Great Age of Russian Novel: 1856-80 Turgénev A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859)

1. Great Age of Russian Novel: 1856-80 TurgénevA Nest of Gentlefolk (1859) Fathers and Children (1862) GoncharóvOblómov (1857) Tolstoy War and Peace (1863-9) Anna Karenina (1873-77) Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) The Idiot (1868) The Devils (1872) The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

2. The approach of the train was made more and more evident by the preparatory movements in the station, the running of attendants, the appearance of gendarmes and porters, and the arrival of those coming to meet the train. Through the frosty steam, workers in sheepskin jackets and soft felt boots could be seen crossing the curved tracks. The whistle of the engine could be heard down the line, and the movement of something heavy. AK I, XVII

3. A watchman, either drunk or too bundled up because of the freezing cold, had not heard a train being shunted and had been run over. Even before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back, the ladies had learned these details from the butler. Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mangled corpse. Oblonsky was obviously suffering. He winced and seemed ready to cry. ‘Ah how terrible! Ah, Anna, if you’d seen it! Ah, how terrible!’ he kept saying. Vronsky was silent, and his handsome face was serious but perfectly calm. ‘Ah, if you’d seen it, Countess,’ said StepanArkadyich. ‘And his wife is here . . . It was terrible to see her . . . She threw herself on the body. They say he was the sole provider for a huge family. It’s terrible!’ ‘Can nothing be done for her?’ Mme Karenina said in an agitated whisper. […] The people coming out were still talking about what had happened. ‘What a terrible death! Said some gentleman passing by. ‘Cut in two pieces they say.’ ‘On the contrary, I think it’s the easiest, its instantaneous,’ observed another. ‘How is it they don’t take measures?’ said a third. Mme Karenina got into the carriage, and StepanArkadyich saw with surprise that her lips were trembling and she could hardly keep back her tears. ‘What is it, Anna?’ he asked, when they had driven several hundred yards. ‘A bad omen,’ she said. AK, I, XVIII

4. Apart from the political and socio-economic significance of the event, it presupposed the liberation of new and multitudinous human forces that brought new and altogether larger dimensions to the backdrop against which the literature was to be understood. Consequently, there is in the realism and assumption of multiplicity, of spaciousness and depth, to be seen in the sheer plenitude of words or the sheer multitude of persons, lives, relationships and places which the foreground of the fiction subsumes. Hierarchies or even class differences seem blurred or diminished to the point of caricature through the literature’s profound concern to enfranchise all conditions of humanity, from the highest to the humblest. Freedom, equality and brotherhood may not have existed in the reality of Russian life, but in the realism of Russian Literature they were the motive forces which determined the veracity of the realism.“ Richard Freeborn, ‘The Age of Realism’ in Charles Moser (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (CUP, 1989)

5. Marriage […] is a means by which society attempts to bring into harmonious alignment patterns of passion and passions of property. Tony Tanner, Adultery in the novel: contract and transgression (NY: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1979)

6. Tolstoyan morality rigidly enforces the notion that violation of the marriage bond is a form of apostasy and brings in its train the tragic loss of all that is most dear, imperiling in the end all life and happiness…Tolstoyan morality, concerned in this novel so obviously with marriage as the basic social contract, insists that violation of that contract brings tragedy in its wake, while observance brings the possibility of an ultimately meaningful life. All those caught in Anna’s tragedy lose what they most sought. Richard Freeborn, ‘The Age of Realism’ in Charles Moser (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (CUP, 1989)

7. Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what should and what should not be done. […] These principles might be irrational and not good, but they were absolute and in complying with them Vronsky felt at ease and could hold his head high. Only quite lately, in regard to his relations with Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code did not quite meet all circumstances and that the future presented doubts and difficulties for which he could find no guiding thread. AK, 3, XX

8. There was something especially gentle and tender in the expression of her sweet-looking face as she stepped past him. As he looked back, she also turned her head. Her shining grey eyes, which seemed dark because of their thick lashes, rested amiably and attentively on her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile. AK, I, XVIII

9. All eyes, all binoculars were turned to the bright-coloured little group of riders as they lined up […] For the spectators it looked as if they were all riding together; but for the riders there were seconds of difference to them […] The big barrier stood right in front of the tsar’s pavilion. The emperor, and the entire court, and throngs of people – all were looking at them…Vronsky felt those eyes directed at him from all sides, but he saw nothing except the ears and neck of his horse, the earth racing towards him.

10. She flew over the ditch as if without noticing it; she flew over it like a bird; but just then Vronsky felt to his horror that, having failed to keep up with the horse’s movement, he, not knowing how himself, had made a wrong, an unforgivable movement as he lowered himself into the saddle. His position suddenly changed, and he knew that something terrible had happened. He was not yet aware of what it was….He barely managed to free the foot before she fell on her side breathing heavily and making vain attempts to rise with her slender, sweaty neck, fluttering on the ground at his feet like a wounded bird. The awkward movement Vronsky had made had broken her back. But he understood that much later. [FrouFrou’s] head turned to him, looking at him with her lovey eye. Still not understanding what had happened, Vronsky pulled the horse by the reins. She again thrashed all over like a fish, creaking the wings of the saddle, freed her front legs, but unable to lift her hindquarters, immediately staggered and fell on her side again. His face disfigured by passion, pale, his lower jaw trembling, Vronsky kicked her in the stomach with his heel and again started pulling at the reins. She did not move but, burying her nose in the ground, merely looked at her master with her speaking eye….’A-a-ah!’ groaned Vronsky, clutching his head. ‘A-a-ah, what have I done!’ he cried. ‘The race is lost! And it’s my own fault – shameful, unforgiveable! And this poor, dear, destroyed horse! A-a-ah, what have I done!” AK, XXVI

11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6_JaLi-kM

12. Yes I must collect myself and think it over,’ he thought, looking intently at the untrampled grass before him and following the movements of a little green bug that was climbing a stalk of couch-grass and was blocked in its ascent by a leaf of angelica. ‘From the very beginning,’ he said to himself, holding back the leaf of angelica so that it no longer hindered the bug and bending down some other plant so that the bug could get over on to it. ‘What makes me so glad? What have I discovered? 8, XII Understanding clearly then for the first time that for every man and for himself nothing lay ahead but suffering, death and eternal oblivion, he decided it was impossible to live that way, that he had either to explain his life so that it did not look like the wicked mockery of some devil, or shoot himself. 8, XII

13. What am I doing? To me personally, to my heart, unquestionable knowledge is revealed, inconceivable to reason, and I stubbornly want to express this knowledge by means of reason and words. Don’t I know that the stars don’t move?’ he asked himself, looking at a bright planet that had already changed its position over the topmost branch of a birch. ‘Yet, looking at the movement of the stars, I cannot picture to myself the turning of the earth, and I’m right in saying that the stars move. ‘And would the astronomers be able to understand or calculate anything, if they took into account all the various complex movements of the earth? All their astonishing conclusions about the distances, weights, movements and disturbances of the heavenly bodies are based solely on that very movement which is now before me, which has been that way for millions of people throughout the ages, and has been and always will be the same and can always be verified. And just as the conclusions of astronomers that were not based on observations of the visible sky in relation to the same meridian and the same horizon would be idle and lame if they were not based on that understanding of the good which has always been and will be the same for everyone, and which is revealed to me by Christianity and can always be verified in my soul. And I don’t have the right or possibility of resolving the question of other beliefs… AK, 8, XIX When Levin puzzled over what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer and fell into despair; but when he left off worrying about the problem of his existence he seemed to know both what he was and for what he was living, for he acted and lived resolutely and unfalteringly. AK, 8, X