Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [477]
4 Gretchen: Diminutive of Margarete, a peasant girl in Goethe’s Faust who is seduced and abandoned by Faust.
5 hat of Monomakh: A slightly altered quotation from Pushkin’s historical drama Boris Godunov. The ‘hat of Monomakh’ is the hereditary crown of the Russian tsars, named after Prince Vladimir Monomakh (1053-1126).
6 bring forth children: See Genesis 3:16 (Revised Standard Version).
7 Gautier: An actual bookshop in Moscow, owned by V. I. Gautier, located on Kuznetsky Bridge.
8 ‘... kiss the cross’: It was customary to seal an oath by kissing the cross.
9 ‘... sancta simplicitas’: ‘O holy simplicity’ - words said to have been spoken by the Czech reformer Jan Hus (1369-1415), as he was being burned at the stake, to an old woman who came up to add a stick to the fire.
10 bast: The flexible inner bark of the linden, which had many uses (as roofing material, fibre for binding, material for shoes) in rural Russia.
11 vestals: The Vestal Virgins were priestesses who tended the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and household, in ancient Rome.
12 the brothers: That is, ‘brother Slavs’ - Serbians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins - whose struggle for independence drew sympathy and aid from Russian society (see note 35, Part Five).
13 Taine: Hippolyte Taine (1828-93), French philosopher, historian and critic. His book Intelligence was published in 1870. In What Is Art? Tolstoy includes him among the futile reasoners about beauty.
Part Seven
1 Montenegrins ... fighters: Over the course of some six centuries Montenegro never ceased its resistance to Turkish rule. In 1876 the Montenegrins formed bands and embarked on a guerrilla war in the mountains, which was followed closely in the European press.
2 Svintich’s fiftieth birthday: An ironic reference to the celebrating of all sorts of anniversaries that became fashionable in the 1870s.
3 the university question: The January 1875 issue of the Russian Herald, in which the first chapters of Anna Karenina were published, also contained an article by Professor N. Liubimov on ‘The University Question’. Liubimov, who opposed the autonomy of the universities, was accused by young professors of handing them over to the government.
4 Ment: The name of the poet Ment, which means ‘[he] lies’ in French, is Tolstoy’s invention, as is the name of the scholar Metrov, from ‘metre’ or ‘measure’.
5 Journal de St-Pétersbourg: A semi-official magazine published in French from 1842, reflecting the political views of the higher aristocratic circles.
6 Buslaev’s grammar: F. I. Buslaev (1818-97), Russian scholar and philologist, was the author of two fundamental works of historical grammar.
7 King Lear on the Heath: This fantasia is Tolstoy’s parody of the programme music that had become popular in nineteenth-century concert halls, which he disapproved of (see What Is Art?). Two Russian composers used Shakespeare’s King Lear as a subject: M. A. Balakirev (1837-1910) in his King Lear (1860), and P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840-93) in The Storm (1874). Tolstoy believed that the need for adjusting music to literature or literature to music destroyed creative freedom.
8 das ewig Weibliche: The notion of the ewig Weibliche comes from the finale of Goethe’s Faust.
9 Wagnerian trend ... : Like Levin, Tolstoy considered the operas of Richard Wagner (1813-83) and the musical ‘trend’ that followed from them another form of programme music. His strongest attack on Wagner and his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total or composite work of art) appears in What Is Art?
10 ... poet on a pedestal: Tolstoy has in mind the model for a monument to Pushkin by the sculptor M. M. Antokolsky (1843-1902), which was exhibited in the Academy of Art in 1875. Pushkin was shown sitting on a rock with the heroes of his works coming up some stairs towards him, the intention being to illustrate Pushkin’s lines: ‘Now an invisible swarm of guests comes to me,/