Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [476]
27 .. man-God ... God-man: According to Christian dogma, God became man in the ‘God-man’ Christ. Golenishchev implies that Mikhailov, in portraying a Christ whose divinity he denies, is in fact turning man into a god. (Kirillov makes the same reversal in Dostoevsky’s Demons.)
28 Capuan: According to Livy (59 BC-AD 17) in his history of Rome, after spending the winter in Capua, near Naples, during the second Punic War, Hannibal’s army became physically and morally soft and was subsequently defeated. In journalism of the 1870s, the name ‘Capua’ was often applied to the Paris of Napoleon III, but the use of ‘Capuan’ here is peculiar to Tolstoy: in his diaries he referred to his own periods of inactivity as ‘Capua’.
29 ‘Hidden from the wise ...’: A misquotation of Matthew 11:25: ‘... thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes’. (See also Luke 10:21.)
30 when in doubt ... : A literal translation of the French proverb: Dans le doute abstiens-toi, which was Tolstoy’s favourite saying.
31 burden is light: Cf. Matthew 11:30: ‘For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
32 mystical mood ... in Petersburg: See note 34, Part Two.
33 ‘He that humbleth himself ...’: See Luke 14:11.
34 Komisarov: In April 1866 a certain O. I. Komissarov (1838-92), a peasant hatter from Kostroma (Tolstoy spells the name with one s), turned up by chance near the fence of the Summer Garden in Petersburg and inadvertently hindered Karakozov’s attempt to assassinate Alexander II. For that he was granted nobility and became socially fashionable for a time. He eventually drank himself into obscurity.
35 Ristich-Kudzhitsky: That is, Yovan Ristich (1831-99), a Serbian political activist who opposed Turkish and Austrian influence in Serbia. His name was well known in Russia. The ‘Slavic question’ was the question of freeing the Slavic peoples from the Ottoman yoke, one of the most important political issues of the 1870s. In 1875 a popular revolt broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1876 in Montenegro. Serbia declared war on Turkey that same year. Bulgaria placed its hopes in Russia. In 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey, and there was talk of ‘taking Constantinople’ in revenge for the Russian defeat in the Crimean War (1854-6).
36 the Alexander Nevsky: That is, the Order of Alexander Nevsky, created by Peter the Great in 1722, named after St Alexander Nevsky (1220-63), a prince whose victories over the Swedes and the Teutonic knights made him a national hero.
37 ‘He that is married ...’: Cf. I Corinthians 7:32-3. Karenin inverts the two halves of the sentence. 38 throw the stone: See note 33, Part One.
39 Slav tutor: It was traditional to have an English or French tutor; Karenin follows the new fashion in having his son learn Russian from a Slav tutor.
40 the Vladimir ... Andrew the First-called:Tat is, the Order of St Vladimir, named after Prince Vladimir of Kiev (956?-1015), who laid the foundations of the Kievan state and in 988 converted his people to Christianity, and the Order of St Andrew the apostle, patron saint of Russia, traditionally known as ‘the first-called’ from the account of his calling in John 1:37-40.
41 Enoch ... alive to heaven: See Genesis 5:18-24 and Hebrews 11:5.
42 Patti: Carlotta Patti (1835-89), Italian opera singer, elder sister of the more famous Adelina Patti (1843-1919), toured in Russia from 1872 to 1875.
43 perfumed glove: The long, tight-fitting gloves fashionable at the time could only be put on by first being rolled up like a stocking.
Part Six
1 Gvozdevo ... near side: The topography of Pokrovskoe resembles that of Tolstoy’s estate Yasnaya Polyana down to the smallest details. The marsh where Tolstoy used to hunt was divided in two by railway tracks; that is why Levin says ‘on the near side’.
2 Automedon: Achilles’ charioteer in the Iliad.
3 tax farmers: private persons authorized by the state to collect taxes in exchange for a fixed fee. The practice was obviously open to abuse,