Lectures on Russian literature

Dolly Oblonski gives us a lift in her carriage to Vronski's estate for some tennis. Oblonski, Vronski, and Lyovin are brought together in the rest of the chapters at some country elections on the second of October 1875, and a month later Vronski and Anna go to Moscow.

Part seven consists of thirty-one chapters. It is the most important one in the book, the book's tragic climax. We are now all abreast in Moscow, end of November 1875: six of us are in Moscow, three pairs, the insecure, already embittered Vronski-Anna, the breeding Lyovins, and the Oblonskis. Kitty's baby is born, and in the beginning of May 1876 we visit, with Oblonski, Karenin in St. Petersburg. Then back again to Moscow. Now begins a series of chapters, from 23 to the end of part seven, devoted to Anna's last days. Her death, by suicide, is in mid-May 1876. I have already given my account of those immortal pages.

Part eight, the last one, is a rather cumbersome machine, consisting of nineteen chapters. Tolstoy uses a device that he has used several times in the course of the novel, the device of having a character move from one place to another place and 124

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

thus transfer the action from one set of people to another.* Trains and coaches play a significant part in the novel: we have Anna's two train journeys in the first part, from Petersburg to Moscow and back to Petersburg. Oblonski and Dolly are at various points the traveling agents of the story, taking the reader with them wherever Tolstoy wants the reader to be. In fact, Oblonski is finally given a soft job with a big salary for services rendered to the author. Now in the first five chapters of the last, eighth, part, we have Lyovin's half-brother Sergey travel on the same train with Vronski. The date is easy to establish because of the various allusions to war news. The Slavs of Eastern Europe, the Serbians and Bulgarians, were fighting the Turks. This is August 1876; a year later Russia will actually proclaim war with Turkey. Vronski is seen at the head of a detachment of volunteers leaving for the front. Sergey, on the same train, is on his way to visit the Lyovins, and this takes care not only of Vronski but also of Lyovin. The last chapters are devoted to Lyovin's family life in the country and to his conversion when he gropes for God with Tolstoy giving directions.

From this account of the structure of Tolstoy's novel it will be seen that the transitions are far less supple, far less elaborate, than the transitions from group to group in Madame Bovary within chapters. The brief abrupt chapter in Tolstoy replaces the flowing paragraph in Flaubert. But it will be also noted that Tolstoy has more lives on his hands than had Flaubert. With Flaubert a ride on horseback, a walk, a dance, a coach drive between village and town, and innumerable little actions, little movements, make those transitions from scene to scene within the chapters. In Tolstoy's novel great, clanging, and steaming trains are used to transport and kill the characters—and any old kind of transition is used from chapter to chapter, for instance beginning the next part or next chapter with the simple statement that so much time has passed and now this or that set of people are doing this or that in this or that place. There is more melody in Flaubert's poem, one of the most poetical novels ever composed; there is more might in Tolstoy's great book.

This is the moving skeleton of the book, which I have given in terms of a race, with the seven lives at first abreast, then Vronski and Anna pressing forwards, leaving Lyovin and Kitty behind, then again all seven are abreast, and again with the funny jerking movement of a brilliant toy Vronski and Anna take the lead, but not for long. Anna does not finish the race.

Of the six others, only Kitty and Lyovin retain the interest of the author.

I M A GE R Y

Imagery may be defined as the evocation, by means of words, of something that is meant to appeal to the reader's sense of color, or sense of outline, or sense of sound, or sense of movement, or any other sense of perception, in such a way as to impress upon his mind a picture of fictitious life that becomes to him as living as any personal recollection. For producing these vivid images the writer has a wide range of devices from the brief expressive epithet to elaborate word pictures and complex metaphors.

1) Epithets. Among these to be noted and admired are the 'limply plopping' and 'scabrous' as applied so magnificently to the slippery insides and rough outsides of the choice oysters Oblonski enjoys during his restaurant meal with Lyovin. Mrs.

Garnett omitted to translate these beautiful shlyupayushchie and sbershavye; we must restore them. Adjectives used in the scene of the ball to express Kitty's adolescent loveliness and Anna's dangerous charm should also be collected by the reader. Of special interest is the fantastic compound adjective, literally meaning 'gauzily-ribbonly-lacily-iridescent'

( tyulevo-lento-kruzhevno-tsvetnoy), used to describe the feminine throng at the ball. The old Prince Shcherbatski calls a flabby type of elderly clubman, shlyupik, pulpy thing, a child's word for a hardboiled egg that has become quite pulpy and spongy from too much rolling in a Russian Easter game where eggs are rolled and knocked at each other.

2) Gestures. Oblonski, while his upper lip is being shaved, answering his valet's question (Is Anna coming with her husband or alone) by lifting one finger; or Anna, in her talk with Dolly, illustrating Steve's spells of moral oblivion by making a charming blurred gesture of obliteration before her brow.

*

VN interlines but deletes a remark to the class, 'You remember what we called the 'sifting agent.' 'The reference is to his Dickens lecture the preceding semester where he analyzed the structural function of characters whom he called 'perries,' used chiefly to bring characters together or to provide information by conversing with them. See the first volume, Lectures on Literature, p. 98. Elsewhere he calls Oblonski a kind of 'perry.'—Ed.

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Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

3) Details Of Irrational Perception. Many examples in the account of Anna's half dream on the train.

4) Colorful Comedy Traits. As when the old Prince thinks he is mimicking his wife as he grotesquely simpers and curtseys when speaking of matchmaking.

5) Word Pictures. These are innumerable: Dolly miserably sitting at her dressing table and the rapid deep-chested voice in which, disguising her distress, she asks her husband what he wants; Grinevich's convexedly-tipped fingernails; the old sleepy blissful hound's sticky lips—are all delightful and unforgettable images.

6) Poetical Comparisons. Seldom used by Tolstoy, appealing to the senses, such as the charming allusions to diffuse sunlight and a butterfly, when Kitty is described on the skating rink and at the ball.

7) Utilitarian Comparisons. Appealing to the mind rather than to the eye, to the ethical sense rather than to the esthetical one. When Kitty's feelings before the ball are compared to those of a young man before a battle, it would be ridiculous to visualize Kitty in a lieutenant's uniform; but as a rational black-and-white verbal scheme the comparison works nicely and has the parable note that Tolstoy cultivates so assiduously in certain later chapters.

Not all is direct imagery in Tolstoy's text. The parable comparison grades insensibly into the didactic intonations with their meaningful repetitions that characterize Tolstoy's accounts of situations and states of mind. In this respect, the direct statements of chapter openings should be especially marked: 'Oblonski had learned easily at school' or 'Vronski had never had any real home life.'

8) Similes And Metaphors. The old curly birches of the gardens, with all their branches weighed down by snow, seemed decked in new festive vestments (Part one, chapter 9).

But for Lyovin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a wild rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all around her. The place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine. . . . He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking (Chapter 9).

He felt as though the sun were coming near him (Chapter 9).

like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness (Chapter 9).

The Tatar . . . instantly, as though worked by springs, laying down one bound bill of fare, he took up another,