Anna Karenina (Dole)/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN, Russia's greatest poet and the inspirer of the two best works of Gogol, the father of Russian realism, may perhaps be regarded as the direct cause of Count Tolstoï's greatest novel. A relative happened to be visiting at Yasnaya Polyana, and had been reading a volume of Pushkin. Count Tolstoï picked up the work and opened it casually. Some one entered as he was glancing over the pages, and he exclaimed, "Here is something charming! This is the way to write! Pushkin goes to the heart of the matter."
Count Tolstoï was so impressed by Pushkin's directness that he immediately felt like emulating him. He asked to be kept free from interruptions, shut himself into his library, and began "Anna Karenina."
The publication of it began in the Russky Viestnik or Russian Messenger in 1875; but it was frequently interrupted. Months and even years elapsed before it was concluded; yet it kept public attention. Not even the break of several months between two of the parts was sufficient to cool the interest of its reader. After the appearance of the first part he wrote a friend:—
"You praise 'Anna Karenina,' and that is very pleasant to me; the more so as I hear much in its favor; but I am sure that there never was an author more indifferent to his success than I am in this case."
A year later he wrote:—
"For two whole months I have forborne to stain my hands with ink or to burden my heart with thoughts. Now, however, I turn once more to that dull commonplace 'Anna Karenina,' moved solely to rid my desk of it—to make room for other tasks."
Even then he did not finish it. The next year he wrote: "The end of winter and the opening of spring are my busiest months for work. I must finish the novel of which I have grown so tired." But when he once took hold of it the spirit of it quickly seized him again, and much of it was written, as any one can see, with almost breathless haste.
Polevoï, in his illustrated "History of Russian Literature," says of this story: "Count Tolstoï dwells with especial fondness on the sharp contrast between the frivolity, the tinsel brightness, the tumult and vanity, of the worldly life, and the sweet, holy calm enjoyed by those who, possessing the soil, live amid the beauties of Nature and the pleasures of the family."
This contrast will strike the attention of every reader. It is the outgrowth of Count Tolstoï's own life; his dual nature is portrayed in the contrasting careers of Levin and Vronsky. The interweaving of two stories is done with a masterly hand. One may take them separately or together; each strand of the twisted rope follows its own course, and yet each without the other would be evidently incomplete.
As one reads, one forgets that it is fiction. It seems like a transcript of real life, and one is constantly impressed by the vast accumulation of pictures, each illustrating and explaining the vital elements of the épopée. At times one is startled by the vivifying flashes of genius. The death of Anna is dimly suggested by the tragic occurrence of the brakeman's death in the Moscow railway station. A still more suggestive intimation of the approaching tragedy is found in the death of Vronsky's horse during the officers' handicap race at Peterhof. If one may so speak, the atmosphere of the story is electrified with fate. In this respect it is like a Greek drama. There is never a false touch.
Count Tolstoï's brother-in-law says there is no doubt that Levin is the portrait of the novelist himself, but represented as being "extremely simple in order to bring him into still greater contrast with the representatives of high life in Moscow and St. Petersburg." He also says that the description of the way that Levin and Kitty make use of the initial letters of the words in which they wish to express to each other their mutual love is faithful in its minutest details to the history of Count Tolstoï's own wooing. And undoubtedly many of the experiences of Levin on his estate are also transcripts of Count Tolstoï's own experiences.
Tolstoï, like Levin, sought to reform and to better everything about him, and took part in the Liberal movements of the time; but his schemes came to naught, one after the other, and his nihilism,—for he declares in his confession that he was a Nihilist in the actual meaning of the word,—his nihilism triumphs in bitterness on their ruins. The struggle in Levin's mind and the horror of his despair tempting him also to suicide are marvelously depicted. At length, as in Tolstoï's real life, the muzhik comes to his aid, light illumines his soul, and the work ends in a burst of mystic happiness, a hymn of joy, which he sings to his inmost soul, not sharing it with his beloved wife, though he knows that she knows the secret of his happiness.
Interesting and instructive as this idyllic romance is, the chief power of the novelist is expended in portraying the illicit love of Vronsky and Anna. Its moral is the opposition of duty to passion. It has been said that the love that unites the two protagonists is sincere, deep, almost holy despite its illegality. They were born for each other; it was love at first sight, a love which overleapt all bonds and bounds. But its gratification at the expense of honor brings the inevitable torment, especially to the woman who had sacrificed so much. The agony of remorse, intensified by the mortifications and humiliations caused by her position, unites itself with an almost insane jealousy, product also of the unstable relation in which she is placed. At last the union becomes so irksome, so painful, so hateful, that the only escape from it is in suicide.
Count Tolstoï manages with consummate skill to retain his own respect for the guilty woman. Consequently the reader's love and sympathy for the unhappy woman never flag. He lays bare each throb of her tortured heart. He is the Parrhasius of novelists.
Mr. Howells says: "The warmth and light of Tolstoï's good heart and right mind are seen in 'Anna Karenina,' that saddest story of guilty love in which nothing can save the sinful woman from herself,—not her husband's forgiveness, her friend's compassion, her lover's constancy, or the long intervals of quiet in which she seems safe and happy in her sin. It is she who destroys herself persistently, step by step, in spite of all help and forbearance; and yet we are never allowed to forget how good and generous she was when we first met her; how good and generous she is fitfully, and more and more rarely to the end. Her lover works out a sort of redemption through his patience and devotion; he grows gentler, wiser, worthier through it; but even his good destroys her."
Mr. Howells also comments on the extraordinary vitality of the work.
"A multitude of figures pass before us," he says, "recognizably real, never caricatured nor grotesqued, nor in any way unduly accented, but simple and actual in their evil or their good. There is lovely family life, the tenderness of father and daughter, the rapture of young wife and husband, the innocence of girlhood, the beauty of fidelity; there is the unrest and folly of fashion, the misery of wealth, and the wretchedness of wasted and mistaken life, the hollowness of ambition, the cheerful emptiness of some hearts, the dull emptiness of others. It is a world, and you live in it while you read and long afterward, but at no step have you been betrayed, not because your guide has warned or exalted you, but because he has been true, and has shown you all things as they are."
It is hardly worth while to particularize the immortal scenes with which the panoramic canvas is crowded, though the Vicomte de Vogüé characterizes the deathbed scene of Nikolaï Levin as "one of the most finished masterpieces of which literature has reason to be proud," and the description of the races at Tsarskoye-Selo, apart from its tragic moment, is amazing for its vividness and beauty. Indeed, there are dozens of wonderful pictures of life and death in the story. And no translation, however faithful, can do justice to the quiet humor packed away often in a single word of the staccato muzhik dialect, which no one ever handled more successfully than Count Tolstoï.
The translation has been thoroughly revised and largely rewritten. All passages formerly omitted have been restored, and the occasional temptation to embroider by paraphrase on what the author left purposely simple, plain, and direct, has been resisted.
The Russian words and interjections (which, with the idea of giving local color, were employed in the first edition) have been for the most part eliminated, and the glossary is therefore superfluous. The translator's whole purpose has been to give a faithful presentation of this immortal work. CHIEF PERSONS OF THE STORY
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch Karenin.
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (Madame Karenin).
Count Alekseï (Alosha) Kirillovitch Vronsky.
His mother, the Countess Vronsky or Vronskaya.
His brother, Aleksandr Kirillovitch Vronsky.
Prince (Kniaz) Stephan (Stiva) Arkadyevitch Oblonsky.
Princess (Kniaginya) Darya (Dolly, Dolinka, Dashenka) Aleksandrovna Oblonsky or Oblonskaya.
Konstantin (Kostia) Dmitriyevitch (Dmitritch) Levin, proprietor of Pokrovsky.
His brother, Nikolaï Dmitriyevitch Levin.
His mistress, Marya Nikolayevna.
His half-brother, Sergyeï Ivanovitch (Ivanuitch, Ivanitch) Koznuishef.
Prince Aleksandr Shcherbatsky.
Princess Shcherbatsky or Shcherbatskaya.
Their daughter, the Princess (Kniazhna) Yekaterina (Kitty, Katyonka, Katerina, Katya) Aleksandrovna Shcherbatsky or Shcherbatskaya (afterwards Levin or Levina).
Their nephew, Prince Nikolaï Shcherbatsky.