Here, too, in part one the dawning of Anna's tragic romance is fore-glimpsed; and in thematic introduction and contrast to her case, three different examples of adultery or cohabitation are given by Tolstoy: (1) Dolly, a faded woman of thirty-three with many children, happens to find an amorous billet addressed by her husband, Steve Oblonski, to a young French woman who some time ago had been the governess of their children; (2) Lyovin's brother Nikolay, a pitiful figure, lives with a kind-hearted albeit uncultured woman whom, in an ecstasy of social reform common to his time, he took from a low-class brothel of which she had been a passive inmate; (3) in the last chapter of part one Tolstoy clinches it with the Petritski-Baroness Shilton case of cheerful adultery in which no deceit and no family ties are involved.
These three illustrations of irregular amours, Oblonski's, Nikolay Lyovin's, and Petritski's, are traced in the margin of Anna's own ethical and emotional troubles. It will be marked that Anna's troubles start the minute she meets Vronski. Indeed, Tolstoy arranges matters in such a manner that the events in part one (which occur about a year before Anna actually becomes Vronski's mistress) foreshadow Anna's tragic destiny. With an artistic force and subtlety unknown to Russian letters before his day, Tolstoy introduces the theme of violent death simultaneously with that of violent passion in Vronski's and Anna's life: the fatal accident to a railway employee, coincident with their first meeting, becomes a grim and mysterious link between them through Vronski's quietly helping the dead man's family merely because Anna happens to think of it. Married ladies of fashion should not accept presents from strange gentlemen, but here is Vronski making Anna the gift, as it were, of that railway guard's death. And it will also be marked that this act of gallantry, this flash of connivance (with a chance death for chance subject), is something that Anna regards as shameful in retrospection, as if it were a first stage in her unfaithfulness to her husband, an event not to be mentioned either to Karenin or to the young girl Kitty who is in love with Vronski. And more tragically still, Anna feels all at once, as she and her brother are leaving the station, that the accident (coincident with her meeting Vronski and her coming to arrange the affairs of her adulterous brother) is an omen of evil. She is strangely upset. One passerby says to another that such an instantaneous death is also the easiest one: this Anna happens to overhear; this sinks into her mind ; this impression will breed.
Not only is unfaithful Oblonski's state of mind in the beginning of the book a grotesque parody of his sister's destiny, but another striking theme is foreglimpsed in the events of his morning—the theme of significant visions in sleep. In regard to Steve's fickle and carefree mind the dream he dreams has exactly the same value of characterization as has, in regard to Anna's deep and rich and tragic personality, a certain fateful nightmare she will be made to see later.
TOLSTOY'S TI MING
The chronology of Anna Karenin is based on a sense of artistic timing unique in the annals of literature. Upon perusing part one of the book (thirty-four small chapters making in all 135 pages), the reader is left with the impression that a number of mornings, afternoons, and evenings, at least a week in the lives of several people, have been described in vigorous detail.
We shall presently look at the actual time data, but before discussing them, it may be advisable to get the question of meals out of the way.
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This, then, was their sequence in the course of a well-to-do Muscovite's or Petersburgian's day in the seventies of the last century. Breakfast, around 9 a.m., consisted of tea or coffee, with bread and butter: the former might be—as it was at Oblonski's table—some kind of fancy roll (e.g., kalacb, a flour-powdered, crusty outside and soft inside, glorified doughnut, served hot in a napkin). A light lunch between 2 and 3 p.m. would be followed by a large dinner around 5:30 p.m. with Russian liquor and French wines. Evening tea with cakes, jams, and various tasty Russian tidbits would be served between 9
and 10 p.m., after which the family would retire; but its more frivolous members might crown the day with supper in town at 11 p.m. or later.
The action of the novel starts at 8 a.m., Friday, February the 11th (old calendar), 1872. This date is not mentioned anywhere in the text but it is easily arrived at by the following computation:
1. The political events on the eve of the Turkish War, as
alluded to in the last part of the novel, set its end at July
1876. Vronski becomes Anna's lover in December 1872. The
steeplechase episode occurs in August 1873. Vronski and
Anna spend the summer and winter of 1874 in Italy, and
the summer of 1875 on Vronski's estate; then, in
November, they go to Moscow, where Anna commits
suicide on a Sunday evening in May 1876.
2. We are told in chapter 6 of part one that Lyovin had
spent the two first months of the winter (i.e., from mid-
October to the second week of December 1871) in Moscow,
then had retired to his country estate for two months, and
now, i.e., in February, is back in Moscow. About three
months later, a late spring is mentioned as breaking into
exuberant life (chapter 12, part two).
3. Oblonski reads in his morning paper about Count Beust,
Austrian Ambassador to London, traveling through
Wiesbaden on his way back to England. (See note 18
below.) This would be just before the thanksgiving service
for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, which took place
The cover of Nabokov's folder of notes for his projected
Tuesday, February 15/27, 1872; and the only possible
textbook edition of Anna Karenin.
Friday is Friday 11/23 of February, 1872.
Of the thirty-four small chapters, of which part one consists, the first five are devoted to an unbroken account of Oblonski's doings. He awakes at 8 a.m., breakfasts between 9 and 9:30, and around 11 a.m. arrives at his office. Shortly before 2 p.m.
Lyovin unexpectedly turns up there. Beginning with chapter 6 and to the end of chapter 9, Oblonski is set aside and Lyovin is taken up. Tolstoy's device of going back chronologically to handle the Lyovin theme here comes into play for the first time in the book. We go back four months in a brief recapitulation, and then (chapters 7-9) follow Lyovin from the moment of his arrival in Moscow Friday morning through his talk with his half-brother at whose house he is staying, to his (recapitulated) visit to Oblonski's office, and thence to the skating rink, at 4 p.m., where he skates with Kitty. Oblonski reappears at the end of chapter 9: he comes around 5 to fetch Lyovin for dinner; their meal at the Hotel d'Angleterre occupies chapters 10 and 11. Then Oblonski is dismissed again. We know Lyovin has gone to change into evening clothes and is heading for the soirée at the Shcherbatskis, and there we go to wait for him (chapter 12). He appears there (chapter 13), at 7:30 p.m., and in the next chapter Lyovin's meeting with Vronski is described. We have now been with Lyovin and Kitty for a dozen pages (chapters 12-14); Lyovin leaves around 9 p.m. Vronski stays on for another hour or so. The Shcherbatskis before retiring discuss the situation (chapter 15), and the rest of Vronski's evening, till, say, midnight, is described in chapter 16. The reader will note at this point that Lyovin's evening, after he leaves the Shcherbatskis, is to be described later. In the meantime this first day of the novel, Friday, February 11, after a series of sixteen chapters, has been 121
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brought to a close for Vronski, who is sound asleep after supper in his hotel room, and for Oblonski, who is winding up his dramatic and cheerful day at a night restaurant.
The next day, Saturday, February 12, starts at 11 a.m. with Vronski and Oblonski arriving separately at the railway station to meet the Petersburg express bringing Vronski's mother and Oblonski's sister (chapters 17-18). After dropping Anna at his house, Oblonski
goes to his office around noon, and we follow Anna through her first day in Moscow, till 9:30 p.m.
These chapters (17-18), dealing with Saturday events, occupy a score of pages.
Chapters 22-23 (about ten pages) are devoted to the ball which takes place three or four days later, say, Wednesday, February 16, 1872.
In the next chapter (24) Tolstoy uses a device which was adumbrated in chapters 6-8 and which will figure prominently throughout the book, namely that of going back in time where Lyovin's doings are concerned. We go back to Friday night, February 11, to follow Lyovin from the Shcherbatskis to his brother's where he arrives at 9:30 and stays for supper with him (chapters 24-25). Next morning, from another station (the Nizhegorodski) than the one (Peterburgski) at which that same Saturday Anna arrives, Lyovin travels back to his estate in Central Russia, presumably near Tula, some three hundred miles south of Moscow, and his evening there is depicted in chapters 26-27.
Then we leap forward to Thursday, February 17, 1872, in order to follow Anna, who on the next day after the ball leaves for Petersburg where she arrives after a night journey (chapters 29-31), around 11 a.m., Friday, the 18th of February. (This Friday is fully described in chapters 31-33), and here precise timing is deliberately used by Tolstoy to characterize, with ironic overtones, Karenin's scrupulously ordered existence that will be shattered before long. Immediately after meeting Anna at the station, he drives away to preside at a Committee, comes home at 4 p.m., they have guests to dinner at 5, he drives off around 7 p.m. to attend a Cabinet meeting, returns at 9:30 p.m., has evening tea with his wife, then retires to his study, and punctually at midnight proceeds to the conjugal bedroom. The last chapter (34) takes care of Vronski's homecoming that same Friday.
It will be seen from this brief account of the time pattern in part one that Tolstoy uses time as an artist's tool in various ways and for different purposes. The regular course of Oblonski's time through the first five chapters is instrumental in stressing the easy-going routine of his week day, from eight in the morning to dinner time around half-past five in the evening, a flowing course of animal existence which his wife's misfortune cannot mar. With this routine part one begins and is symmetrically closed by the more stately and rigid order of another day, the day of Karenin, Oblonski's brother-in-law. No apprehension of Anna's complete inner change affects the timetable of her husband as through a series of committee meetings and other administrative chores he quietly and steadily makes his way toward bedtime and its lawful joys. Lyovin's "time" erratically interrupts the smooth history of Oblonski's day, and the quality of Lyovin's highstrung and moody nature is reflected in the curious jerks given here to the threads of the chronological web Tolstoy is weaving. Finally we note the striking harmony in which two special scenes in part one fall: the night of the ball with Kitty's dreamlike, exaggerated awareness of Anna's enchantments; and the night of the train journey to Petersburg with its strange fancies passing through the chiarascuro of Anna's mind. These two scenes form as it were the two inner pillars of the edifice of which Oblonski's "time" and Karenin's "time" are the wings.
S T R U C T U RE
What is the key to an intelligent appreciation of the structure of Tolstoy's huge Anna Karenina The key to its structure is consideration in terms of time. Tolstoy's purpose, and Tolstoy's achievement, is the synchronization of seven major lives, and it is this synchronization that we have to follow in order to rationalize the delight that his magic produces in us.
The first twenty-one chapters have for their main subject the Oblonski disaster. It helps to introduce two budding subjects: (1) the Kitty-Lyovin-Vronski triangle, and (2) the beginning of the Vronski-Anna theme. Mark that Anna, who (with the grace and wisdom of a bright-eyed goddess Athena) brings on the reconciliation between her brother and his wife, simultaneously and demoniacally breaks up the Kitty-Vronski combination by captivating Vronski. The Oblonski adultery 122
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and the Shcherbatskis' heartbreak prepare the Vronski-Anna theme which will not be so naturally resolved as are the Oblonski-Dolly trouble and Kitty's bitterness. Dolly pardons her husband for the sake of their children and because she loves him; Kitty two years later marries Lyovin, and it proves to be a perfect match, a marriage after Tolstoy's heart; but Anna, the dark beauty of the book, will see the destruction of her family life, and shall die.
Throughout the first part of the book (thirty-four chapters), seven lives are abreast in time : Oblonski, Dolly, Kitty, Lyovin, Vronski, Anna, and Karenin. In the case of two pairs (the Oblonskis and the Karenins) the pairing has been impaired at the start: it is then patched up in the Oblonski pair, but it is just beginning to break up in the Karenin pair. A complete break-up has taken place in the two possible pairs, in the vestigial Vronski-Kitty pair and in the likewise vestigial Lyovin-Kittypair. In consequence, Kitty is mateless, Lyovin is mateless, and Vronski (tentatively paired off with Anna) threatens to break up the Karenin pair. So let us mark the following important points in this first part: there is a reshuffling.of seven relationships; there are seven lives to take care of (between them the little chapters shuttle); and these seven lives are abreast in time, the time being the beginning of February 1872.
Part two, which consists of thirty-five chapters, starts for everybody in mid-March of the same year, 1872; but then we witness a curious phenomenon: the Vronski-Karenin-Anna triangle lives faster than the still mateless Lyovin, or the still mateless Kitty. This is a very fascinating point in the structure of the novel —the mated existing faster than the mateless. If we follow first the Kitty line we find that mateless Kitty, who is wilting away in Moscow, is examined by a famous doctor around March 15; despite her own woes she helps to nurse back to health Dolly's six children (the baby is two months old) who are down with scarlet fever; and then Kitty will be taken by her parents to Soden, a German resort, in the first week of April 1872. These matters are taken care of in the first three chapters of this part two. Only in chapter 30 do we actually follow the Shcherbatskis to Soden, where time and Tolstoy completely cure Kitty. Five chapters are devoted to this cure and then Kitty returns to Russia, to the Oblonski-Shcherbatski country place a few miles from Lyovin's place, by the end of June 1872, and this is the end of part two as far as Kitty is concerned.
In this same part two Lyovin's life in the Russian countryside is correctly synchronized with Kitty's existence in Germany.
We read of his activities on his country estate in a set of six chapters, 12 to 17. He is sandwiched between two sets of chapters dealing with the lives of Vronski and the Karenins in St. Petersburg; and the very important point to be marked is that the Vronski-Karenin team lives faster than Kitty or Lyovin by more than a year. In the first set of chapters of this part two, from chapters 5 to 11, the husband broods and Vronski perseveres, and by chapter 11, after almost a year of pursuit, Vronski becomes technically Anna's lover. This is October 1872. But in Lyovin's life and in Kitty's life, the time is only spring 1872. They lag behind by several months. Another leap forward is taken by the Vronski-Karenin time-team (a good Nabokovian term — time-team; use it with acknowledgments) in a set of twelve chapters, 18 to 29, in which the famous episode of the steeplechase, followed by Anna's confession to her husband, takes place in August 1873 (with three years to go to the end of the whole novel). Then again the shuttle: we go back to the spring of 1872, to Kitty in Germany. So that at the end of part two we have a curious situation: Kitty's life, and Lyovin's life, are about fourteen or fifteen months behind that of the Vronski-Karenins. To repeat, the mated move faster than the mateless.
In part three, which consists of thirty-two chapters, we stay for a little while with Lyovin, then we visit Dolly with him on the Oblonski estate just before Kitty arrives, and finally in chapter 12, summer 1872, Lyovin has a charming glimpse of Kitty arriving in a coach from the railway station, back from Germany. The next set of chapters takes us to Petersburg to Vronski and to the Karenins just after the
races (this is the summer 1873), and then we move back in time to September 1872, to Lyovin's estate, which he leaves in October 1872 for a somewhat vague journey in Germany, France, and England.
I wish now to stress the following point. Tolstoy is in difficulties. His lovers and betrayed husband live fast—they have left single Kitty and single Lyovin far behind in time: it is mid-winter 1873 in Petersburg during the first sixteen chapters of part four. But nowhere does Tolstoy give us the exact length of Lyovin's stay abroad, and the difference of more than a year between the - Lyovin-Kitty time and the Vronski-Anna time hangs only upon one chronological remark in chapter 11, part two, concerning Anna's becoming Vronski's mistress: for about a year Vronski had been courting her before she fell—and this is the gap of time by which Lyovin-Kitty lag. But the reader does not keep a keen eye on the timetable, even good readers seldom do so and so we are misled into thinking and feeling that the Vrsonski-Anna episodes are perfectly 123
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