Anyone know anything about politics/economy in 19c Russia?

Pretty please? There's a lot of social and economic waffling in Part Two and Three, what with Levin loving and then hating his agriculture, then moving into sharecropping for better results. I admit I'm a little stymied by the politics and economy in Russia at this point in time, other than the fact that the peasants had been freed before this book takes place. I'm just not certain where that leaves the situation in AK. Levin hires his workers, he works with them but is thought very odd for this...then he grows discontent and realizes that his workers don't do a good job for him like they do for himself...then he decides that sharecropping is the best solution - or perhaps sharecropping isn't the right term, but profit-sharing? In any case, it seems a bit like they're dabbling in a near-commune, although Levin still maintains ownership of the land, and the workers are starting to seem like Workers instead of peasants.

My knowledge of the socio-economical-political isms is pretty basic, and I'm having difficulty keeping up. (Part of me wonders if Levin is constantly flip-flopping due to his discontent with his life and things will shore up once he marries Kitty.) I also have to admit that if I decided to research this, it would start and stop at Wikipedia. So does anyone out there know about the topic? Any of our fair contributors able to make a post on the topic?

The square neckline

Part Three, chapter XXVI, Levin visits Sviyazhsky after an invitation for hunting, even though Levin is aware that Sviyazhsky wants Levin to marry his young sister-in-law. And Levin does not want to marry her: "...he knew that even though he wanted to get married, even though by all tokens this quite attractive girl would make a wonderful wife, he was as little capable of marrying her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatsky, as flying into the sky." But he goes to visit Sviyazhsky and his family despite this, wondering if he could see this unnamed girl and start to get over Kitty.

It is an awkward situation, and brilliantly written:

[Levin] felt painfully awkward because the sister-in-law sat facing him in a special dress, put on for his sake, as it seemed to him, cut in a special trapezoidal shape on her white bosom. This rectangular neckline, despite the fact that her bosom was very white, or precisely because of it, deprived Levin of his thought. He fancied, probably mistakenly, that this neckline had been made on his account, and considered that he had no right to look at it and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the neckline having been made at all.

This actually very pretty bridesmaid dress is from JLM Couture, designed by Alvina Valenta

This partial-paragraph had me giggling hysterically, imagining Levin (who I already think of as slightly socially inept) blushing over tea, studiously avoiding the girl's bosom while being so painfully aware that the same bosom was on display for his behalf. I think of him sort of staring at the girl's left ear, or at a spot on the wall just behind her head, if he was forced to converse with her, and the girl perhaps holding her arms together just so, determinedly trying to get the most out of her square neckline. Or maybe she's not that forward, I don't know, the girl herself is really an incidental part of this episode, it's her bosom that's important. Shortly later, being forced into asking the girl a direct question, Levin "...[tried] to look past the neckline, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction, he would see nothing else." He very quickly excuses himself from the table with a very awkward and completely abrupt (and false), "'I hear an interesting conversation,' he added and went to the other end of the table."

A portrait of Anna

In Part Three, chapter XIV, Karenin, upon writing the letter that informs his wife that he will forget her transgression and has decided that he cannot break the bonds placed upon them by a higher power, studies the portrait of Anna in his study, executed by "a famous painter."

Anna's eyes stare at him, insolently and mockingly, and the beauty of her white skin, black hair, and black lace over her head also strike Karenin as "unbearably insolent and defiant." I thought again, just a little bit, about this portrait, even though at that point, this portrait is not how I see Anna:

I would certainly call this stare defiant, though perhaps not insolent - however, I am not Karenin and have not just been informed by my wife that she is in love with another and has no use for me.

Tolstoy was very aware of art and its uses, so I was a little disappointed that this moment did not last longer than the half-paragraph at the beginning of this section. However, Karenin, with his seemingly extraordinary knack for burying his emotions and concerns behind work and politics, remains in his study with his work. All this time, the portrait stares down at him, though Tolstoy does not acknowledge its presence until the end of the chapter: "...he again glanced at the portrait, frowned and smiled contemptuously...Alexei Alexandrovich went to bed at eleven o'clock, and when, lying in bed, he recalled the incident with his wife, it no longer presented itself to him in the same gloomy light."

This brooding-by-portrait also reminds me of another famous scene from another famous book, made into a movie.



Of course, I can't find the actual scene, but at 1:46, as Mammy talks to Melanie, there's a large portrait of Scarlett in a blue dress behind them. At one point in the film, Rhett, enraged at Scarlett, pours himself yet another whiskey but in a fury, doesn't drink it but hurls it in an outrage at that portrait. It's quite a different reaction to the hanging, watching portrait than Karenin's cold, calculated response to Anna's. Karenin is not sitting well with me. I am not certain how I'd like for him to be reacting, but his incessant concern about society over his own relationship and emotions and his preternatural ability to compartmentalize and forget his own emotions make me think of him as cold, unfeeling, false.

Holy cow...I'm almost caught up!

I just finished Part Four this morning and thought I was on track, then looked at the reading time line and realized I should be finishing up Part Five now. Oh well, at least that means that everything I want to say about what I've read so far is fair game! Heh. I'm back in action.

A dead horse

Part two, chapter XXV...Vronsky rides his beloved Frou-Frou to death in an obstacle race. 

Frou-Frou is described during the race as "excited and much too high-strung," and has a bad start to the race at the first moment, but as she moves into her stride, she and Vronsky overtake everyone except for two of Vronsky's rivals, Makhotin and Kuzovlev. Vronsky is described, in these first few minutes of the race, as "...not yet master of himself or of his horse...he was unable to guide his horse's movements."

As Kuzovlev and his horse go down over an obstacle, Vronsky is left behind only Makhotin. Frou-Frou nails her hoof on a solid barrier as they jump it, but it makes no difference to her stride and they race on, hell bent for leather, to catch up with Makhotin. As they finally pass Makhotin on a straight stretch, Vronsky's "...joy and tenderness for Frou-Frou kept increasing..." as their victory was all but assured. But as they pass the most difficult obstacle and start to soar over the last, Vronsky makes a wrong move, shifts, lowers in his saddle, and his false move sends Frou-Frou down and breaks her back. 

But Vronsky doesn't understand the extent of Frou-Frou's injuries, he only sees that he is no longer winning, and pulls at the fallen, hurt horse to get her to rise and finish the race. He "...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, looked at her master with her speaking eye." And Vronsky finally understands. At the moment of a great triumph, he fails, and Frou-Frou is shot while Vronsky remains uninjured. The memory of this race "...remained in his soul for a long time as the most heavy and painful memory of his life."

I cannot help but to think this does not bode well for our Anna, if one chooses to see the race as an extended metaphor. Think of it: Vronsky is proud and proud of his possession, the horse (Anna?); his love an affection for the horse rise the closer they are to victory (maintaining, getting away with an affair, or succeeding in taking Anna from Karenin?); he doesn't at first understand that what he does causes the horse to fall (yes...); in the end, his careless actions causes Frou-Frou's death (oh dear.)

I think this scene is also telling for me about Vronsky's character. Here he is portrayed as caring but careless with his possession, and the fact that Frou-Frou's death remained with him as one of the most painful memories of his life is something I can understand, but it also tells me that Vronsky - at this point in his life - must not have experienced great tragedy of any sort that affected him to this degree. To me, well into Part Two, Vronsky is still a careless society cad, popular and successful, and without any great care in the world. I fear for his carelessness with his beloved Frou-Frou, and with the mistakes that resulted in her death.

Kitty at the Spa, part two

As Kitty recuperates at the German spa, she meets two characters who seem to help her along on her road to recovery, both mentally and physically: Mme Stahl and her companion, Varenka. Mme Stahl has a mysterious ailment which renders her an invalid, and Varenka, who is revealed to be a false daughter, cares for her as well as tending to the sick around her.

I feel like this section is a very telling one in terms of Tolstoy's sense of false charity, and also a societal dark section in which we have the conflicted and innocent Kitty tiptoeing through the minefield of charity, true and false. Mme Stahl is presented at first as this very religious, kind, and true person, while Varenka is the picture of absolute selflessness. Only towards the end of section two is it revealed that Mme Stahl is likely an "invalid" only because her figure is grotesque, and that despite her loftiness, she is actually prone to contemptuousness. Varenka is allowed to remain pure and good, though her mother's ulterior motives are revealed.

I also find it interesting that it's Kitty's father who casually reveals Mme Stahl's false front. The Prince had known Mme Stahl when she was younger, and when he tells Kitty the truth of her "ailment," the woman falls off her pedestal in Kitty's mind:

...despite having prepared herself not to submit to her father's opinion, not to let him into her sanctuary, she felt the divine image of Mme Stahl that she had carried in her soul for a whole month had vanished irretrievably, as the figure made by a flung-off dress vanishes once you see how the dress is lying. There remained only a stubby-legged woman who stayed lying down because of her bad figure and tormented the docile Varenka for not tucking in her rug properly. And by no effort of imagination could she bring back the former Mme Stahl.

The Prince interrupts Kitty's childish belief in Mme Stahl - an interruption of something almost sacred by a very secular person like a wedge pummelling its way into a timber.

Kitty is also wounded by her own charitable acts towards the painter Petrov and his wife. She befriends Petrov, who is ill with an unnamed disease (perhaps consumption?) in her quest to be kind and charitable to the sick and less fortunate around her. But Petrov becomes enamoured of Kitty, which inevitably turns his wife against Kitty. In this there's a repetition of her previous relationship with Levin, as she did not wish for Levin to fall in love with him because she would turn him down. But there's also an eye-opening bit of maturation in progress for Kitty, as she discovers that even well-meaning acts do not always stay true to intention, and that the charitable can encounter ire.

I can't help but to feel like these scenes at the spa are some of the deceptively darkest we've read so far, what with its pointed repetition of the sense of false charity, the truth of personality revealed and the keen and barbed method of reminding us that people are not what they seem. The particular bone to pick here is obviously with those who engage in charity and spirituality as a mask for their own selfish ends, exposing the duplicity of false charity and religion, but in a larger sense it can be read as a cautionary tale: people are not who they say they are. I read these scenes first as progressing the story, but at some point stopped, blinked as a light went on in my head, and went back over everything again finding new and deeper meaning behind the plot.

Kitty progresses as a character so rapidly at the spa in only a few short pages; we walk with her as she barrels through recovery and growing up. The spa section - and section two entirely - ends with some of her first thoughts as an adult:

...she understood that she had deceived herself in thinking that she could be what she wished to be...she felt all the difficulty of keeping herself, without pretense and boastfulness, on that level to which she had wished to rise...Kitty returned to Moscow cured. She was not as carefree and gay as before, but she was at peace.

Lofty: Kitty at the spa

loft⋅y

–adjective, loft⋅i⋅er, loft⋅i⋅est.

1.	extending high in the air; of imposing height; towering: lofty mountains.

2.	exalted in rank, dignity, or character; eminent.

3.	elevated in style, tone, or sentiment, as writings or speech.

4.	arrogantly or condescendingly superior in manner; haughty: to treat someone in a lofty manner.

5.	Nautical. noting a rig of a sailing ship having extraordinarily high masts.

6.	(of fabric or yarn) thick and resilient.

---

Origin:
1400–50; late ME; see loft, -y ¹

Related forms:

loft⋅i⋅ly, adverb

loft⋅i⋅ness, noun

Synonyms:
1. elevated. See high. 3. sublime. 4. supercilious.

Antonyms:
2. lowly. 4. humble.

Thank you, dictionary.com

Reading the first part of chapter 23, section two, I was struck by the preponderance of the use of the word "lofty" in my translation, which is the most recent Pevear/Volokhonsky edition. In the first three paragraphs, "lofty" is used twice, and in the fourth it's used twice in rapid succession, marking a drastic change of tone to the chapter.

Lofty: high, exalted, elevated. For me, the connotation of "lofty" includes air, space, height, spirits, spirituality: I hear lofty and immediately think of European Gothic cathedrals, especially High Gothic towards the end of the fourteenth and into the fifteenth centuries. For me, "lofty" does indeed have spiritual - and spatial - connotations.

Here it's used as such:

[Kitty's] comfort lay in the fact that, thanks to this acquaintance [with Mme Stahl and Varenka], a completely new world was opened to her which had nothing in common with her past: a lofty, beautiful world, from the height of which she could calmly look over that past.

...it was a lofty, mysterious religion, bound up with a series of beautiful thoughts and feelings which one could not only believe in because one was told to, but could also love.

Heavenly, which could be a synonym, is also used once:

Yet in [Mme Stahl's] every movement, in every word, in every heavenly glance, as Kitty put it, especially in the whole story of her life...in everything, Kitty learned 'what was important,' which till then she had not known.

But the very next sentence turns lofty into something darker:

But however lofty Mme Stahl's character was, however touching her whole story, however lofty and tender her speech, Kitty inadvertently noticed features in her that she found troubling.

This is the chapter in which Kitty dabbles with charity, generosity, and spirituality on her way towards healing the hurt that Vronsky's rejection inflicted on her. With his ever acute balance, Tolstoy shows Mme Stahl's true character through a progression in Kitty's eyes, from lofty to fallen. It's interesting to me, first and foremost, how he paints Mme Stahl's persona with the repetition of "lofty," which not only imbues meaning but also a physical depiction to her spiritual being, before taking lofty to a second, more cynical use - how the very word gets turned on its ear to become mocking.

If you are reading a different translation, do you have this repetition of "lofty" in these paragraphs? If not, what words are used in yours?