Tolstoy

Tatyana has a brother in the first sketch (a prototype of Oblonsky), while her husband has a sister called kitty, but there is no trace of Levin and his brothers yet, nor any member of the Shcherbatsky family. Stavrovich is portrayed sympathetically, while his wife is intriguingly both ‘provocative’ and ‘meek’. Tolstoy had never before sketched a synopsis of a fictional work in advance, but in any case this raw material soon changed significantly. He developed and dramatically expanded every part of this storyline in future drafts except for his evocation of the state of mind of Balashov’s horse during the race, which he subsequently decided to cut. Balashov’s English groom is called Cord, as in the final version of the novel, but his mare is not Frou-Frou yet. To begin with she bears the English name of ‘Tiny’, and is referred to as ‘Tani’ (as the name becomes when transliterated) and also as ‘Tanya’, thus drawing an indelible link with his lover, which remains in the final version, although the association is not articulated.

Tolstoy was nowhere near ready to give any of this material to Sonya to copy out yet. Instead, he started a new draft of the beginning of his novel:

After the opera, the guests drove over to young Princess Vrasskaya’s house. Having arrived home from the theatre, Princess Mika, as she was called in society, had so far only managed to take off her fur coat in the brightly lit hall in front of the mirror, which was festooned with flowers; with her small gloved hand she was still unhooking the lace which had caught on a hook of her fur coat…²⁶

This time he called his heroine Anastasia (‘Nana’) Arkadyevna karenina, and replaced her yellow lace gown with the black velvet she will wear to the ball in the final version. Her husband is now firmly called Alexey Alexandrovich, but her lover’s name has switched from Balashov to Gagin. Tolstoy ended up discarding this draft, but he would save up the detail of the caught lace for Anna to unhook in the final version of the novel, when she is leaving Princess Betsy’s soirée after her fateful encounter with Vronsky.

Tolstoy wrote several more pages, but he was already beginning to chafe at the bit. He wanted to write a novel of adultery, but he did not want to be constrained by writing only about St Petersburg high society, even if his attitude towards it was sharply critical. With a few exceptions (Stavrovich, for example, has a conversation with a nihilist on a train), his social radius was thus far stiflingly small, and so he decided to introduce in his third draft the character of kostya Neradov, a prototype of Levin. Neradov is a rural landowner, and both a friend of Gagin (the future Vronsky) and his rival for the hand of kitty Shcherbatskaya, who also now makes her first appearance. The action, moreover, now moves to Moscow.

4. The fourth draft of the opening of Anna karenina, 1873

Tolstoy was gradually finding his way into his new novel. His fourth stab at an opening now received the title ‘Anna karenina’, followed by ‘Vengeance is Mine’ as an epigraph. This draft begins with the familiar scene of a husband waking up after a row the night before with his wife, who has discovered his infidelity. ‘Stepan Arkadyich Alabin’ is almost Oblonsky. Anna comes to Moscow as peacemaker, and she meets Gagin at the ball. But still Tolstoy was not satisfied: there was no tension in the relationship between the Levin and Vronsky prototypes, as they were friends. He decided to change their names to Ordyntsev and udashev, and now made them rivals for kitty’s hand rather than friends. It was time to try another beginning. Tolstoy took out a fresh sheet of paper and started a fifth opening draft:

There was a cattle exhibition in Moscow. The Zoological Garden was full of people. Beaming with his pleasant, open face and full red lips, wearing his hat slightly tilted to one side on his thinning, light brown curly hair, the grey of his beaver collar merging with his handsome greying sideburns, Stepan Arkadyich Alabin, well known to all of Moscow society, was walking along…²⁷

Ordyntsev, who is about to run into his old friend Alabin, has come up to Moscow to show his calves and his bull.