The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

152 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

unexpectedly at a dinner party at the Oblonskys in Moscow. Timing is all. By now she has recovered from her rejection by Vronsky; Levin too has recovered from the insult of her initial rejection of him. Through glances and gestures, Kitty and Levin forgive each other and already trust in each other’s love. The actual marriage proposal is conveyed through a parlor game, secretaire, in which the players must guess out sentences and replies solely from the initial letters of words. Kitty and Levin guess out a great deal, grabbing the chalk from one another, but at a certain point “a darkening came over him from happiness. He simply could not pick out the words she had in mind; but in her lovely eyes shining with happiness he understood everything he needed to know” (p. 398).

An equivalently famous episode in Crime and Punishment - when the hero and heroine realize their love and commit to each other - might help to focus, albeit in extreme form, the difference between a Dostoevskian dependence on the Book as mediator, and a Tolstoyan striving to reach the realm of the authentic without having to rely on words. That “love story” comes about in three installments, Raskolnikov’s three visits to Sonya Marmeladova in Parts IV (ch. 4), V (ch. 4), and VI (ch. 8) of the novel. The grounds for this love are laid in their first meeting. Raskolnikov seeks out Sonya in her quarters. Bewildered at her faith in God amid such moral filth, he concludes she is a holy fool (and fears that in her company he will become one too). He demands that she read to him the account of the Rising of Lazarus, but rummaging around in the Gospels he can’t find the passage. Sonya sternly reprimands him, takes the Bible, locates the page, but does not need to read it: she need only recite. She has become its narrative. After the Lazarus story is over Sonya closes the book, at which moment Raskolnikov promises to come to her the next day and tell her who killed Lizaveta. Of this pivotal scene Dostoevsky writes that the candle was flickering out, “casting a dim light in this destitute room upon the murderer and the harlot strangely come together over the reading of the eternal book” (IV, ch. 4, p. 328). Everything about this scene speaks of a Dostoevskian epiphany. In Dostoevsky, knowledge is communal and symbolic.

In Tolstoy, as in Pushkin, “understanding what one needs to know” depends not on accessing or citing a verbal narrative, but on proper maturation. Lay down the right habits or structures in the individual, and wisdom will come at the right time - even without words. This knowledge cannot be forced by merely “talking it out,” with oneself or another person. The most terrible example of that hopeless strategy is Anna Karenina’s lengthy “monologue” to herself before her suicide (Part VII, chs. 26-31). By this point in the novel, Anna’s heightened consciousness rivals the Underground Man’s in its alertness to its own perversity. She makes impossible demands on Vronsky and impossibly