Anna Karenina

3 the university question: The January 1875 issue of the Russian Herald, in which the first chapters of Anna Karenina were published, also contained an article by Professor N. Liubimov on ‘The University Question’. Liubimov, who opposed the autonomy of the universities, was accused by young professors of handing them over to the government.

4 Ment: The name of the poet Ment, which means ‘[he] lies’ in French, is Tolstoy’s invention, as is the name of the scholar Metrov, from ‘metre’ or ‘measure’.

5 Journal de St-Pétersbourg: A semi-official magazine published in French from 1842, reflecting the political views of the higher aristocratic circles.

6 Buslaev’s grammar: F. I. Buslaev (1818-97), Russian scholar and philologist, was the author of two fundamental works of historical grammar.

7 King Lear on the Heath: This fantasia is Tolstoy’s parody of the programme music that had become popular in nineteenth-century concert halls, which he disapproved of (see What Is Art?). Two Russian composers used Shakespeare’s King Lear as a subject: M. A. Balakirev (1837-1910) in his King Lear (1860), and P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840-93) in The Storm (1874). Tolstoy believed that the need for adjusting music to literature or literature to music destroyed creative freedom.

8 das ewig Weibliche: The notion of the ewig Weibliche comes from the finale of Goethe’s Faust.

9 Wagnerian trend ... : Like Levin, Tolstoy considered the operas of Richard Wagner (1813-83) and the musical ‘trend’ that followed from them another form of programme music. His strongest attack on Wagner and his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total or composite work of art) appears in What Is Art?

10 ... poet on a pedestal: Tolstoy has in mind the model for a monument to Pushkin by the sculptor M. M. Antokolsky (1843-1902), which was exhibited in the Academy of Art in 1875. Pushkin was shown sitting on a rock with the heroes of his works coming up some stairs towards him, the intention being to illustrate Pushkin’s lines: ‘Now an invisible swarm of guests comes to me,/ Familiar of old, the fruits of my dream.’

11 panikhida: A memorial service for the dead.

12 Lucca: Paulina Lucca (1841-1908), an Italian-born opera singer who made her career in Austria, visited Russia in the early 1870s. She had great successes as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen.

13 folle journée: The French phrase, taken from the comedy La Folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro, by Beaumarchais (1732-99), came to be applied to all sorts of carnivals and festive evenings.

14 foreigner ... to exile abroad: In October 1875 a commercial credit bank in Moscow was suddenly closed, and its directors and board members were arrested. The chief cause of the scandal was a certain foreign negotiator whose fraudulent dealings led to the bank’s collapse. His trial lasted until November 1876, when he was found guilty and banished from Russia, a ‘punishment’ which aroused widespread indignation.

15 Krylov’s fables: The poet Ivan Krylov (1769-1843) was the father of the Russian fable. Levin’s phrase is modelled on the line, ‘And the pike was thrown into the river’, from the fable ‘The Pike’, in which a corrupt court punishes the guilty pike by throwing it into the river.

16 ‘Rejoice, O Isaiah’: See note 18, Part Five.

17 Bible illustrations . . . : The French graphic artist Gustave Doré (1832-93) is most famous as an illustrator of classics such as The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, and Gargantua and Pantagruel. In 1875 a luxury edition of the Bible with Doré’s illustrations went on sale in Russia. Tolstoy disapproved of Doré’s illustrations for being ‘merely aesthetic’.

18 Zola, Daudet: Tolstoy is thinking of the naturalist movement in French literature in the latter half of the nineteenth century, headed by Émile Zola (1840-1902), based on the exact reproduction of life and the total absence of novelistic fiction. For a time Alphonse Daudet (1840-97) was also an adherent of naturalism. Tolstoy criticized the movement for its lack of ‘spiritualizing’ ideas.

19 United Agency ... Banking Institutions: The title of the post is a parody conflating the names of two actually existing institutions of the time: The Society of Mutual Land Credit and The Society of Southwestern Railways.

20 Rurik: See note 4, Part One.