No. 52 Chablis, Nuits
Burgundy wines, white and red respectively. The white wines known to us as Chablis are made in the Department of Yonne (eastern France) situated in the oldest viticultural district of Europe, namely the ancient province of Burgundy. Nuits (place name) St. Georges, which presumably was the waiter's suggestion, comes from vineyards north of Beaune, in the center of the Burgundy district (p.43).
No. 53 Parmesan
Cheese was eaten with bread as an hors-d'oeuvre and in between courses (p.43).
No. 54 Gallant steeds
Russia's greatest poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) translated into Russian (from a French version) Ode LIII of the so-called Anacreontea, a collection of poems attributed to Anacreon (born in the sixth century b.c. in Asia Minor, died at the age of 85), but lacking the peculiar forms of Ionic Greek in which he wrote according to authentic fragments quoted by ancient writers. Oblonski misquotes Pushkin horribly. Pushkin's version reads: Gallant steeds one recognizes By the 139
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
markings branded on them; Uppish Parthians one can tell By their elevated mitres; As to me I recognize Happy lovers by their eyes . . . (p.45).
No. 55 And with disgust the scroll of my past life I read, and shudder, and denounce it And bitterly complain. . . .
Lyovin quotes a passage from Pushkin's poignant "Recollection" (1828) (p.48).
No. 56 Recruits
In the summary of the week's news of the Pall Mall Budget for December 29, 1871, I find the following: "An Imperial decree has been issued at St. Petersburg fixing the levy of recruits of the year 1872 at the rate of six per 1000 for the whole empire including the Kingdom of Poland. This is the usual levy in order to raise the army and navy to their proper standard" etc.
This note has little direct bearing on our text but is of some interest in itself (p.48).
No. 57 Himmlisch ist's . . .
"To conquer my earthly lust would have been divine but if I have not succeeded, I experience all the same lots of pleasure."
According to a brief note in Maude's translation of the novel (1937), Oblonski quotes these lines from the libretto of the Fledermaus which, however, was first produced two years after that dinner.
The exact reference would be: Die Fledermaus, komische Opérette in drei Akten nach Meilhac und Halevy (authors of Le Réveillon, a French vaudeville, which itself was taken from a German comedy Das Gefangnis by Benedix), bearbeitet von Haffner und Gênée, Musik von Johann Strauss. First produced in Vienna on April 5, 1874 (according to Loewenberg's Annals of Opera, 1943). I have not discovered this anachronistic quotation in the score but it may be in the complete book (p.50).
No. 58 That gentleman in Dickens . . .
The reference is to the pompous and smug Mr. John Podsnap in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, which had first appeared in London in twenty monthly parts from May 1864 to November 1865. Podsnap, who was "happily acquainted with his own merit and importance, [had] settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence. . . . [He] had even acquired a peculiar flourish of the right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems by sweeping them behind him . .
." (p.50).
No. 59 Plato's "Symposium"
In this dialogue Plato, a notorious Athenian philosopher (died in 347 b.c. at the age of eighty), has several banqueters discuss love. One of them rhetorically distinguishes earthly from heavenly love; another sings of Love and Love's works; a third, Socrates, speaks of two kinds of love, one ("being in love") which desires beauty for a peculiar end, and the other enjoyed by creative souls that bring into being not children of their body but good deeds (culled from an old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica) (p.51).
No. 60 The dinner bill
This literary dinner had cost twenty-six rubles including the tip, so Lyovin's share was thirteen rubles (about ten dollars of the time). The two men had two bottles of champagne, a little vodka, and at least one bottle of white wine (p.52).
No. 61 Princess Shcherhatski had been married thirty years ago
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A slip on Tolstoy's part. Judging by Dolly's age, it should be at least thirty-four (p.53).
No. 62 Changes in the manner of society
In 1870, the first institution of higher learning for women (the Lubianski Courses: Lubyanskie Kursy) was inaugurated in Moscow. In general it was a time of emancipation for Russian women. Young women were claiming a freedom they did not have until then—among other things the freedom to choose their own husbands instead of having their parents arrange the match (p.54).
No. 63 Mazurka
One of the dances at balls of the time ("Gentlemen commencing with left foot, ladies with right, slide, slide, slide, slide, bring feet together, leap-turn" etc.). Tolstoy's son Sergey, in a series of notes on Anna Karenin (Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vols.
37-38, pp. 567-590, Moscow, 1939), says: "The mazurka was a favorite with ladies: to it the gentlemen invited those ladies to whom they were particularly attracted"(p.55).
No. 64 Kaluga
A town south of Moscow in the Tula direction (Central Russia) (p.60).
No. 65 Classic, modern
"Classic" (klassicbeskoe) education in reference to Russian schools meant the study of Latin and Greek, whereas "Modern"
(realnoe) implied their replacement by living languages, with the stress laid on the "scientific" and practical in other subjects (p.62).
No. 66 Spiritualism
The talk (at the Shcherbatskis) about table turning in part one, chapter 14, with Lyovin criticizing "spiritualism" and Vronski suggesting they all try, and Kitty looking for some small table to use—all this has a strange sequel in part four, chapter 13, when Lyovin and Kitty use a card table to write in chalk and communicate in fond cipher. This was a fashionable fad of the day—ghost rapping, table tilting, musical instruments performing short flights across the room, and other curious aberrations of matter and minds, with well-paid mediums making pronouncements and impersonating the dead in simulated sleep (p.62). Although dancing furniture and apparitions are as old as the world, their modern expression stems from the hamlet Hydesville near Rochester, New York State, where in 1848 raps had been recorded, produced by the ankle bones or other anatomical castanets of the Fox sisters. Despite all denouncements and exposures, "spiritualism" as it unfortunately became known fascinated the world and by 1870 all Europe was tilting tables. A committee appointed by the Dialectical Society of London to investigate "phenomena alleged to be spiritual manifestations" had recently reported thereon—and at one seance the medium Mr. Home had been "elevated eleven inches." In a later part of the book we shall meet this Mr. Home under a transparent disguise, and see how strangely and tragically spiritualism, a mere game suggested by Vronski in part one, will affect Karenin's intentions and his wife's destiny.
No. 67 Ring game