TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The portion of the translation presented below represents the entirety of my efforts to date. I saw no point in translating (or, indeed, reading) further without some congratulatory and hortatory feedback from readers—both those newcomers to Tolstoy’s nineteenth-century masterpiece, and those inveterate lovers of literature for whom this sizable opus is a familiar old friend. The raison d’être of my new (much-needed) translation is, if not instantly apparent, then easily glossed: I felt, in short, that the work needed vivifying.
— C.P. Boyko, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, March 1, 2001.
PART ONE
Chapter One
Happy families are all alike! Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way!
Everything at the Oblonskys’ was topsy-turvy! Oblonsky’s wife had found out that he had been having an affair with the French governess who used to live with them, and told him she could no longer stay under the same roof with him! This was the third day things had been this way, and not only the married couple themselves, but the family and the whole household were painfully aware of it! Everyone in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that people who had casually dropped into any inn would have more connection with each other than they, the Oblonsky family and household! Oblonsky’s wife refused to leave her rooms! He himself hadn’t been home for three days! The children were running around the house as though lost! The English governess had had a quarrel with the housekeeper and written to a friend of hers asking her to look out for a new job for her! The day before the cook had picked dinner-time to go out! The kitchen maid and coachman had given notice!
TECHNICAL NOTE
I am working not from the original manuscript (I am not, alas, proficient in German) but from Joel Carmichael’s “modern American translation,” which I purchased for one dollar at a second-hand clothing store, and which is a little dog-eared but otherwise quite legible.
— C.P. Boyko, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, March 1, 2001.