Amor, Felicidade, Paixão


A Felicidade é um estado de Amor permanente.
Ama-se o sol, o mar, o céu, as nuvens, as árvores, as flores, o canto dos pássaros...
Ama-se, Ama-se, Ama-se!... Simplesmente Ama-se!
Contudo, não é por geração espontânea que esse estado de amor iluminado acontece.
É sim, um processo gradual.
E é aí que o Amor pelo Outro entra em cena!
Quando se ama desmedidamente alguém, esse amor transborda — extravasa tocando tudo à nossa volta. Transita por osmose para o Todo que nos rodeia.
Sorrimos! Celebramos! Flutuamos!...
Dir-se-ia que tudo à nossa volta mudou, quando, afinal, quem mudou fomos nós! Sentimo-nos Exuberantes! Eufóricos! Alcançámos o Maior Bem — a Felicidade!

Porém, quem — como Karenina e Vronsky — enveredar pelo caminho da pura atracção, da paixão, perde-se sem nunca lá chegar!
Mas aqueles que — como Kitty e Levin — optarem pelo caminho do conhecimento mútuo, da compreensão, do respeito... esses sim, têm fortes probabilidades de a alcançar!

Paixão é Fogo que se extingue!
Amor é Semente que cresce!
Paixão é Ansiedade Inquietante!
Amor é Paz Radiante!
Paixão é sempre a descer!
Amor é sempre a subir!...


NOTA: Não posso deixar de louvar aqui, a brilhante tradução do casal Guerra, que foi elaborada directamente a partir do russo, conferindo uma maior autenticidade à obra.

4.75⭐️ I suffer from 'the more I like a book, the more difficult is it for me to write an articulate review' syndrome

So, I have this ongoing etiquette problem. Though sometimes I think it is a matter of respect. Or maybe social awkwardness. I’d consult my Emily Post on the issue, but it’s a unique bookworm sort of problem. I don’t think Ms. Post got that deeply into the protocol of neurotic bibliophiles.

Anyway, the question is.. why do I unconsciously call an author by their first name sometimes? In some respects, I’ve had this conversation before in the context of gender. That is, are discussants more likely to assume a first name basis when conversing about women authors rather than male authors? If so, does this mean a sign of disrespect? What about when this happens as a discussion among women? Is this more or less problematic? It also, obviously, happens sometimes with two authors by the same name, or with an author that someone happens to know personally.

But my question doesn't just have to do with this situation. I'm more interested as to why readers feel the impulse to do this to start with. The answer I've come up with is maybe an obvious one, but its worth stating: the emotional bond that a good book can seem to create in a reader’s mind with that author. This emotional bond can resemble love or hatred, respect, anger or sadness or can even simply result from spending some time with a comedian who has told enough, “you know how when,” jokes that you recognize. But on some level you feel you understand where they’re coming from. But its hard to pinpoint when that happens. Usually, for me, I only see it when I write my review. Usually I self-consciously delete it later once I realize it. As if I think that I’m like someone who met a movie star in a fast food restaurant and then decided to gush to everyone about how we were destined to be BFFs because it turned out that we had ordered the same kind of fries. But it is always revealing of how much the novel got to me. Virginia Woolf is the ultimate example of this for me. My experience with Mrs. Dalloway was like breaking through a wall into a party I’d always been invited to with close friends. I had the same experience with Austen and the Brontes and Graham Greene and a few others.

I wasn’t expecting to add another to this collection with Tolstoy. I've read this before, but that time my impression of Tolstoy as an intimidating, distant Big Russian Author intact. This read was different. I believe that the translation work of Paevar and Volokhonsky deserves credit for that. My first read was with the Garnette translation. However, as the NYRB notes, Garnett morphed Tolstoy’s words into “graceful late-Victorian prose,” as she did to every other Russian author she translated. And unfortunately, it turns out that graceful late-Victorian prose reads rather… well.. like it sounds like it might. Intelligently done, but often intimidating and cold. Thus, despite the fact that her work may have made Tolstoy’s work “accessible” to a Victorian audience, her work did a disservice to Tolstoy for me. Because that Victorian sensibility… that’s not Tolstoy. At least, it is not the Tolstoy that Paevar and Volokhonsky showed me. I’m glad that I gave this book a second chance, because this time Tolstoy became Leo a couple times. If my self-consciousness reasserted itself immediately and he became Tolstoy again, that’s okay. I remember those Leo moments.

There are many things I loved about this novel. I think what got me most, however, is something that’s based in the process of its creation. As I understand it, writing this novel was a great struggle for Tolstoy. Originally, he meant this to be a straightforward morality tale. Anna was meant to be an ugly, vulgar old adulteress who represented Evil Womankind, and Karenin a model of sainted Christianity. But the longer the writing went on, the more this black and white purpose acquired shades of grey. Anna became beautiful, then sympathetic at the beginning, and then in the middle, and then all the way into the end. Karenin became clueless, hypocritical, desperate, and even “unmanly”. Vronsky no longer twisted his mustache, but became a man with a code who wanted very much to be allowed to keep that code and live a life. The morals became increasingly tangled until his original purpose became almost-yes, we’ll get there- unrecognizable. He found his way from rigid morality to what makes a tragedy a tragedy.

Tolstoy just can’t bring himself to judge these people. There are moments where he shows that he could have gone full on Oscar Wilde if he wanted to, but he takes it back. For every cutting remark, there’s an apologetic attempt to reach out and embrace everyone a few paragraphs later. There’s a wonderful quality of generosity that runs through the whole novel. Judge not, lest ye be judged. It seems to have slowly eaten away at original purpose until there wasn’t anyone I could bring myself to blame. Some of them I sympathized with from the beginning-Anna, Dolly, Levin- and some snuck up on me-Karenin, Kitty- and some-Vronsky, Oblonsky- took me awhile, but I got there. The book is set up as a dance where these seven people come together, go through the motions and then change partners again. How they come together, why, and what the two partners want from each other in that moment reveals everything about these two characters. As our two anchors who represent the two choices that you can come to resolve the existential crises of life, Levin and Anna get to meet everyone and everyone gets to reflect them back to themselves. Other characters experience them and make their own choices by evaluating their experience. Their resolutions represent the spectrum of other choices that you can make in between Ecstasy (starts as Anna, moves to Levin) and Death (which moves from Levin to Anna). The dance climaxes when Levin and Anna meet and the author finally allows himself to face the powerful woman he’s created and see what he thinks of her. What happens in the scene is beautiful and makes a lot of sense. I hated what he did it to it afterwards, which read like someone desperately afraid that they had revealed too much (we’ll get there), but it doesn’t negate what happens when we see that opposites are more alike than we’d like to think. Like that circle you always see done with fascism and communism-in-reality where despite whatever they may say, they are not the opposites that they claim.

You’ll notice that seven is an odd number. Someone is always going to be left on the outside, or being the third wheel to one of the pairs. Everyone has a turn with this. Anna starts it, then Levin continues it, then Kitty, then Karenin and full circle until we come back to Anna standing by herself once again. Through the odd man out, we get an exploration of how loneliness, rejection, and mistaken choices to reject others affect these characters. The two choices seem to be either that it will transform them, or that it will gradually harden the worst parts about them until they become an unbreakable diamond. Kitty’s time in Europe is perhaps the most through exploration of this phenomenon. Tolstoy allows her to break and reform and then reform again until she’s able to give herself permission to be herself again. Not everyone is lucky enough to have the space and time to do that. Levin gets to do it eventually. I’d even argue that Vronsky almost gets to that point time and time again. Anna is the diamond. Karenin shatters to pieces and then rebuilds himself into one again. Surprisingly, in the end, Karenin was the one who broke my heart.

He shows these peoples' attempts at understanding each other and failing again and again. It's revealing that he has this tendency have these characters look at each other just “seem to express” deep, extensive feelings with their eyes or with mundane trivialities. Characters frequently make assumptions that other people are mind-readers or that they are, and some even go so far as to tell them so. “I can tell that you think that I…” or “Her eyes told me that…” etc. It seems like he can’t think of a way that these people can be honest with each other and just say these things that they are dying to convey to each other, so they have to make all these assumptions. The ones who can communicate with each other are the ones who drive the novel- Anna, Levin, Kitty. Our author stand-in, Levin, is the most socially anxious being. He frequently doubts every word that comes out of his mouth, blushes and embarrasses himself with his boyish pride, and puts his foot in his mouth on about a million occasions. Anna and Karenin’s inability to speak to each other just the few words that would have stopped this whole thing on about chapter ten is a more serious version of this. Levin’s older brother and his almost love affair with Kitty’s friend and one wrong word spoken that changed their lives is a lightly amusing version. But all these little moments add up to a more thorough condemnation of social conventions than anybody throwing themselves under a train at the end could possibly have managed. Only Connect in eight hundred pages at full volume. Only a few people manage it, and usually not for long. He shows us why succeeding is a gift, not something that we can take for granted.

And as for the writing… Tolstoy gets away with so much that other authors can't. He tells rather than shows for at least half the novel, and that is a conservative estimate. He repeats himself constantly. He chooses isolated moments and lets them go on for fifty pages longer than anyone on earth needs. Levin and Kitty’s wedding ceremony takes six chapters in my version. A two day hunting trip takes twice that. Ultimately, his writing isn’t that quotable out of context, except for that famous bit about happy families. Why? I can’t tell you. But Woolf can:
"For it has come about, by the wise economy of our nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic... For which reasons we leave a great blank here, which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion.”

The commonest expressions thrown together in the right order and with the right kind of passion. That’s Tolstoy all over.

But I know we’re going to have to talk about that end. That is, what he does to Anna because he could not himself decide what he wanted her to be, and really what he wanted himself to be. Even his generosity failed him here. He chose to take Anna’s rebellion against her circumstances and grind it down until it became the scratchings of a selfish, spiteful cat. He went gloriously, full-tilt into a wall wrong, but it was wrong. It seemed like his original stern morality got the best of him. At first, I wanted to think that it was just a plot mechanics decision in the sense that Anna was the big outlier in the story and social structure, and the way he had written the people around her there was no way for anyone to move forward unless she herself changed. Whatever Anna’s story was about, it was not about how love conquers all because Tolstoy doesn’t believe that. That couldn’t be the end. She couldn’t go back to Karenin, because that would have been an even bigger betrayal. But in the end, I think that I'm wrong and it was just him feeling like he had to condemn her for her sins in the end. He couldn't let it be about what he said it was the whole novel because that was too dangerous.

And it wasn’t just Anna’s ending that I had an issue with. Levin’s, too. There are things to love about it, but it also  felt like the kind of resolution that you write when you’ve got someone very powerful standing over your shoulder, tapping his steel toed boot on the floor. Levin had some powerful questions about how you go on through the muck and be happy when you know there’s so much evil around you. About how to rationally believe in God as a man of science. Tolstoy shows us that his domestic happiness isn’t enough to negate these questions. And then suddenly, it is, because it’s the end of the novel and he can’t just leave his audience with anything less than God is Good. Lastly, I really did not like what he did with that scene where Anna and Levin meet and  find each other sympathetic. It makes sense that they would. Why must Anna become the witch who ensorcelled him in order to keep pure Levin’s hands clean? It’s insultingly dishonest in a book that otherwise makes a point of truth telling. I know why, actually. It’s about the two things that came above. But I'm still not a fan..

But still. I can mostly forgive Tolstoy for what he did to Anna and Levin and their complex struggles because of one thing: his joy. Even when his generosity of spirit uncharacteristically fails him with Anna, or when powerful intellect goes off the rails toward crazytown with Levin and his peasant-worship, he has this great ability to celebrate things great and small. This is most evident in the Levin sections where we get long odes to the harvest and to his love for Kitty. He gets perhaps the most genuinely sweet proposal scene I’ve ever read, and his depiction of sheer ecstasy after his success left me smiling for hours. And really, despite the all that earnest, existential angst and all the terror of death, the ultimate conclusion that I think Tolstoy wants me to walk away with from that last Levin chapter is Life. Even with the problems with it I mentioned above, its such a relief to see Levin finally just let himself rest that its difficult to hate it completely. And Levin isn’t the only one who gets to experience the joy. Kitty gets to be wrapped up on it. Oblonsky walks around with an apparently unshakeable foundation of it. Vronsky and Anna even get pieces of it sometimes, in their love for each other, in Vronsky’s love of horses and Anna’s for her children. One of Karenin’s problems is that he never sees the value in joy. Tolstoy complements this with a sly sense of humor that sneaks into the prose in between the other seven hundred and fifty pages of Seriously Considering the World. He’s got some great bits about his own misconceptions about marriage and the absurd things jealousy leads us to do. He pokes fun at men showing off their manliness to each other. He has some fun with mysticism, laughs about the ridiculousness of politics. He makes me laugh with the extremes to which he carries his insistence that we think about the feelings of everybody. Including the dog. Twice. I mean, could you be so insensitive as to forget how it inconveniences the dog when you’re disorganized getting out the door in the morning? You monsters!

In the end, it’s just all out there, you know? Awhile ago, I saw Jon Stewart give a speech in tribute to Springsteen. I forget the occasion, but I’ve always remembered one part of what he said, which is that Springsteen is great because whenever he is on stage, he doesn’t hold back. You know that when he walks out he’s going to be going all out, one hundred percent of the time, and when he’s done, he’s left it all on the field. But this isn’t in a reality show culture flash inappropriate body parts and explore the outer reaches of vulgarity kind of way. It’s just more the sense you have that he has worked through the problems that he presents to you as long and as hard as he can. He’s mustered up all the blood, sweat and tears that he has to present it to you, and there aren’t any bon mots he’s saving for the cocktail party later. This book is a book of statements, but it feels like a book of questions. Do you know any better?

Often, with Tolstoy, I think that a lot of us feel like we do. With rare exceptions, he deals with everything on earth as if it is the most serious thing alive. We know about “don’t worry, be happy.” He’s got a lot of anxiousness about his dealings with women, and some extremely silly ideas about Women in general. We can even feel that we know better about communism, idealization of manual labor or even just his ideas about cooperative farming. But still, he’s got those big questions about everything and he insists that they matter. He’s so wonderfully earnest from the beginning until the very end. He reminds me of David Foster Wallace, in that respect. That Consider the Lobster essay, with all that serious questioning and pain, thrown out to the readers of Gourmet. He feels like the inheritor of this fearsome intellect/earnest straightforwardness duality. Both these guys are really asking. This was a surprisingly vulnerable book in that way. For every opinion Tolstoy pronounced, he retracted two and asked four questions. That is the sort of mind I want to be around. Does this all come down to “but he means so well”? No. Maybe. A little bit. But his amazing writing ability, his sharp insight, and his ability to reason through as far as he could go are powerful enough that I will always let it go.

I’m excited for my next Tolstoy read. He rambled at me for eight hundred pages, and I can’t wait for eight hundred more. What’s up, War and Peace? As my favorite cartoon monkey said, “It is time.”

مراجعتي للرواية في الرابط ادناه، حلقة بعنوان ليه لازم نقرأ انا كاريننا

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ9wu...

تعاطفت مع البطلة كثيرا و ان لم اعذرها. تولستوى مبدع فى تشريح نفسية شخصياته و اظهار تناقضاتها

جميع العائلات السعيدة متشابهة. لكن العائلات غير السعيدة تختلف في أسباب بؤسها.

هكذا بدأت الرواية

استلهم تولستوى قصتها من حادثة عاشها قبل سنوات لدى وصوله إلى إحدى محطات القطار مباشرة بعد انتحار شابة كانت عشيقة أحد الإقطاعيين في الجوار. وذلك برمي نفسها أمام القطار. وكانت تلك الحادثة ومصير الفتاة التي أثرت فيه لزمن طويل. تتبلور في فكره على مدى السنوات

يقولون إن النساء يحببن فى الرجال حتى رذائلهم.. وأنا أكره فيه فضائله!. لا أستطيع أن أعيش معه! لكن ماذا أفعل .. لقد كنت شقية.. وكنت أعتقد أن الإنسان لا يمكن أن يكون أكثر شقاء مما كنت. لكن الحالة الفظيعة التى أجتازها الآن تفوق كل ما تصورت. أتصدق إني أكرهه برغم علمي بأنه رجل طيب ! بل رجل رائع! وإني لا أساوي أصبعاً من أصابعه؟.. إنى أكرهه بسبب كرمه....

عن أمراض المجتمع الإقطاعى يتحدث تولستوى ليصدم المجتمع الغربى كله في مبادئه و يضع أمامه ماديته في صورة لا يمكن إلا بغضها و التقزز منها بل و التبرؤ من واقع يعيشونه يوميا و لذلك جعلك تتعاطف مع بطلة القصة التي كانت ضحية نفسها و جمالها قبل أن تكون ضحية المجتمع و قيمه

في اللحظة التى إلتفت إليها. إستراحت على وجهه عيناها الغبراوان. اللتان زادتها سواداً كثافة أهدابهما. وإبتسامة خفيفة ترف على شفتيها الحمراوين. إن طبيعتها تطفح بشئ يظهر –برغم إرادتها – فى بريق عينيها وفي إبتسامتها...

رغم كل ما كانت فيه آنا من النعيم و ما يقطع بلا شك أنها تعيش سعيدة حيث الزوج الرائع ذو النفوذ و الذرية الصالحة و العيش الرغيد و الجمال الفتان إلا أنها كانت تعيسة و بائسة و في الوقت نفسه كانت صادقة مع نفسها و زوجها بل و حتى مع العشيق

الجميل أنها تسعى للخلاص بأن تحمل وزرها و تتحمل نتيجة خطيئتها أمام نفسها قبل أن تتحملها أمام المجتمع.

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I read this book for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2017 Reading Challenge. For more info about what this is, click here.



You would have thought that I'd have learned my lesson after reading THE BRONZE HORSEMAN, but no - apparently this is the year of emotionally wresting Russian love stories. One of the more "heated" debates in my romance group is whether a romance, by definition, must have a happy ending. Most of the people in my group say yes; but I'm a pessimist, and I say no. With ANNA KARENINA, however, I can actually see the merit in reclassifying it as a "love story" and not a romance, because what occurs between these characters is less a romantic interlude than an intrigue of tempestuous thoughts, emotions, and chaos.



Basically, Anna is married to this old dude named Alexei, and ends up having an affair with a much younger man named Vronsky. Her husband finds out and the result is a major fustercluck, where the decision to get a divorce and the matter of custody both become heated debates. Anna selfishly continues to pursue her relationship with Vronsky, and ultimately ends up pushing him away, because Vronsky is just as selfish and doesn't really appear to see people as people so much as abstract concepts that loosely orbit his own desires and sense of self. Juxtaposed against this is the relationship between Stepan and Dolly; Stepan has affairs as well, but because he is a man, his wife must deal. IT IS CRAY.



Like Dickens, Tolstoy's writing still feels very modern because even though the particulars have changed, human nature mostly remains the same. I have a friend who is Russian and she explained some of the concepts of the Russian psyche that Tolstoy was writing about: namely, intense pride and the need to always be right (or at least, to not concede an argument). She also said that this edition is a really good translation, so if you're one of those people who - like me - always wonders whether the translator did their homework, this one apparently did.



Despite that, I couldn't really get into this book. It was way too long and I skimmed the last 100 pages because I'd had enough of these families and their drama. It's also intensely depressing. That last scene with Anna, and the fact that she changed her mind, cut deep. In many ways, ANNA KARENINA reminds me of MADAME BOVARY and THE AWAKENING, in the sense that the wayward woman is punished for wanting more and daring to dream beyond what society allows her. But said woman is also so selfish that the reader has trouble investing in her emotionally. I could appreciate the writing and the characterizations and even the story, but I felt I was missing a lot because I didn't have context for the culture and the history. That's the benefit of learning these types of books in schools; you are literally saturated in context and then, later, tested on your understanding of it. Reading these books independently means being able to enjoy them at my leisure, but then, conversely, also means that I run the risk of missing crucial points or having things go over my head.



I'm glad I read ANNA KARENINA but I don't think that this book is for me. Some classics just aren't "fun" and to me, this is one of them. So, since I rate purely on enjoyment and NOT literary merit, I'm going to give ANNA KARENINA a 2. It wasn't awful and got me through some lengthy jags spent in waiting rooms and bus seats, but it wasn't particularly enjoyable and the ending harshed my mellow.



2 stars

Tolstoy should've been a psychologist. I can't think of another novelist, past or present, who so ably describes human emotions, motivations and thought processes, especially with regards to human relationships. That facet of his writing, is spellbinding.
And while Tolstoy will, throughout 'Anna Karenina', widen the lens, and explore larger themes, such as the betterment of society through governmental and agricultural reform (mostly through the character of Levin- a stand-in for Tolstoy himself) at its core, the novel I think, is a study of more intimate themes: family, love and marriage, infedility, morality and faith.
The novel is basically a time- share between the two main characters (who only actually meet once in the novel) Konstantin Dmitrich Levin and Anna Karenina.
Anna is the breathtakingly beautiful aristocratic wife of Alexei Karenin, a rather boring, rational government official. When Anna meets the handsome, rich young military officer, Count Vronsky, she falls madly in love with him. What follows is the fascinating transformation of Anna's character in response to her own internal struggle with decisions she makes in her pursuit of emotional honesty and how Society disdainfully casts her aside.
The novel's co- protagonist, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin (Tolstoy) is an independent thinking landowner/farmer who extolls the virtues of country life and farming as the backbone of traditional national values while struggling to find compromise as Russia finds its way in the modern world. After he settled into married life and especially when he is away from the farm and has free time on his hands, Levin is a deep thinker. Like...'what is the meaning of life?' type thinker. This is made more interesting by the fact that it parallels the authors own struggle with the big questions: Life, Death, Good vs Evil, God, Faith.
Anna Karenina is a large novel with large ideas and at the same time, touchingly human. It has been described as the greatest novel of all time. It very well could be. It is definitely a masterpiece.

A panoramic view of the high society, obsessed with keeping up appearances, in a fast changing Russia. Full of reflections on love, faith, duty and (maybe less compelling for the modern reader) agriculture - 4 stars

Short chapters filled with multifaceted, very real characters and a lot of interesting contrasts is my characterisation of the reading experience of Anna Karenina. Commentary of society, with the opportunism and nepotism of the aristocracy is personified in Stepan "Stiva" Oblonski, who we meet at the start of book one, would be an other major component. Leo Tolstoy takes us to meet the extended family of the Oblonski's, including the titular Anna in a sweeping account of life's tribulations reminiscent to a good soap. Marriages form and break up, children are born, people fall from horses, there are touching death scenes and religious revelations.
I felt this was an engaging read, with quite some dry humour and a very keen eye of Tolstoi to the flaws in humans in general and the aristocracy in general. I would say that my expectations were maybe a tad too high and I don't feel this is the best novel ever, sometimes it meanders a bit too much and a plot driven story isn't really there. But I am still glad to have read this classic and being able to discuss this in the setting of a virtual bookclub with a lot of fellow readers.
Below I included some impressions from the eight distinct sections of the book, without giving away too much of the plot.

In Book I we have Stiva feeling sorry for himself that his charm and good looks don't mean his wife Dolly immediately forgives him for his affair with the French governess of his children. Ljovin, his good friend from the province is a direct opposite to him. Muscular and shy of office work, not smooth in his handling of ladies. He is sincerely interested in the Russian people in general, but disappointed in the politics within the Zemstvo governing districts.

Ljovin is very much in love with Kitty, sister of Dolly. And he is very much insecure and kind of a selfrighteous asshole at times in his purity.

Then we have Anna, and immediately we have on of the first of many contrasts, on how mens affairs are covered up (by their sister in the case of Stiva) while society will denounce her after she falls for Vronski, who she meets on the train station. This while her husband, Karenin, is still clearly doting over her at the start of this tale; his trust in his wife is quite touching considering how the story will progress.

The start of the book is just brimming with life and sharp observations. The ball is a good example, it shows Kitty going through a myriad of emotions I could all relate to. All characters have charming and less than perfect sides, making them very lifelike, although besides Ljovin and Karenin no one really seems to work or do something. Also interesting how even the cynical party people like Vronski fall in love head over heels in what we would now think of as a rather traditional manner.

Book II starts of with Kitty being literally lovesick and Anna and Vronski moving in ever tighter circles. Also an other major theme of the book, Ljovin’s love for the Russian countryside and nature pops up.

There are interesting tidbits to pick up, like Vronski already being on a low carb diet to stay on weight as jockey. He strikes me almost as a teenager, with his “let me take you away and forget about the consequences”. Also his drinking buddies give me the vibe of unserious student life, making his love declarations hard to believe for me while the demise of his beautiful horse might seem like a foreshadow of Anna her fate.

Karenin as a workaholic pushing his doubts about his wife aside by diving into work is an interesting contrast to this approach, very different.
The impact of lies on their family life, and especially Anna her son who senses that something is wrong with Vronski visiting so often, is excellently captured.

Book III takes the agricultural themes to new levels. A lot of the terms in the excellent translation of Hans Boland made me realise that I, like most of the characters in the book, am a thoroughly city person. Like the older brother of Ljovin I associate the countryside with holiday, something greatly frustating to his brother who rather works with the farmers than relax.
How endearing his fascination is with "normal people", Ljovin also has some interesting contrasting beliefs: he does not believe in healthcare for the peasants and the reason for not wanting to be involved in the Zemstvo turns out to be a rather reactionary that it does nothing for him.
He tops this of with a statement that no human endeavour in his view can be successful without being tied to self-interest, all Adam Smith like. But after this Goldman Sachs moment he works himself in the sweat in a mindless flow while harvesting.

Karenin in this section is all appearance and status focussed, with a hilarious section on his bureaucratic work with commissions and lots of legalities.
Vronski goes full on sect like towards Anna in his call for her to break with her past.

I kind of missed a big event like the ball or horse race in this third part, Levin and his other, sick brother at the end who can’t really communicate with each other was touching, but still.

Interesting how at the start of Book IV a foreign prince is so healthy he is compared by Tolstoi to a big shiny Dutch cucumber. Only slightly later Ljovin bulging biceps are compared to an Edam cheese so apparently I can assume Dutch produce at the time equalled rude health.

Ljovin’s and Kitty’s courtship through the first letters of words is very touching (if impractical), as is the bubbly lovey doveyness. You do wonder why Anna’s fascination with Vronski could not be described as engrossing by Tolstoi. To counter this we have a baffling scene of "read my diary so you know of my earlier sex with others"; a not-so-subtle move inspired apparently on Tolstoi's own life.

The reversion of Anna and Stiva their fates, with first the sister pleading for the brother and now Stiva pleading for Anna with Karenin, shows again the keen eye of the author of contrasts.

At the end of this section we suddenly have someone at the brink of death, a rather unfathomable change of heart because of that and an act of desperation, that all feels kind of out of character to me.

Book V starts with a wedding, including some stress about a shirt, based on Tolstoi his own wedding, and a trip to Italy. Painter Michailov, a small side character, capably illustrates how an artist is longing for validation and must be inspired in part by how Tolstoi himself sometimes felt.

The boredom and tribulations of married life, including rows and a sick brother who dies after a touching struggle, shows the value of the new bride.
Karenin’s breakdown is touching as well, his realisation he is without friends for instance but also his prideful nature are illustrated. How he tries to let his son belief Anna is dead is so cruel and over the top, as is the reunion scene on his birthday

And then the scathing opera scene where the vindicative power of the high society versus those that deviate is shown. I liked this section quite a lot, Book V is probably my favourite.

The reversion of faiths between Kitty and Anna is even touched upon by Dolly at the start of Book VI. Ljovin in this section struck me as quite modern with his ideal of always wanting to be a better person and being innately dissatisfied by himself. But to balance this he is then portrayed as childishly jealous. And he drinks swamp water during hunting.
In these scenes Oblonski’s profiteering from the peasants is rather nauseating and Veslovski as his friend is terrible as well; you can well imagine why a revolution will end the aristocracy in a couple of decades if you read about their behaviours in the depiction by Tolstoi.

Dolly reflecting on the sad fate of women being constantly pregnant and losing children felt modern as well, and she becomes in my view a much deeper character than I imagined. Also when she remarks that a man can always find better partners after someone reveals to her postponing pregnancies to keep a man interested in her, gives her a kind of solemn and realistic aura.

In Book VII the contrast struck me very clearly yet again:
Vronski: modern, decadent, rich, societally engaged, in an unconventional relationship.
Ljevin: traditional, hardworking, focussed on his own family, conventionally married.

Elections being sabotaged by student like pranks of nicking someones uniform or feeding people so drunk they can’t vote show that democracy was only nascent at best in the Russia Tolstoi knew.
And finally we start to see the obsessive side of Anna, being locked in her house and despised by society while her partner can indulge in elections and society.

The pureness of Ljovin is illustrated again at the start of this section, with him wanting to understand a music play while the rest of the attendees just want to talk with interesting people, and him being all star struck with a charming lady he meets for the first time.
Interesting how Ljovin in the city thinks of his afternoon as laborious while it is just meetings, concerts and family visits and then four bottles of champagne in a society club. This gave me some The Great Gatsby vibes.

Contrasts yet again, this time around life and death: the birth of the child of Ljovin and the death of a major character. There are some very well written scenes of the powerlessness and desperation of Ljovin when his wife goes into childbirth.

Oblonski going kind of broke, but being comforted that other members of high society are in even more debt. And even Ljovin spends too much money during his stay in Moscow, a symbol of the waning status and standing of the aristocracy versus the professional and merchant middle class.
Oblonski tries to use his standing to get a supervisory board spot in a railroad company, even having to "lowering" himself to “Jews”, who apparently exemplify capital.

Karenin going under in religious fervor and being influenced by a mystic French soothsayer, all Raspoetin like, while an other character goes into full morphine addiction. Book VII is really the most grim section of the book.

Anna’s jealousy and powerlessness (frankly she acts like a little child in my view, wanting to have it all and not facing up to the consequences of her choices, projecting on her partner her own unhappiness and trying to get him ever more in her grip to keep her mind of her predicament) leads to many struggles and a full out breakdown. The scenes of her riding through Moscow are reminiscent to Mrs. Dalloway, feverish and acutely aware of all the lives going on around her.

Finally Book VIII felt a bit like an after thought.
We have someone with a death wish, leaving as volunteer to the war with the Turks in the Balkan.
Ljovin’s existential doubt in this section is interesting and in my view a bit out of his pragmatic character, at least him contemplating suicide is something I could not imagine at all from all of the earlier books of the novel.

The contrast between Kitty her engagement with her child versus how Anna went about this in earlier sections is very clear.

And then we end with Ljovin his spiritual awakening and acceptance of his own human fallacy in living (even after the revelation that everything in life focusses on the goodness of God he still gets mad, discusses) does not impede his believe to do the right thing anymore.
It’s a bit vague to me as a modern day reader, I mean he is human and will go on making mistakes, that doesn't feel as the kind of deep truth a book of a thousand pages should end with.

¡¡ Ha sido un gustazo volver a leer este libro con esta traducción !!. Leí Anna Karénina hace algo más de veinte años en una edición preciosa, que me regaló mi hermana, pero con una traducción tan horrible que había párrafos enteros en los que no entendía absolutamente nada. En aquel momento pensé que el problema era mío y que el libro era demasiado para mí, que me superaba; tardé meses en leerlo, entendiéndolo a medias y lo acabé por pura cabezonería.
Lo que quiero decir con todo esto es que las traducciones con los clásicos son tan importantes como la obra que pretendemos leer.
Me quedo con la satisfacción de haber leído y disfrutado de este clásico indiscutible y también con la certeza de que seguiré leyendo a Tolstoy.

Anna Karenina is a remarkable story about society, faith and love. Included is a large range of emotions with some character flaws such as infidelity, unethicalness and selfishness.

All the characters are intertwined with Anna in some form. Anna and the Count, Stephen and Dolly, Kitty and Levin the last being the most honest and likeable.

Anna's first sighting of Count Vronsky is a string pulling of the heart with the railway station as the backdrop of their meeting. The Count finds Anna's beauty captivating. The love affair between the Count and Anna leads her to act in a way that is not befitting her rank in society. She forgets herself and tells Karenin she loves the Count. A strict moral code leaves Anna socially ostracized by society rules, she is shamed and shunned. Her love is very sad, for her the outcome is truly tragic. Her desires and changes in her life did not really give her physical or mental happiness, mostly suffering.

Anna's story is paralleled by that of strong-minded Levin and charming Kitty, frivolous Stiva and loyal Dolly. Dolly finds Steven (charming yet non conforming in his life as a parent and not being responsible to fulfill his role as a husband and father) cheating on her. In yet she has the most ordinary of values in family. She finds great joy in the moments with her children her primary motivation in life giving her great meaning.

Princess Kitty and Levin are quite charming and by far my favorite. He is older, their beliefs are different and yet they complement each other quite well. Levin is rejected at first as Kitty is smitten by another and Levin retreats to his farm and has many peasant families working with him. His bouts makes him search for the meaning of life which makes him skeptical in his beliefs. He eventually finds peace with God. He has loved Kitty always. Kitty is sensitive and compassionate. They marry and life for them is good and their love is true.

The story is beautifully written, rich and complex in morals. The novel is a cautionary tale of what not to do. This is not Anna's story, it is Levin's and Tolstoy who are one in their moral and spiritual beliefs.

“There are as many different kinds of love as there are different hearts” Leo Tolstoy in his timeless novel.

o kadar uzun zamandır bekliyordum ki goodreads'in durum güncelleme bölümünde "I'm finished!" linkine tıklamayı... okumaya başlayalı bir ay geçmiş. normalde bir kitap elimde kabaca şöyle bir üç haftadan uzun kaldığı zaman sinirlenmeye ve kitaptan soğumaya başlarım. gelin görün ki anna karenina bir ömür ruhumda benimle yaşayacak kitaplardan biri oldu. uzun uzun okumuş olmaktan asla mutsuz olmadım; bilakis, bilerek acele etmedim. evet, kitabı beklediğimden uzun sürede okuyor olmak beni bir miktar utandırdı, fakat kitapla yaşadığım macera açısından baktığımda her şey olması gerektiği gibi oldu diye düşünmeden edemiyorum. bir okur olarak benim kitabı değil, kitabın beni yönettiği bir okuma süreci oldu diyebilirim.

en sevdiğim yazarlardan Orhan Pamuk, şöyle demiş anna karenina ile ilgili:

“Okuduğum en mükemmel, en kusursuz, en derin ve en zengin roman. Tolstoy’un her şeyi gören, herkesin hakkını veren, hiçbir ışığı, hareketi, ruhsal dalgalanmayı, şüpheyi, gölgeyi kaçırmayan, inanılmayacak kadar dikkatli, açık, kesin ve zekice bakışı, bu romanın sayfalarını çevirdikçe okura, ‘evet, hayat böyle bir şey!’ dedirten kitap. Yarıştan önceki bir atın diriliğini, mutsuz bir bürokratın yavaş yavaş düştüğü yalnızlığı, bir kadın kahramanının üst dudağını, bir büyük ailedeki dalgalanmaları, hep birlikte yaşanan hayatlar içinde tek tek insanların inanılmaz ve hayattan da gerçek kişisel özelliklerini Tolstoy mucizeye varan bir edebi yetenek, hoşgörü ve sanatla önümüze seriverir. Roman sanatı konusunda eğitim için okunacak, defalarca okunacak ilk roman Anna Karenina’dır.”

çok iyi bir okur olduğumu, çok okuduğumu iddia edemem. ama şimdiye kadar okuduğum kitaplar, hatta daha da daraltayım; klasikler arasında anna karenina kadar kaliteli bir dizi gibi, tane tane, adım adım ilerleyen; her karaktere ayrı bir özen gösteren, bu karakterlerin gelişimiyle ayrı, başlarına gelenlerle ayrı ilgilenen kitap okumadım desem, abartmış olmam herhalde. dolayısıyla, kitabın başlarındaki sahne geçişleri bana -belki de çok saçma bir şekilde- Masumiyet Müzesi'ni çağrıştırıp kitabın ortalarına geldiğimde artık bu çağrışım bende kaşıntı yapıp dayanamayarak, acaba orhan pamuk'un anna karenina konusunda söylediği bir şeyler var mı diye araştırdığımda yukarıda yer verdiğim alıntıya denk gelip; bürokrattan ata, bir kadının üst dudağından bir aile tarihine geçişlerle ilgili kısmı okuduğumda yaşadığım heyecanı az buçuk tahmin edebilirsiniz.

çok heyecan verici, çok güzel bir haber almışım; doyasıya sevinmişim ve artık sadece dingin bir mutluluk yaşıyormuşum gibi dolu dolu bir hisle bıraktı bu kitap beni. ne kadar övsem az.

I was assigned Anna Karenina in a Russian Lit class I took second semester of my senior year of college. I was finishing my senior thesis and didn't make it twenty pages in, and in subsequent years I lugged that Constance Garnett edition around with me from apartment to apartment, never making it past more than those first few chapters before I finally gave up several moves ago and left it in a box on the curb. And when I finally read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, at age thirty-six, I felt I'd dodged a bullet by not getting to this any sooner, because I don't think it would've made such an impression on me.

This is one of the best books I've read, and I'd go so far as to say it's one of the best books that's been written. I'm going to make this the moment I stop a practice begun in my feckless youth and long regretted, of almost never giving five-star reviews no matter how good a book is, and going forward will have an expanded scale. This doesn't mean I think Anna Karenina is a better novel than, say, War and Peace; it only means that I've evolved, with age, in my awarding of these stupid yellow Internet book report stars that I hate.

Reading a great book feels like being in love. The night I started Anna Karenina I went to bed buzzing, almost too happy to sleep and excited to wake up in the morning so that I could continue to read. And it's a relief to have access to such a thrilling sensation, now that I'm a married woman and must avoid the temptations of falling in love with a dashing count, which, I now know, could only end terribly for me and pretty much everyone else.

As we all know, Tolstoy starts this off with his famous observation that "all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The other day I was talking with my sister, who complained that while it sounds good, this isn't actually true. I agree that it doesn't really seem to be the case even in this book, but for me the opening alludes to that magically paradoxical hybrid of specificity and universality that's just what great literature is made of. The characters in Anna Karenina are aristocrats in Tsarist Russia in the 1870s, and live in a world where their messages are sent and their food is cooked and their clothes are washed and their estates are farmed and their butts are wiped by servants and peasants who are considered something less than totally human even when their souls are celebrated and rhapsodized over by their romantic overlords. The characters and their world are exactly placed in one highly specific historical moment, and each person is so exquisitely described and developed that we'd know them immediately if we ever sat next to one of them on the train. The characters in this book are more real than real people, and that's what makes this book simultaneously so specific -- there is no one just like Anna, just like Levin, just like any of these characters -- and yet so general -- there are so many people who are almost like them that we recognize in these characters aspects of people in our own lives, of ourselves. I'm glad I waited to read this book because by the time I did I'd been married, I'd had a child, I'd suffered through romantic relationships that had turned toxic and unsalvageable, so I could admire just how accurately and beautifully all these things were described. Of course, I still hadn't yet harvested wheat or (spoiler alert!) thrown myself under a train, but after reading this I know just how those doing those things must be. The suicide in this book is one of the most incredible passages I've ever read, and will stick with me for the rest of my life. I wouldn't be surprised if I think of it at the moment of my own death, though I guess (well, hope) it's a little premature to say.

Of course, this being Tolstoy, the magnificent death scene can't be the end of it, and is followed by a lengthy and arguably tedious informercial for religious faith and family life. I remember a similar sort of thing at the end of his other long novel and it reminds me a bit of going to see some reconfiguration of a classic punk band a few years ago and being subject to the lead singer's plug for Ron Paul: Tolstoy's got a captive audience and he will hold forth on his tiresome pet ideas, throughout the book in little asides and then with great force at the end. In a normal writer I'd call this a flaw but I suppose in Tolstoy it's an eccentricity he's more than entitled to. It's his prerogative because by the end I felt whatever nutty crap he wanted to pull was well worth it.

I think part of getting old and crotchety and out of touch has been, for me, getting more conservative and lame and stupidly swoony about "the canon" and what constitutes Deathless Literature. Anna Karenina is better than almost anything else I can think of because it lives and breathes, and there's so much in it, and no matter what I do to it -- read it as a resolutely feminist text, as I do, and pretty much ignore the Christian faith stuff that was clearly so central for its author -- it isn't, and can't be, remotely diminished. I can read all the footnotes; I can ignore the footnotes. I can go to commentaries and articles and Nabokov and Bakhtin on the subject of Anna Karenina and what it all must truly mean; I can go back to school for my PhD and devote the rest of my life to its study. Or, I can remain willfully ignorant, as I am, and just enjoy the story, which is all that I've done and all I feel up to, and for me right now that's fine. It makes my own life so much larger, both by illuminating my own lived experience and by expanding and enhancing it to include all these events I haven't lived through, places I haven't been, and people I haven't known. I've had so much more and richer of a life than I could've had without having read this novel. My soul will always remain crushed by what happened to Anna, and even, in spite of myself, strengthened by Levin's religious conversion and the birth of his son. I think another thing I didn't get when I was younger, with my stingy four stars, was how hard that is to do, to write a book that will effect something like that in readers... Or maybe it isn't so hard really, because a lot of books do that for a lot of people. Certainly a lot have done it for me and they for sure weren't all highly respectable Russian Classics.

But there is something especially timeless in here, though, that I don't think I'm imagining. It's so simultaneously of its time but of of our time too, maybe every time, and it's shocking how these old words on the page can be so vital and alive. Some of that I do think comes from the translation, and I sometimes wonder if hip new translations are cheating a bit...? Well, even if they do come with an asterisk, I'd say avoid poor fusty Constance as I highly recommend Pevear and Volokhonsky. Highly recommend this book. Whew. What a read. Gosh.