden boy of the first half of the novel, our always favorite company, is so out of favor with his creator by now that Tolstoy won’t even allow him a normal bout of grief. Good grief!

  In Chapter 3 Tolstoy exposes the thoughtlessness and hypocrisy of Sergei’s and his friend Katavasov’s support for the war (again, there’s no doubt where Tolstoy’s sympathies lie), and then in Chapter 4, still at the station, Sergei goes and talks to Vronsky’s mother. Tolstoy has pulled us a couple of degrees of separation away from Anna… to talk about her.

  This was not just an artistic decision; I think Tolstoy needed to pull away, to get away from the middle of the rushing stream and find eddies. Sergei and Madame Vronsky are eddies. Madame Vronsky lets her resentment out, which is understandable, if you like, in that she’s a horribly mean old woman:

  “[…] You know, of course, that he had shot himself once already on her account,” she said, and the old lady’s eyelashes twitc
hed at the recollection. “Yes, hers was the fitting end for such a woman. Even the death she chose was low and vulgar.”XXV

  Any reader who condemns Anna’s morality should have to explain why Tolstoy puts that argument into the mouth of the novel’s vilest woman. Nevertheless, Madame Vronsky’s recounting of getting the news is chilling and sets me atremble:

  “[…] my Mary told me a lady had thrown herself under the train. Something seemed to strike me at once. I knew it was she. […]”XXVI

  And Madame Vronsky goes on! How damaged Vronsky was! She is understandable in her hatred if she would just focus on her son, but her contempt of Anna reminds us again that Madame V is a nasty piece of work:

  “Oh, why talk of it!” said the countess with a wave of her hand. “It was an awful time! No, say what you will, she was a bad woman. Why, what is the meaning of such desperate passions? It was all to show herself something out of the way. Well, and that she did do. She brought herself to ruin and two good men—her husband and my unhappy son.”XXVII

  On and on. She rues her destroyed son by condemning Anna:

  “[…] No, say what you will, her very death was the death of a vile woman, of no religious feeling. God forgive me, but I can’t help hating the memory of her, when I look at my son’s misery!”XXVIII

  That religious woman then thanks God for having sent them the Serbian war to rouse her son a little.