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Russian Literature and the Horse BY SALVATOR SALVATORNot Not long1 ago in a contribution to Daily Racing Form I mentioned a number of fa famou writers who had introduced racing epi sodes into their works and among others Tolstoi as having in one of his most famous famousnovels novels Anna Karenina told the story of a military steeplechase in an extremely graphic and exciting manner It has been suggested to me that a few details about the race in Anna Karenina would be interesting so sohere here they are Tolstoi in his later life the worlds most celebrated social reformer idealist and moral teacher was in his youth a member of the smart set in the highest circles of the Russian nobility Himself a count and a member of one of the most noted families of the Muscovite aristocracy his youth and early manhood were spent in the gay world whose center was the court of the czar at Petrograd or as it then was called St Petersburg Like all young Russian nobles he entered the army saw service in the Crimean War and became an officer in a crack regiment He was at this time an ardent sportsman a devotee of both field sports and of the turf What he wrote therefore was the fruit of intimate personal knowledge and it is this fact which makes his racing epi sode in Anna Karenina so wonderful a piece of writing A great Russian literary critic Prince Kropotkin in speaking of it compares it with the wellknown description of a clay at the races at Longchamps when whenthe the Grand Prix de Paris is decided which 13mile Zola introduced into his novel of the Parisian underworld Nana and well tays that Zola merely wrote from the out side and gives us a piece of brilliant re porting while Tolstoi makes us veritably veritablysee see the race enter into it as if we beheld an actual spectacle and feel all the emo tions of the participants COUNT ALT2XIS VUOXSKT The hero if so he may be called of Anna Karenina is Count Alexis Vronsky who when the story begins is a brilliant young oflicer one of the upper circle of jinny men and a notable figure in the haut ton of Petersburg and Moscow I need not enter into the plot of the novel one of the most powerful ever written which re lates the disastrous course of his love affair with the Countess Anna Karenina from which lovely but unhappy lady its title is taken The racing interlude forms a portion of part 2 and extends through chapters they are short ones 19 to 25 Vronsky has entered his English thoroughbred mare Frou Frou in an officers steeplechase over a se ¬ vere threemile course at Krasnoe Seloe The picture which Tolstoi draws of Frou Frou is a charming one and testifies to his connoisseurship in horse flesh fleshIn In the horse box stood a dark bay mare with a muzzle on pawing at the fresh straw with her hoofs Looking around him in the twilight of the horse box Vronsky uncon ¬ sciously took in once more in a compre ¬ hensive glance all the points of his favorite mare FrouFrou was of medium size not altogether free from reproach from a breed ¬ ers standpoint She was smallboned all over though her chest was extremedy prom ¬ inent in front it was narrow Her hind quarters were a little drooping and in her forelegs and still more in her hind legs there was a noticeable curvature The muscles of both hind and forelegs were not very thick but across her shoulders the mare was exceptionally broad a peculiarity especially striking now that she was lean from training trainingThe The bones of her leg below the knee looked no thicker than a finger from in front but were extraordinarily thick seen from the side She looked altogether ex ¬ cept across the shoulders as it were pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth But she had in the highest degree the Qual ¬ ity that makes all defects forgotten that quality was blood the blood that tells as the English expression has it The muscles stood up sharply under the net ¬ work of sinews covered with the delicate mobile skin as soft as satin and they were as hard as bone Her cleancut head with prominent bright spirited eyes broad ¬ ened out at the opened nostrils that showed the red blood in the cartilage within All about her figure and especially her head there was a certain expression of energy and at the samn time of softness She was one of those creatures which seem only not to spealc because Nature has not allowed them to toThe The translation I have quoted is probably far less effectively or expertly worded than the original The curvature of the legs referred to was probably not the precise term which Tolstoi used and what he there doubtless meant to convey was that Frou Frou was a bit kneesprung forward and with a pronounced angle in the hock But he brings the mare before us so vividly that we feel as if he were describing a real and not an imaginary animal and it is quite probable that in limning Vronskys favorite he etched for us a portrait of some thor ¬ oughbred mare that he had himself owned and raced in a similar event in his salad days daysSIIOAVS SIIOAVS HER 7TEUYOI7SXESS 7TEUYOI7SXESSThis This feeling is confirmed as we read on through the next paragraphs paragraphsDirectly Directly Vronsky went up to her she drew in a deep breath and turning back her prominent eye until the white looked blood ¬ shot she stared at the approaching figures from the opposite side shaking her muzzle and shifting lightly from one leg to the other There you see how fidgety she is said the Englishman There darling There said Vronsky going up to the mare and speaking sooth ¬ ingly to her But the nearer he came the more excited she grew Only when he stood by her head she was suddenly quieter while the muscles quivered under her soft deli ¬ cate coat Vronsky patted her stronc neck straightened over her sharp withers a stray lock of her mane that had fallen on the other side and moved his face nearer her dilated nostrils transparent as a bats wing She exhaled a loud breath snorted through her tense nostrils started pricked up her sharp ear and put out her strong black lip toward Vronsky as though she would nip hold of his sleeve But remembering the1 muzzle she shook it and again began rest lessly stamping one after the other of her ahapely limba Quiet darling quiet he said patting her again over her hind quarters and with s glad sense that his mare was in the best 1 possible condition he went out of the horse l box The mares excitement had affected Vronsky He felt that his heart was throb I bing and that he too like the mare longed t to move to bite it was both dreadful and t delicious I do not propose to rehearse the story of t the race The book itself must be referred t to in order to read it appreciatively Suflice t to say that the chief opponent of FrouFrou i is another English horse a large and power I ful chestnut stallion called Gladiator owned and ridden by a brother officer of Vrohskys Mahotin Tolstoi describes the course and t the different obstacles minutely The con t test is watched by the Czar and the whole c court among the spectators being the Count ess Anna Karenina of whose presence A Vronsky is keenly aware which adds to his excitement At the end the race narrows t down to a match between FrouFrou and Gladiator The speed courage and nerve i force of the mare carry her to virtual tri umph over the superior strength and power of the stallion when as she is taking the last obstacle in brilliant style Vronsky com mils a fatal error He fails to keep in l rhythm with the mare as she takes the leap and as she lands she falls with a broken j back and a bullet ends her life and race together The result of the race is in a way sym 1 bolical of that of Vronskys love affair for i it ends with the suicide of the Countess Anna and his own departure for the war i in search of a bullet that shall end his own 1 life In reading these chapters one is not only conscious of tho consummate literary art of Tolstoi but of the fact that he is wViting con amore He had himself lived what he was writing of and that enabled him to comimmicate to it all the thrill and glow 1 that he had experienced under the circum J stances of turf rivalry Recurring to Zola and the racing episode in Nana it may 1 be said that the reason this is only a piece of brilliant reporting which is written 1 from the outside is because Zola probably i never in his life bestrode a horse and al I thoroughbred was something with which he 1 was personally as unfamiliar as a dodo dodoIn In my former article I also spoke of a j short story by Tolstoi considered by many critics and especially by the Russians them ¬ i selves the worlds greatest horse story This tale which is usually printed in vbl umes containing other sketches by Tolstoi of life in the Caucasus and on the steppes is called Kholstomer that being the name of the equine central figure a piebald Or loff trotting gelding which is represented as telling most the story of his life in the first person His name the accent is upon the secon o means clothmeas ¬ urer and was given him because of the fact that cloth measurers in Russia are professionally skillful and the swiftness with which they do their work commonly pro ¬ verbial Kholstomer at the beginning of the story is presented as a brokendown and decrepit old gelding the knockabout servitor of at drover who has charge of a whole herd of highbred horses All these horses heartily despite their masters hack because of his sorry appearance and the fact that he is a plebeian beast of no pretensions to blood j When he is turned out among them they band together to illuse and abuse him mak j ing what should be his hours of rest and j peace so miserable that he gets to welcome the moment when his rough master saddles and bridles him and sets off on the days work At last he can stand this no longer and one evening as his equine tormentors gather about him to resume their congenial task of abuse he suddenly stops them with a few words and asks them to listen while he tells them the story of his life This story which Tolstoi represents as occupying several evenings in the telling describes how the wretched outcast was born at the imperial stud at Khrenovoi and of the bluest Orloff blood But his piebald coat won the disfavor of the overseer and so he was gelded and sold for a small price before his speed was tested His purchaser soon finds out that he is marvelously fast and he passes finally into the ownership of one of the greatest of Russian dandies and sporting men in whose hands he easily defeats all the fastest trotters in Russia This master a handsome proflgate who runs through millions in a few years the gelding passionately loves while the man in his turn is inordinately vain of his horse horseCHASE CHASE BTJIKS THE HOUSE HOUSEFinally Finally the sweetheart of the spendthrift betrays him and elopes with another man Her lover pursues the runaways with his race horse and overtakes them but in doing so overdrives Kholstomer and ruins him The master himself being also now finan ¬ cially ruined the horse soon is sold and begins the downward descent which ends in the position in which he is found at the beginning of the narrative narrativeHis His recital wins for Kholstomer the re ¬ spect and compassion of the rest of the herd but this avails him naught He is nothing but a wreck and soon after becom ing infected with the mange is sold to the knacker His end is a piteous tragedy j which Tolstoi depicts with a terrible realism that searches the heart i iAll All through this story Tolstoi discloses the most astonishing knowledge of horses horse nature and horse habits both on the 1 material and the psychological sides To write as he does here he must have had the j most intimate acquaintance with horses of all sexes ages and conditions have stud ¬ ied them deeply and come to know them with profound insight Most animal stones are tragic and this one like the racing episode in Anna Karenina is pathetically so but its every word the reader realizes as true to life with unflinching fidelity The only thing which to the American taste mars it is a touch of overmorbidity in some of the details which sickening and gruesome might have been omitted without in any way affecting its artistic or dramatic quality j This morbidity is of course characteristic of all Russian fiction and one finds it in all the great Russian writers I have referred to Tourguenevs famous horse story called The End of Tchertopkhanoff as one which some critics consider even greater than Tol stois opuscule whose outlines I have just sketched and it has the same Russianesque morbidity in its plot and the denouement The hero with the jawbreaking name is a Russian rural handed proprietor with a pas ¬ sion for horses but not much money with which to gratify it One day a Jewish horse dealer brings to him a wonderful stallion fresh from the steppes gloriously beautiful and fleet as the wind He falls in love with t this horse at the first glance and decides that y he must have him although without the r money to pay for him However he suc ¬ c ceeds in securing him from the dealer and s standing the latter off for the payment paymentTchertopkhanoff Tchertopkhanoff in a short time grows t simply to idolize his new pet Nothing else j in the world is really of any account to him t but this wonderful horse which he rides far r and wide his beauty everywhere causing the greatest envy and admiration while no other steed can approach him for fleetness or in ¬ telligence But all this time he has never t been paid for and one night he mysteriously disappears from his owners stable having quite probably been spirited away by his j former owner the dealer dealerWhen When Tchertopkhanoff finds that his idol j is gone he becomes to all intents and pur ¬ poses a madman His one and only purpose j in life is the recovery of his lost horse By hook or crook he obtains the money and travels all over Russia in search of him At last he finds him and at a ruinous price succeeds in obtaining him and taking him home In triumph But almost Immediately j he becomes the prey of doubt and suspicion The new horse is in many ways the exact j duplicate of the old but in others he is j not He keeps doing things that he ought not to and finally he makes a miserable exhibition under the most provoking circum ¬ stances Still his owner cannot make up j his mind One day everything goes well and ho dismisses his doubts as silly shadows The next day they return with redoubled force and he is convinced that he has only j a counterfeit steed and not the real one that he has fooled and victimized himself and ruined himself into the bargain and all for nothing nothingBrooding Brooding over all these things his mind at last becomes affected and the idea takes 1 possession of him of taking his horses life j The steps by Avhich he works himself up j I to this and finally commits the murder j n for so it really is both in the ethical effect i upon the reader and the dark and terrible manner of its commission are described by j Tourguenev with the most masterly power No purely human tragedy could be more i grippingly portrayed Once you have read this tale it is one of the famous series i called A Sportsmans Sketches written about twenty years before Tolstoi wrote Kholstomer you will never forget it And like Tolstois story only a Russian could have written it It has the psychological profoundness in which the Russian writers excel their unrivaled literary art in which idealism and realism are wonderfully min ¬ gled and always that touch of morbidness that is an inescapable racial trait
