"nudge") to his acquaintances and to his own servants; barin (master) or "Your Excellency" to servants in general; "Your Excellency" also to an inferior in office if he happens to occupy a high bureaucratic position; Gospodin (Mr.) Ivanov to a wrathful superior—or to somebody who in desperation has to address him but does not know his first name and patronymic; Ivanov to his teachers at high school; Vanya to his relatives and close childhood friends; Jean to a simpering female cousin; Vanyusha or Vanyushenka to his fond mother or wife; Vanechka Ivanov, or even Johnny Ivanov, to the beau monde if he is a sportsman or a rake, or merely a good-natured, elegant nonentity. This Ivanov may belong to a noble but not very old family since surnames derived from first names imply comparatively short genealogical trees. On the other hand, if this Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov belongs to the lower classes—is a servant, a peasant, or a young merchant—he may be called Ivan by his superiors, Vanka by his comrades, and Ivan Ivanych ("Mr. Johnson") by his meek kerchiefed wife; and if he is an old retainer, he may be addressed as Ivan Ivanych in sign of deference by the family he has served for half a century; and a respectable old peasant or artisan may be addressed by the weighty "Ivanych."
In the matter of titles, Prince Oblonski or Count Vronski or Baron Shilton meant in old Russia exactly what a prince, a count, or a baron would mean in continental Europe, prince corresponding roughly to an English duke, count to earl, baron to baronet. It should be noted, however, that titles did not imply any kinship to the Tsar's family, the Romanovs (the Tsar's 128
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immediate relatives were called Grand Dukes) and that many families of the oldest nobility never had a title. Lyovin's nobility was older than Vronski's. A man of comparatively unglamorous origin but a favorite of the Court might receive the title of Count from the Tsar and it seems likely that Vronski's father had been ennobled that way.
To force upon a foreign reader the use of a dozen names, mostly unpronounceable to him, for the designation of one person is both unfair and unnecessary. In the appended list I have given full names and titles as employed by Tolstoy in the Russian text; but in my revised translation* I have ruthlessly simplified addresses and allowed a patronymic to appear only when the context absolutely demanded it. (See also Notes 6, 21, 30, 68, 73, 79, 89.)
A complete list of characters that appear, or are mentioned, in part one of Anna Karenin (note stress accents and the revised spelling of names):
The Oblônski-Shcherbâtski Group
Oblonski, Prince Stepan Arkâdievich ("son of Arkâdi"); anglicized diminutive of first name: Steve; aged 34; of ancient nobility; formerly (till 1869) served in Tver, his home town, a city north of Moscow; is now (1872) head of one of the several government bureaus in Moscow; office hours: from around 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to around 5 p.m.; may also be seen on official business at his residence; has a house in Moscow and a country estate (his wife's dowry), Ergushôvo, twenty miles from Lyovin's estate Pokrôvskoe (presumably in the Province of Tula, south of Moscow, Central Russia).
His wife, Dolly (anglicized diminutive of Dâria; the Russian diminutive is Dâsha or Dâshenka); full name: Princess Dâria Aleksandrovna ("daughter of Aleksandr") (wife of) Oblônski, born Princess Shcherbâtski; aged 33 ; has been married nine years in part one.
Their five children (in February 1872), three girls and two boys: the eldest (aged eight) Tanya (diminutive of Tatiâna); Grisha (diminutive of Grigori); Mâsha (Maria); Lili (Elizaveta); and baby Vâsya (Vasilf). A sixth child is to be born in March, and two children have died, making eight in all. In part three when they go to their country place Ergushôvo in late June 1872, the baby is three months old.
Dolly's brother, unnamed, drowned around 1860 in the Baltic; and two sisters: Natalia (French form: Nathalie), married to Arséni Lvov, a diplomat and later an official at the Palace Offices (they have two boys, one called Mfsha, diminutive of Mihaïl); and Kitty (anglicized diminutive of Ekaterina; Russian diminutive: Katya, Katenka), aged 18.
Prince Nikolây Shcherbâtski, a cousin.
Countess Maria Nordston, a young married woman, Kitty's friend.
Prince Aleksândr Shcherbâtski, a Moscow nobleman, and his wife ("the old Princess") are the parents of Dolly, Nathalie, and Kitty.
Filip Ivanych Nikftin and Mihail Stanislavich Grinévich, officials of Oblônski's bureau.
Zahar Nikftich (first name and patronymic), Oblônski's secretary.
Fomin, a shady character in a case under discussion at Oblônski's office.
*
Along with the other sections of what is called the Commentary in this volume, Nabokov intended the account of names to be part of the prefatory matter to a textbook edition of Anna Karenin that would have contained a new translation. It is particularly unfortunate that this project was never completed. Ed.
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Alabin, a society friend of Oblônski.
Prince Golitsyn, a gentleman dining with a lady at the Hotel d'Angleterre.
A Mr. Brénteln who married a Princess Shahovskôy.
Countess Bânin, a lady at whose house Oblônski attends a rehearsal of some private theatricals.
Mrs. Kalinin, a staff captain's widow, with a petition.
Mile. Roland, formerly the French governess of Oblônski's children, now his mistress. She will be replaced in part four, chapter 7, about two years later (winter 1873-1874) by a young ballerina Masha Chibisova.
Miss Hull, their English governess.
Mlle. Linon, the old French governess of Dolly, Nathalie, and Kitty.
Matryona Filimônovna ("daughter of Filimon"), no surname; diminutive: Matryosha; the old nurse of the Shcherbatski girls, now nursing the Oblônski children. Her brother, a cook.
Matvey(the English would be Matthew), Oblonski's old valet and butler.
Other servants of the Oblônski household: Mâr'ya, a housekeeper of sorts; a chef; an assistant (female) cook, who prepares the servants' meals; several anonymous maids; a footman; a coachman; a daily barber, and a weekly clockwinder.
The Bôbrishchevs, the Nikitins, the Mezhkôvs, Moscow families mentioned by Kitty in connection with gay and dull balls.
Kôrsunski, Egôrushka (diminutive of Geôrgi), an amateur conductor of dances at the balls given by his friends.
His wife, Lydie (Lidia).
Miss Elétski, Mr. Krivin, and other guests at the ball.
The Karénin Group
Karénin (rhymes with "rainin' "), Alekséy Aleksândrovich ("son of Aleksandr"), Russian nobility of unspecified ancientry, formerly (around 1863) Governor of Tver; now a statesman occupying a high rank in one of the Ministries, apparently Interior or Imperial Estates; has a house in Petersburg.
His wife, Anna Arkâdievna ("daughter of Arkâdi") Karénin, born Princess Oblônski, Steve's sister. Married eight years.
Seryôzha (diminutive of Sergey), their son, in his eighth year in 1872.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna ("daughter of Ivan"), no surname mentioned, a friend of the Karenins, fashionably interested in the union of Catholic religions (Greek and Roman) and of the Slav nations.
Prâvdin, a vaguely Masonic correspondent of hers.
Princess Elizaveta Fyôdorovna Tverskôy; anglicized diminutive: Betsy; Vronski's first cousin, married to Anna's first cousin.
Ivan Petrôvich (first name and patronymic), no surname given, a gentleman from Moscow, Anna's acquaintance, who happens to travel on the same train with her.
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An anonymous railway guard, crushed by a backing train; leaves a widow and a large family.
A number of people, passengers and officials, on trains and railway stations.
Annushka (lowly diminutive of Anna), Anna Karénin's maid.
Mariette, Seryôzha's French governess, surname not given; at end of part four is replaced by Miss Edwards.
Kondr
âti (first name), one of the Karénins' coachmen.
The Vrdnski Group
Vronski, Count Alekséy Kinlych, son of Count Kiril Ivanovich Vrônski; diminutive Alydsha; a Cavalry Captain (rotmistr) of the Guards and aide-de-camp at the Court; stationed in Petersburg; in Moscow on leave of absence; has an apartment in St.
Petersburg in the Morskâya Street (a fashionable quarter) and a country estate Vozdvizhenskoe, some fifty miles from Lyovin's estate, presumably in the Province of Tula, Central Russia.
His elder brother, Aleksândr (French: Alexandre), living in St. Petersburg, Commander of a Regiment of the Guards, father of at least two daughters (the elder is called Marie) and of a newborn boy; his wife's name is Vârya (diminutive of Varvara), née Princess Chirkov, daughter of a Decembrist. Keeps a dancing-girl.
Countess Vrônski, mother of Aleksândr and Alekséy, has an apartment or house in Moscow and a country estate nearby, reached from a station (Obirâlovka), a few minutes from Moscow on the Nizhegorodski line.
Alekséy Vrônski's servants: a German valet and an orderly; old Countess Vronski's maid and her butler Lavrénti, both traveling with her back to Moscow from Petersburg; and an old footman of the Countess who comes to meet her at the Moscow station.
Ignâtov, a Moscow pal of Vrônski.
Lieutenant "Pierre" Petritski, one of Vronski's best friends, staying in Vr6n-ski's Petersburg flat.
Baroness Shflton, a married lady, Pierre's mistress.
Captain Kamerôvski, a comrade of Petn'tski's.
Various acquaintances mentioned by Petritski: fellow officers Berkôshev and Buzulûkov; a woman, Lora; Fertingof and Miléev, her lovers; and a Grand Duchess. (Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses were Romanovs, i.e., relatives of the Tsar.)
The Lyavin Group
Lydvin, Konstantîn Dmitrich ("son of Dmitri"), scion of a noble Moscow family older than the Count Vronski's; Tolstoy's representative in the world of the book; aged 32; has an estate, Pokrôvskoe, in the "Karâzinski" District and another in the Seleznyovski District, both in Central Russia. ("Province of Kashin"—presumably the Province of Tula.) Nikolây, his elder brother, a consumptive crank.
Maria Nikolaevna, first name and patronymic, no surname given; diminutive: Mâsha; she is Nikolây's mistress, a reformed prostitute.
Nikolay's and Konstantin's sister, unnamed; living abroad.
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Their elder half brother, Sergéy Ivanovich Kôznyshev, a writer on philosophic and social questions; has a house in Moscow and an estate in the Province of Kâshin.
A professor from the University of Kharkov, South Russia.
Trûbin, a cardsharp.
Kritski, an acquaintance of Nikolay Lydvin, embittered and leftist.
Vanyushka, a boy, adopted at one time by Nikolay Lyovin, now a clerk in the office of Pokrovskoe, the Lyovins' estate.
Prokofi, Koznyshev's man servant.
Menials on Konstantin Lyovin's estate: Vasili Fyodorovich (first name and patronymic), the steward; Agâfia Mihâylovna (first name and patronymic), formerly nurse of Lyovin's sister, now his housekeeper; Filip, a gardener; Kuzmâ, a house servant; Ignât, a coachman; Semyon, a contractor; Prôhor, a peasant.
Commentary N o tes (part one)*
No. 1 All was confusion in the Oblonski's house
In the Russian text, the word dom (house, household, home) is repeated eight times in the course of six sentences. This ponderous and solemn repetition, dom, dom, dom, tolling as it does for doomed family life (one of the main themes of the book), is a deliberate device on Tolstoy's part (p.3).
No. 2 Alabin, Darmstadt, America
Oblonski with several of his friends, such as Vronski and presumably Alabin, is considering arranging a restaurant supper in honor of a famous songstress (see note 75); these pleasant plans permeate his dream and mingle with recollections of recent news in the papers: he is a great reader of political hodge-podge. I find that about this time (February 1872) the Cologne Gazette at Darmstadt (capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, part of the new German Empire in 1866) was devoting much discussion to the so-called Alabama claims (generic name applied to claims for indemnity made by the U. S. upon Great Britain because of the damage done to American shipping during the Civil War). In result Darmstadt, Alabin, and America get mixed up in Oblonski's dream (p.4).
No. 3 77 mio tesoro
"My Treasure." From Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787), it is sung by Don
Ottavio, whose attitude toward women is considerably more moral than Oblonski's (p.4).
No. 4 But while she was in the house I never took any liberties. And the worst of the matter is that she is already . . .
The first "she" refers to Mile. Roland, the second to Oblonski's wife Dolly, who is already eight months pregnant (Dolly is to be delivered of a girl at the end of the winter, that is in March) (p.6).
No. 5 Livery stable
*
Page references are to the 1935 Modern Library Edition; but the key phrases sometimes represent Nabokov's retranslations.
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Where the Oblonskis rented a carriage and a pair. Now the rent is due (p.7).
No. 6 Anna Arkadievna, Daria Aleksandrovna
In speaking to a servant, Oblonski refers to his sister and wife by their first names and patronymics. In the reference to Dolly, there would not have been much difference had he said knyaginya (the Princess) or barynya (the Mistress) instead of
"Daria Aleksandrovna" (p.7).
No. 7 Side whiskers
Fashionable in the seventies throughout Europe and America (p.7).
No. 8 You want to try
Matvey reflects that his master wishes to see if his wife will react to the news in the same way as she would have before their estrangement (p.8).
No. 9 Things will arrange themselves
The old servant uses a comfortably fatalistic folksy term: obrazuetsya, things will take care of themselves, it will be all right in the long run, this too will pass (p.8).
No. 10 He who likes coasting . . .
The nurse quotes the first part of a common Russian proverb : "He who likes coasting should like dragging his little sleigh"
(p.8).
No. 11 Flushing suddenly
Cases of flushing, blushing, reddening, crimsoning, coloring, etc. (and the opposite action of growing pale), are prodigiously frequent throughout this novel and, generally, in the literature of the time. It might be speciously argued that in the nineteenth century people blushed and blanched more readily and more noticeably than today, mankind then being as it were younger; actually, Tolstoy is only following an old literary tradition of using the act of flushing, etc., as a kind of code or banner that informs or reminds the reader of this or that character's feelings (p.9). Even so the device is a little overdone and clashes with such passages in the book where, as in Anna's case, "blushing" has the reality and value of an individual trait.
This may be compared to another formula Tolstoy makes much use of: the "slight smile," which conveys a number of shades of feeling—amused condescension, polite sympathy, sly friendliness, and so on.
No. 12 A merchant
The name of this merchant (p.9), who eventually does acquire that forest at Ergushovo (the Oblonski's estate), is Ryabinin: he is to appear in part two, chapter 16.
No. 13 Still damp
In the old system of making-ready, as employed in Russia and elsewhere by printers of newspapers, it was necessary to dampen paper before it could be satisfactorily printed. Hence a newspaper copy fresh from the press would be dampish to the touch (p.9).
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No. 14 Oblonski's newspaper
The mildly liberal newspaper Oblonski read was no doubt the Russian Gazette (Russkie Vedomosti), a Moscow daily (since 1868) (p.9).
No. 15 Ryurik
In
the year a.d. 862, Ryurik, a Northman, the chief of a Varangian (Scandinavian) tribe, crossed the Baltic from Sweden and founded the first dynasty in Russia (862-1598). This was followed, after a period of political confusion, by the reign of the Romanovs (1613-1917), a much less ancient family than the descendants of Ryurik. In Dolgorukov's work on Russian genealogy, only sixty families descending from Ryurik are listed as existing in 1855. Among these are the Obolenskis of which name "Oblonski" is an obvious and somewhat slatternly imitation, (p. 10).
No. 16 Bentham and Mill
Jeremy Bentham (1740-1832), English jurist, and James Mill (1773-1836), Scotch economist; their humane ideals appealed to Russian public opinion (p.ll).
No. 17 Beust rumored to have traveled to Wiesbaden
Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust (1809-1886), Austrian statesman. Austria was at the time a regular wasp's nest of political intrigue, and much speculation was aroused in the Russian press when on November 10 new style, 1871, Beust was suddenly relieved of his function as Imperial Chancellor and appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Just before Christmas, 1871, immediately after presenting his credentials, he left England to spend two months with his family in North Italy. According to the gazettes of the day and to his own memoirs (London, 1887), his return to London via Wiesbaden coincided with preparations for the thanksgiving service to be held in St. Paul's Tuesday, February 17/15, 1872, for the recovery (from typhoid fever) of the Prince of Wales. Of Beust's passage through Wiesbaden on his way back to England Oblonski read on a Friday; and the only Friday available is obviously February 23/11, 1872—which fixes nicely the opening day of the novel (p. 11).
Some of you may still wonder why I and Tolstoy mention such trifles. To make his magic, fiction, look real the artist sometimes places it, as Tolstoy does, within a definite, specific historical frame, citing fact that can be checked in a library—that citadel of illusion. The case of Count Beust is an excellent example to bring into any discussion about so-called real life and so-called fiction. There on the one hand is a historical fact, a certain Beust, a statesman, a diplomat, who not only has existed but has left a book of memoirs in two volumes, wherein he carefully recalls all the witty repartees, and political puns, which he had made in the course of his long political career on this or that occasion. And here, on the other hand, is Steve Oblonski whom Tolstoy created from top to toe, and the question is which of the two, the "real-life" Count Beust, or the "fictitious" Prince Oblonski is more alive, is more real, is more believable. Despite his memoirs—long-winded memoirs full of dead clichés—the good Beust remains a vague and conventional figure, whereas Oblonski, who never existed, is immortally vivid. And furthermore, Beust himself acquires a little sparkle by his participating in a Tolstoyan paragraph, in a fictitious world.
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