Anna Karenina

20 The Two Origins ... explanation: The Slavophiles (see note 13, Part Four) often touched on the notion of the two origins - Catholic and Orthodox, rational and spiritual, Western and Eastern - of Russian culture. A. S. Khomiakov (1804-60), religious philosopher and poet, an important representative of the Slavophile movement, wrote about the Byzantine origin of Russian history. At the end of the novel, Levin will be ‘disappointed in Khomiakov’s teaching about the Church’.

21 Ivanov-Strauss-Renan: A. A. Ivanov (1806-58), an artist of the ‘Wanderers’ group, was the founder of the historical school of Russian painting; his most famous work was ‘Christ Shown to the People’ (1858). David Strauss (1808- 74), German theologian and philosopher, wrote a famous ‘historical’ Life of Jesus, as did the French religious historian and lapsed Catholic Ernest Renan (1823-92).

22 new school: The artist I. N. Kramskoy (1837-87), also a ‘Wanderer’, met Tolstoy in 1873 and may have told him about his plans for a painting on the subject of the mocking of Christ. The ‘new school’ treated traditional religious subjects with the techniques of realism. Tolstoy thought they had taken a wrong turn; his preference went neither to the traditionally ‘religious’ nor to the new ‘realistic’, but to a ‘moral’ treatment of the subject (see his What Is Art?).

23 Charlotte Corday: Charlotte Corday d‘Armont (1768-93) became famous for assassinating the French revolutionary politician Jean-Paul Marat (1743- 93), a Montagnard, in revenge for the ‘September massacres’ of the Girondin party, which he instigated. She went to the guillotine.

24 Raphael’s: Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), one of the greatest painters of the Florentine school, was commonly regarded in the nineteenth century as the supreme master of the art of painting. It was his ‘idealizing’ influence above all that the new historical school rejected.

25 Pre-Raphaelite Englishman: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, W. Holman-Hunt (1827-1910), J. E. Millais (1829-96) and D. G. Rossetti (1828-82) chief among them, revolted against the imitation of nature and favoured convention in art. They held up the Italian masters before Raphael, particularly Giotto and Botticelli, as models. The influential critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) cham pioned their work.

26 Rachel: The Swiss-born actress Eliza Félix (1820-58), known as Mille Rachel, contributed greatly to the revival of French classical tragedy on the nineteenth-century stage.

27 .. man-God ... God-man: According to Christian dogma, God became man in the ‘God-man’ Christ. Golenishchev implies that Mikhailov, in portraying a Christ whose divinity he denies, is in fact turning man into a god. (Kirillov makes the same reversal in Dostoevsky’s Demons.)

28 Capuan: According to Livy (59 BC-AD 17) in his history of Rome, after spending the winter in Capua, near Naples, during the second Punic War, Hannibal’s army became physically and morally soft and was subsequently defeated. In journalism of the 1870s, the name ‘Capua’ was often applied to the Paris of Napoleon III, but the use of ‘Capuan’ here is peculiar to Tolstoy: in his diaries he referred to his own periods of inactivity as ‘Capua’.

29 ‘Hidden from the wise ...’: A misquotation of Matthew 11:25: ‘... thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes’. (See also Luke 10:21.)

30 when in doubt ... : A literal translation of the French proverb: Dans le doute abstiens-toi, which was Tolstoy’s favourite saying.

31 burden is light: Cf. Matthew 11:30: ‘For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

32 mystical mood ... in Petersburg: See note 34, Part Two.

33 ‘He that humbleth himself ...’: See Luke 14:11.

34 Komisarov: In April 1866 a certain O. I. Komissarov (1838-92), a peasant hatter from Kostroma (Tolstoy spells the name with one s), turned up by chance near the fence of the Summer Garden in Petersburg and inadvertently hindered Karakozov’s attempt to assassinate Alexander II. For that he was granted nobility and became socially fashionable for a time. He eventually drank himself into obscurity.