same time twisting and trying to pull from his vest a button that was
hanging loose. His mother had many times reproved him, but the plump
little hand kept returning to the button. At last she had to take the
button off and put it in her pocket. ‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’
said she, and again took up the bedquilt on which she had long been
at work and which always came handy at trying moments. She worked
nervously, jerking her fingers and counting the stitches.”
In another place a father is instructing his child. “The lesson
consisted of a recitation of several verses of the Gospel and the
review of the first part of the Old Testament. The lesson went fairly
well, but suddenly the boy was struck by the appearance of his father’s
forehead, which made almost a right angle near the temples, and he gave
the end of the verses entirely wrong. The father concluded he did not
understand what he was reciting and was vexed.”
The leader in a ball room pays a compliment to his partner. “‘It is
restful to dance with you,’ said he, as he fell into the slow measures
of the waltz. ‘Charming! Such lightness! such precision!’ This is what
he said to almost all his dancing acquaintances.”
These slight touches give a better idea of what takes place than many
words. The descriptions, as we have observed, are few and brief, but
how graphic are they in their simple statements!
The visit of Levin, the country proprietor, to his stable to see a
cow which has just calved is thus narrated. “Crossing the courtyard,
where the snow was heaped under the lilac bushes, he stepped up to the
stable. As he opened the door, which creaked on its frosty hinges,
he was met by the warm, penetrating breath from the stalls, and the
cattle, astonished at the unwonted light of the lantern, turned around
from their beds of fresh straw. The shiny black and white face of his
Holland cow gleamed in the obscurity. Berkut, the bull, with a ring
in his nose, tried to get to his feet but changed his mind and only
snorted when they approached his stanchion. The beautiful Pava, huge as
a hippopotamus, was lying near her calf, snuffing at it and protecting
it with her back as with a rampart from those who would come too close.
“Levin entered the stall, examined Pava, and lifted the calf, spotted
with red and white, on its long, awkward legs. Pava bellowed with
anxiety, but was reassured when the calf was restored to her and began
to lick it with her rough tongue. The calf hid its nose under its
mother’s side and frisked its tail.”
No one has ever described the coming of Spring more vividly yet more
simply than Tolstoi. “It snowed on Easter Sunday. Then suddenly on the
following day a south wind blew up, the clouds drifted over, and for
three days and three nights a warm and heavy rain fell ceaselessly.
On Thursday the wind went down, and then over the earth was spread a
thick gray mist, as if to conceal the mysteries that were accomplishing
in nature: the ice in every direction was melting and disappearing;
the rivers overflowed their banks; the brooks came tumbling down
with foamy, muddy waters. Towards evening the Red hill began to show
through the fog, the clouds drifted away like white sheep, and Spring
in reality was there in all her brilliancy. Next morning a bright sun
melted away the thin scales of ice which still remained, and the warm
atmosphere grew moist with the vapors rising from the earth. The dry
grass immediately took a greenish tint, and the young blades began
to peep from the sod like millions of tiny needles. The buds on the
birch trees, the gooseberry bushes, and the snow-ball trees swelled
with sap, and around their branches swarms of honey bees buzzed in the
sun. Invisible larks sent forth their songs of joy to see the prairies
free from snow. The lapwings seemed to mourn their marshes, submerged
by the stormy waters. The wild swans and geese flew high in the air,
with their calls of spring. The cows, with rough hair and places worn
bare by the stanchions, lowed as they left their stalls. Around the
heavy, flossy sheep gambolled awkwardly the young lambs. Children ran
barefoot over wet paths, where their footprints were left like fossils.
The peasant women gossiped gaily around the edge of the pond where they
were bleaching their linen. From all sides resounded the axes of the
peasants, repairing their plows and their wagons. Spring had really
come.”
The shattering of an ideal by a single word of disparagement is thus
shown when a young girl hears from her father that the pious Madame
Stahl, whom she had idolized, kept her bed because one leg was shorter
than the other and she did not wish it noticed. “Her ideal of holiness,
as seen in Madame Stahl, which she had for a whole month carried in
her soul, had irrevocably disappeared, as a face seen in a garment
thrown down by chance disappears when one really sees how the garment
is lying. She retained only the image of a lame woman who stayed in bed
to conceal her deformity, and who tormented poor Varenka because her
plaid was not arranged to suit her, and it became impossible for her
imagination to bring back to her the remembrance of the former Madame
Stahl.”
How could domestic discomfort be better pictured than when a mother,
with her six children, arrives at her country home and undergoes the
following tribulations:
“The roof was leaking, the water dripped in the corridor and the
nursery, and the little beds had to be brought down into the parlor.
It was impossible to find a cook. Among the nine cows in the barn,
according to the dairy-woman’s report, some were going to calve and the
rest were either too young or too old, and consequently they could not
have butter, or even milk for the children. Not an egg was to be had;
it was impossible to find a hen. They had for roasting or broiling one
tough old purple rooster. No women were to be found to do the washing;
all were at work in the fields. They could not drive because one of
the horses was balky and would not be harnessed. They had to give up
bathing because the bank of the river had been trodden into a quagmire
by the cattle, and, moreover, it was too conspicuous.... Walking near
the house was not pleasant because the tumble-down fences let the
cattle into the garden and there was in the herd a terrible bull that
bellowed and was reported to be ugly. In the house there was not a
clothes-press. The closet doors either would not shut or flew open
when any one passed. In the kitchen there were no pots or kettles; in
the laundry there were no tubs, nor even any scrubbing-boards for the
girls.”
Nowhere, perhaps, in all literature, is a hunting expedition so
graphically described as in the account of the party that set forth
from Levin’s. The feelings of the hunters and of the dogs themselves
are given with quiet but convincing realism.
It may be doubted whether some of Tolstoi’s shorter works are not more
artistic productions than either of his two long novels. To take the
single instance of a rather commonplace official who falls ill and dies
and to make out of it the terrible tragedy of “Ivan Ilytch” requires,
perhaps, even higher powers than to give such variegated pictures
of life as appear in “War and Peace” or in “Anna Karenina.” Yet the
latter novel, being many-sided and comprehensive, is perhaps his most
representative, as it is certainly his best known work, and it must
justly be ranked as among the very foremost of the masterpieces of
fiction.
The book opens with an account of the confusion in the house of
the Oblonskys when the easy-going and good-tempered Prince Stepan is
detected by his wife Dolly in an intrigue with the French governess,
and whose “stupid smile” when confronted with the letter that betrays
him, “causes the whole trouble.” The Prince can not really repent
and persuade himself that he loves his wife, whose charms have
faded; he regrets only that he had not hid the thing more adroitly,
and his sister Anna is called from Petersburg to Moscow to secure a
reconciliation. Although he was entirely wrong, almost every one in
the house was on his side, except his little girl, who knew only that
there was trouble and that her mother was unhappy and who blushed for
her father when he asked her so lightly after her mother’s welfare,
until he too blushed when he perceived it. About the same time Levin,
the country proprietor, also comes to Moscow to woo Kitty, the younger
sister of the unfortunate wife. He had fallen in love successively
with each of the daughters of the house, but his affection was now
centered on the youngest, whom he deemed a creature so accomplished
that he scarcely dared aspire to her hand. They had been old friends
for many years, but Kitty had then another admirer, one Vronsky, a
brilliant young officer, to whom at the moment her preference was given
and Levin’s blunt offer was rejected. But Vronsky, who had gone to the
railway station to meet his mother (whom he did not love and to whom
for that very reason he was all the more conventionally considerate)
found her in company with Anna Karenina, who had come to Moscow to
compose Dolly’s troubles with her husband. Anna is the beautiful and
accomplished wife of Karenin, an estimable but matter-of-fact Russian
official, greatly her senior in age, who was making for himself an
enviable career in the public service. At the station and afterwards
at a ball Anna meets the young officer, and the two instantly fall in
love with each other with a passion so deep and lasting that it can
not afterwards be extinguished. This passion is at first, however,
expressed only by inferences. Thus, an accident occurs at the station;
a train-hand is crushed, and a pitiful scene described when the widow
perceives his dead body; Vronsky leaves two hundred roubles for her
relief, an act which Anna sees and feels that it “concerns herself
too closely.” Anna composes successfully the domestic trouble between
Prince Stepan and his wife, and here, too, the complete reconciliation
appears in the chiding and ironical banter renewed between the pair
rather than from any express acknowledgment.
But Anna, who has thus healed the wound in her brother’s household,
has torn open one far more fatal in her own. Vronsky, who has neglected
Kitty for the brilliant creature in whom his whole soul is now
absorbed, meets Anna again at the station as she leaves. “I came simply
for this, to be where you are,” he said. “I could not do otherwise.”
Her eyes belied the remonstrance that she forced to her lips, and when
she returned to Petersburg, where her husband was waiting for her, her
first thought as she gazed on his really distinguished face was, “Good
Lord! Why are his ears so long?” When Vronsky afterwards meets her
at a drawing-room in that city and she has forbidden him to speak of
love, she feels that by the very use of the word “forbidden” she has
recognized a certain jurisdiction over him which has encouraged him to
speak.
Her husband, who had noticed that others were observing the
_tête-à-tête_ between his wife and the handsome officer, resolved to
admonish her. “‘Anna, I must put you on your guard.’
“‘On my guard? Why?’ She looked at him so gayly, so innocently, that
for any one who did not know her as her husband did the tone of her
voice would have sounded perfectly natural, but for him, who knew that
he could not deviate from the least of his habits without her asking
the reason, who knew that her first impulse was always to tell him of
her pleasures and her sorrows, the fact that Anna took special pains
not to observe his agitation, or even to speak, was very significant
to him. He felt by the very tone that she assumed that she had said
openly and without dissimulation, ‘Well, thus it must be, and from
henceforth.’ He felt like a man who should come home and find his house
barricaded against him....
“‘Your rather too lively conversation this evening with Count Vronsky
attracted attention.’ As he spoke he looked at Anna’s laughing eyes,
for him so impenetrable, and saw with a feeling of terror all the
idleness and uselessness of his words.... He trembled; again he
twisted his fingers till the knuckles cracked.
“‘I beg of you, keep your hands still; I detest that,’ said she.
“‘Anna, is this you?’ he said, trying to control himself and stop the
movement of his hands.”
When he declares that he loves her a frown passes over her face. The
word irritates her.
“‘Love!’ she thought; ‘does he even know what it means!’ And when they
retired she waited long without moving, expecting that he would speak
to her, but he said nothing. Then the image of another filled her with
emotion and with guilty joy. Suddenly she heard a slow and regular
sound of snoring. ‘Too late! Too late!’ she thought, with a smile. She
remained for a long time thus, motionless, with open eyes, the shining
of which it seemed to her she herself could see. From this night a new
life began for Karenin and his wife. There was no outward sign of it.
Anna continued to go into society, and everywhere she met Vronsky.
Karenin understood it, but was powerless to prevent it. Whenever he
tried to bring about an explanation she met him with humorous surprise
which was beyond his penetration.”
Another incident revealed to him still more clearly the terrible
truth. A hurdle race at which Vronsky rode is described with a realism
of which Tolstoi only is the master. Anna’s husband observes her while
she watches the contest in which her lover is involved. “Her face
was pale and stern. Nothing existed for her beyond the one person
whom she was watching. Her hands convulsively clutched her fan. She
held her breath.... He did not wish to look at her, but his gaze was
irresistibly drawn to her face, whereon he read only too plainly and
with feelings of horror all that he had tried to ignore.” When others
fell in the race he saw that those were not the ones on whom her gaze
was riveted. “The more he studied her face the greater became his
shame. Absorbed as she was in her interest in Vronsky’s course, Anna
was conscious that her husband’s cold eyes were upon her, and she
turned around toward him for an instant questioningly and with a slight
frown. ‘Ah! I don’t care,’ she seemed to say as she turned her glass
to the race. She did not look at him again. The race was disastrous.
Out of the seventeen riders more than half were thrown, and at last
Vronsky fell. The terror caused by this was so universal that Anna’s
cry of horror caused no astonishment, but her face continued to show
more lively symptoms of her anxiety. She lost her presence of mind; she
tried to escape like a bird caught in a snare. Her husband hastened to
her and offered her his arm.
“‘Come, if it is your wish to go,’ he said in French; but she did not
heed him, and gazed at the place where Vronsky had fallen. Her husband
offered his arm again, and she drew back with aversion.”
At last, however, she feels compelled to accompany him to the
carriage, and on the way home he reproves her.
“‘You have behaved improperly, and I would ask you not to let this
happen again.’
“She heard only half of his words; she felt overwhelmed with fear; and
she thought only of Vronsky, and whether he was killed.... She looked
at her husband with an ironical smile, and answered not a word, because
she had not noticed what he said. At first he had spoken boldly; but as
he saw clearly what he was speaking about, the terror which possessed
her seized him. At first her smile led him into a strange mistake. ‘She
is amused at my suspicions! She is going to tell me now that they are
groundless; that this is absurd.’ Such an answer he longed to hear: he
was so afraid that his suspicions would be confirmed, that he was ready
to believe any thing she might say. But the expression of her gloomy
and frightened face allowed no further chance of falsehood.
“‘Possibly I am mistaken,’ said he: ‘in that case, I beg you to forgive
me.’
“‘No, you are not mistaken,’ she replied, with measured words, casting
a look of despair on her husband’s icy face. ‘You are not mistaken: I
hear you, but I am thinking only of him. I love him. I have been false
to you. I cannot endure you, I fear you, I hate you! Do with me as you
please!’ And, throwing herself into the bottom of the carriage, she
covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears.”...
“No one except Karenin’s most intimate friends suspected that
this apparently cold and rational man had one weakness absolutely
contradictory to the general consistency of his character. He could
not look on with indifference when a child or a woman was weeping. The
sight of tears caused him to lose his self-control, and destroyed for
him his reasoning faculties.
“Karenin in spite of his anger against his wife could not forget the
feeling which her weeping caused, and in his effort to control himself
his face assumed an appearance of deathlike rigidity. When he reached
home he deliberated upon his course. He thought of a duel, but as he
was a timid man, he discarded it. He knew that ‘his friends would never
allow him to fight and permit the life of a government official so
indispensable to Russia to be exposed to danger.’ The service of the
state, always important, assumed unwonted magnitude. As to divorce,
public scandal would cause him to fall in public opinion. Separation
was equally impossible. His only course was to keep his wife under his
protection, doing what he could to break off her illicit relationship
with Vronsky and preserving in every way possible his ostensible
relations with her. ‘Only by acting in this manner,’ he thought to
himself, ‘did he conform with the laws of religion, refusing to send
away his guilty wife and consecrating his powers to her regeneration.’
He had not thought of finding a foothold in religion until he had
settled the matter upon other grounds, then this sanction gave him full
comfort and satisfaction.”
But the illicit relations continued and the scandal grew, until at
last divorce seemed to him the only remedy, and he began to make
preparations for the suit, but from this project he was recalled by a
telegram from his wife that she was dying and would die easier if she
had his forgiveness. When he reached his home, the Swiss opened the
door even before Karenin rang the bell; dressed in an old coat and
slippers.
“‘How is the _baruina_!’
“‘She is as comfortable as could be expected.’
“Karenin turned very pale; he realized how deeply he had hoped for her
death.”...
“A uniform overcoat hung in the hall. Karenin noticed it, and asked,--
“‘Who is here?’
“‘The doctor, the nurse, and Count Vronsky.’
“Karenin went into the drawing-room. There was nobody there; but the
sound of his steps brought the nurse, in a cap with lilac ribbons, out
of the _boudoir_. She came to Karenin, and, taking him by the hand with
the familiarity that the approach of death permits, led him into the
sleeping-room.
“‘Thank the Lord that you have come! She talks of nothing but you;
always of you,’ she said.
“‘Bring some ice quick!’ said the imperative voice of the doctor from
the chamber.
“In the _boudoir_, sitting on a little low chair, Karenin saw Vronsky
weeping, his face covered with his hands. He started at the sound
of the doctor’s voice, uncovered his face, and found himself in the
presence of Karenin. The sight of him disturbed him so much that he
sank down in his chair, as if he wanted to disappear out of sight;
then, making a great effort, he rose, and said,--
“‘She is dying: the doctors say that there is no hope. I am in your
power. Only allow me to remain here. I will conform to your wishes in
every other respect. I’--
“When he saw Vronsky in tears, Karenin felt the involuntary tenderness
that the sufferings of others always caused him: he turned away his
head without replying, and went to the door.”
* * * * *
“Karenin’s wrinkled face expressed acute suffering: he wanted to speak,
but his lower lip trembled so that he could not utter a word, and
his emotion hardly allowed him to glance at his dying wife. He took
her hand, and held it between his own. Every time that he turned his
head towards her, he saw her eyes fixed on him with a sweetness and a
humility that he had never seen there before.
“‘Wait! you do not know--Wait, wait!’ She stopped to collect her
thoughts. ‘Yes,’ she began again, ‘yes, yes, yes, this is what I want
to say. Do not be astonished. I am always the same, but there is
another being within me, whom I fear: it is she who loved him, _him_,
and hated you; and I could not forget what I had once been. Now I am
myself, entirely, really myself, and not another. I am dying, I know
that I am dying.... One thing only is indispensable to me: forgive me,
forgive me wholly! I am a sinner; but Serozha’s nurse told me that
there was a holy martyr--what was her name?--who was worse than I. I
will go to Rome: there is a desert there. I shall not trouble anybody
there. I will only take Serozha and my little daughter. No, you cannot
forgive me: I know very well that it is impossible. Go away, go away!
you are too perfect!’
“She held him with one of her burning hands, and pushed him away with
the other.
“Karenin’s emotion became so great that he could no longer
control himself. He suddenly felt his emotions change to a moral
reconciliation, which seemed like a new and unknown happiness. He had
not believed that the Christian law, which he had taken for a guide in
life, ordered him to forgive and love his enemies; and yet his soul was
filled with love and forgiveness. Kneeling beside the bed, he laid his
forehead on her arm, the fever of which burned through the sleeve, and
sobbed like a child.”...
“Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and, when he saw Anna, he hid his
face in his hands.
“‘Uncover your face, look at him, he is a saint,’ said she. ‘Uncover
your face! look at him!’ she repeated in an irritated manner. ‘Karenin,
uncover his face: I want to see him.’
“Karenin took Vronsky’s hands and uncovered his face, disfigured by
suffering and humiliation.
“‘Give him your hand; forgive him.’
“Karenin held out his hand to him, without trying to keep back the
tears.”...
“‘The happiness I feel at being able to forgive, clearly shows me my
duty. I offer the other cheek to the smiter: I give my last cloak to
him who has robbed me. I only ask one thing of God,--that he will not
take away from me this joy of forgiving.’
“Tears filled his eyes. Vronsky was amazed at the calm, luminous face.
“‘These are my feelings. You may drag me in the dust, and make me the
laughing-stock of creation; but I will not give up Anna for that, nor
will I utter a word of reproach to you,’ continued Karenin. ‘My duty
seems clear and plain to me: I must remain with her; I shall remain
with her. If she wishes to see you, I shall inform you of it; but now
I think it will be better for you to go away.’
“Karenin rose: sobs choked his voice. Vronsky rose too, and, standing
with bowed head and humble attitude, looked up at Karenin, without a
word to say. He was incapable of understanding Karenin’s feelings, but
he felt that such magnanimity was above him, and irreconcilable with
his conception of life.”
But Anna recovers, and her old guilty love for Vronsky returns. She
flees with him to other countries in Europe, but the tumult in her soul
will not subside and social ostracism confronts her everywhere. She
returns with Vronsky and lives for a time on his estates in Russia, and
there are brief intervals of happiness. Dolly visits her and finds that
“Anna was all aglow with that elusive beauty which comes to a woman
through the assurance of love returned. Her smiles which, as it were,
flew over her face, her brilliant eyes, her graceful and quick motions,
her voice, her whole person, from the dimples of her cheeks and the
curve of her lip, with its full, rich sounds, and even the quiet,
friendly manner in which she replied to a visitor who asked permission
to mount her horse, was instinct with a seductive charm. It seemed as
if she herself knew it, and was pleased.”
But this is for a moment. In spite of her passion and the constant
devotion of her lover quarrels continually arise, jealousies, the
fear of abandonment, and at last the desire for revenge upon one who
she unjustly imagines is false or indifferent. Her final resolution
is suicide, “to make him repent.” She accomplishes her purpose at a
railway station under the same conditions as those when she first met
her lover.