Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [479]
26 Trinity Monastery: The Trinity-St Sergius Monastery, some thirty miles north of Moscow, is a spiritual centre and place of pilgrimage founded in the fourteenth century by St Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314-92).
Part Eight
1 Northern Beetle: The title is a parody of the Northern Bee, a reactionary newspaper edited by Faddey Bulgarin (1789-1859), who was also a bad novelist and a secret agent specializing in the denunciation of writers, Pushkin among them.
2 American friends ... Slavic question: After the failed attempt on the life of Alexander II in 1866, an American diplomatic mission arrived in Petersburg and presented the tsar with an expression of sympathy and respect on the part of all the American people. The ‘American friends’ were met with receptions and banquets in the capital. In 1871-2 there was drought in Samara province, followed in 1873 by famine. Committees were organized for relief of the peasants there, and Tolstoy was one of the first to respond with a large donation. For the ‘Slavic question’ see note 35, Part Five.
3 volunteers: ‘Slavic Committees’ appeared in Russia soon after the outbreak of the Serbian war in 1876, recruiting volunteers to send to the aid of Serbia. Prior to Russia’s entry into the war, only retired officers like Yashvin and Vronsky could serve as volunteers.
4 Tsaritsyn station: The name of Tsaritsyn, a major city on the Volga, was changed to Volgograd in 1925, then to Stalingrad, and has now been changed back to Volgograd.
5 Ristich ... Milan: For Ristich, see note 35, Part Five. Milan Obrenovich (1852-1901), prince of Serbia, declared war on Turkey in 1876 with the promise of Russian support. Serbia achieved complete independence in 1878, and in 1882 the country was made a kingdom with Milan Obrenovich as king. In 1889 he abdicated in favour of his son Alexander I.
6 Plato ... life: Before and during his work on Anna Karenina, Tolstoy assiduously studied philosophy, convinced that it gave the best answers to questions about the meaning of life and death. Like Levin, he was particularly interested in the works of Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza.
7 love ... will: Tolstoy was both fascinated and repulsed by the philosophy of the German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who maintained that a blind will underlies phenomena, in opposition to the representation of the world produced by the intelligence. Tolstoy considered his views hopeless, dark and pessimistic; hence Levin’s attempt to substitute love for will.
8 Khomiakov: See note 20, Part Five.
9 ‘infidel Hagarenes’: That is, the Muslims, reputed to be descendants of Hagar, concubine of Abraham and mother of Ishmael (Genesis 16).
10 Pugachev ... Khiva: Emelian Pugachev (c. 1742-75), a Cossack and impostor, claimed to be the tsar Peter III and led an uprising in an attempt to take the throne. He was defeated and executed. For Khiva, see note 20, Part Three.
11 Karr ... Prussia: Alphonse Karr (1808-90), a witty Parisian journalist and pamphleteer who wrote for the collection Guêpes (Wasps), published anti-military pamphlets before the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
12 ’... not peace but a sword’: A slight misquotation of Matthew 10:34: ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’
13 Varangians: See note 4, Part One.
14 the Eastern question: See note 42, Part One.
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