No. 3 77 mio tesoro
"My Treasure." From Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787), it is sung by Don
Ottavio, whose attitude toward women is considerably more moral than Oblonski's (p.4).
No. 4 But while she was in the house I never took any liberties. And the worst of the matter is that she is already . . .
The first "she" refers to Mile. Roland, the second to Oblonski's wife Dolly, who is already eight months pregnant (Dolly is to be delivered of a girl at the end of the winter, that is in March) (p.6).
No. 5 Livery stable
*
Page references are to the 1935 Modern Library Edition; but the key phrases sometimes represent Nabokov's retranslations.
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Where the Oblonskis rented a carriage and a pair. Now the rent is due (p.7).
No. 6 Anna Arkadievna, Daria Aleksandrovna
In speaking to a servant, Oblonski refers to his sister and wife by their first names and patronymics. In the reference to Dolly, there would not have been much difference had he said knyaginya (the Princess) or barynya (the Mistress) instead of
"Daria Aleksandrovna" (p.7).
No. 7 Side whiskers
Fashionable in the seventies throughout Europe and America (p.7).
No. 8 You want to try
Matvey reflects that his master wishes to see if his wife will react to the news in the same way as she would have before their estrangement (p.8).
No. 9 Things will arrange themselves
The old servant uses a comfortably fatalistic folksy term: obrazuetsya, things will take care of themselves, it will be all right in the long run, this too will pass (p.8).
No. 10 He who likes coasting . . .
The nurse quotes the first part of a common Russian proverb : "He who likes coasting should like dragging his little sleigh"
(p.8).
No. 11 Flushing suddenly
Cases of flushing, blushing, reddening, crimsoning, coloring, etc. (and the opposite action of growing pale), are prodigiously frequent throughout this novel and, generally, in the literature of the time. It might be speciously argued that in the nineteenth century people blushed and blanched more readily and more noticeably than today, mankind then being as it were younger; actually, Tolstoy is only following an old literary tradition of using the act of flushing, etc., as a kind of code or banner that informs or reminds the reader of this or that character's feelings (p.9). Even so the device is a little overdone and clashes with such passages in the book where, as in Anna's case, "blushing" has the reality and value of an individual trait.
This may be compared to another formula Tolstoy makes much use of: the "slight smile," which conveys a number of shades of feeling—amused condescension, polite sympathy, sly friendliness, and so on.
No. 12 A merchant
The name of this merchant (p.9), who eventually does acquire that forest at Ergushovo (the Oblonski's estate), is Ryabinin: he is to appear in part two, chapter 16.
No. 13 Still damp
In the old system of making-ready, as employed in Russia and elsewhere by printers of newspapers, it was necessary to dampen paper before it could be satisfactorily printed. Hence a newspaper copy fresh from the press would be dampish to the touch (p.9).
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No. 14 Oblonski's newspaper
The mildly liberal newspaper Oblonski read was no doubt the Russian Gazette (Russkie Vedomosti), a Moscow daily (since 1868) (p.9).
No. 15 Ryurik
In the year a.d. 862, Ryurik, a Northman, the chief of a Varangian (Scandinavian) tribe, crossed the Baltic from Sweden and founded the first dynasty in Russia (862-1598). This was followed, after a period of political confusion, by the reign of the Romanovs (1613-1917), a much less ancient family than the descendants of Ryurik. In Dolgorukov's work on Russian genealogy, only sixty families descending from Ryurik are listed as existing in 1855. Among these are the Obolenskis of which name "Oblonski" is an obvious and somewhat slatternly imitation, (p. 10).
No. 16 Bentham and Mill
Jeremy Bentham (1740-1832), English jurist, and James Mill (1773-1836), Scotch economist; their humane ideals appealed to Russian public opinion (p.ll).
No. 17 Beust rumored to have traveled to Wiesbaden
Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust (1809-1886), Austrian statesman. Austria was at the time a regular wasp's nest of political intrigue, and much speculation was aroused in the Russian press when on November 10 new style, 1871, Beust was suddenly relieved of his function as Imperial Chancellor and appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Just before Christmas, 1871, immediately after presenting his credentials, he left England to spend two months with his family in North Italy. According to the gazettes of the day and to his own memoirs (London, 1887), his return to London via Wiesbaden coincided with preparations for the thanksgiving service to be held in St. Paul's Tuesday, February 17/15, 1872, for the recovery (from typhoid fever) of the Prince of Wales. Of Beust's passage through Wiesbaden on his way back to England Oblonski read on a Friday; and the only Friday available is obviously February 23/11, 1872—which fixes nicely the opening day of the novel (p. 11).
Some of you may still wonder why I and Tolstoy mention such trifles. To make his magic, fiction, look real the artist sometimes places it, as Tolstoy does, within a definite, specific historical frame, citing fact that can be checked in a library—that citadel of illusion. The case of Count Beust is an excellent example to bring into any discussion about so-called real life and so-called fiction. There on the one hand is a historical fact, a certain Beust, a statesman, a diplomat, who not only has existed but has left a book of memoirs in two volumes, wherein he carefully recalls all the witty repartees, and political puns, which he had made in the course of his long political career on this or that occasion. And here, on the other hand, is Steve Oblonski whom Tolstoy created from top to toe, and the question is which of the two, the "real-life" Count Beust, or the "fictitious" Prince Oblonski is more alive, is more real, is more believable. Despite his memoirs—long-winded memoirs full of dead clichés—the good Beust remains a vague and conventional figure, whereas Oblonski, who never existed, is immortally vivid. And furthermore, Beust himself acquires a little sparkle by his participating in a Tolstoyan paragraph, in a fictitious world.
No. 18 They (Grisha and Tanya) were in the act of propelling something, and then something fell. . . . All is confusion, thought Oblonski.
This little accident to a simulated train against a background of confusion in the adulterer's home will be marked by the good reader as a subtle premonition, devised by Tolstoy's farsighted art, of a considerably more tragic catastrophe in part seven of the book. And what is especially curious is that Anna's little boy Seryozha, later in the book, plays at school at an invented game where the boys represent a moving train; and when his house-tutor finds him despondent, the despondency is due not to his having hurt himself in that game but to his resenting the family situation (p. 11).