Abstract

The paper argues that Tolstoy's Realism does not rely on a mimetic representation of 'reality'. In Anna Karenina what operates is a poetics of the 'gaze' , which resonates with the poetics of an artist like Constantin Guys, whom Baudelaire called 'a painter of modern life.' While not claiming that Tolstoy based his Mikhailov on Guys, the paper uncovers parallels between the painter as 'archeologist' or local historian and Milhailov's artistic method based on the recovery of memory as trace and interpretation of signs