“Akh, Andréi,” she says to her brother, “what a treasure of a wife you have!—a real child, gay, animated. How I love her!” Andréi had taken a seat by his sister: he did not speak; an ironical smile played on his lips. She noticed it, and went on: “Her little weaknesses call for indulgence.... Who is there without some?... To understand every thing is to forgive.” And she forgives every thing, even the most cruel insult, even the wound inflicted on the most sensitive part of her sensitive nature,—of her loving heart. The handsome Anatoli Kuragin comes with his father, Prince Vasíli, to ask her hand in marriage, she being an heiress. While waiting to carry off this dowry with a high hand, he plays, in the Bolkonsky house, as everywhere else, his game of seduction; and he has rendezvous with the demoiselle de compagnie, a young and pretty French girl. Marya catches them accidentally. She refuses the marriage which she had eagerly anticipated. “I shall be called to some other good fortune. I shall be happy in devotion, and in making others happy.” She dreams of seeing the man whom she loved marry the one who has so shamefully insulted her. “I should be so glad to see her his wife: she is so sad, so lonely, so abandoned! How she must love him when he forgets her so! Who knows? Perhaps I should have done the same.”
Andréi goes to war; and Tolstoï takes us with him into a world of action, which he describes with rare power. We are dazzled at first by the brilliant art with which the novelist moves armies, carries out the combinations of tacticians, shows the troops with their passionate dash or their senseless terrors, represents their leaders with their hesitations or their unconscionable activity, but all alive, true, recognizable, from the humblest of the German officers to Napoleon the great captain. We are singularly struck by certain of his preferred methods; like that, for instance, of being true to fact in his painting of what is always idealized. Napoleon has vulgarities of character and expression, and the unexpected meeting with them gives us at first a shock of admiration. Instead of saying simply, “What realism!” we exclaim, “What reality!” Yet I do not hesitate to consider this portion of “War and Peace” as inferior to others. The historian in Tolstoï inspires me with a certain feeling of distrust: it seems to me that the painter of battles, with his first-class ability, here and there takes advantage of our fairness. There is a tinsel effect in his painting; the details are far too numerous, and there is not so much variety among them as one would think.
What is incomparable in the war part of the romance are the descriptions of military customs, the scenes of camp-life, the impressions of certain hours of day and night, the reminiscences of evening conversations, the effects of groups lighted up by the weird light of the bivouac, the heart-rending aspects of the battle-field or the hospital-wards. The marvellous beauty of all this wealth of feelings felt and experienced adds its glory to the more commonplace and less valuable woof of the historical narration. Turgénief, who understood this, noted somewhere or other this difference; but there are very few readers who can thus bethink themselves, and take account of their illusions.
Wounded at Austerlitz, and taken to the French hospital, Andréi sees Napoleon approach his bedside; that is to say, he sees the one who, in his eyes, represents the ideal, the superhuman man, the hero, the demigod. At death’s door, Andréi sees all things in a light which reduces them to their real proportions. To him all Napoleon’s acts, all his words, all the motives which make him act and speak, seem empty of interest. He turns from the sight of what is only human, and, with his eyes fixed solely on the medal which Marya hung around his neck on the day of his departure, he endeavors to believe “in that ideal heaven which alone promises him peace.”
Scarcely recovered from his wound, Andréi returns to his father’s home, which he reaches in time to be present at his wife’s confinement. There is here an admirable scene, which will be surpassed only by the birth-scene described in the romance of “Anna Karénina.” All that is dramatic, august, mysterious, in the opening flower of maternity has been expressed by Tolstoï in these two passages. That of “Anna Karénina” is famous. We feel nothing of the equivocal impressions and the lugubrious effects, which, under the pretext of realism, the author of “La Joie de Vivre” will put into a similar description. But a parallel between the realism of Tolstoï and the realism of Zola would carry us too far from our subject.
The impression left upon Andréi Bolkonsky by the death of his wife has in no small degree contributed to develop in him the tendency toward dissatisfaction with life. But one day a young girl comes into the circle of shadow, and he instantly allows her to usurp its place. The memory of a luminous vision is brought into the depths of his soul. All the apparently sleeping springs of affection in his nature are stirred up by the appearance of Natasha Rostova. Chance brings Andréi to the young girl’s paternal mansion: he falls in love with her, and with this new love begins the renewal of life.
The house of the Rostofs is the third of the seignorial homes which Tolstoï opens to us, and it is the one where it is the easiest thing to forget one’s self. Songs only are heard, merry laughter, the chatter of fresh voices. The head of the family, Count Rostof, is a great proprietor, ostentatious, but free from arrogance, and is carelessly hurrying to his ruin; but no one better than he understands the duties of hospitality. His wife is a sweet, good woman, adoring her family, and by her family adored. There are two sons in the house. The youngest, Petya, is a child at the beginning of the story; but he will be seen in the ranks of the Russian army before the end of the book. And Tolstoï, in describing his heroic death, will write a few pages, the beauty and noble sadness of which, without any sense of detriment, recall Virgil and the episode of Euryalus dying beside Nisus. The elder brother, Nikolaï Rostof, is the typical young noble, born for military life, for whom the profession of soldier is the first in the world, who is too sound in mind, too healthy in body, not to carry everywhere with him his good-humor and his off-hand manners. But he returns to camp as to a second home, and weeps with joy to see his comrades again; and he has no regret when he is once more in his tent, and he submits to the yoke and habits of military life with the same sensation of pleasure that a weary man feels when at last he has the chance to lie down and go to sleep. Tolstoï makes use of Nikolaï Rostof just as he does of Prince Andréi, in order to make us present with him during a portion of the deeds of war which he wishes to relate. Rostof’s impressions are not, however, like Bolkonsky’s: they recall pretty closely the memories noted in the “Military Sketches” of Sevastópol. It is evident that Tolstoï, who has very largely put himself into each of his characters, has reflected himself in this peculiar side in this one.
In the house of the Rostofs, there is a whole swarm of young girls,—the prudent Viéra, methodical and tiresome; the gentle Sonya, a poor relation, who is loved by the son, and who worships him, even to sacrifice: she will forego marriage with him, so that he may be rich and happy. But a luminous face, dazzling with its freshness, gayety, and grace, is that shown us in Natasha, Andréi Bolkonsky’s “bride.” Natasha is so beautiful, that no one can see her without loving her. She is willing to be loved without returning it. Happy in the effect caused by her beauty, she mistakes all her coquettish, maidenly caprices for honest, serious sentiments. She has imagined that she was in love with her brother Nikolaï’s friend Boris, then with Denisof, then with Prince Andréi, all in succession; but her passion has never yet been really awakened. It is waiting for the appearance of the last aspirant, the only one unworthy of being chosen; and then it bursts forth with frightful violence. Natasha meets Anatoli Kuragin: she yields to the fascination of his beauty, his boldness. He shamelessly addresses a few coarse, flattering words to her; and she is intoxicated by this unrefined incense more than by delicate homage. She forgets that she is plighted to Prince Andréi: she allows herself to listen to words of love. She loves; and she loves so passionately, that, without hesitation, she consents to all that her seducer has planned to lead her to irretrievable ruin. She is willing to elope. A providential chance prevents her departure. Pierre Bezúkhof arrives in time to reveal to the unfortunate young woman that Kuragin is married: he gives him a pretty rough experience of his giant hand, and compels Lovelace to return Natasha’s letters, and to pack off.
Natasha[52] falls ill with sorrow, shame, and remorse. The doctors cannot get the better of this moral suffering. Religion alone puts an end to it. A lady who lives in the country near the Rostofs comes to Moscow during Lent, and takes Natasha with her to perform their devotions. Each morning before daybreak they set out, and go to kneel before the Virgin, “the blackened painting of whom is lighted up by the candles and the first rays of the dawn.” Natasha prays with fervor, with humility. She feels that she is gradually becoming somewhat regenerated; and on the day when she is to receive the communion, she finds herself “at peace with herself, and reconciled to life.”
“‘Count,’ asked Natasha of Pierre, as she paused, ‘do I do wrong to sing?’ And she raised her eyes to his, and blushed.
“‘No. Wherein would lie the harm?... On the contrary. But why should you ask me?’
“‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ replied Natasha, speaking hurriedly. But it would grieve me to do any thing which might displease you. I saw,’ she went on, without noticing that Pierre was embarrassed, and reddening in his turn, ‘I saw his name in the order of the day.... Do you think that he will ever forgive me? Do you believe that he will always be angry with me? Do you?’
“‘I think,’ continued Pierre, ‘that he has nothing to forgive. If I were in his place’—And the same words of love and pity which he had spoken to her once before were on his tongue’s end, but Natasha did not give him time to finish.
“‘Akh! you? That is a very different thing,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘I don’t know a better and more generous man than you. Such a man does not exist. If you had not helped me then and now, I do not know what would have become of me.’ Her eyes filled with tears, which she hid behind her music; and, turning around abruptly, she began to practice her solfeggi, and to walk up and down.”
Thus begins the last romance in Natasha’s life. She loves Pierre Bezúkhof, not with the fanciful love which she felt for Andréi, nor the mad passion which Kuragin inspired in her, but with a pure, moral affection, founded on esteem, on the similarity of thoughts and feelings. This union is the only one which Tolstoï wishes to realize for Bezúkhof, for it is the only kind which seems to him legitimate. But, before it can be accomplished, it must needs be that the man to whom Natasha had plighted her troth should be no longer between her and the one whom she is to marry. Accordingly we are brought to witness Andréi Bolkonsky’s death.
The French invasion of 1812 has roused all the powers of Russia. From the muzhik to the velmozh, every one has felt the impulse of self-sacrifice. The Rostofs, whose second son Petya desires to go as a hussar, are surprised in the midst of moving, by the arrival of wounded, whom it is impossible to transport farther. They have some of the furniture unloaded, and arrange a train of wagons. Among the mortally wounded whom they have thus received is Prince Andréi. He was struck by a bursting shell on the same day as Kuragin, and chance has so brought it about that the wounded man can behold on his bed of agony the man who stole Natasha’s heart from him. This is a most powerfully dramatic scene. It is not the only one offered by this part of the book. Natasha discovers, during the journey, that Prince Andréi is in one of the wagons. She makes her way out during the night, and comes to kneel by his bedside. Natasha and the Princess Marya meet at this death-bed. The analysis of the wounded man’s last feelings and sensations at the supreme moment is a marvel of divination: the ecstasy of the evening hours, the delirium of the moments of somnolence, are expressed with a power of imagination which makes one shudder.
Meantime, beside the Rostofs’ carriage walks a man of lofty stature, in laborer’s attire. It is Pierre Bezúkhof, who also has desired to find a chance to sacrifice himself. He did not join the army, like Andréi Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, Petya, and the others. Does he think, then, like the author of “My Religion,” that he has no right to kill a man, even though it were an enemy of his country? He stays in Moscow, with vague projects, which Fate, that mighty actor in the dramas of mankind, according to the author of “War and Peace,” prevents him from putting into execution. He is captured by the French, and endures a most trying nomad captivity. But he finds among his comrades in misfortune a poor soldier with wounded feet, and body devoured by vermin, and from him he learns the great secret of existence. Platon Karataïef, in spite of his pitiable exterior, personifies the moral and religious ideal, which, as we have already seen, Count Tolstoï definitely came to accept. As soon as the hero of “War and Peace,” Pierre Bezúkhof, has reached this limit of his development, the story has only to proceed of its own inertia to the conclusion. I feel that there is no necessity of delaying over the final scenes. The Princess Marya, whose father is now dead, marries Nikolaï Rostof, who had saved her life by quelling a revolt among the serfs of Luisuia Gorui, the Bolkonsky’s domain. Bezúkhof, at last a widower, is free to marry Natasha.
As in “War and Peace,” so in “Anna Karénina,” we shall find Count Lyof Tolstoï himself just as his own confessions have allowed us to point him out. As in “War and Peace,” all the chief personages will have some of his characteristics, and Vronsky and Konstantin Levin, in turn, represent him in some peculiar aspect, in the same way as Nikolaï Rostof, Prince Andréi, and Count Pierre. Thus, in the discourse where Count Vronsky proposes a re-organization of his landed property, and claims that it must be based on the agreement between the muzhik and his former lord, Count Tolstoï propounds a theory which he long held, but which he has since gone beyond; for, as we shall soon see, he has reached Communism.
In the same way we recognize the ideas of “My Religion” in Levin’s resistance of the patriotic outburst, or, to use his language, the unreflecting enthusiasm which rouses the Russian youth, and drives one of the characters of the story, Vronsky, to enlist of his own accord for the defence of the Serbian cause. While protesting by his own abstention, and also by his tirades against the Slav committees and the enlistment, Konstantin Levin is already applying the doctrine which Count Tolstoï will formulate in the maxim, “Do not engage in war,” and on which he will make the following comment: “Jesus has shown me that the fifth temptation that deprives me of my welfare is the distinction made by us between our compatriots and foreign nations. I must believe in that. Consequently, if in a moment of forgetfulness I experience a feeling of hostility against a man of another nationality, I must not fail to recognize, in my thoughtful moments, that this feeling is false. No longer, as formerly, can I justify myself by the superiority of my people to others; by the ignorance, the cruelty, or the barbarity of another people. I cannot refrain, at the first opportunity, from endeavoring to be more affable to a foreigner than to one of my countrymen.” And if Vronsky behaves differently from Konstantin Levin, it is not because Tolstoï wishes to offset the conduct of the one to the views of the other. In reality, it is not from conviction, it is from despair, that Vronsky enlists. He goes away so as to forget, amid the excitement—or, as Pascal said, the divertissement—of a soldier’s life the impression of the inward drama which has disturbed his soul to its foundation, and which, by a fatal, but unexpected, conclusion, has just bespattered him with blood.
The romance of “Anna Karénina” is the history of an adulterous amour: the climax of the amour is suicide. Is this suicide in the novelist’s mind a moral penalty? That would be a wholly barbarous conception, a sort of divine judgment such as would have been imagined by a story-teller in the Middle Ages, and Tolstoï seems to have wished to forestall such a vulgar interpretation of his narrative. There are in the romance other criminal amours, and it is without any sign of punishment that the wholly immoral relationship between the Princess Betsy and her lover leads them to scandalous conduct. On the other hand, the passion which unites Anna Karénina and Vronsky is a sincere, profound, almost solemn passion, in spite of the illegality of their behavior. The hearts of these two lovers are culpable but lofty. Besides, the more sympathy the author of the romance shows in their presentation, the more powerful is the lesson which he desires to draw from their moral torment. All the plan and all the interest of the work are here. What agonies of remorse this illegal union, so passionately desired, brings upon the guilty woman! What deep mortifications and what vulgar discomfitures, what deadly humiliations and what prosaic irksomeness, spring from this false situation, and ultimately make it so odious, so painful, that way of escape has to be found by an act of madness in a moment of despair!
Yet never were more conditions united to facilitate this union outside the law. Vronsky’s rank is too lofty for him to fear public opinion: he makes it, as it were, a point of honor to defy it, and he instals his mistress in his splendid domain as though she were his legitimate wife. Without much apparent difficulty, he makes his friends and his family treat his liaison with respect. Anna Karénina, on her part, loves Vronsky with a perfect passion, which is only intensified and not chilled by the feeling of sacrifices undergone. All that she asks from her lover in return is to be loved by him. She has made it a point of honor on her part to refuse the advantages of a divorce which her husband, Alekséi Karénin, at first offers to have pronounced against himself. She refused from a double reason of delicacy: she did not wish to add this gratuitous insult to the wrongs of which she is guilty towards this disagreeable, but upright, man; above all, she does not wish that a suspicion of calculation should cast its shadow over the feeling which she has towards the count.
A divorce, however, would put an end to many sentimental doubts causing misunderstandings, and to many subtleties of behavior resulting only in collisions. Vronsky demands the divorce with all the strength of his generous pride. Anna Karénina scouts the idea of it with such jealous anxiety as a naturally noble woman can feel in preserving the remains of her dignity, which a shock of passion has thrown down and broken to fragments like a costly vase. This antagonism creates between the two lovers a secret source of bitterness. There are other latent troubles. By her marriage, Anna Karénina has a son from whom she is separated, whom she worships; and the slightest remembrance of him causes her heart to thrill with that same strange feeling which is the precursor of motherhood. In consequence of her amour with Vronsky, she has a daughter. By a singular anomaly she does not love the child of the man whom she loves: she is vexed with her daughter for occupying in some measure a place usurped, for monopolizing with her the maternal cares which it seems to her that the other child so grievously needs. If as a mother she has her whimsical but touching fits of jealousy, as a woman she has other fears, the absurdity of which does not prevent them from being very painful. She spends her time and gnaws her heart in trying to divine her lover’s attitude towards her. She knows that for her sake he has renounced a most brilliant future; she is afraid that she cannot fill his objectless existence; she sees in each attempted return to any occupation, to any distraction whatsoever, a proof of weariness, a confession of irksomeness, a sign of regret.
Vronsky, who has made absolute renunciation without thought of return, at last begins to suffer from this distrust: the more it grows, the more disappointment and secret vexation he feels. Here the loftiness of character which attaches him to his mistress, and which has made it easy for him to brave every thing for her, turns against the unfortunate woman, and impels him to resist the efforts which she makes to get fuller possession of him. It is easy to imagine what will be the outcome of this incessant struggle. Each day the angles become sharper, feelings become more touchy, actions rankle more painfully; these two beings, starting on the bright and free pinnacles of love, have descended, without being themselves aware of it, into the dark and suffocating regions of hate. The result of this inevitable decay of passion is made not less cruel, but more evident, by a wholly external complication. The divorce which at one time Alekséi Karénin had offered, he refuses when his wife, weary of such suffering, at last decides to ask him for it. Here it is that the future author of “My Religion” appears with his precise theory of the immorality of divorce. The group of mystics to which the deserted husband has been led to ask consolation of a religious kind declare, through the mouth of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, that Alekséi Karénin cannot accede to his wife’s wishes, and grant her liberty, without falling himself into a state of mortal sin.
From the day when they learn of his refusal, Anna Karénina and Vronsky, in spite of themselves, rush straight towards separation. Anna, in her dread of it, precipitates it. Vronsky is nettled at her ever increasing restlessness; and before what seems to him pure ingratitude, he affects an indifference which he does not feel. Discussions, once rare, come in quick succession, and become quarrelsome. This daily conflict brings about an explosion, followed by a rupture.
Vronsky leaves her. He goes to his mother, the natural enemy of his mistress. As soon as she is alone, Anna Karénina feels as though torn in every fibre of her being: he must come back; she will fall on her knees before him; she will humiliate herself like a naughty child. She has written him to return, but she has not the strength to wait for him; she hurries to meet him, and stops at an intermediate station, when by a telegram she informs him of her arrival. The train arrives. Only the count’s valet appears, bringing a note in which Vronsky dryly announces that he is coming back. The tone of the note is interpreted by Anna as a new proof of the death of a love which in her alone has grown with time and possession. She tells herself that there is no more reason to live, and a series of fatal circumstances unite at this critical moment to hasten her to her death. She wishes to escape the inquisitive eyes of the loiterers at the station, who are struck by her strange behavior: she leaves the platform, and steps down upon the track. She remembers the terrible accident which a train-hand had met with at Moscow on the very day of her first meeting with Vronsky. A sort of reflex action takes place in her brain: a freight-train is coming along; she goes to meet it.
“She looked under the cars, at the chains and the brake, and the high iron wheels; and she tried to estimate with her eye the distance between the fore and back wheels, and the moment when the middle would be in front of her.
“‘There,’ she said, looking at the shadow of the car thrown upon the black coal-dust which covered the sleepers, ‘there in the centre he will be punished, and I shall be delivered from it all,—and from myself.’
“Her little red travelling-bag caused her to lose the moment when she could throw herself under the wheels of the first car: she could not detach it from her arm. She awaited the second. A feeling like that she had experienced once, just before taking a dive in the river, came over her, and she made the sign of the cross. This familiar gesture called back to her soul memories of youth and childhood. Life, with its elusive joys, glowed for an instant before her, but she did not take her eyes from the car; and when the middle between the two wheels appeared, she threw away her red bag, drawing her head between her shoulders, and, with outstretched hands, threw herself on her knees under the car. She had time to feel afraid. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Why?’ thought she, trying to draw back; but a great, inflexible mass struck her head, and threw her upon her back. ‘Lord, forgive me all!’ she murmured, feeling the struggle to be in vain. A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard. And the candle by which she read, as in a book, the fulfilment of her life’s work, of its deceptions, its grief, and its torment, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness; then flickered, grew faint, and went out forever.”
Certainly when one reads this brutally frightful dénouement in the light of the motto of the book, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” one might be tempted to interpret Jesus’ word in its Judaic sense. Yet it would be a serious mistake. It is very certain that this sudden and tragic end in the novelist’s mind was meant for Anna Karénina’s deliverance: out of pity for her, he granted her the favor of death. Death alone could put an end to the torment of this soul, and this torment began with the sin. Here is the true punishment of guilty love: all the illusion which exalted the senses, as long as they are pastured in “love’s shadow,” as one of Shakspeare’s characters calls it, vanishes as soon as one is sated of love itself.
“What had been for Vronsky for nearly a year the only and absolute aim of his life, was for Anna a dream of happiness, all the more enchanting because it seemed to her unreal and terrible. It was like a dream. At last the waking came; and a new life began for her, with a sentiment of moral decadence. She felt the impossibility of expressing the shame, the horror, the joy, that were now her portion. Rather than put her feelings into idle and fleeting words, she preferred to keep silent. As time went on, words fit to express the complexity of her sensations still failed to come to her, and even her thoughts were incapable of translating the impressions of her heart. She hoped that calmness and peace would come to her, but they held aloof. Whenever she thought of the past, and thought of the future, and thought of her own fate, she was seized with fear, and tried to drive these thoughts away.
“‘By and by, by and by,’ she repeated, ‘when I am calmer.’
“On the other hand, when during sleep she lost all control of her imagination, her situation appeared in its frightful reality: almost every night she had the same dream. She dreamed that she was the wife both of Vronsky and of Alekséi Aleksandrovitch. And it seemed to her that Alekséi Aleksandrovitch kissed her hands, and said, weeping, ‘How happy we are now!’ And Alekséi Vronsky, he, also, was her husband. She was amazed that she could believe such a thing impossible; and she laughed when she seemed to explain to them that every thing would simplify itself, and that both would henceforth be satisfied and happy. But this dream weighed on her spirits like a nightmare, and she always awoke in a fright.”
That is the moral punishment. What keen psychology! What an admirable commentary, and what a powerful interpretation of the “surgit amari aliquid!” And it is not only her punishment as a woman which Tolstoï has described, it is also her punishment as a mother, when the separation, long postponed by the husband’s own will, becomes indispensable to the two paramours, both of whom have returned from the doors of death, and returned more morbidly, more hopelessly, in love with each other than ever before.
During the first part of this separation, Anna Karénina had wonted herself to think that it was her duty to give up all that had hitherto gone to make her happiness, and to leave in her husband’s hands as a compensation, such as it was, all the elements of her past happiness which she had exchanged for another kind. “I give up all that I love, all that I appreciate most in this world,—my son and my reputation!” She succeeds for some time in lulling, in deceiving, the maternal sentiment, in substituting in place of her affection for her son her tender and constant care for the daughter, the child of her liaison with Vronsky. But Vronsky is obliged suddenly to leave Italy where they have been together; he and Anna reach Petersburg; the mother is again in the neighborhood of the house where her son is living; she wishes to enter it, to see him; she begs for permission, and it is harshly refused; she determines to go to her husband’s at any cost, and make her way to the child by bribing the servants. The reader will not blame me for quoting this admirable scene.[53]
“She went to a neighboring shop and purchased some toys, and thus she formed her plan of action: she would start early in the morning before Alekséi Aleksandrovitch was up; she would have the money in her hand all ready to bribe the Swiss and the other servants to let her go up-stairs without raising her veil, under the pretext of laying on Serozha’s bed some presents sent by his god-father. As to what she should say to her son, she could not form the least idea: she could not make any preparation for that.
“The next morning, at eight o’clock, Anna got out of her hired carriage and rang the doorbell of her former home.
“‘Go and see what is wanted! It’s some baruina,’ said Kapitonuitch, in overcoat and galoshes, as he looked out of the window and saw a lady closely veiled standing on the porch. The Swiss’s assistant, a young man whom Anna did not know, had scarcely opened the door before Anna thrust a three-ruble note into his hand.
“‘Serozha—Sergéi Aleksiévitch,’ she stammered; then she went one or two steps down the hall.
“The Swiss’s assistant examined the note, and stopped the visitor at the inner glass door.
“‘Whom do you wish to see?’ he asked.
“She did not hear his words, and made no reply.
“Kapitonuitch, noticing the stranger’s confusion, came out from his office and asked her what she wanted.
“‘I come from Prince Skorodumof to see Sergéi Aleksiévitch.’
“‘He is not up yet,’ replied the Swiss, looking sharply at the veiled lady.
“Anna had never dreamed that she should be so troubled by the sight of this house where she had lived nine years. One after another, sweet and cruel memories arose in her mind, and for a moment she forgot why she was there.
“‘Will you wait?’ asked the Swiss, helping her to take off her shubka. When he saw her face, he recognized her, and bowed profoundly. ‘Will your ladyship[54] be pleased to enter?’ he said to her.
“She tried to speak; but her voice failed her, and with an entreating look at the old servant she rapidly flew up the stairs. Kapitonuitch tried to overtake her, and followed after her, catching his galoshes at every step.
“‘Perhaps his tutor is not dressed yet: I will speak to him.’
“Anna kept on up the stairs which she knew so well, but she did not hear what the old man said.
“‘This way. Excuse it if all is in disorder. He sleeps in the front room now,’ said the Swiss, out of breath. ‘Will your ladyship be good enough to wait a moment? I will go and see,’ And opening the high door, he disappeared.
“Anna stopped and waited.
“‘He has just waked up,’ said the Swiss, coming back through the same door.
“And as he spoke, Anna heard the sound of a child yawning, and merely by the sound of the yawn she recognized her son, and seemed to see him alive before her.
“‘Let me go in—let me!’ she stammered, and hurriedly pushed through the door.
“At the right of the door was a bed, and on the bed a child was sitting up in his little open nightgown; his little body was leaning forward, and he was just finishing a yawn and stretching himself. His lips were just closing into a sleepy smile, and he fell back upon his pillow still smiling.
“‘Serozha!’ she murmured as she went towards him.
“Every time since their separation that she had felt an access of love for the absent son, Anna looked upon him as still a child of four, the age when he had been most charming. Now he no longer bore any resemblance to him whom she had left: he had grown tall and thin. How long his face seemed! How short his hair! What long arms! How he had changed! But it was still the same,—the shape of his head, his lips, little slender neck, and his broad shoulders.
“‘Serozha!’ she whispered in the child’s ear.
“He raised himself on his elbow, turned his frowzy head around, and, trying to put things together, opened wide his eyes. For several seconds he looked with an inquiring face at his mother, who stood motionless before him. Then he suddenly smiled with joy; and with his eyes still half-closed in sleep, he threw himself, not back upon his pillow, but into his mother’s arms.
“‘Serozha, my dear little boy!’ she stammered, choking with tears, and throwing her arms around his plump body.
“‘Mamma!’ he whispered, cuddling into his mother’s arms so as to feel their encircling pressure. Smiling sleepily, he took his hand from the head of the bed and put it on his mother’s shoulder and climbed into her lap, having that warm breath of sleep peculiar to children, and pressed his face to his mother’s neck and shoulders.
“‘I knew,’ he said, opening his eyes; ‘to-day is my birthday; I knew that you would come. I am going to get up now.’
“And as he spoke he fell asleep again. Anna devoured him with her eyes. She saw how he had changed during her absence. She would scarcely have known his long legs coming below his nightgown, his hollow cheeks, his short hair curled in the neck where she had so often kissed it. She pressed him to her heart, and the tears prevented her from speaking.
“‘What are you crying for, mamma?’ he asked, now entirely awake. ‘What makes you cry?’ he repeated, ready to weep himself.
“‘I? I will not cry any more—it is for joy. It is all over now,’ said she, drying her tears and turning around. ‘Nu! go and get dressed,’ she added, after she had grown a little calmer, but still holding Serozha’s hand. She sat down near the bed on a chair which held the child’s clothing. ‘How do you dress without me? How’—she wanted to speak simply and gayly, but she could not, and again she turned her head away.
“‘I don’t wash in cold water any more; papa has forbidden it: but you have not seen Vasíli Lukitch? Here he comes. But you are sitting on my things.’ And Serozha laughed heartily. She looked at him and smiled.
“‘Mamma! dúshenka, golúbtchika!’ [dear little soul, darling], he cried again, throwing himself into her arms, as though he now better understood what had happened to him, as he saw her smile.
“‘Take it off,’ said he, pulling off her hat. And seeing her head bare, he began to kiss her again.
“‘What did you think of me? Did you believe that I was dead?’
“‘I never believed it.’
“‘You believed me alive, my precious?’
“‘I knew it! I knew it!’ he replied, repeating his favorite phrase; and, seizing the hand which was smoothing his hair, he pressed the palm of it to his little mouth, and began to kiss it.”
“Vasíli Lukitch, meantime, not at first knowing who this lady was, but learning from their conversation that it was Serozha’s mother, the woman who had deserted her husband, and whom he did not know, as he had not come into the house till after her departure, was in great perplexity. Ought he to tell Alekséi Aleksandrovitch? On mature reflection he came to the conclusion that his duty consisted in going to dress Serozha at the usual hour, without paying any attention to a third person—his mother, or any one else. But as he reached the door and opened it, the sight of the caresses between the mother and child, the sound of their voices and their words, made him change his mind. He shook his head, sighed, and quietly closed the door. ‘I will wait ten minutes longer,’ he said to himself, coughing slightly, and wiping his eyes.
“There was great excitement among the servants; they all knew that the baruina had come, and that Kapitonuitch had let her in, and that she was in the child’s room; they knew, too, that their master was in the habit of going to Serozha every morning at nine o’clock: each one felt that the husband and wife ought not to meet, that it must be prevented.
“Kornéi, the valet, went down to the Swiss to ask why Anna had been let in; and finding that Kapitonuitch had taken her up-stairs, he reprimanded him severely. The Swiss maintained an obstinate silence till the valet declared that he deserved to lose his place, when the old man jumped at him, and shaking his fist in his face, said,—
“‘Da! Vot! you would not have let her in yourself? You’ve served here ten years, and had nothing but kindness from her, but you would have said, “Now, go away from here!” You know what policy is, you sly dog. What you don’t forget is to rob your master, and to carry off his raccoon-skin shubas!’
“‘Soldier!’ replied Kornéi scornfully; and he turned towards the nurse, who was coming in just at this moment. ‘What do you think, Marya Yefimovna? He has let in Anna Arkadyevna, without saying any thing to anybody, and just when Alekséi Aleksandrovitch, as soon as he is up, will be going to the nursery.’
“‘What a scrape! what a scrape!’ said the nurse. ‘But, Kornéi Vasilyévitch, find some way to keep your master, while I run to warn her, and get her out of the way. What a scrape!’
“When the nurse went into the child’s room, Serozha was telling his mother how Nádenka and he had fallen when sliding down a hill of ice, and turned three somersaults. Anna was listening to the sound of her son’s voice, looking at his face, watching the play of his features, feeling his little arms, but not hearing a word that he said. She must go away, she must leave him: this alone she understood and felt. She had heard Vasíli Lukitch’s steps, and his little discreet cough, as he came to the door, and now she heard the nurse coming in; but unable to move or to speak, she remained as fixed as a statue.
“‘Baruina! Golúbtchika!’ [mistress, darling], said the nurse, coming up to Anna, and kissing her hands and her shoulders. ‘God sent this joy for our birthday celebration! You are not changed at all.’
“‘Ach! nurse [nyanya], my dear: I did not know that you were in the house,’ said Anna, coming to herself.
“‘I don’t live here; I live with my daughter. I came to give my best wishes to Serozha, Anna Arkadyevna, golúbtchika.’
“The nurse suddenly began to weep, and to kiss Anna’s hand.
“Serozha, with bright, joyful eyes, and holding his mother with one hand and his nurse with the other, was dancing in his little bare feet on the carpet. His old nurse’s tenderness towards his mother was delightful to him.
“‘Mamma, she often comes to see me; and when she comes’—he began; but he stopped short when he perceived that the nurse whispered something in his mother’s ear, and that his mother’s face assumed an expression of fear, and at the same time of shame.
“Anna went to him.
“‘My precious!’ she said.
“She could not say the word ‘farewell’ [proshcháï]; but the expression of her face said it, and he understood.
“‘My precious, precious Kutik!’ she said, calling him by a pet name which she used when he was a baby. ‘You will not forget me; you’—but she could not say another word.
“Only then she began to remember the words which she wanted to say to him, but now it was impossible to say them. Serozha, however, understood all that she would have said: he understood that she was unhappy, and that she loved him. He even understood what the nurse whispered in her ear: he heard the words ‘always at nine o’clock;’ and he knew that they referred to his father, and that his mother must not meet him. He understood this, but one thing he could not understand: why did her face express fear and shame?... She was not to blame, but she was afraid of him, and seemed ashamed of something. He wanted to ask a question which would have explained this circumstance, but he did not dare: he saw that she was in sorrow, and he pitied her. He silently clung close to her, and then he whispered, ‘Don’t go yet! He will not come yet awhile.’
“His mother pushed him away from her a little, in order to see if he understood the meaning of what he had said; and in the frightened expression of his face she perceived that he not only spoke of his father, but seemed to ask her how he ought to think about him.
“‘Serozha, my dear,’ she said, ‘love him; he is better than I am; and I have been wicked to him. When you have grown up, you will understand.’
“‘No one is better than you,’ cried the child, with sobs of despair; and, clinging to his mother’s shoulders, he squeezed her with all the force of his little trembling arms.
“‘Dúshenka, my darling!’ stammered Anna; and, bursting into tears, she sobbed like a child, even as he sobbed.
“At this moment the door opened, and Vasíli Lukitch came in. Steps were heard at the other door; and, in a frightened whisper, he exclaimed, ‘He is coming,’ and gave Anna her hat.
“Serozha threw himself on the bed, sobbing, and covered his face with his hands. Anna took them away to kiss yet once again his tear-stained cheeks, and then with quick steps hurried from the room. Alekséi Aleksandrovitch met her at the door. When he saw her, he stopped and bowed his head.
“Though she had declared a moment before that he was better than she, the swift glance that she gave him, taking in his whole person, awoke in her only a feeling of hatred and scorn for him, and jealousy on account of her son. She hurriedly lowered her veil, and, quickening her step, almost ran from the room. She had entirely forgotten in her haste the playthings which, on the evening before, she had bought with so much love and sadness; and she took them back with her to the hotel.”
In such scenes, in such moral analyses, as these, it is necessary to look for the meaning and the drift of “Anna Karénina.” There is also in the conduct of the husband, the statesman, Alekséi Karénin, a constant lesson and significance which it would be easy to verify with “My Religion” in hand. He is punished for having sacrificed every thing to his ambition, even the love and the care of her whom he took to be his wife. He does not fight a duel with Vronsky because he lacks courage, but, above all, because religion lays it upon him as a duty not to strive to kill his neighbor. He hates his guilty wife, even to the point of wishing for her death, and of feeling disappointment when he finds her alive after the travail which she dreaded so keenly; but his heart softens at her delirium, at the words of repentance which she speaks at the moment which she thinks is her last: he forgives her. From the day when he has tasted the divine sweetness of mercy, he is another man: he has found the meaning of life. Henceforth he will apply the doctrine of Jesus: “‘I offer my other cheek to the smiter; I give my last cloak to him who has robbed me; I ask only one thing of God, that he will not take from me the joy of forgiving.’... Karénin rose: sobs choked his voice. Vronsky rose too, and standing with bowed head and humble attitude, looked up at Karénin without a word to say. He was incapable of understanding Alekséi Aleksandrovitch’s feelings; but he felt that such magnanimity was above him, and irreconcilable with his conception of life.”
The astonishment felt by Vronsky at hearing Karénin’s words, we also have some right to feel in reading Tolstoï’s work entitled “My Religion.” This work is a socialistic and communistic interpretation of the gospel. The censorship has put an end to the publication and sale of it; but it cannot prevent the manuscript from passing from hand to hand; and, when it shall have succeeded in destroying it, it will be forever unable to suppress the state of mind of which this work is only a manifestation, and which will possibly be before long the state of mind of a whole people.
It is possible now, if it ever was, by looking towards Russia, to find in the spectacle of the moral phenomena there going on an answer to the question, “How are dogmas born?”
It was remarked long ago that all the great convulsions of a nation are followed by an increased tendency towards mysticism: this is manifested in Russia more than elsewhere. For example, after the invasion in 1812, a sort of sectarian eruption followed the patriotic fever. The muzhik had bravely burned his harvest, and had taken arms to drive out the foreigner. He had done a man’s work, and had been given to understand, that, as soon as the enemy were out of the way, the grateful country would recognize him as a son and give him his freedom. The French, burned out by fire, cut down by frost,[55] retire, sowing the path of their journey back with corpses. But the hour of liberty does not yet strike. The affairs of Europe must be put in order before taking hold of the muzhik’s. After the treaties have been signed, after the armies have gone home, the rights of the muzhik remain neglected, and his complaints are stifled. His despair is seen in emigrations, in deeds of violence, in his affiliation with existing sects, in the formation of a new social and religious dogma. At that moment we see arise for the first time the bogomól, or praying men.
In the last quarter of the century, Russia has experienced a storm more tremendous than that of the invasion of 1812: it might be said that the face of the country was transformed by the upheaval in the condition of the people.
The single reign of Alexander II. saw such facts accomplished as the abolition of serfdom; the redivision of the land; above all, the increase in the taxes, which has touched the people in a very different way from all the reforms. The dominating influence of wealth has grown more and more; a great net-work of railroads has extended over the country; the maxim of laissez faire and laissez passer has made its way into the Russian village. None of these changes has fully succeeded, or, in better words, none has succeeded as yet. In periods of transition, it is the feature of inconvenience that, above all, attracts attention, and more often than not causes the advantageous to be overlooked. Now, here, the ill has often surpassed the good. Thus in the regulation of landed property, the insufficiency of the lots of land granted the muzhik, and the lack of proportion between the revenue and the tax imposed, have quickly brought the small cultivator back into dependence upon the great proprietor, and serfage has re-appeared in disguise.
As to the administrative reforms, the zemstvo, the tribunal, the school, all this has scarcely made any impression upon the people except as bringing an increase in the tax, expressed by the immemorial formula so much per soul. The taxes coming in much less than the increase in the rates, extreme measures have to be taken to obtain the payment of them. The muzhik has only one way of escaping prosecution, and that is to give himself over, body and soul, to the usurer. In short space of time the misery is universal. A single man gets rich at the expense of all the others: it is the kulak (the fist), the monopolist.
Bread is lacking in many places. In its place they eat, not cake, but preparations of straw, bark, or grass, all that which is called by the expressive term cheat-hunger.[56] It is plain to see that the muzhiks, reduced to these extremities, lose their interest in a society which treats them a little less kindly than if they were common cattle. All that they know of public affairs is that it is necessary to pay the tax. The most palpable advantage which they get from the time spent in discussing the common interests is the bumper of vodka with which discussions are kept alive: thus they forget themselves for a few hours.
Then, in hatred of the present, minds turn back to the past, and, above all, yearn eagerly for the future. The peasant’s naïve imagination is consoled by his dreams; the ardor of his desires is spent in Utopias. The idea of free lands haunts these enthusiastic minds. The story is secretly whispered about of the promises made by the Shah of Persia to emigrants who will come and settle in his dominions: his subjects shall pay no taxes and have no superiors. Solid masses of people set out suddenly, and depart for “the country of the white waters.” There it is that the popular ideal is to be realized. Many outlaw themselves without leaving their residences, and refuse to answer any of their obligations towards the commune or the mir. Others take refuge in the neighboring forest, go and settle in the desert, in the steppe. A considerable number go on pilgrimages to the holy places. Finally, there are those who go to swell the class of true Nihilists; that is to say, people who make their lives even a bold negation of all that is accepted, affirmed, around them,—the class of wanderers, or that of occults.
The attitude of these refractory men and women strikes the people, and is not slow to inspire them with a respect which is thus explained. The Russian people’s heads are stuffed with legends. One of the widest spread is that of the centenarian who lives in the desert, taking no other food than a consecrated wafer once a week; and, though he has not the slightest notion of the alphabet, yet he reads the Holy Book, the book with the leaves of gold, where is found the answer to every question, the rule for all conduct. We see now how reality and legend can come to be confounded. In the lonely hut where this hermit dwells apart, fitted as he is ordinarily by his intelligence and his will for the exceptional part which he is going to perform, he allows himself endlessly to reflect on all sorts of subjects. He ruminates at his leisure, in the solitude, over all the difficulties of the life from which he has torn himself away. He gropes after his definition of things good and of things evil; he slowly builds up his solemn casuistry.
The peasants one after another take the road to his hermitage. They are sure of bringing away good advice about disputed cases. Their cases include every subject,—family affairs, commune affairs, church affairs. Every thing is discussed, exposed to the cenobite’s criticism, to his interpretation. It is a matter of course that religious questions fill a large part in this programme, worked up by the anxieties of the throng, and the prophetic explanations of the hermit. But the programme also takes up economic or social questions. It prepares for the coming of a new law. This law is the outcome of a duty, and this duty is summed up in the formula, “To live according to justice;” or, in other words, “according to the will of God.”
The schisms formed, as we have just seen, are those of unimportant people. They have nothing in common with those which the irksomeness of living develops, in similar lines, in Russia, among the upper classes of the nation. Quite contrary to the sects born in the aristocracy, the schisms among the common people take their rise in the need of existence. They serve the instinct which impels the creature to seek not only life, but the best form of life. That is why they act so powerfully on the masses; that is why they cross time and space, making proselytes, apostles, martyrs.
The surprising thing is that the rich and aristocratic Count Tolstoï should become the apostle of such a religion. Like the sectaries of the rustic class, he builds a complete religious, political, and social system upon a new interpretation of the Gospels.
His religion, properly speaking, takes as its foundation the maxim of the Evangelist, “Resist not the one that is evil.” And it is not in an allegorical sense, it is by the letter, that these words of Jesus must be understood. The law laid down by Jesus’ disciples is precisely the opposite of that of the disciples of this world, which is the law of conflict. This doctrine of Jesus, which is sure to give peace to the world, is contained wholly in five commandments:—
1. Be at peace with everybody. Do not allow yourself to consider any one as low or stupid.
2. Do not violate the rights of wedlock. Do not commit adultery.
3. The oath impels men to sin. Know that it is wrong, and bind not yourselves by any promise.
4. Human vengeance or justice is an evil. Do not, under any pretext, practise it. Bear with insults, and render not evil for evil.
5. Know that all men are brothers, the sons of one father. Do not break the peace with any on account of difference of nationality.
By putting this doctrine into practice, man can realize a happiness in life, and there is no happiness in life except in this path. There is no immortality. The conception of the resurrection of the dead, according to Tolstoï, is the greatest piece of barbarism.
The political doctrine derived from this religious doctrine admits of no tribunals or armies or national frontiers.
The social doctrine to which we must be led by this religious and political dogma is the suppression of property, and the proclamation of communism. Man is not put into the world that others should work for him, but that he himself should work for others. He alone who works shall have daily bread.
The most dangerous enemy of society is the Church, because it supports with all its power the errors which it has read into its interpretation of Jesus’ doctrine. In place of this false light of Church dogma, which misleads believers and lets them “go into the pit,” must be substituted the light of conscience; one’s whole conduct must be irradiated by it, by submitting each of his acts to the approbation of the judge which we feel within us, “in our inner tribunal.”
To succeed in leading the life which conscience may approve, what is, above all, necessary? “Do not lead a life which makes it so difficult to refrain from wrath, from not committing adultery, from not taking oaths, from not defending yourself by violence, from not carrying on war: lead a life which would make all that difficult to do.” Do not crush at pleasure the very conditions of earthly happiness; do not break the bond which unites man to nature: that is to say, lead lives so as to enjoy “the sky, the sun, the pure air, the earth covered with vegetation and peopled with animals;” become a rustic instead of being the busy, weary, sickly urban. Return to the natural law of labor,—of labor freely chosen and accomplished with pleasure, of physical labor, the source of appetite and sleep. Have a family, but have the joys of it as well as the cares: that is, keep your children near you; do not intrust their education to strangers; do not imprison them; do not drive them “into physical, moral, and intellectual corruption.” Have free and affectionate intercourse with all men, whatever their rank, their nationality. “The peasant and wife are free to enter into brotherly relations with eighty millions of working-men, from Arkhangel to Astrakhan, without waiting for ceremony or introduction. A clerk and his wife find hundreds of people who are their equals; but the clerks of higher station do not recognize them as their equals, and they in their turn exclude their inferiors. A wealthy man of society and his wife have only a few score families of equal distinction, all the others are unknown to them. The cabinet minister and the millionaire have only a dozen people as rich and as important as they are. For emperors and kings, the circle is still narrower. Is it not like a prison, where each prisoner in his cell has relations only with one or two jailers?” Finally, live in a community, in hygienic conditions, with moral habits, which bring you the nearest possible to that ideal which is the very foundation of happiness, health as long as you live, death without disease, when existence has reached its limit.
The higher one rises in the social scale, the farther one departs from this ideal. The picture, which Tolstoï paints of the physical pains and tortures of the wealthy and of the aristocratic, of those whom he calls “the martyrs of the religion of the world,” is remarkably vigorous. Rousseau’s declamation against the pretended benefits of civilization here finds a powerful interpreter.
Does that mean that Tolstoï declaims? No one is more in earnest. It is not only in words that he declares war on the organization of society recognized and defended by the government of his country. He puts the doctrine into practice; he is ready to suffer all things to affirm the cause of Jesus. His refusal to take an oath, which is one of the articles of his creed, has already brought upon him a condemnation from one of those tribunals which he himself condemns in the name of the maxim of the Gospels, “Judge not.” It is not credible that the old hero of the wars of the Caucasus and Crimea compels his son to refuse military service, as was done once by the son of Sutaïef, the raskolnik of Tver. He would have liked to strip himself of his property, in order to conform to the socialistic dogma forbidding inheritance and property. He was hindered only by the fear of trampling upon the liberty and the conscience of others. But amid the luxury of his family Count Tolstoï lives the life of a poor man. He has dropped his pen as a novelist.[57] Clad like a muzhik, he wields the scythe or drives the plough; between seedtime and harvest, he preaches his evangel.
I do not wish either to spread or to confute his teaching: for me it is sufficient to have given the reader an idea of it. Let him not show the characteristic behavior of a French reader; let him not hasten to see in Count Tolstoï’s latest attitude a sign of aberration. This attitude in his country is shared by a multitude of men. The single religious sect of Shalaputui (Extravagants), preaching and practising a communistic gospel like Tolstoï, has, within a score of years, won over all the common people, all the rustic class, of the south and south-west of Russia. Judicious observers, well-informed economists, foresee the complete and immediate spread of the doctrine in the lower classes throughout the empire.[58] The day when the work of propagation shall be finished, the raskolniks of a special socialistic dogma will be counted: their number will suffice to show their power. That day, if they take it into their heads to act, will only have—using the popular expression—“to blow” on the old order of things, to see it vanish away.