No. 18 They (Grisha and Tanya) were in the act of propelling something, and then something fell. . . . All is confusion, thought Oblonski.
This little accident to a simulated train against a background of confusion in the adulterer's home will be marked by the good reader as a subtle premonition, devised by Tolstoy's farsighted art, of a considerably more tragic catastrophe in part seven of the book. And what is especially curious is that Anna's little boy Seryozha, later in the book, plays at school at an invented game where the boys represent a moving train; and when his house-tutor finds him despondent, the despondency is due not to his having hurt himself in that game but to his resenting the family situation (p. 11).
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No. 19 She is up . . . that means she's not slept again all night.
Dolly usually rose later and would never have been up as early as that (it is now around 9:30 a.m.) had she slept normally through the night (p.12).
No. 20 Tanchurochka
A further diminution fanciful and endearing, of the common diminutive "Tanya" or "Tanechka." Oblonski crosses it with one of the dochurochka, tender diminutives of dochka, the Russian word for "daughter" (p.12).
No. 21 Petitioner
Oblonski, as any high official, was in a position to hasten the proceedings of a case or to cut through the red tape, or sometimes even to influence a dubious issue. The petitioner's visit may be compared to seeing one's Congressman in quest of a special favor. Naturally, there were more plain people among petitioners than high-born and influential ones, since Oblonski's personal friend or social equal could ask him for a favor at a dinner or through a common friend (p. 12).
No. 22 The clockman
There was, in the homes of Russian gentlemen, a custom of having a clockmaker (who happens to be a German here) come once a week, generally on Fridays, to check and wind the desk clocks, wall clocks, and grandfather clocks in the house. This paragraph defines the day of the week on which the story begins. For a novel in which time plays such an important part, a clockman is just the right person to start it on its way (p. 17).
No. 23 Ten rubles
In the early seventies of the last century, one ruble was about three-quarters of a dollar, but the purchasing power of a dollar (one ruble thirty) was in some respects considerably higher than today. Roughly speaking, the government salary of six thousand per year that Oblonski was paid in 1872 would correspond to four thousand five hundred dollars of 1872 (at least fifteen thousand dollars of today, untaxed).*
No. 24 And the worst of the matter . . .
The worst of the matter, Dolly reflects, is that in a month or so she is going to have a child (p. 18). This is on Tolstoy's part a nicely devised echo of Oblonski's thoughts on the same subject (p.6).
No. 25 Complete liberalism
Tolstoy's own notion of "liberalism" did not coincide with Western democratic ideals and with true liberalism as understood by progressive groups in old Russia. Oblonski's "liberalism" is definitely on the patriarchal side and we shall also note that Oblonski is not immune to conventional racial prejudice (p.20).
No. 26 Uniform
Oblonski changed from a lounge coat he wore into a government official's uniform (e.g., a green frock coat) (p.20).
No. 27 The Penza Provincial Office
*
Perhaps more than $60,000 as of 1980. Ed.
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Penza, main city in the Province of Penza, east central Russia (p.20).
No. 28 Kamer-yunker
German Kammerjunker, English (approximately) gentleman of the King's bedchamber. One of the several Russian court ranks, of an honorary nature, with such tame privileges as, for instance, the right to attend court balls. The mention of this title in connection with Grinevich merely implies that he belonged, and prided himself in belonging, to a socially more prominent set than his colleague, the plodding old bureaucrat Nikitin (p.21 ). The latter is not necessarily related to the Nikitins mentioned by Kitty on p. 86.
No. 29 Kitty's education
Though high schools for women began to come into existence as early as 1859, a noble family of the Shcherbatski type would either send their daughters to one of the "Institutes for Young Noblewomen," that dated back to the eighteenth century, or have them educated at home by governesses and visiting teachers. The programme would consist of a thorough study of French (language and literature), dancing, music, drawing. In many families, especially in St. Petersburg and Moscow, English would run a close second to French.
A young woman of Kitty's set would never go out-of-doors unattended either by a governess or by her mother or by both.
She would be seen walking only at a certain fashionable hour on a certain fashionable boulevard, and on these occasions a footman would be following a few steps behind—both for protection and prestige.
No. 30 Lyovin
Tolstoy wrote "Levin," deriving the surname of this character (a Russian nobleman and the representative of a young Tolstoy in the imaginary world of the novel) from his own first name "Lev" (Russian for "Leo"). Alphabetically the Russian "e"
is pronounced "ye" (as in "yes")> but in a number of instances it may have the sound of "yo" (as in "yonder"). Tolstoy pronounced his first name (spelled "Lev" in Russian) as "Lyov" instead of the usual "Lyev." I write "Lyovin" instead of "Levin,"
not so much to avoid any confusion (the possibility of which Tolstoy apparently did not realize) with a widespread Jewish surname of a different derivation, as to stress the emotional and personal quality of Tolstoy's choice (p.21).
Lvov
In giving to Nathalie Shcherbatski's husband, a diplomat with extremely sophisticated manners, the surname Lvov, Tolstoy used a common derivative from "Lev" as if to point out another side of his, Tolstoy's, personality in his youth, namely the desire to be absolutely comme il faut.
No. 31 Oblonski was on familiar terms
Russians (as well as the French and the Gemans) when addressing intimates use the singular "thou" (French tu, Germane) instead of "you." This isty in Russian, the "y" being pronounced somewhat as "u" in "tug." Although generally speaking the ty would go with the use of the interlocutor's first name, a combination of ty with the surname, or even with first name and patronymic, occurs not infrequently (p.22).
No. 32 An active member of the zemstvo, a new type of man in this respect
The zemstvos (created by a government act of January 1, 1864) were district and provincial assemblies with councils elected by three groups: landowners, peasants, and townspeople. Lyovin had been at first an eager supporter of these administrative boards but now objected to them on the grounds that landowner members were steering their needier friends into various lucrative positions (p.23).
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No. 33 New suit
According to fashion plates of the time, Lyovin probably wore a well-cut short coat ("sack coat") with a braid edge, and then changed into a frock coat for his evening visit to the Shcherbatskis (p.24).
No. 34 Gurin
A merchant name implying a good but not smart restaurant, adequate for a friendly lunch around the corner (p.24).
No. 35 Eight thousand acres in the Karazinski district
The allusion is clearly to a district in the Province of Tula (further disguised as "Kashin"), Central Russia, south of Moscow, where Tolstoy possessed a considerable amount of land himself. A "province" (or "government," guber-niya) consisted of districts (uezdy), and this one consisted of twelve such districts. Tolstoy invented "Karazinski," fancifully deriving it from Karazin (the name of a famous social reformer, 1773-1842), and combining Krapivenski District, where his own estate, Yasnaya Poly ana, was situated (about eight miles from Tula on the Moscow-Kursk line), with the name of a neighboring village (Karamyshevo) (p.26). Lyovin had also land in the "Selez-nyovski" district of the s
ame ("Kashin") province.
No. 36 Zoological Garden
Tolstoy has in view a skating rink on the Presnenski Pond or some part of it, just south of the Zoo, in the north-west corner of Moscow (p.26).
No. 37 Red stockings
According to my source (Mode in Costume, by R. Turner Wilcox, New York, 1948, p. 308) purple and red in petticoats and stockings were great favorites with Parisian young ladies around 1870—and fashionable Moscow, of course, followed Paris. The shoe in Kitty's case would probably be a buttoned bottine of fabric or leather (p.28).
No. 38 A very important philosophical question
Tolstoy did not bother to go very far for a suitable subject. Problems of mind versus matter are still discussed all over the world; but the actual question as defined by Tolstoy was by 1870 such an old and obvious one, and is stated here in such general terms, that it hardly seems likely a professor of philosophy would travel all the way (over 300 miles) from Kharkov to Moscow to thrash it out with another scholar (p.30).
No. 39 Keiss, Wurst, Knaust, Pripasov
Although according to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1882), there was a German educator Raimond Jacob Wurst (1800-1845) and a sixteenth-century song-maker Heinrich Knaust (or Knaustinus), I can find no Keiss, let alone Pripasov, and prefer to think that Tolstoy wittily invented wholesale that string of materialistic philosophers with—in plausible percentage—one Russian name in the wake of three German ones (P-31).
No. 40 The skating ground
Ever since the beginning of history, when the first skates were fashioned from the cannon bone of a horse, boys and young men used to play on the ice of frozen rivers and fens. The sport was extremely popular in old Russia, and by 1870 had become fashionable for both sexes. Club-skates of steel, round-toed or pointed, were strapped to the shoe and kept firm by clamps, spikes, or screws that entered the sole. This was before the time that special skating-boots, with skates permanently fixed to them, were used by good skaters (p.34).
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No. 41 The old curly birches of the garden, with all their branches weighed down by snow, seemed decked in new festive vestments
As previously noted, Tolstoy's style, while freely allowing the utilitarian ("parabolic") comparison, is singularly devoid of poetical similes or metaphors intended to appeal primarily to the artistic sense of the reader. These birch-trees (with the
"sun" and "wild rose" comparisons further) are an exception. They will presently cast a few spicules of their festive frost onto the fur of Kitty's muff (p.35).
It is curious to compare Lyovin's awareness of these emblematic trees here, at the commencement of his courtship, with certain other old birches (to be first mentioned by his brother Nikolay), that are worried by a crucial summer storm in the last part of the book.
No. 42 Behind chairs
A beginner might toddle along in his awkward skates
clinging to the back of a chair painted green, on wooden
runners, and in these same chairs ladies might be driven
around by a friend or paid attendant (p.35).
No. 43 Russian garb
This lad, a gentleman's son, wears for skating the winter
attire of the lower classes, or a stylized version of it—high
boots, short belted coat, sheepskin cap (p.36).
No. 44 We are at home on Thursdays. . . . "Which means to-
day?" said Lyovin
This is a slip on Tolstoy's part; but then, as previously
mentioned, Lyovin's time throughout the book is prone to
lag behind the time of the other characters. The Oblonskis,
and we, know it is Friday (chapter 4), and later references
to Sunday confirm this (p.40).
No. 45 The Hotel d'Angleterre or the Ermitage
Nabokov's drawing of a costume such as Kitty wore when she
The Ermitage is mentioned but not chosen, since it would
skated with Lyovin.
have been hardly seemly for a novelist to advertise one of
the best Moscow restaurants (where, according to Karl Baedeker, writing in the nineties, i.e., twenty years later, a good dinner minus wine cost two rubles twenty-five, or a couple of old-time dollars). Tolstoy mentions it, along with his invented Angleterre, merely to point out the latter's gastronomic rank. It will be noted that dinner is at the old-fashioned time between five and six (p.40).
No. 46 Sleigh
Cabs for hire as well as private vehicles other than the kareta (a closed carriage on wheels, such as Oblonski used) were more or less snug sleighs for two people. Snow permitting the use of sleighs covered the streets of Moscow and Petersburg approximately from November to April (p.40).
No. 47 Tatars
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Or, less, correctly, Tartars—a name given to nearly three million inhabitants of the former Russian Empire, chiefly Moslems and mostly of Turkic origin, remnants of the Mongol (Tatar) invasions of the thirteenth century. From the Province of Kazan, East Russia, a few thousand migrated in the nineteenth century to Petersburg and Moscow where some of them pursued the calling of waiters (p.41).
No. 48 The French girl at the buffet board
Her job would be to supervise the buffet, and sell flowers (p.41).
No. 49 Prince Golitsyn
A generalized gentleman here. The moralist in Tolstoy had such a distaste for "inventing" (although actually the artist in him invented a greater number of plausible people than any man before him except Shakespeare) that often in his drafts we find him using "real names" instead of the slightly camouflaged ones he superimposed later. Golitsyn is a well-known name, and in this case Tolstoy apparently did not bother to twist it into Goltsov or Litsyn in his final text (p.42).
No. 50 Oysters
Flensburg oysters: these came from German beds (on the North Sea coast of Schleswig Holstein, just south of Denmark), which from 1859 to 1879 were rented to a company in Flensburg on the Denmark border.
Ostend oysters: ever since 1765 seed oysters had been brought from England to Ostend in Belgium.
Both "Flensburg" and "Ostend" were small products in the seventies, and these imported oysters were highly esteemed by Russian epicures (p.42).
No. 51 Cabbage soup and groats
Shchi—z soup consisting mainly of boiled cabbage—and grechnevaya kasha— boiled buckwheat meal—were, and presumably still are, the staple food of Russian peasants, whose rustic fare Lyovin would partake of in his capacity of gentleman farmer, man of the soil, and advocate of his simple life. In my time, forty years later, to slurp shchi was as chic as to toy with any French fare (p.42).
No. 52 Chablis, Nuits
Burgundy wines, white and red respectively. The white wines known to us as Chablis are made in the Department of Yonne (eastern France) situated in the oldest viticultural district of Europe, namely the ancient province of Burgundy. Nuits (place name) St. Georges, which presumably was the waiter's suggestion, comes from vineyards north of Beaune, in the center of the Burgundy district (p.43).
No. 53 Parmesan
Cheese was eaten with bread as an hors-d'oeuvre and in between courses (p.43).
No. 54 Gallant steeds
Russia's greatest poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) translated into Russian (from a French version) Ode LIII of the so-called Anacreontea, a collection of poems attributed to Anacreon (born in the sixth century b.c. in Asia Minor, died at the age of 85), but lacking the peculiar forms of Ionic Greek in which he wrote according to authentic fragments quoted by ancient writers. Oblonski misquotes Pushkin horribly. Pushkin's version reads: Gallant steeds one recognizes By the 139
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markings branded on them; Uppish Parthians one can tell By their elevated mitres; As to me I recognize Happy lovers by their eyes . . . (p.45).
No
. 55 And with disgust the scroll of my past life I read, and shudder, and denounce it And bitterly complain. . . .
Lyovin quotes a passage from Pushkin's poignant "Recollection" (1828) (p.48).
No. 56 Recruits
In the summary of the week's news of the Pall Mall Budget for December 29, 1871, I find the following: "An Imperial decree has been issued at St. Petersburg fixing the levy of recruits of the year 1872 at the rate of six per 1000 for the whole empire including the Kingdom of Poland. This is the usual levy in order to raise the army and navy to their proper standard" etc.
This note has little direct bearing on our text but is of some interest in itself (p.48).
No. 57 Himmlisch ist's . . .
"To conquer my earthly lust would have been divine but if I have not succeeded, I experience all the same lots of pleasure."
According to a brief note in Maude's translation of the novel (1937), Oblonski quotes these lines from the libretto of the Fledermaus which, however, was first produced two years after that dinner.
The exact reference would be: Die Fledermaus, komische Opérette in drei Akten nach Meilhac und Halevy (authors of Le Réveillon, a French vaudeville, which itself was taken from a German comedy Das Gefangnis by Benedix), bearbeitet von Haffner und Gênée, Musik von Johann Strauss. First produced in Vienna on April 5, 1874 (according to Loewenberg's Annals of Opera, 1943). I have not discovered this anachronistic quotation in the score but it may be in the complete book (p.50).
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