Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [474]
11 women’s education: In the 1860s women were allowed education only as teachers or midwives, but by the 1870s women’s struggle for intellectual and social independence had been clearly expressed and higher studies in many fields were opened to them. (See note 26, Part One.)
12 long hair, short ... : The full saying is: ‘Long on hair, short on brains’.
13 choral principle: Pestsov here borrows a favourite notion of the Slavophiles, proponents of Russian national culture and Orthodoxy, originally expressed by the writer K. S. Aksakov (1817-60), about the peasant village commune being a sort of ‘moral chorus’ in which each voice is heard, but in harmony with all other voices.
14 ... never mind, silence!: Levin quotes, consciously or unconsciously, the unmistakable words of the lovelorn and mad Mr Poprishchin in The Diary of a Madman, by Nikolai Gogol (1809-52).
15 Fomin’s ... Fulde’s: Fomin’s was an actual florist’s shop in Moscow, and Fulde’s was an actual jewellery shop.
16 Froom: That is, Froom’s Railway Guide for Russia and the Continent of Europe, published in English in 1870.
17 that holy martyr ... : Anna is thinking of St Mary of Egypt, a fifth-century saint much venerated in the Orthodox Church, a prostitute who converted to Christianity and withdrew to the Egyptian desert, where she spent more than forty years in solitude and repentance.
18 Yeliseev’s: The Yeliseev brothers owned famous delicatessen shops in Petersburg and Moscow which have survived to this day.
Part Five
1 prepared for communion: Only practising Orthodox Christians could be married in the Orthodox Church. To be a practising Christian meant to receive communion, and the necessary preparation for communion was the confession of one’s sins.
2 the ambo: A raised platform leading from the body of the church to the doors of the sanctuary.
3 The mixing of these trades ... : The sentence is a slightly altered quotation from the comedy Woe from Wit by the Russian poet, playwright and diplomat Alexander Griboedov (1795-1829).
4 suitor in Gogol: The suitor Ivan Kuzmich Podkolesin, in Gogol’s comedy The Wedding, jumps out the window and flees just before he is expected to propose.
5 icon for the bride: In the Orthodox wedding ceremony, the bride and groom enter the church preceded by two children carrying icons - an icon of the Saviour for the groom and of the Mother of God for the bride.
6 the iconostasis: In an Orthodox church this is an icon-bearing partition with three doors that separates the body of the church from the sanctuary.
7 the heated church: City churches are often very large and only part of them can be kept warm in winter. This wedding, since it is before the Great Lent, is taking place in the very early spring.
8 new ones?: Specially painted and decorated candles are held by the bride and groom in an Orthodox wedding. They are often kept afterwards, but, as they are costly and burn down very little during the service, they may also be given back to the church.
9 step on the rug: A small piece of fine cloth is placed in the middle of the church for the bride and groom to stand on during the actual marriage ceremony. There is a popular belief that whoever steps on it first will be the dominant partner in the marriage.
10 porch of the church: The Orthodox marriage service has two parts: the betrothal and the marriage proper (the ‘crowning’, during which attendants hold crowns over the heads of the bride and groom). The betrothal takes place in the porch of the church, the crowning inside the church itself.
11 kamilavka: A special round velvet hat worn by Orthodox priests; the Russian word is a distortion of the Greek kalimavka, meaning ‘beautiful hat’.
12 the Synod: At the death of the patriarch Adrian in 1700, Peter the Great reorganized the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church, appointing a Holy Synod of bishops, instead of a new patriarch, to preside over Church affairs, headed by a Chief Procurator who was a layman answerable to the tsar. The Church was thus regarded not as a divine institution but as a department