Book & Author: Reflections
Anna Karenina and Madame D
By Razia Fasih Ahmad
US
There are times when an idea suddenly comes to your mind just like a radio catches a signal from a distant station and then fades away. Apparently they do not have any connection or association with the work you are doing. It looks as if those ideas were in the air to be caught by receptive minds at the same time or at different times.
Many writers must have gone through this experience to have a very poetic or philosophical thought protruding through the mind with a skeptical string whether the thought is original or is a by-product of some previous reading. The writer is puzzled because she/he does not want to forgo the idea if it is her/his own and at the same time does not want to use it if it is somebody else’s.
It also happens that a writer comes across with his own idea written crystal clear by somebody else; maybe centuries ago. This kind of phenomenon when it occurs as a pure chance is called Tawarud in Persian. Sometimes, Persian and Urdu poets try to improve an idea by using better words, keeping the central idea the same. There are examples of re-telling the folklore or old stories again and again in many other languages.
Now the question is in what category we should put Tolstoy’s masterpiece, Anna Karenina! Reading a short Chinese story, I came across a story written by Lien Pu in the days of Sung dynasty, centuries ago, which is strikingly similar to Tolstoy’s novel in many details.
The translator Li Tang tells us this much about Madame D: this was taken from Chi’ngchunlu by Lien Pu of Sung Dynasty, who said he personally knew the story when he was a student at the university in the capital. I have filled in the details about the student movements for recovery of national territory, which are well-known facts in history, based on such works as Chou Mi’s Ku Tweihsin Tsachih. He also tells us in the introduction of the book: Madame D is the story of a married woman’s adultery, relieved by an unhappy marriage. (Famous Chinese stories translated by Lin Yutang. Jaico Publishing House) Let expound over the similarities: Madame “D” is singularly beautiful as is Anna. Let us see as they appear for the first time formally dressed for a particular occasion. It looks as if Anna is an elaboration of Madame D. “Madame D was dressed in a simple black gown of the finest material, with no jewelry except a crescent of pearls on her hair.”
Anna was in a black, low-cut velvet dress that showed off her full shoulders and bosom, which looked carved out of old ivory, her round arms, and tiny slender hands. On her black hair all her own she wore a small garland of pansies.
Madame D: “Perhaps she had better taste than the others. Perhaps she knew she was like a work of art which required no gilded frame.” Anna: She always stood out from her dress; it was never conspicuous. The black dress with its rich lace was also unnoticeable on her: it was merely a frame, what was visible, was herself, simple, natural, elegant and at the same time gay and full of life.”
Madame D: “Having a naturally fair complexion with smooth white skin her face looked like a sculptured jade which glowed with a soft warm luster…. She however managed to appear happy.”
Both, Anna and Madame D, are very beautiful, conscious of their good looks, both have better taste than most women of their time, and both dress in a simple but elegant style only to enhance their natural beauty.
Both come from respectable families and their husbands are high officials in their respective governments.
They both were faithful to their husbands and did not have affairs though flirtations and affairs were quite common in high society in those days.
They had lost their parents and they both had influential brothers. Both are married without love.
Madam D: “The match was the union of two old families. Madam D remembered that her affection for her husband had cooled first. She had discovered a streak of greed, something hard and selfish in his character which changed her opinion of him. With her husband’s appointment as an imperial censor Madame D lost all hope in him, and with it all love and respect (page149). He now constantly boasted of his new friends and their positions and his knowledge of important persons. She had come to see in her husband an unscrupulous, selfish individual who was interested only in his personal advancement. It hurt her pride (page150). Madame D had come to regard her husband as a bore, but she was resigned to her fate.
Anna: When Vronsky was governor of a province, (though not a young man) Anna’s aunt, a rich provincial brought them together. He proposed and gave his fiancée and his wife all the emotions he was capable of (page 542).
Anna’s brother says about Anna’s husband, “You married a man twenty years older than you. You married without love and without knowing love.”
Anna gives expression to her feelings on different occasions: I cannot live with him, You must understand, the sight of him has physical effect on me, I am beside myself, I cannot, simply cannot live with him (page456).
“He could only do what is natural to his mean character. He will remain in the right and as far as me, who am already ruined he’ll drive me still further, still lower into ruin” (page312). He is not a human being, he’s an official machine (page386).
Karenin always talks to Anna in a bantering tone as if she were a child in spite of the fact that she was well-read and far more intelligent than an average woman of society.
Similar is the case with Madame D. She is also very intelligent. She understands politics better than her husband. She had been born to power and wealth and she was not impressed (page150).
Anna and Madame D both were careful and virtuous before meeting their lovers, although they belonged to a society in which flirtation and love affairs were very common.
No gossip had ever been whispered against her (Madame D page 150). “Anna and wrongdoing! I cannot associate them. I can’t believe it,” says Dolly about her sister-in-law, when she is told about Anna’s situation. Anna and Madame D both become reckless later on. “They felt they had something intensely in common, and Madame D forgot all her pretensions to rank and spoke as a woman to a man who fascinates her. She had never before felt such intoxication.” Madame D feigns illness and stays nights with him. “She said to her lover, if I had not met you I would have lived my life in vain” (page157). Madame D takes extraordinary risks to meet her lover. As her parents were dead she would go to their house to meet her lover and spend ten delirious days there.
Anna and Vronsky are as reckless as Madame D and her lover. Anna manages to meet Vronsky even at her home. He turns down a promising post in order to be near her.
Both Anna and Madame D got pregnant by their lovers. Both husbands got suspicious.
Both women confess in the end. Madame D knows that her husband would never risk the scandal of a divorce.
Karenin also thinks that divorce is out of question. In due time Anna and Madame D both start living with their lovers. The story of Madame D ends rather abruptly. With the change of Government, the husband of Madame D is exiled, dies on the way and Madame D and her lover get married.
Anna and Vronsky live together without marriage. The state of affairs is such that they both feel irritated, wronged, and miserable. In the end Anna commits suicide.
We do not know whether Tolstoy ever read Madame D’s story. We know that he dealt with the same theme for quite some time. He mentioned it to his wife telling her that he intends writing a novel about a woman in high society who betrayed her husband. The author’s problem he said was, “to represent the woman as not guilty but merely pitiful.”
Tolstoy actually started the novel in 1873. We are told in the introduction of the book that one evening in March 1873 he found a volume of tales by Pushkin in the living room and began reading passages aloud to his wife. He was struck by the opening sentence of one tale. The guests arrived at the country house. “That’s the way for us to write.” He exclaimed to Sonia. Anyone else would start by describing the guests, the rooms but he jumps straight into the action.” Later the same evening Tolstoy went to his study and started Anna Karenina.
Although we cannot be certain whether Anna Karenina is based upon the story of Madame D, the fact remains that the two stories have a great deal in common. When we read about Madame D’s husband he reminds us of Karenin. This raises the critical question: Is the story of Anna based on the Chinese story of Madame D? Indeed, this deserves a scholarly inquiry; scholars ought to do more research on this subject to find the answers. Perhaps few graduate dissertations can unlock this mystery!
(Razia Fasih Ahmad is a prominent Urdu fiction writer. During her literary career spanning seven decades, she produced ten novels, two novelettes, five collections of short stories, and collection of short stories in English, two travelogues, etc. She is presently working on another Urdu poetry collection and short stories in English)
