Have you ever noticed that when you are really into a book and reading it steadily that all of a sudden it starts popping up in other places around you--or maybe not the actual book but a character or some aspect of it? That's happened to me a few times this past week with Anna Karenina.
I mentioned that I've been in the mood to read short stories, so I pulled out Ox Tales: Earth and started reading the first story written by Rose Tremain called "The Jester of Astapovo". One of the things I sort of like about short stories is you don't know exactly what you're going to get, so it is truly a tiny world that opens itself up to you as you read. There might be a vague blurb, but in this case there is nothing to go by except the title. I'm only about halfway through the story (my high expectations of loads of uninterrupted reading time this weekend have been more or less dashed but going into the weekend one can always hope), but I've read enough to know I'm curious to see how things will turn out.
It's 1910 and Astapovo is an "insignificant little stop some 120 miles south-east of Moscow." Ivan Andreyevich Ozolin is the stationmaster on this section of the Ural railroad line. He's married but fancies himself in love with an older woman who he convinces to go out bicycling with him, though he tells his wife he's going mushroom picking. His wife Anna is suspicious when he comes home empty handed, and he is empty handed in more ways than one. The widow Tanya Trepova admits to being flattered by Ivan's attention but quickly comes to her senses and questions why she is there in the country with this man. Later back at work Ivan must deal with an emergency on a train passing through his station. A man has taken ill and cannot continue on in his journey and must be taken somewhere to lie down and have a doctor attend to him. The town is very small, so Ivan offers his bed. And the man is Count Leo Tolstoy. Ah. Do you see a theme emerging here? Trains, the possibility of an adulterous relation, and here shows up the author Tolstoy himself! I'll have to read the second half of the story more slowly.
My other moment of serendipity came when I was pulling out a few catalogs from small presses that I wanted to browse through. One is the Spring catalog for Hesperus Press, which I have already looked through several times, but all of a sudden a title which I passed by previously caught my eye. Vladimir Odoevsky's Two Princesses is now on my wishlist (amazon lists it as being published in November of this year). "Princess Mimi and Princess Zizi, Odoevsky's complementary society tales from the 1830s, portraying the two diametrically opposed sides of the nature of the Russian Aristocracy, can be seen as precursors of Anna Karenina and the works of Dostoevsky."
This made me wonder if the story of Anna Karenina has been retold in other works? The only novel I've come across so far has been Irina Reyn's What Happed to Anna K. I don't usually like reading retellings or sequels to famous novels, but I might give this one a try. It was an Amazon best book of the month in 2008 (well, for whatever that's worth anyway) and they call it a "reinvention of Anna Karenina. Irina Reyn finds her tragic heroine in the Russian-Jewish immigrants of New York's outer boroughs." It could be interesting.
As for this week's reading, I didn't quite finish part two as I had hoped. I might be able to read the last twenty-five pages tonight, if not will just keep pushing on. At this point there have been several spoilers, so please beware--(though maybe everyone has passed me by already as I feel like I am reading very slowly). I thought it curious that Alexei is completely aware of what is happening with his wife, Anna, and Vronsky, yet he allows it to go on. And Anna knows he knows--there's a complicity almost, but if no admits anything... It sounds as though affairs were a common occurrence, and to men like Vronsky affairs with married women had even more cachet than with those who weren't. For all that I do think it might be more than just a fling, yet the question is will he follow through now that Anna is pregnant? The book seems to abound with ominous foreshadowing. First there is the accident on the rail line at the beginning of the book. Now the death of Vronsky's horse due to his own imperfect riding. And sadly he seems to take it out on the horse. Hmm. For all his goodness and love for Anna I do wonder how honorable he will be in the end.