It’s rare for homosexuality to appear in nineteenth and early twentieth century novels, so I notice when it does, or seems to. An early scene in Anna Karenina attracted my attention.

In Part Two, Chapter Nineteen, Vronsky is having breakfast at his regiment club the day of the steeplechase race. The homosexual content isn’t explicit, but Tolstoy’s description of two of the officers and Vronsky’s and another officer’s attitudes toward them makes Tolstoy’s implication seem clear.

“At the entrance two officers appeared: one young, with a weak, thin face, who had come to the regiment from the Corps of Pages not long ago; the other a plump old officer with a bracelet on his wrist and little puffy eyes.”

The bracelet seemed like a telling detail to me, and the difference in ages. Vronsky is clearly annoyed by the two officers and tries to ignore them. He pretends to be engrossed in a book. But they sit at his table and tease him about his eating, “Not afraid of gaining weight?” they ask.

Again, that they would comment on his physical appearance seemed indicative. Not getting a reaction from Vronsky, the two order wine and leave together for the billiard room.

“Just then the tall and well-built cavalry captain Yashvin came into the room and, giving the two officers a scornful toss of the head, went over to Vronsky.”

Yashvin greets Vronsky in a masculine way, “slapping him hard on the epaulette with his big hand” and then says to him:

“‘There go the inseparables,’ Yashvin added, looking mockingly at the two officers who at that moment were leaving the room.”

The effeminate details of the two officers contrasted with the masculine Vronsky and Yashvin, and the fact that Yashvin calls them “the inseparables” seems meant to imply that the two officers were homosexual friends if not lovers.

I asked my friend who knows Russian to look up the passage in the original. He said the scene reads the same in Russian, and that “inseparables” was a good translation.