Tolstoyan Still Lives: Characters and Ideas Coalescing around Death

Author: Yuval Klein

'Portrait of an Unknown Woman' by Ivan Kramskoi

In Tolstoy’s late short story Khodynka, which recounts a tragedy that occurred at the coronation of Nicholas II, the reader is presented with an abundance of death and a frugality of depth. By then, he had purported to know What Is Art? – as evidenced by his eponymous 1897 work – and wrote with an unambiguous didacticism. In briefly lampooning the late Tolstoy’s barren writing about dead bodies, one might become more appreciative of its seminal predecessors. These works can be likened to Tolstoy’s grave, a coffin on which grass sprouts in freeform, never crystallizing, thereby categorically rejecting stasis – in stark contrast to a barren unmarked grave, which heralds death in a vacuum. Tolstoy’s earlier haunting and evocative scenes with corpses have been gleaned – or perhaps, “exhumed” – from The Cossacks (1863), Anna Karenina (1873), and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886).

A twenty-three year old noblewoman, Rina, decides to attend the coronation of Nicholas II with “the people,” claiming, in her justification to her princely father, that viewing this historic scene from their designated pavilion would inhibit her from being with those wondrous people. In doing so, she might gain insight into subaltern conceptions of the emperor, and perhaps, have a “wild ride,” so to speak. After her father concedes to his beloved daughter, there is an abrupt shift to the second protagonist. Yemelyan is a muzhik who intends to attend the coronation alongside his fellow peers, with whom he manufactures cigarettes in a factory. The narrative remains glued to him as the scene descends into chaos – the crowd becomes so dense and uncontained that he is unable to see safety nor veer towards it. As he wades through the crowd, squirming with an urgency of self-preservation, Yemelyan reaches the height of disorientation and resentment towards his fellow man. Suddenly, he stumbles upon a child, heaves him towards a coachman and witnesses him alight on top of the crowd, running over the shoulders of madness. In a small clearance, he observes the corpse of a trampled woman whose pigment undertook a deathly bluish coloration. Tolstoy relates her appearance with dull language, but not a single human physical reaction or emotional response is described, nor even alluded to.

At a policeman’s behest, a squadron of Cossacks shove Yemelyan back into the caustic crowd. In a sea of people again, his fear and hatred suddenly dissipate, and he eludes the inertia of the crowd by finding an open space in which to dawdle, that is, drink and smoke, somehow… When we return to Yemelyan, he is stoic and proactive, demonstrating exemplary civic and moral behavior. The narrative shift is abrupt – similar to characters falling off of a cliff in the cartoons, wherein the momentum shifts linearly, the object of inertia rotating at a discernible ninety degrees. In other words, a motivator, i.e. the boy, flicks a light in the darkness of his soul, and voilà – without deliberation, without indulgence – he has achieved pure enlightenment. The mensch proceeds to find a half-conscious Rina, saving her life in a way that does not reveal itself to the reader. He learns that she is rich; she offers to take him to her father, where he would receive imminent reimbursement; he refuses; he’s ecstatic; Rina is, too; and they are spiritually nourished by this conversation until their dying days. 

The characters have no cognitive interiority; they are as emotionally hollow as corpses. In the next case study, Anna Karenina, death and corpses will lend to a richness of suprapersonal experiences. One might notice that the historical tragedy of Khodynka is infused with subjective experiences, yet no measures are taken to embellish them. Its scope also precludes the sort of residual significance that the soon to be described scenes hold in Anna Karenina and beyond. Finally, the corpse of the woman and the other alluded-to-victims weren’t described prior to the events, thus the reader is only shown death in a vacuum… in service of a banal argument. Khodynka left much to be desired. Where the story erred, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude thrived in its recounting of The Banana Massacre. One of the characters, José Arcadio Segundo, must grapple with the evanescent memory of those whose lives coalesced around him so animatedly in the preceding moments. It is a scene that has stayed with me for many years, one that sets a better artistic precedent than Yemelyan’s stupid exploits.

The first object of anatomy about which I will write belongs to a female horse named Frou Frou. When she is first introduced in Part II of Anna Karenina, Vronsky’s emotional connection to her is immediate. In fact, prefacing a description of her “qualities,” i.e. body, Tolstoy writes that it is Vronsky who “took [them] in at a glance.” The presence of a glance, through which one can vicariously observe life and death, is of integral literary value. By observing Vronsky’s visceral attraction to Frou-Frou’s gleaming, tender, and energetic mannerisms, one can evince her overarching symbolic purpose, as a figure who is metaphoric of Anna, and in this capacity, foreshadowing the arc of their relationship. The name “Frou Frou” also alludes to a then famous comic play in which the eponymous protagonist leaves her child and husband for a lover, arriving in Italy of all places. All of these basic anecdotes could be said of Anna. Therefore, as well as the initial impressions of the horse and Anna, the “wild ride” analogy should once again be invoked in likening the race of Vronsky and Frou Frou to the parallel relationship between Anna and Vronsky – the rapture, spectacle, and vicissitudes of passion are presented to the reader in one wondrous spectacle. Furthermore, the strewn body heralds a momentous shift in the novel’s plot, whereby the nature of Anna’s infatuation becomes apparent to the St. Petersburg nobility, herself, and soon thereafter, Karenin as well. 

A horse named “Gladiator,” the main adversary of Frou Frou and Vronsky, is described as having enormous ears. This draws a parallel between the former and Karenin; Anna constantly frets about her husband’s ears, becoming utterly repulsed at the sight of them. This thought is, of course, contingent upon her love for Vronsky – for before their fling, no such thoughts pestered her. Anna has, in effect, been harnessed by Vronsky. Their antagonist – or “chief rival” – is the big-eared Karenin. This scene happens soon after another in which Anna obstinately rejects the prospect of Vronsky making her his mistress. After all, she has “everything,” i.e. her son Seryozha, to lose – all for the bittersweet fruits of libertinage. 

Having arrived late, Vronsky recognizes the glare of Anna and his cousin Betsy, but does not engage with them. The only opponent to whose presence he is not privy to is Makhotin, master of the formidable “Gladiator.” Vronsky is, therefore, unaware of the full extent to which Karenin looms over his relationship with Anna. Vronsky refuses to believe that Karenin is a substantive opponent, but the “Gladiator” proves regnant, for Vronsky and Frou Frou’s will to the finish line ultimately collapses behind him. Anna is shocked to see the imminence of love and all its vicissitudes that the race represents (of course, she couldn't possibly know); she is rapt by its every move and utterly overwrought at its height, and is then shocked upon seeing its ultimate conclusion. Karenin, meanwhile, sees the extent to which Vronsky and Anna, as well as Frou Frou, are linked to one another. Therefore, the expectations of each of the three characters are subverted by the spectacle before them and all that it represents.

Frou Frou is initially disoriented and hence undesirable, reflecting Anna’s fatigue and depression during the first stage of her and Vronsky’s relationship. They overcome opponents and obstacles, meeting “the devil” with determination. When they manage to surpass Makhotin and the “Gladiator,” the joy is accompanied by cognizance of their main opponent’s dangerous proximity. In other words, Vronsky and his partner are leading the race, but their opponent looms large over them. The metonymic functions of each character work flawlessly in accordance to the imminent arc of the protagonists’ story. Vronsky wants Anna to entrust him with the responsibility of leading her past Karenin towards an elusive finish line. While Vronsky manages to lead Anna forward, they eventually collapse prior to the cumulative moment, i.e. Anna’s awaited divorce from Karenin and the subsequent marriage between Vronsky and Anna. Frou Frou staggered as Vronsky “failed to keep up with the horse’s movements…” In the upheaval prior to suicide, Anna claimed that she had gone too fast for him, and that “everything” has soured and collapsed as a result.

Frou Frou flails on the ground, her back broken. Vronsky impetuously tugs at her collar, trying to rein her back into the race, in which Makhotin has presently soared past them. When the race is over and he has lost, Vronsky is finally able to feel sincere pity and loss at the sight of the broken horse. She is executed in front of everyone. Similarly, after Vronsky and Anna have sex for the first time, the act is described in terms of “murder.” These events are concluded in a way akin, though markedly different, to that of Khodynka; we are told that the events described linger in the memory of the protagonists for a significant amount of time. In the case of Vronsky, the significance is vividly rendered to the reader, unlike with Yemelyan. “But the memory remained in Vronsky’s soul for a long time as the most heavy and painful memory of his life.” The terminus of the memory’s traumatic primacy is Anna’s demise. Vronsky, rather than jettisoning vanity, allows it to mingle with proactive and sympathetic feelings of love and the ego. He is distraught at the sight of Frou Frou’s corpse, bridging Part 2 to Part 8, in which he weeps over the ruined, still evocative corpse of his late lover.

The first and last meetings of Anna and Vronsky occurred at a railway station – emerging at the confluence of love, death, and trains. The two scenes are in dialogue with one another, as I intend to show. At the sight of the railroad worker, gouged out by “... something huge and implacable…”  like a later Anna – Oblonsky is immediately and sincerely affected, exhibiting sorrow that exceeds the socially warranted amount. Conversely, Vronsky is composed, instead, initiating a vain and ostentatious display of generosity in an attempt to move Anna, with whom he is already deeply infatuated. She is able to discern the nature of his intentions. We are thus introduced to facets of the characters’ identity in showing their idiosyncratic reactions to a profound stimulus, that of a dead body. In a vacuum, perhaps as a short story, Oblonsky’s reaction would testify to a profoundly sympathetic temperament, whereas Vronsky would be exposed as an exhibitionist, whose virtue is merely "performative," insincere. The event of Anna’s death neither affirms this reading, nor does it reveal an opposite pole, so to speak. Instead, it is consistent with another reality, one that can only be excavated from the bountiful grounds of longevity. 

In the case of Anna, Oblonsky is initially distraught, but this state wanes rather quickly, such that he is able to perform his civic duties unimpeded soon after. Conversely, Vronsky becomes permanently demoralized. Vronsky digs himself into a pit of depression, from which there is no quick escape. On the other hand, Stiva’s pit of sorrow is a hole through which he falls, and is then immediately trampolined back up. It demonstrates how, though sentient and humane, Oblonsky is not swept away long by any one thing, be it emotions, projects, or ideas – his profound emotional experiences are rather transient. Perhaps this is also enhanced by the fact that his external reality remained relatively tranquil throughout the story, that is in spite of the challenge that his affair initially posed. It was quickly resolved, and afterwards, Dolly and Oblonsky simply became arbiters of the other characters’ relationship. For example, in facilitating Levin and Kitty’s relationship, and in attempting to mend the markedly less facile relationship of Anna and Karenina. Dolly also serves as a valuable friend to Anna, and Oblonsky is to Levin. They harness their emotions, and in doing so, seize a more placid external reality, while tending to their fickle, outwardly tempestuous friends. 

Anna is initially introduced to the reader as she visits her brother and Dolly in the midst of their crisis. She offers a beacon of stability, a light that slowly wanes throughout the novel. The metaphorical darkness is described at the end of Part 7 in depicting the extinguished reading lamp, as it “sputtered, grew dim, and went out forever.” Oblonsky is perplexed as to how he might placate his livid and disconsolate wife, who suddenly neglects her chores, which she normally does so assiduously that the domestic workers aren’t qualified to compensate for her absence. He, too, feels indignant by the whole affair, but is, again, able to spring back rather quickly into his bureaucratic office work. At a train station, Oblonsky awaits his sister’s arrival and meets Vronsky, who was a marriage prospect of his sister-in-law Kitty at the time. Vronsky awaits his mother’s arrival, to whom he is exceedingly polite, but not particularly affectionate. In a fortuitous convergence of paths, the two incoming guests sit next to one another and converse extensively. Vronsky’s mother is initially pleased by the affair with Vronsky and it’s not inconceivable that her trainbound boasts about him were motivated by an intention to facilitate a relationship between the two. An affair with such a fine married woman would not violate the rules of propriety; on the contrary, such an affair will enhance a young man’s prestige. When, for example, Princess Betsy illicitly handles an affair with Tushkevich – a minor and unremarkable character – everyone in their milieu knows and tolerates the scandal, simply treating it as a source of amusement. When Anna and Vronsky’s relationship reveals itself to be increasingly passionate and conspicuous, Vronsky’s mother no longer tolerates it, as it errs to the socially transgressive. 

When the ladies alight from the train, Anna appears first, passing by Vronsky as a stranger. Vronsky’s first impression is described similarly to the previously described first impression of Frou Frou. He is drawn to something “gentle” and “tender” that he has gleaned independent of bodily proportions and features – it is a visceral attraction that the two elicit. She, too, glances back at him – and he purports to discern a “restrained animation… as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will…” That is, Anna is brimming with a palpable energy that is waiting to be expended on the likes of him or another. The description calls into question whether or not Vronsky’s chance entrance into Anna’s life precipitated her ultimate derailment, or whether she was simply prone to such an affair by virtue of her temperament. 

The culmination of this scene occurs when, upon mounting their carriages, the characters notice a commotion brewing. The ladies stay put, while Vronsky and Oblonsky delve into the source of dismay, following the crowd towards the site of action. Even before the mens’ arrival, the news of a dead watchman reached them. At the sight of a mangled corpse, Oblonsky is nearly incapable of repressing tears, whereas Vronsky is not particularly moved, or at least quite reticent. Anna is shaken up, telling her brother that this event is “a bad omen.” Then, before moving on to the issue at hand – Dolly and Oblonsky’s crisis – she subtly reveals another burst of this surplus energy and shivers at its subliminally acknowledged extirpation potential. Anna is described… “tossing her head as if she wanted physically to drive away something superfluous that was bothering her.” Vronsky may not be a defined object on which to melt herself, but in his presence, that ominous potential briefly surfaced – a bad omen, indeed.

I will now contextualize a striking scene in The Cossacks, Tolstoy’s remarkable 1863 novel. A young officer named Olenin is deployed to the Caucuses, in which the Russian imperial army seeks to consolidate rule and domination of the local Chechens by way of the area’s Cossacks. His attempts at fulfilling his quixotic literature-derived fantasies of seducing a local girl – perhaps a Circassian, like in A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov’s classic – and becoming seamlessly integrated into the perceived primitive order of the villagers’ lives, play out in an enjoyable farce. The prose in The Cossacks is economical, lacking in the verbosity and chronological scope of Tolstoy’s more recognizable works. 

Olenin falls in love with a Cossack girl named Maryanka, who proves to be more assertive and agential than expected. She is poised to marry Luka or “Lukashka,” who, after a great feat of heroism, has enough cultural capital to be integrated into her rather wealthy household. In one scene, he shoots a rogue abrek – Northern Caucasian, in this case, Chechen, vigilantes who fought against Russian expansionism – during a night patrol. As the night passes, the narrator relates an abundance of sensory details, such that the reader feels at the brink of something – perhaps death, glory, or battle – and then, at the arrival of dawn, Luka spots an erratically moving piece of driftwood and intuits that a Chechen is behind it. A hand juts from behind the log; Luka aims his rifle; as the log comes nearer to him, a Chechen rears his head and is instantaneously shot. 

“In the name of the Father and the Son,” Lukashka cries out as a sharp piercing noise sounds. His squadron is galvanized into wakeful vigilance, and when Luka informs them about his feat, they are incredulous. He points at the corpse, which can be made out stagnating further along the river, and their attention immediately shifts to the prospect of more Chechens – a whole squadron who would imminently follow this perceived scout. While fellow Cossack soldiers Nazarka and Ergushov leave the riverbank in pursuit of reinforcement, a sleep-deprived and volatilely trigger-happy Lukashka nearly shoots Uncle Eroshka, a town elder who is initially respected by Luka before he is caught conspiring against the boy’s relationship with Maryanka. Luka rambles triumphantly about the details of his deathly encounter, while the old man somberly observes the corpse. 

The reinforcement arrives and Luka cautiously wrests his prey from out of the water. At first, everyone quips about the corpse before them, all except for Uncle Eroshka, a wise old pariah who's seen and instigated death many times in his life, and as such, developed a callousness that precludes excitement of any sort. After the abrek is robbed of his possessions, the fog of derision that previously masked his humanity evaporated and the weight of his life gradually became palpable to Lukashka and the other Cossacks. Luka does not necessarily mourn the person before him, but is rapt by its intensity.

In describing the next scene from The Death of Ivan Ilyich, little context is warranted; the presence and embodiment of death arise at the beginning of the story. At first, the narrator reveals the thoughts of Ilyich’s acquaintances upon hearing of his passing. They are mainly unified by a sense of an unease at the dead man’s social proximity to them, “delight that he had died and they hadn’t,” and amongst colleagues, there are opportunistic speculations about a concomitant vacancy for promotion. One such unsympathetic acquaintance is Pyotr Ivanovich, a colleague and lifelong friend; Ilyich’s death elicits in him a strategically repressed fear of his own mortality, which subsides soon after the funeral. 

Pyotr Ivanovitch is struck by the corpse of his “friend.” In describing the body in accordance with his thoughts, the narrator writes with a blithe condescension. For example, in describing an acquaintance who invites Pyotr Ivanovitch to play cards, he writes that his look reveals that “the incident of the funeral service for Ivan Ilyich could in no way serve as a sufficient motive for considering the order of the session disrupted…” Tolstoy is cultivating a humiliating callous around the death of our protagonist, so that he may describe the full weight of his life in the ensuing chapters. He also constantly emphasizes how the body merely demonstrates how “dead men always lie,” how “dead men always do,” or “as [is] with all dead people.” Having done so, the weight of Ilyich’s life can thus stand in contrast to the piercing lightness of his death, that is, all death.