character he created. This is the background of the book, the Milky Way of the book, the Lyovin-Kitty family life line. We shall presently turn to the pattern of iron and blood, to the Vronski-Anna pattern that stands in awful relief against this star-dusted sky.
Although he is mentioned earlier, Vronski makes his first appearance in part one, chapter 14, at the Shcherbatskis.
Incidentally, it is here that starts an interesting little line, the line of 'spiritualism,' table tilting, entranced mediums, and so on, a fashionable pastime in those days. Vronski in a light-hearted mood wishes to try out this fashionable fad; but much later, in chapter 22 of part seven, it is, curiously enough, owing to the mediumistic visions of a French quack who has found patrons among Petersburg society people, it is owing to him that Karenin decides not to give Anna a divorce—and a telegram to that effect during a final period of tragic tension between Anna and Vronski helps to build up the mood that leads to her suicide.
Some time before Vronski met Anna, a young official in her husband's department had confessed his love to her and she had gaily relayed it to her husband; but now, from the very first look exchanged with Vronski at the ball, a fateful mystery enfolds her life. She says nothing to her sister-in-law about Vronski's giving a sum of money for the widow of the killed railway guard, an act which establishes, through death as it
were, a kind of secret link between her and her future lover.
And further, Vronski has called on the Shcherbatskis the
evening before the ball at the exact moment when Anna
remembers so vividly her child from whom she is separated
for the few days she has spent in Moscow smoothing her
brother's troubles. It is the fact of her having this beloved
child which will later constantly interfere with her passion
for Vron-ski.
The scenes of the horse race in the middle chapters of part
two contain all kinds of deliberate symbolic implications.
Firstly there is the Karenin slant. In the pavilion at the races
a military man, Karenin's social superior, a high-placed
general or a member of the royal family, kids Karenin,
saying—and you, you're not racing; upon which Karenin
replies deferentially and ambiguously, 'the race I am
running is a harder one, ' a phrase with a double meaning,
since it could simply mean that a statesman's duties are
more difficult than competitive sport, but also may hint at
Karenin's delicate position as a betrayed husband who
must conceal his plight and find a narrow course of action
between his marriage and his career. And it is also to be
marked that the breaking of the horse's back coincides
with Anna's revealing her unfaithfulness to her husband.
A far deeper emblematism is contained in Vronski's actions
The final page in Nabokov's teaching copy of
at that eventful horse race. In breaking Frou-Frou's back
with his concluding comments.
and in breaking Anna's life, Vronski is performing
analogous acts. You will notice the same 'lower jaw
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trembling' repeated in both scenes: the scene of Anna's metaphysical fall when he is standing over her adulterous body, and the scene of Vronski's physical fall when he is standing over his dying horse. The tone of the whole chapter of the race with the building up of its pathetic climax is echoed in the chapters relating to Anna's suicide. Vronski's explosion of passionate anger—anger with his beautiful, helpless, delicate-necked mare whom he has killed by a false move, by letting himself down in the saddle at the wrong moment of the jump—is especially striking in contrast to the description that Tolstoy gives a few pages earlier, when Vronski is getting ready for the races—'he was always cool and self-controlled' —
and then the terrific way he curses at the stricken mare.
'Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her head back and gazing at him with her exquisite eye. Still unable to realize what had happened, Vronski tugged at his mare's reins. Again she struggled like a fish, and making the saddle flaps creak, she freed her front legs but unable to lift her rump, she quivered all over and again fell on her side. With a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling and his cheeks white, Vronski kicked her with his heel in the stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her master with her speaking eye.*
''A—a—a!' moaned Vronski, clutching at his head. 'Ah! what have I done! The race lost! And my fault! shameful, unpardonable! And this poor, lovely creature killed by me!'
Anna almost died giving birth to Vronski's child.
I shall not say much about Vronski's attempt to kill himself after the scene with Anna's husband at her bedside. It is not a satisfactory scene. Of course, Vronski's motives in shooting himself may be understood. The chief one was injured pride, since in the moral sense Anna's husband had shown himself, and had seemed to be, the better man. Anna herself had called her husband a saint. Vronski shoots himself much for the same reason as that for which an insulted gentleman of his day would have challenged the insulter to a duel, not to kill his man, but on the contrary to force him to fire at him, the insulted one. Exposing himself to the other man's forced fire would have wiped away the insult. If killed, Vronski would have been revenged by the other's remorse. If still alive, Vronski would have discharged his pistol in the air, sparing the other man's life and thus humiliating him. This is the basic idea of honor behind duels, although of course there have been cases when both men were out to kill each other. Unfortunately, Karenin would not have accepted a duel, and Vronski has to fight his duel with his own self, has to expose himself to his own fire. In other words, Vronski's attempt at suicide is a question of honor, a kind of hara-kiri as understood in Japan. From this general point of view of theoretic morals this chapter is all right.
But it is not all right from the artistic viewpoint, from the point of view of the novel's structure. It is not really a necessary event in the novel; it interferes with the dream-death theme that runs through the book; it interferes technically with the beauty and freshness of Anna's suicide. If I am not mistaken, it seems to me that there is not a single retrospective reference to Vronski's attempted suicide in the chapter dealing with Anna's journey to her death. And this is not natural: Anna ought to have remembered it, somehow, in connection with her own fatal plans. Tolstoy as an artist felt, I am sure, that the Vronski suicide theme had a different tonality, a different tint and tone, was in a different key and style, and could not be linked up artistically with Anna's last thoughts.
The Double Nightmare : A dream, a nightmare, a double nightmare plays an especially important part in the book. I say
*
Mrs. Garnett translates, 'gazed at her master with her speaking eyes,' to which VN adds the note in his teaching copy, 'A horse can't look at you with both eyes, Mrs. Garnett.' Ed.
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lovely structure leading towards vistas of tenderness and fond duties and profound bliss. In the Anna and
