I first heard about Andrew Davies’s new miniseries of War and Peace a month ago from online preview articles, and I’ve
watched the first two episodes (the last two will air soon) on American cable. As per my Subject Line, I’ve long believed
Tolstoy was a great closet Janeite, ever since I read a little-known but
extraordinary article by (the late author) Harold Brodkey, entitled “Henry James and Jane Austen”, which appeared
in The Threepenny Review, No.
33 (Spr., 1988), pp. 3-7. In it, the eccentric Brodkey modestly claimed he was
not a scholar, but his article is filled with brilliant insights, especially as
to JA’s writing, but also as to James’s and Joyce’s. But it was Brodkey’s
passing comment about Tolstoy and Austen that first alerted me to Tolstoy’s
covert but intense interest in JA’s novels:
“…Austen accepts the unknowability and accidental
and contingent nature of things in a rather pragmatic way, rather like Tolstoy-who got it from her, perhaps. The degree of the
reality of the time sequences, the way the events seem to happen in real time, is interestingly similar in Austen and
Tolstoy. Austen is extremely difficult to write about. She is the first and
most direct of the unfated or free will writers of the industrial era; and who
wants to argue about free will or the industrial era? She is among the elect,
among the writers of surprise and of real-time amatory events. Her lovers make
their own fates. They are active and dramatic entities. Tolstoy steals a scene
from her, from Persuasion, to
represent realistic and actual love in Anna
Karenina: the proposal scene between Kitty and Levin is taken in great
detail from that of Anne Elliot and Wentworth….” END QUOTE FROM BRODKEY
When
I went back and reread that passage from Anna
Karenina (in Book IV, Chapter 13) for the first time in decades, I saw that
Brodkey was spot-on in perceiving the great textual detail of Levin and Kitty
as Wentworth and Anne at the White Horse Inn. It was as if Tolstoy wanted to
both pay homage to, but also amplify and Russify, JA’s most romantic scene.
Based
on that dense allusive “smoke”, in 2010 I went on to read articles about, and
also identify on my own, a number of other covert but, to me clear, allusions
to several of JA’s novels, which are significant in both War and Peace and Anna
Karenina. I will in my book be devoting a significant section to this topic,
alongside my findings about C. Bronte, Pushkin, Twain, Conan Doyle, Joyce, S.
Aleichem, Nabokov, and others in the distinguished roster of closet Janeites,
whose fiction supposedly was not influenced by hers, but actually was.
My
personal favorite veiled Tolstoy allusion to JA is the identity of the unnamed
English novel which Anna Karenina reads on the train, which appears to contain four
distinct plot elements:
“…[Anna]
had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the
novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the
room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she
longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden
after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised
everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no
chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little
hands, she forced herself to read. The
hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness, a
baronetcy and an estate…”
John
Sutherland’s identification of the unnamed English novel, working from an
initial suggestion by A.N. Wilson, is that Anna is reading “all of them, and
none of them”—i.e., “a variety of Trollope’s novels, with a dash of Yonge”. However, I gather from Sutherland’s
discussion that no one of Trollope’s or Yonge’s novels contains distinct
references to all four of those specific
plot elements, whereas I have now identified not one, but two English novels
which do!:
Jane
Austen’s Mansfield Park:
Tom
Bertram is nursed by Fanny after her return to Mansfield Park;
Sir
Thomas is a member of Parliament, and Fanny loves to listen to him orate;
Mary
Crawford rides with boldness, which provokes Fanny, and Fanny almost becomes
Mary’s sister in law; &
Edmund
is one step removed from the baronetcy and mastery of Mansfield Park as the
novel ends.
AND
Mary
Elizabeth Braddon’s 1862 best-seller Lady
Audley’s Secret :
Lady
Audley nurses her sick husband, a baronet with a large estate;
Robert,
the hero, imagines being “pushed into Parliament”;
Alicia,
Lady Audley’s stepdaughter, engages in bold horseback riding; &
Robert,
the hero, will one day soon succeed his uncle the old, sick baronet.
PLUS…It’s
well established in Tolstoy studies that Leo. T alluded intentionally to
Braddon’s potboilers, to the chagrin of Tolstoy purists. But now I can explain
Tolstoy’s curious interest in an apparently non-literary novelist. I.e., a
great deal of Braddon’s appeal to Tolstoy must have been that Tolstoy
recognized how influential Austen’s novels were on Braddon’s fiction, and how
surprisingly well Braddon saw beneath the surface of JA’s novels. And Tolstoy therefore
celebrated his recognition of that hidden literary lineage in the above-quoted novel-reading
scene on the train in Anna Karenina!
And,
to back that up, I will shortly followup on those two (surprisingly connected)
sources for Anna Karenina‘s novel-reading,
by writing about:
(1)
the elaborate veiled allusions to Sense
& Sensibility and Mansfield Park in
Lady Audley’s Secret, and
(2)
Arthur Conan Doyle’s veiled allusions to both Lady Audley’s Secret as well as (per my posts last month) to Sense & Sensibility, with a soupcon
of Tolstoyan allusion for good measure!
But
for the remainder of this post, I’ll zero in on one specific Tolstoy allusion
to JA’s writing relevant to Davies’s adaptation. As my Subject Line indicates,
Andrew Davies is “at it again”—or so sing the chorus of TV critics who’ve
accused him of sexing up Tolstoy’s saga, by inserting PG-13 incest scenes they
say are not actually there in the oft-translated text of Tolstoy’s epic ----just
as Davies was accused, two decades ago, of sexing up his mega-successful 1995
miniseries adaptation of Pride &
Prejudice, by gratuitously (so say the naysayers) inserting that
world-famous scene of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in a clinging wet blouse after
cooling off in a Pemberley pond, a scene which definitely was most definitely
not included in the novel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hasKmDr1yrA
I’ve
previously suggested many times that all the critics of Davies’s dripping Mr.
Darcy are themselves all wet—because it’s clear to me that Davies picked up on
the very real, dense concentration of sexual subtext and imagery in the words
describing Elizabeth Bennet’s awed (indeed, nearly orgasmic) reaction to the
triple KO combo of seeing Pemberley and its grounds, then Darcy’s portrait,
then Darcy himself in the flesh (wet or not). So, even though there is no
literal description in P&P of Darcy taking a dip on a hot day, then
emerging like an erotic Neptune, that scene is the perfect translation of the
proverbial thousand words of “sextuality” into a powerful, erotic, cinematic
picture.
And…don’t
forget that Davies also caught the same unjustified flak in 2007, when his Sense & Sensibility began with
Willoughby in bed with the seduced young Eliza Williams-even though that
seduction is strongly implied by the narrative. And yet again in 2008 with his
depiction of Catherine’s sexual dreams in Northanger
Abbey, as though he too knew what I discovered several years ago—i.e., that
Jane Austen gives us a very broad hint in the following narration…..
“They
danced again; and, when the assembly closed, parted, on the lady's side at
least, with a strong inclination for continuing the acquaintance. Whether she
thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared
herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I
hope it was no more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most; for if
it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be
justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must
be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the
gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.”
…that
Catherine is going to have a sexual dream
about her future husband on what just happens to be, in the chronology of NA,
the Eve of St. Agnes---which is when a single girl is obliged by tradition to
“prepare herself for bed” by not eating and then stripping to her birthday
suit!
And now
I’m ready to get to what I found a few weeks ago, which, to me, is convincing
evidence that Tolstoy did indeed mean for his sharp elf readers to infer the occurrence
of actual incest between Anatole and Helene in War and Peace. I believe Tolstoy thereby meant to allude to the
incestuous brother-sister pair who had inspired him to create his diabolical
pair: Henry and Mary Crawford in Mansfield
Park!
And
it’s not just those two parallel devilish sibling pairs. What I haven’t yet
seen in Davies’s first two episodes, is any sign that Davies has picked up on
the much subtler incestuous charge that Tolstoy also intentionally created between
Nicholas and Natasha Rostov----who are, I suggest, an amalgam of Fanny and
Edmund, but also Fanny and William, in Mansfield
Park!
Two
Tolstoy scholars (George Clay in 1998 & Juliet Mitchell in 2013) have
written about Tolstoy intending to suggest incestuous feelings in both brother-sister pairs, the
diabolical Kuragins and the squeaky-clean Rostovs. What I am still waiting and
hoping to read, is an English translation of the original manuscript draft of
W&P which survived Tolstoy, and which supposedly contains explicit incestuous
scenes between Helene and Anatole, strong stuff that Tolstoy apparently lopt
and cropt out of his text, leaving only hints. So Davies is standing on solid
ground in his explicit depiction of Helene and Anatole as lovers.
They
are each halves of a Satanic whole, whose mission seems to be, in part, to
corrupt the virtuous young heroine Natasha. And so it’s no coincidence that Anatole
decides to try to seduce Natasha, and nearly succeeds, just like Henry Crawford
almost gets to the finish line with Fanny. And Anatole’s and Helene’s father is
the embodiment of the spoken-of but never seen vicious uncle Admiral Crawford.
And
Mary
Crawford with her harp is like Helene, and both are based on Helen of Troy as
well as Circe and the Sirens. And then
we have Nicholas Rostov whose huge gambling debts hobble the family fortune,
just as do Tom Bertram’s!
MP
and W&P in some other ways seem totally different as novels. Tolstoy
embraces the “Big Bow Wow strain” with his vast sections about Napoleon and the
war that tore Europe apart. But it’s clear from cutting edge Austen studies of
the past 30 years that JA was also very much interested in that Big Picture, in particular as to the Napoleonic Wars that
engulfed England (and two of JA’s brothers) during half of JA’s lifetime. But
she chose to wink and hint at it. So, again, we find Tolstoy standing at JA’s
literary canvas, and filling in JA’s blanks from the faintly visible shadows
she delicately sketched, and this time from Napoleon’s rear, eastern flank.
As
for siblings Natasha and Nicholas, consider the scene in Book 7, Ch. 7, of
W&P, after the refined Natasha has amazed the room with her spirited and
earthy Old Russian country dancing. Near the end of Episode 2 of Davies’s
miniseries, he places cousin Sonia (another Fanny Price figure) in the carriage
ride home on a snowy moonlit night. But Tolstoy actually wrote a scene with
Natasha and brother Nicholas sharing a confusingly and disturbingly romantic tete
a tete:
“After
nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent to look for
them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count and countess did not know
where they were and were very anxious, said one of the men. Petya was carried out like a log and laid in
the larger of the two traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other.
"Uncle" wrapped Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a
new tenderness. He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not
be crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to
ride in front with lanterns.
….What
was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly caught and
assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all find place in
her? But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she suddenly struck up
the air of As 'twas growing dark last night—the tune of which she had all the
way been trying to get and had at last caught.
"Got
it?" said Nicholas.
"What
were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.
They
were fond of asking one another that question.
"I?"
said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I thought that
Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were a man he would always
keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then for his manner. What a good
fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?... Well, and you?"
"I?
Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along and
imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows where we are really
going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly find that we are
not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No, nothing
else."
"I
know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as Natasha knew
by the sound of his voice.
"No,"
said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about Prince Andrew at
the same time as of the rest, and of how he would have liked "Uncle."
"And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How well Anisya carried
herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her spontaneous, happy, ringing
laughter. "And do you know," she suddenly said, "I know that I
shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now."
"Rubbish,
nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: "How charming
this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her and never shall have.
Why should she marry? We might always drive about together!"
"What
a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.
"Ah,
there are still lights in the drawing-room!" she said, pointing to the
windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety darkness of
the night.
“invitingly
in the moist velvety darkness of the night”??
George Clay was spot-on in 1998: this is very suggestive. But I go a big
step further, and see this scene as Tolstoy wishing us to recognize that
there’s much less of a gap between the worldly Kuragin siblings and the innocent
Rostov siblings than the latter would like to believe. But it would not
surprise the worldly socialite, who makes the following sage comments while
watching mousy Sonia blush in jealousy of cousin Nicholas early in the novel:
"How plainly all these young
people wear their hearts on their sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna,
pointing to Nicholas as he went out. "Cousinage—dangereux voisinage;"
she added. [Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.]
"Yes," said the countess
when the brightness these young people had brought into the room had vanished;
and as if answering a question no one had put but which was always in her mind,
"and how much suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that
we might rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than
the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so
dangerous both for girls and boys."
"It all depends on the bringing
up," remarked the visitor.
"Yes, you're quite right,"
continued the countess. "Till now I have always, thank God, been my
children's friend and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the
mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from
them. "I know I shall always be my daughters' first confidante, and that
if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't
help it), he will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."
Mrs.
Norris and Sir Thomas, anyone? Still think I am imagining it all? ;)
And
I’ll conclude by promising that, in yet another post, I’ll explain how this dark,
ironic connection of Tolstoy’s innocent and worldly siblings appears to me to
have actually spotted by Vladimir Nabokov long before 1998—in fact, nearly nine
decades ago, but he wrote about his discovery not in a scholarly treatise, but,
indirectly, in his early, proto-Lolita
novella, fittingly entitled…. Laughter in
THE DARK.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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