---

439.

The approach of the train was more and more evident by the preparatory bustle in the station, the rush of the porters, the movement of policemen and attendants, and people meeting the train. Through the frosty vapour could be seen workmen in short sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing the rails of the curving line. The hiss of the boiler could be heard on the distant rails, and the rumble of something heavy.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, The Modern Library, New York, 1965, p.65.

PLACE: Petersburg

TIME: ca. 1870, Tolstoy writing about his own time

CIRCUMSTANCE: Oblonsky is meeting his sister Anna Karenina at the train station.

 

440.

At that moment the wind, as if surmounting all obstacles, sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He had said what her soul longed to hear...

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, The Modern Library, New York, 1965, p.109.

PLACE: A small station between Petersburg and Moscow

TIME: ca. 1870, Tolstoy is writing about his own time

CIRCUMSTANCE: Anna, while leaving the train for a short while to get some fresh air, meets Vronsky.

 

441.

The work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at once laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides, brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another on to the sound of rattling tin boxes and clanging scythes, and the hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and happy shouts.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, The Modern Library, New York, 1965, p. 270.

PLACE: Levin's country estate, not too far away from Moscow.

TIME: between 1870 and 1880, Tolstoy is writing about his own time.

CIRCUMSTANCE: Levin mowing in the fields together with the peasants.

442.

The peasant women, with their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the cart. One wild untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a hundred strong, healthy voices of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing in unison.

The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt as though a storm was swooping down upon him with a thunder of merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the carts, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild, merry song with its shouts and whistles and clapping.

 

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, The Modern Library, New York, 1965, p.291.

PLACE: Levin's country estate.

TIME: between 1870 and 1880

CIRCUMSTANCE: The peasant women an their way home after a long day of work in the fields.

 

443.

Levin, unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for the night in the meadow scarcely slept the whole short summer night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughter all together over supper, then singing again and laughter.

The whole long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the meadow before the morning.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, The Modern Library, New York, 1965, p.292.

PLACE: Levin's country estate.

TIME: between 1870 and 1880.

CIRCUMSTANCE: Levin and some of his peasants spending the night in the meadows.

 

444.

...and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud, began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard the steps of Stepan Arkadyevich, mistaking them for the tramp of the horses in the distance, he heard the brittle sound of the edge of a hummock on which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could not explain to himself.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, The Modern Library, New York, 1965, p.607.

PLACE: Levin's country estate.

TIME: Between 1870 and 1880.

CIRCUMSTANCE: Levin and some friends hunting for grouse and snipe in the marsh.

---

home