Stricken by Infection: Art and Adultery in Anna Karenina and Kreutzer Sonata

Abstract

Resentment proceeds from powerlessness, said Rousseau. How true! A man is spiteful when he wants to do what is not in his power–he encounters obstacles and grows resentful. (57:136)Lev Tolstoi had originally intended to open Anna Karenina with a scene in Princess Betsy’s salon, later moved to part 2 of the novel, in which the work’s central themes are all touched on in the conversation of the gathered guests. This introductory discussion primarily concerns illicit liaisons, but alongside the talk of adultery, one guest states, “The theme is everything. Once one has a theme, it is easy to embroider on it” (121). These words obliquely acknowledge a debt to one of the novel’s sources, Aleksandr Pushkin’s “Egyptian Nights,” a story about improvisation in which that art is conceived not merely as the instantaneous or impromptu invention we usually think of, but even more importantly as the appropriation of someone else’s topic. Anna Karenina, and some of Tolstoi’s later works as well, make important borrowings from Pushkin’s story about borrowing, employing both themes from “Egyptian Nights” and therefore the methods of the Italian improvisor in it.