and Love's works; a third, Socrates, speaks of two kinds of love, one ('being in love') which desires beauty for a peculiar end, and the other enjoyed by creative souls that bring into being not children of their body but good deeds (culled from an old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica) (p.51).

No. 60 The dinner bill

This literary dinner had cost twenty-six rubles including the tip, so Lyovin's share was thirteen rubles (about ten dollars of the time). The two men had two bottles of champagne, a little vodka, and at least one bottle of white wine (p.52).

No. 61 Princess Shcherhatski had been married thirty years ago

140

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

A slip on Tolstoy's part. Judging by Dolly's age, it should be at least thirty-four (p.53).

No. 62 Changes in the manner of society

In 1870, the first institution of higher learning for women (the Lubianski Courses: Lubyanskie Kursy) was inaugurated in Moscow. In general it was a time of emancipation for Russian women. Young women were claiming a freedom they did not have until then—among other things the freedom to choose their own husbands instead of having their parents arrange the match (p.54).

No. 63 Mazurka

One of the dances at balls of the time ('Gentlemen commencing with left foot, ladies with right, slide, slide, slide, slide, bring feet together, leap-turn' etc.). Tolstoy's son Sergey, in a series of notes on Anna Karenin (Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vols.

37-38, pp. 567-590, Moscow, 1939), says: 'The mazurka was a favorite with ladies: to it the gentlemen invited those ladies to whom they were particularly attracted'(p.55).

No. 64 Kaluga

A town south of Moscow in the Tula direction (Central Russia) (p.60).

No. 65 Classic, modern

'Classic' (klassicbeskoe) education in reference to Russian schools meant the study of Latin and Greek, whereas 'Modern'

(realnoe) implied their replacement by living languages, with the stress laid on the 'scientific' and practical in other subjects (p.62).

No. 66 Spiritualism

The talk (at the Shcherbatskis) about table turning in part one, chapter 14, with Lyovin criticizing 'spiritualism' and Vronski suggesting they all try, and Kitty looking for some small table to use—all this has a strange sequel in part four, chapter 13, when Lyovin and Kitty use a card table to write in chalk and communicate in fond cipher. This was a fashionable fad of the day—ghost rapping, table tilting, musical instruments performing short flights across the room, and other curious aberrations of matter and minds, with well-paid mediums making pronouncements and impersonating the dead in simulated sleep (p.62). Although dancing furniture and apparitions are as old as the world, their modern expression stems from the hamlet Hydesville near Rochester, New York State, where in 1848 raps had been recorded, produced by the ankle bones or other anatomical castanets of the Fox sisters. Despite all denouncements and exposures, 'spiritualism' as it unfortunately became known fascinated the world and by 1870 all Europe was tilting tables. A committee appointed by the Dialectical Society of London to investigate 'phenomena alleged to be spiritual manifestations' had recently reported thereon—and at one seance the medium Mr. Home had been 'elevated eleven inches.' In a later part of the book we shall meet this Mr. Home under a transparent disguise, and see how strangely and tragically spiritualism, a mere game suggested by Vronski in part one, will affect Karenin's intentions and his wife's destiny.

No. 67 Ring game

A parlor game played by young people in Russia and presumably elsewhere: the players form a circle all holding the same string, along which a ring is passed from hand to hand while a player in the middle of the circle tries to guess whose hands conceal the ring (p.65).

No. 68 Prince

141

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

Princess Shcherbatski's way of addressing her husband as knyaz (Prince) is an old- fashioned Moscovism. Note also that the Prince calls his daughters 'Katenka' and 'Dashenka' in the good Russian manner, i.e., having no use, as it were, for new-fangled English diminutives ('Kitty' and 'Dolly') (p.66).

No. 69 Tyutki

A plural noun applied by the gruff Prince to the young scatterbrains, with connotations of fatuousness and foppery. It does not really suit Vronski whom Kitty's father seems to have in mind here; Vronski may be vain and frivolous but he is also ambitious, intelligent, and persevering. Readers will note the curious echo of this fancy word in the name of the hairdresser ('Tyutkin coiffeur') whose sign Anna reads with a roaming eye on the day of her death while driving through the streets of Moscow (p. 885); she is struck by the absurd contrast of 'Tyutkin,' a Russian comedy name, with the stiff French epithet

'coiffeur,' and for a second reflects she might amuse Vronski by making a joke of this (p.66).

No. 70 Corps of pages

Pazbeski ego imperatorskogo velichestva korpus (His Imperial Majesty's Corps of Pages), a military school for the sons of noblemen in old Russia, founded 1802, reformed 1865 (p.68).

No. 71 Chateau des Fleurs, can-can

Allusion to a night restaurant with vaudeville performances on a stage. 'The notorious can-can ... is only a quadrille danced by gross people' (Allen Dodworth in Dancing and its Relations to Education and Social Life, London, 1885) (p.69).

No. 72 The station

The Nikolaevski or Peterburgski railway station in the north-central part of Moscow. The line was built by the government in 1843-1851. A fast train covered the distance between Petersburg and Moscow (about 400 miles) in twenty hours in 1862

and in thirteen hours in 1892. Leaving Petersburg around 8 p.m., Anna arrived in Moscow a little after 11 a.m. the following day (p.70).

No. 73 Ah, your Serenity

An inferior—servant, clerk, or tradesman—would address a titled person (prince or count) as 'your Serenity,' vashe siyatel'stvo (German 'Dur-chlaucht'). The use which Prince Oblonski (who is a siyatel'stvo in his own right, of course) makes of the term in greeting Count Vronski is playfully patronizing: he mimics an elderly attendant stopping a young scapegrace in his tracks, or—as more precisely, perhaps—acts the staid family man speaking to a flighty bachelor (p.70).

No. 74 Honi soit qui mal y pense

The motto of the Order of the Garter, 'Shame to him who thinks evil of it,' as pronounced by Edward the Third in 1348

when rebuking the mirth of some noblemen over a lady's fallen garter (p.70).

No. 75 Diva

This Italian word ('the divine one') was applied to celebrated singers (e.g., la diva Patti); by 1870, in France and elsewhere, the term was often used in reference to flashy ladies of the variety stage; but here I think a respectable singer or actress is implied. This diva, reflected and multiplied, takes part in Oblonski's dream—the dream from which he awakes Friday at 8

a.m., February 11 (p. 4). Here, on page 71 Oblonski and Vronski talk of the supper to be given in her honor next day, Sunday, February 13. On page 77 Oblonski talks about her ('the new singer') with Countess Vronski at the station, that same Saturday morning, February 12. Finally, on page 90, he tells his family, at 9:30 p.m. the same Saturday, that Vronski has just 142

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

called to inquire about the dinner they are to give next day to a celebrity from abroad. It seems that Tolstoy

Вы читаете Lectures on Russian literature
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату