No. 97 Small traveling lantern
This was, in 1872, a very primitive gadget, with a candle
inside, a reflector, and a metallic handle that could be fixed
to the arm of a railway fauteuil at the reader's elbow (p.
118).
No. 98 The stove-heater
Here is a further set of impressions going back to the
muffled-up guard who got crushed ("someone being torn
part") and going forward to Anna's suicide (the blinding
wall, the "sinking"). The wretched stove-heater seems to
somnolent Anna to be gnawing at something in the wall,
and this will be twisted into the groping and crushing
motion of the disgusting dwarf in her later nightmare (p.
118).
No. 99 A stop
The station is Bologoe, midway between Moscow and St.
Petersburg. In the 1870s this was a twenty-minute stop in
the small hours for some bleak refreshments (see also note Nabokov's sketch of the sleeping car in which Anna rode from 72) (p. 120).
Moscow to St. Petersburg.
No. 100 Round hat
In 1850, there appeared a hard hat with a low crown designed by William Bowler, an English hatter, and this was the original model of the bowler, or derby—its American name stemming from the fact that the Earl of Derby wore a gray bowler with a black band to the English races. It was generally adopted in the seventies.
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Karenin's ears should be noted as the third item in the series of the "wrong things" which underscore Anna's mood (p. 123).
No. 101 Panslavist
Promoter of a spiritual and political union of all Slavs (Serbs, Bulgarians, etc.), with Russia at its head (p.128).
No. 102 Put [Seryozha] to bed
The time is around 9 p.m. (see end of paragraph). For some reason Seryozha has been put to bed earlier than usual (see above where "around ten" is mentioned as his bedtime—a singularly late one for a child of eight) (p.131).
No. 103 Due de Lille's Poesie des Enfers
Possibly a disguised allusion on Tolstoy's part to the French writer Count Mathias Philippe Auguste Villiers de L'Isle Adam (1840-1889). Tolstoy invented the title, "The Poesie of Hades," (p. 132).
No. 104 Vronski's teeth
In the course of the novel, Tolstoy refers several times to Vronski's splendid regular teeth, sploshnye zuby, which make a smooth solid ivory front when he smiles; but before he disappears from the pages of the novel in part eight, his creator, punishing Vronski in his brilliant physique, inflicts upon him a marvelously described toothache (p. 137).
No. 105 A special note on the game of tennis
At the end of chapter 22 of part six, Dolly Oblonski watches
Vronski, Anna, and two male guests play tennis. This is July
1875 and the tennis they are playing on the Vronski
country estate is the modern game, which a Major
Wingfield introduced in England in 1873. It was an
immediate success and was played in Russia and in this
country as early as 1875. In England, tennis is often called
lawn tennis because at first it was played on croquet lawns,
hard or turfy, and also in order to distinguish it from the
ancient game of tennis, played in special tennis halls and
called sometimes court-tennis. Court-tennis is mentioned
both by Shakespeare and Cervantes. Ancient kings played
it, stamping and panting in resounding halls. But this (lawn
tennis), I repeat, is our modern game. You will notice
Tolstoy's neat description: the players divided into two
teams of two stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net
with gilt poles (I like the gilt—an echo of the game's royal
origin and genteel resurrection) on the nicely rolled
croquet-ground. The various personal tricks of playing are
described. Vronski and his partner Sviazhski played a good
game and played it very earnestly: keeping a sharp eye on
the ball as it came their way and without haste or delay
Nabokov's drawing of a tennis costume such as Anna wore in
her game with Vronski
they ran nimbly up to it, waited for the rebound, and neatly
hit it back—most of the shots were more or less lobs I'm
afraid. Anna's partner, a young man called Veslovski, whom Lyovin had thrown out of his house a couple of weeks before, played worse than the others. Now comes a nice detaiclass="underline" the men with the ladies' permission took their coats off and played in their shirt sleeves. Dolly found the whole performance unnatural—grown-up people running after a ball like children.
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Vronski is a great admirer of English ways and fads, and the tennis illustrates this. Incidentally, the game was much tamer in the seventies than it is today. A man's service was a stiff pat, with the racquet held vertically at eye level; a lady's sevice was a feeble underhand stroke.
No. 106 A special note on the question of religion
The people in the book belong to the Russian church, the so-called Greek Orthodox—or more correctly Greek Catholic—
Church, which separated from the Roman communion a thousand years ago. When we first meet one of the minor characters in the book, Countess Lidia, she is interested in the union of the two churches and so is the pietist lady Madame Stahl affecting Christian devotion, whose influence Kitty soon gets rid of at Soden. But as I say, the main faith in the book is the Greek Catholic creed. The Shcherbatskis, Dolly, Kitty, their parents, are shown combining the traditional ritual with a kind of natural, old-fashioned, easy-going faith which Tolstoy approved of, for in the seventies when Tolstoy was writing this novel he had not evolved yet his fierce contempt for church ritual. The marriage ceremony for Kitty and Lyovin, and the priests, are described sympathetically. It is at his marriage that Lyovin, who had not gone to church for years and had considered himself an atheist, feels the first pangs of faith birth, then doubt again—but at the end of the book we leave him in a state of bewildered grace, with Tolstoy gently pushing him into the Tolstoyan sect.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1884-1886)
To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces : the longing for privacy and the urge to go places : introversion, that is, interest directed within oneself toward one's own inner life of vigorous thought and fancy; and extroversion, interest directed outward, toward the external world of people and tangible values. To take a simple example: the university scholar—and by scholar I mean professors and students alike—the university scholar may present sometimes both sides. He may be a bookworm and he may be what is called a joiner—and the bookworm and the joiner may fight within one man. A student who gets or wishes to get prizes for acquired knowledge may also desire, or be expected to desire, prizes for what is called leadership. Different temperaments make different decisions, of course, and there are minds in which the inner world persistently triumphs over the outer one, and vice versa. But we must take into account the very fact of a struggle going on or liable to go on between the two versions of man in one man — introversion and extroversion. I have known students who in the pursuit of the inner life, in the ardent pursuit of knowledge, of a favorite subject had to clap their hands to their ears in order to shut out the booming surf of dormitory life; but at the same time they would be full of a gregarious desire to join in the fun, to go to the party or to the meeting, to give up the book for the band.