Book 2 Part 3 Chapter 20 (Chapter 123 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Pierre invited to Berg's little party. The Bergs at home. Desultory talk. A characteristic evening.
Briggs: Berg and Vera, assiduous social-climbers, invite Pierre to dinner.
Maude (chapters 20-21): The Bergs' evening party
Pevear and Volkhonsky (chapters 20-21): An evening with the Bergs. Prince Andrei and Natasha meet there.

Translation:

XX.

On one morning colonel Adolf Berg, who Pierre knew, as he knew all in Moscow and Petersburg, in a neat from needles uniform, with anointed forward temples, as carried by the sovereign Aleksandr Pavlovich, arrived to him.

— I now was at the countess's, your spouse, and was so unhappy that my request could not be executed; I hope that in you, count, I will be happier, — he said, smiling.

— For you anything, colonel. I am at your services.

— I am now, count, now completely arranged in a new apartment, — informed Berg, obviously knowing that this could not be heard but nicely; — and because of this I desire to make a little evening for my and my spouse’s acquaintances. (He still more pleasantly smiled.) I wanted to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of welcoming us in a cup of tea and... in dinner.

Only Countess Elen Vasilievna, considering Berg some kind of humiliating society for herself, could have the cruelty to refuse from such invitations. — Berg so clearly explained why he wished to gather at himself a not large and good society, and why this will be nice for him, and why he for cards and for something evil pitied money, but for good society was ready to carry expenditures that Pierre could not refuse and promised to be there.

— Only not late, count, should I dare to ask, so without 10 minutes to eight, I dare to ask. The party is made up, our general will be there. He is very nice to me. Have supper, count. Do such a favor.

Against his habit of being late, Pierre on this day, instead of eight without 10 minutes, had arrived to Berg’s at eight without a quarter.

Berg, hooking up what was needed for the evening, already was receiving guests.

In the new, clean, bright, decorated with busts, pictures and new furniture office sat Berg about his wife. Berg in a brand new, buttoned uniform sat near his wife, explaining to her that they always can and must have acquaintances which are higher than themselves because of how then there is only pleasantness from meeting.

— You will take over something and can ask about something. Here look how I have lived from the first ranks (Berg counted his life not in years, but in the highest awards). My friends now are still nothing, but I am in the vacancy of the regimental commander, and I have the happiness to be your husband (he got up and kissed the hand of Vera, but by the way to her bent back a corner of rolled up carpet). And then I brought all this. The main skill is to choose your acquaintances. By myself of course, I need to be virtuous and neat.

Berg smiled with a consciousness of his superiority above weak women and fell silent, thinking that all the same this pretty wife of his was weak woman, which not may comprehend what alone forms the dignity of men, — being a man.509 Vera at that same time also smiled with the consciousness of her superiority above her virtuous, good husband, but which was all the same wrong, as all men, by the notion of Vera, in understanding life. Berg, judging by his wife, counted all women weak and foolish. Vera, judging by only her husband and spreading this comment, thought that all men credited only the minds of themselves, but together with that understand nothing, being proud egoists.

Berg got up and, hugging his wife carefully, so that to not crinkle the lace drape for which he expensively paid for, kissed her in the middle of the lips.

— One thing only, for us to not have children, soon, — he said by his unconscious for himself filial ideas.

— Yes, — answered Vera, — I really do not want this. We need to live for society.

— Exactly such as Princess Yusupova, — said Berg, with a happy and good smile, pointing at the cape.

At this time it was reported about the arrival of Count Bezuhov. Both spouses exchanged complacent smiles, each ascribing to themselves the honor of this visit.

"Here is what it means to be able to make acquaintances, thought Berg, here is what it means to be able to keep oneself!"

— Only please, when I am occupying the guests, — Vera told him, — do not interrupt me, because of how I know how to take each, and in which society what needs to be spoken.

Berg also smiled.

— It cannot be the same: sometimes with men there should be male conversation, — he said.

Pierre was adopted in the brand new living room, in which there was nowhere to sit to not break the symmetry, amenities and order, and because it was quite understandingly weird that Berg magnanimously would suggest to destroy the symmetry with a chair or a couch for the dear guest, he apparently found himself in this regard a painful indecision, proposing this decision and issue to the choice of the guest. Pierre upset the symmetry by moving a chair himself, and immediately and already Berg and Vera began the evening, interrupting one another and occupying the guest.

Vera, having decided in her mind that Pierre needed to be occupied in conversation about the French embassy, immediately and already began this conversation. Berg, having decided that he needed male conversation, interrupted the speech of his wife, affecting a question about war with Austria and unwittingly with the common conversation jumped off into personal considerations about those proposals which were done by him for participation in the Austrian campaign, and about those reasons why he did not accept them. Despite that the conversation was very awkward, and that Vera was angry for the intervention of the male element, both spouses with pleasure felt that, despite of how there was only one guest, the evening was beginning very well, and that the evening was how two drops of water look in any other evening with conversations, tea and lit candles.

Soon arrived Boris, an old fellow of Berg. He with some tint of superiority and patronage approached Berg and Vera. Behind Boris arrived a lady with a colonel, then the general himself, then the Rostovs, and the evening was now completely, undoubtedly beginning to look like everything in an evening. Berg with Vera could not hold joyful smiles in seeing the movements of the living room, the sound of incoherent speech, rustling dresses and bows. All was, as a whole, especially liked by the look of the general, praising the apartment, battering the shoulder of Berg, and with fatherly arbitrariness ordered the production of the Boston table. The general hooked to Count Ilya Andreich, as the most noble of the guests after himself. The old men with the old, the young with the young, the hostess at the tea table, on which were exactly such the same cookies on a silver basket, what were at the Panin’s in the evening, all was completely so the same, as at others.

509 ein Mann zu sein

Time: one morning, fifteen minutes to eight (quarter to in Briggs and Pevear and Volkonsky)
Mentioned: ten minutes to eight

Locations: Berg's house
Mentioned: Moscow, St. Petersburg, French, Austria (and Austrian)

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes:

Back to Pierre. Berg has invited Pierre to come to a dinner. A strange humorous scene that plays up the vanity and insincerity, as well as plain unlikeablility of Vera and Berg, with them each thinking they have the power over
each other and Berg emphasizing his rankings and moving up in society. Vera doesn't want children, but wants to live for society.

Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Colonel Adolph Berg ("...Adolf..." in Maude, Briggs, and Mandelker. "...Adolphe..." in Garnett. "Adolphe de Berg" in Bell.)

Count Pierre Bezukhoi

Countess Elena Vasilyevna

Viera (also "wife")

Princess Yusupovaya ("...Yusupov" in Edmonds, Wiener, and Garnett. "...Yusupova" in Dunnigan, Mandelker, and Maude. "Princess Youssoupow" in Bell.)

Boris

Count Ilya Andreyitch

(other guests at the party, "Berg's own general, the Rostof family, a colonel and his lady", there is also a reference to the Panins)

Abridged Versions: Chapter 7 in Bell. No break.
Gibian: Chapter 12: Line break rather than chapter break at the end.

Fuller: Entire chapter is removed.

Komroff: Other than a stray detail here or there, the chapter is preserved and followed by a line break.

Kropotkin: Chapter 9: Chapter is preserved.
Simmons: Chapter 12: Entire chapter is cut and replaced with "In his social climbing, Berg and his wife Vera give a small dinner party. The Rostovs are present and also Prince Andrew and Pierre. Pierre is struck by the
curious change that has come over Prince Andrew and Natasha."

Additional Notes:

Mandelker introduction to Anna Karenina: xx: "Other essential oppositions that structure the work reflect a very real ideological polarity, so that the values debated in the novel are mapped dichotomously: city versus

country, society versus family, ST. Petersburg, the window onto Europe, versus Moscow, the ancient Russian capital."

Letters (Christian): Pages 518-519: “The fact that many very harmful and deeply rooted prejudices against women and their work exist is absolutely true, and it’s even more true that it’s necessary to fight against them.

But I don’t think that a society in Petersburg which will establish reading rooms and premises for women is the way to fight them. I am not disturbed by the fact that a woman gets a lower salary than a man: prices are

determined by the cost of labour. And if the government gives a man more than a woman, it’s not that it gives the woman too little, but that it gives the man too much. I am disturbed by the fact that the woman who

carries, feeds and brings up young children has the additional burden laid on her of kitchen work, cooking at the stove, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, making clothes, and washing tables, floors and windows.

Why is all this terribly heavy burden laid solely on the woman? There are times when the peasant, the factory worker, the civil servant or any man at all has nothing to do, but he’ll lie down and smoke and leave it to the

woman--often pregnant, or ill, or with children--(and the woman submits)--to cook at the stove or bear the terrible burden or doing the laundry or looking after a sick child at night. And all this because of the superstition

that it’s somehow a woman’s work. This is a terrible evil and the cause of innumerable illnesses of unhappy women, premature old age, death or the stupefaction of the women and their children. This is what one needs

to fight against by word and deed and example.”

My Religion: Consequently, a life for self can have no meaning. The reasonable life is different ; it has another aim than the poor desires of a single individual. The reasonable life consists in living in such a way that life

cannot be destroyed by death. We are troubled about many things, but only one thing is necessary.