Tolstoy's smiles
/Damasio distinguishes emotion from feeling and describes the former as visible bodily reactions. He allows that facial features such as smiles can be considered in this emotion category, and mentions how actors can learn to express these emotions physically. He cites cases of people trained to produce the body features of an emotion who then begin to experience the comparable feeling. In class we asked a question concerning the reverse possibility -- can a person who experiences a particular feeling succeed in hiding the visible bodily characteristics of the emotion that precedes that feeling? Following are two excerpts from Anna Karenina, written in 1877, that suggest Tolstoy was very familiar with the difficulties of hiding one's emotions.
This first passage is from the opening chapter of Tolstoy's book. The passage below, from Chapter 18 of Part 1, describes the first time that Anna encounters Vronsky, who will eventually become her lover.