21 ... face of fire: The simile is borrowed from Psalm 68:2: 'as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God' - which is sung in the Orthodox Easter service and has thus become proverbial.
22 Landau ... Bezzubov: Influential mediums were a feature of society life at that time. Landau resembles the medium Douglas Hume, who travelled and 'prophesied' in America and Europe, enjoyed the sympathy of Napoleon III and was received at the court of Alexander II. Hume had surprising success in Russia, married the daughter of Count Bezborodko ('Beardless') and thus became a count himself. Tolstoy parodies his success by having Landau adopted by Countess Bezzubov ('Toothless').
23 Saul: The reference is to the conversion of Saul (the apostle Paul) recounted in Acts 9:3-9.
24 Apostle James: Oblonsky quotes from James 2:26: 'For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.' This teaching seems to be a contradiction of St Paul's notion of 'justification by faith' (see Romans 4, Galatians 3), so much so that Martin Luther, who (like Karenin and Countess Lydia Ivanovna) preached justification by faith, wanted to have the Epistle of James removed from the Bible. The two apparently contradictory assertions are in fact complementary.
25 ... Under the Wing: Titles, which Tolstoy gives in English, of pious tracts in the spirit of the 'new mystical trend' connected with the sermons of the Protestant missionary Lord Radstock (Granville Augustus William Waldgrave, Lord Radstock, 1831-1913), who visited Russia twice, in 1874 and 1878, and was a popular figure in the high-society salons of Moscow and Petersburg. Lord Radstock, a graduate of Eton and Oxford, was invited to Russia by Countess Chertkov, the mother of Vladimir Chertkov, who later became the most important of Tolstoy's 'disciples'.
26 Trinity Monastery: The Trinity-St Sergius Monastery, some thirty miles north of Moscow, is a spiritual centre and place of pilgrimage founded in the fourteenth century by St Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314-92).
Part Eight
1 Northern Beetle: The title is a parody of the Northern Bee, a reactionary newspaper edited by Faddey Bulgarin (1789-1859), who was also a bad novelist and a secret agent specializing in the denunciation of writers, Pushkin among them.
2 American friends ... Slavic question: After the failed attempt on the life of Alexander II in 1866, an American diplomatic mission arrived in Petersburg and presented the tsar with an expression of sympathy and respect on the part of all the American people. The 'American friends' were met with receptions and banquets in the capital. In 1871-2 there was drought in Samara province, followed in 1873 by famine. Committees were organized for relief of the peasants there, and Tolstoy was one of the first to respond with a large donation. For the 'Slavic question' see note 35, Part Five.
3 volunteers: 'Slavic Committees' appeared in Russia soon after the outbreak of the Serbian war in 1876, recruiting volunteers to send to the aid of Serbia. Prior to Russia's entry into the war, only retired officers like Yashvin and Vronsky could serve as volunteers.
4 Tsaritsyn station: The name of Tsaritsyn, a major city on the Volga, was changed to Volgograd in 1925, then to Stalingrad, and has now been changed back to Volgograd.
5 Ristich ... Milan: For Ristich, see note 35, Part Five. Milan Obrenovich (1852-1901), prince of Serbia, declared war on Turkey in 1876 with the promise of Russian support. Serbia achieved complete independence in 1878, and in 1882 the country was made a kingdom with Milan Obrenovich as king. In 1889 he abdicated in favour of his son Alexander I.
6 Plato ... life: Before and during his work on Anna Karenina, Tolstoy assiduously studied philosophy, convinced that it gave the best answers to questions about the meaning of life and death. Like Levin, he was particularly interested in the works of Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza.
7 love ... will: Tolstoy was both fascinated and repulsed by the philosophy of the German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who maintained that a blind will underlies phenomena, in opposition to the representation of the world produced by the intelligence. Tolstoy considered his views hopeless, dark and pessimistic; hence Levin's attempt to substitute love for will.
8 Khomiakov: See note 20, Part Five.
9 'infidel Hagarenes': That is, the Muslims, reputed to be descendants of Hagar, concubine of Abraham and mother of Ishmael (Genesis 16).
10 Pugachev... Khiva: Emelian Pugachev (c. 1742-75), a Cossack and impostor, claimed to be the tsar Peter III and led an uprising in an attempt to take the throne. He was defeated and executed. For Khiva, see note 20, Part Three.
11 Karr ... Prussia: Alphonse Karr (1808-90), a witty Parisian journalist and pamphleteer who wrote for the collection Guepes (Wasps), published anti-military pamphlets before the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
12 '... not peace but a sword': A slight misquotation of Matthew 10:34: 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.'
13 Varangians: See note 4, Part One.
14 the Eastern question: See note 42, Part One.
[Back Cover]
"Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English, and their superb rendering allows us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the palpability of Tolstoy's 'characters, acts, situations.' "
--James WOOD, The New Yorker
"In their version, Anna Karenina becomes a surprising rediscovery. . . . Pevear and Volokhonsky may truly be said to be the reinventors of the classic Russian novel for our times."
--PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize Citation
"At last, a version of Tolstoy's great novel that is neither musty, nor overly modernized, nor primly recast as a Victorian landscape. With their usual fastidious precision for Russian contexts and
modes of address, the prizewinning Pevear/Volokhonsky team has given us a pellucid Anna Karenina that speaks (as Tolstoy himself wished to speak) from within its own time, but for all times."
--Caryl EMERSON, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University
Table of Contents
[Front and Back Flaps]
Contents
Introduction
Translators' Note
Further Reading
List of Principal Characters
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Notes
[Back Cover]
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
(Series: # )
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