by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
19 one of the most expensive regiments: A commanding officer received symbolic pay and was expected to outfit his regiment at his own expense.
20 Serpukhovskoy … back from Central Asia: In 1873 the Khiva khanate was united with Russia. Events in Central Asia, judging by the press of the time, aroused considerable international interest. Quick and brilliant military careers could be made in the Turkestan of the 1870s, of which Serpukhovskoy is a typical example.
21 Russian communists: Various radical groups of the 1860s, including the followers of the writer N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828–89), advocated forms of communism based on the theories of French socialists such as Charles Fourier (1772–1837) and Saint–Simon (1760–1825), prior to the emergence of Marxian communism.
22 Hélène: See note 12, Part Three.
23 justice of the peace: The legal reform of 1864 handed all local civil disputes over to the justices of the peace. Their hearings were open, contentious, oral and equitable. The nobility considered this a loss of power, and complaints about justices of the peace were common among landowners of the time.
24 serf… emancipation: The Russian serfs were emancipated by the emperor Alexander II in 1861.
25 Peter, Catherine, Alexander: The emperors Peter the Great (1672–1725) and Alexander II (1818–81) and the empress Catherine the Great (1729–96) were the most important reformers of the Russian empire. The potato, for instance, was forcibly introduced by Catherine the Great. The period ‘before the tsars’ was that of the princedoms of Novgorod, Kiev and Moscow.
26 Tosscan… Bitiug: ‘Tosscan’ appears to come from ‘Toscan’ (i.e. ‘Tuscan’), punningly distorted by Nikolai Ivanych. Percherons are a great breed of work and draft horses from La Perche in Normandy; the Bitiug, named after an affluent of the Don, is a Russian breed of strong, heavy–set cart horses.
27 Mulhouse system: In the 1850s the German economist Hermann Schulze–Delitsch (1808–83) proposed an arrangement of independent banks and cooperatives, with the idea of reconciling the interests of workers and owners. Companies organized on his principles appeared in Russia in 1865. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–64), a German socialist, was the founder of the German Universal Workers’ Union. Instead of Schulze–Delitsch cooperatives, he favoured manufacturing associations supported by the state. The ‘Mulhouse system’ refers to a society for the improvement of workers’ lives founded by a factory–owner named Dolfuss in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse. A commercial undertaking with philanthropic aims, it built houses which were sold to workers on credit.
28 Frederick: Poland was first partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia in 1772. The king of Prussia at that time was Frederick the Great (1712–86).
29 Spencer: British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), founder of the evolutionary school, believed that education does not lead to national prosperity but that prosperity is a necessary condition for the development of education. A Russian translation of an article by Spencer on education was published in 1874.
30 Mill: See note 5, Part One. Mill’s book on political economy was translated into Russian by the radical writer N. G. Chernyshevsky (see note 21, Part Three), author of the influential novel What Is to Be Done? (1863).
31 Kauffmann, Jones, Dubois, Miccelli: These are invented names, parodying the pedantic manner of referring to obscure authorities.
32 Franklin: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), American writer, inventor, patriot and statesman. As a young man, Tolstoy kept a diary in the manner of Franklin’s, in which he chronicled his own moral shortcomings and exhorted himself to improve.
33 anointed: The Orthodox sacrament of the anointing of the sick is a sacrament of healing which, like the Roman Catholic sacrament of extreme unction, has come to be associated with terminal illness.
Part Four
1 foreign prince … to Petersburg: In January–February 1874, Petersburg was host to princes from Germany, England and Denmark, invited on the occasion of the wedding of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to Maria Alexandrovna, daughter of Alexander II.
2 Athenian night: The Roman writer Aulus Gellius (second century ad) was the author of a collection of dialogues on various branches of knowledge known as Athenian (or Attic) Nights, the title of which in Russian became proverbial for gatherings marked by licentious behaviour.
3 portfolio … pushed her away: According to the law of that time, Karenin, as head of the family, had the right to read the correspondence of his wife and any other member of his household.
4 legal profession … placed: The legal profession emerged in Russia together with the institution of open courts, as a result of the judicial reforms of 1864. Lawyers became prominent public figures and their profession both profitable and fashionable.
5 in a frock coat: That is, dressed more casually, not in the formal tailcoat usually called for on such occasions.
6 ’Be not so stern …’: A jumbled quotation of the first two lines of the poem ‘From Hafiz’ by Afanasy Fet (1820–92), a friend of Tolstoy’s and one of his favourite poets.
7 russification of Poland: Portions of Poland came under Russian domination through the three partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1798. The national insurrections that broke out in 1830 and 1863 were cruelly repressed, and ‘Russian’ Poland remained under Russian domination until 1914.
8 Attic salt: Refined wit thought to be typical of Athenian conversation, as represented in the many ‘dialogues’ of classical and Hellenistic literature.
9 education… disputes …: In 18 71 the Russian minister of national education, Count D. A. Tolstoy, proposed establishing two sorts of schools, so–called ‘real’ high schools and classical gymnasiums. The distinction was intended to limit the teaching of natural science, which was seen as a source of dangerous materialistic and atheistic notions. It was hoped that classical studies would cure young people of revolutionary ideas.
10 anti–nihilistic: The term ‘nihilism’, first used philosophically in German (Nihilismus) to signify annihilation, a reduction to nothing (attributed to Buddha), or the rejection of religious beliefs and moral principles, came via the French nihilisme to Russian, where it acquired a political meaning, referring to the doctrine of the younger generation of socialists of the 18 60s, who advocated the destruction of the existing social order without specifying what should replace it. The great Russian lexicographer V. I. Dahl (1801–72), normally a model of restraint, defines ‘nihilism’ in his Interpretive Dictionary of the Living Russian Language as ‘an ugly and immoral doctrine which rejects everything that cannot be palpated’.
11 women’s education: In the 1860s women were allowed education only as teachers or midwives, but by the 1870s women’s struggle for intellectual and social independence had been clearly expressed and higher studies in many fields were opened to them. (See note 26, Part One.)
12 long hair, short…: The full saying is: ‘Long on hair, short on brains’.
13 choral principle: Pestsov here borrows a favourite notion of the Slavophiles, proponents of Russian national culture and Orthodoxy, originally expressed by the writer K. S. Aksakov (1817–60), about the peasant village commune being a sort of ‘moral chorus’ in which each voice is heard, but in harmony with all other voices.
14 … never mind, silence!: Levin quotes, consciously or unconsciously, the unmistakable words of the lovelorn and mad Mr Poprishchin in The Diary of a Madman, by Nikolai Gogol (1809–52).
15 Fomin’s … Fulde’s: Fomin’s was an actual florist’s shop in Moscow, and Fulde’s was an actual jewellery shop.
16 Froom: That is, Froom’s Railway Guide for Russia and the Continent of Europe, published in English in 1870.
17 that holy martyr…: Anna is thinking of St Mary of Egypt, a fifth–century saint much venerated in the Orthodox Church, a prostitute who converted to Christianity and withdrew to the Egyptian desert, where she spent more than forty years in solitude and repentance.
18 Yeliseev’s: The Yeliseev brothers owned famous delicatessen sho
ps in Petersburg and Moscow which have survived to this day.
Part Five
1 prepared for communion: Only practising Orthodox Christians could be married in the Orthodox Church. To be a practising Christian meant to receive communion, and the necessary preparation for communion was the confession of one’s sins.
2 the ambo: A raised platform leading from the body of the church to the doors of the sanctuary.
3 The mixing of these trades …: The sentence is a slightly altered quotation from the comedy Woe from Wit by the Russian poet, playwright and diplomat Alexander Griboedov (179 5–182.9).
4 suitor in Gogol: The suitor Ivan Kuzmich Podkolesin, in Gogol’s comedy The Wedding, jumps out the window and flees just before he is expected to propose.
5 icon for the bride: In the Orthodox wedding ceremony, the bride and groom enter the church preceded by two children carrying icons – an icon of the Saviour for the groom and of the Mother of God for the bride.
6 the iconostasis: In an Orthodox church this is an icon–bearing partition with three doors that separates the body of the church from the sanctuary.
7 the heated church: City churches are often very large and only part of them can be kept warm in winter. This wedding, since it is before the Great Lent, is taking place in the very early spring.
8 new ones?: Specially painted and decorated candles are held by the bride and groom in an Orthodox wedding. They are often kept afterwards, but, as they are costly and burn down very little during the service, they may also be given back to the church.
9 step on the rug: A small piece of fine cloth is placed in the middle of the church for the bride and groom to stand on during the actual marriage ceremony. There is a popular belief that whoever steps on it first will be the dominant partner in the marriage.
10 porch of the church: The Orthodox marriage service has two parts: the betrothal and the marriage proper (the ‘crowning’, during which attendants hold crowns over the heads of the bride and groom). The betrothal takes place in the porch of the church, the crowning inside the church itself.
11 kamilavka: A special round velvet hat worn by Orthodox priests; the Russian word is a distortion of the Greek kalimavka, meaning ‘beautiful hat’.
12 the Synod: At the death of the patriarch Adrian in 1700, Peter the Great reorganized the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church, appointing a
Holy Synod of bishops, instead of a new patriarch, to preside over Church affairs, headed by a Chief Procurator who was a layman answerable to the tsar. The Church was thus regarded not as a divine institution but as a department of the state. This ‘synodal’ period of Russian church history lasted until 1917, when an all–church council elected a new patriarch, Tikhon (now St Tikhon).
13 ‘For thou … in love’: The extracts from the Orthodox marriage service in this chapter are taken from The Service Book of the Holy Orthodox–Catholic Apostolic Church, compiled, translated and arranged by Isabel Florence Hap–good with the endorsement of the patriarch Tikhon, published since 1918 in a number of editions.
14 … would be happy: Another popular belief concerning the marriage ceremony. The crowns are customarily held above the heads of the bride and groom during the service, but it was thought that if the crown was actually put on the person’s head, it would help to make the person happy in married life.
15 ‘…reverence her husband’: Ephesians 5:33. The Slavonic version reads ‘fear’ instead of the milder ‘reverence’ of the King James version.
16 elaborate psalm: Psalm 12.8, beginning: ‘Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in his ways.’
17 see their children’s children: Tolstoy quotes snippets from prayers and petitions in the marriage service (see note 13, Part Five).
18 ‘Rejoice, O Isaiah’: At this central moment in the marriage service, the priest takes the bride and groom by the hand and leads them three times around the lectern, the attendants following them holding the crowns over their heads, while the choir sings certain verses, the best known beginning ‘Rejoice, O Isaiah’.
19 Tintoretto: Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto (1518–94), was an Italian painter of the Venetian school.
20 The Two Origins … explanation: The Slavophiles (see note 13, Part Four) often touched on the notion of the two origins – Catholic and Orthodox, rational and spiritual, Western and Eastern – of Russian culture. A. S. Khomiakov (1804–60), religious philosopher and poet, an important representative of the Slavophile movement, wrote about the Byzantine origin of Russian history. At the end of the novel, Levin will be ‘disappointed in Khomiakov’s teaching about the Church’.
21 Ivanov–Strauss–Renan: A. A. Ivanov (1806–58), an artist of the ‘Wanderers’ group, was the founder of the historical school of Russian painting; his most famous work was ‘Christ Shown to the People’ (1858). David Strauss (1808–74), German theologian and philosopher, wrote a famous ‘historical’ Life of Jesus, as did the French religious historian and lapsed Catholic Ernest Renan (1823–92).
22 new school: The artist I. N. Kramskoy (1837–87), also a ‘Wanderer’, met Tolstoy in 1873 and may have told him about his plans for a painting on the subject of the mocking of Christ. The ‘new school’ treated traditional religious subjects with the techniques of realism. Tolstoy thought they had taken a wrong turn; his preference went neither to the traditionally ‘religious’ nor to the new ‘realistic’, but to a ‘moral’ treatment of the subject (see his What Is Art?).
23 Charlotte Corday: Charlotte Corday d’Armont (1768–93) became famous for assassinating the French revolutionary politician Jean–Paul Marat (1743–93), a Montagnard, in revenge for the ‘September massacres’ of the Girondin party, which he instigated. She went to the guillotine.
24 Raphael’s: Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520), one of the greatest painters of the Florentine school, was commonly regarded in the nineteenth century as the supreme master of the art of painting. It was his ‘idealizing’ influence above all that the new historical school rejected.
25 Pre–Raphaelite Englishman: The Pre–Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters that emerged in the mid–nineteenth century, W. Holman–Hunt (1827–1910), J. E. Millais (1829–96) and D. G. Rossetti (1828–82) chief among them, revolted against the imitation of nature and favoured convention in art. They held up the Italian masters before Raphael, particularly Giotto and Botticelli, as models. The influential critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) championed their work.
26 Rachel: The Swiss–born actress Éliza Felix (1820– 58), known as Mlle Rachel, contributed greatly to the revival of French classical tragedy on the nineteenth–century stage.
27 … man–God… God–man: According to Christian dogma, God became man in the ‘God–man’ Christ. Golenishchev implies that Mikhailov, in portraying a Christ whose divinity he denies, is in fact turning man into a god. (Kirillov makes the same reversal in Dostoevsky’s Demons.)
28 Capuan: According to Livy (59 bc–ad 17) in his history of Rome, after spending the winter in Capua, near Naples, during the second Punic War, Hannibal’s army became physically and morally soft and was subsequently defeated. In journalism of the 1870s, the name ‘Capua’ was often applied to the Paris of Napoléon III, but the use of ‘Capuan’ here is peculiar to Tolstoy: in his diaries he referred to his own periods of inactivity as ‘Capua’.
29 ‘Hidden from the wise…’: A misquotation of Matthew 11:25: ‘… thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes’. (See also Luke 10:21.)
30 when in doubt…: A literal translation of the French proverb: Dans le doute abstiens–toi, which was Tolstoy’s favourite saying.