اگر پیش از خواندنِ کتاب، پلات آناکارنینا را در چند سطر به من می‌دادند تا بخوانم، احتمالاً می‌گفتم داستانی نیست که از آن لذت ببرم، یعنی موضوع خیانت هیچ‌وقت از موضوعات مورد علاقه‌ی من نبوده و گرایش مذهبی مسیحی تولستوی در این کتاب هم با سلیقه‌ی من جور نیست.
اما آنچه خواندنِ آنا کارنینا را به تجربه‌ای لذت‌بخش تبدیل می‌کند، توانایی نویسنده در آفرینش یک فرم موفق است. واقعا می‌شود پلات آناکارنینا را در یک صفحه خلاصه کرد، تقریباً بدون آن که نکته‌ای کلیدی از قلم بیفتد، اما تولستوی از همین پلاتِ ساده رمانی هزار صفحه‌ای نوشته که خواننده را با خود همراه می‌کند (گرچه از نظر من می‌شود حدود دویست صفحه از کتاب را هم بدون لطمه خوردن به محتوا کم کرد، اما باز هم نسبت به بعضی از آثار کلاسیک، نسبت حجم به محتوا قابل قبول است)
نوشته‌های تولستوی شاید برخلاف داستایوفسکی فاقد پیچیدگی‌های فلسفی باشد، اما او یک «داستان‌سرای» بسیار موفق است. شخصیت‌پردازی و فضاسازی داستان در اوج قرار دارد. پیچیدگی‌های احساسی شخصیت‌ها بسیار عمیق و قابل درک توصیف شده‌اند، و نویسنده، خواننده را پیوسته بر سر دوراهی‌های اخلاقی قرار می‌دهد و او را به چالش می‌کشد.
عشق سالم/ناسالم
شاید مهمترین درون‌مایه‌ی کتاب، تصویری باشد که تولستوی از دو نوع عشق به خواننده نشان می‌دهد.
نوع اول که در قالب شخصیت «لوین» نشان داده می‌شود و پاک و سنتی و پذیرفته‌شده در جامعه است.
نوع دوم که از نظر تولستوی معادل هوسرانی، آزادی کامل جنسی و خیانت است، در شخصیت «آنا کارنینا» به نمایش گذاشته می‌شود.
تولستوی دوست دارد خواننده بتواند هر دو نوع از عشق را درک کند. به همین خاطر شخصیت‌پردازی آنا کارنینا آنقدر عمیق هست که خواننده بتواند بفهمد چرا او چنین شیوه‌ای از زندگی را برگزیده است.
در عین حال تولستوی مایل است شخصیت‌های کتاب را به سزای اعمالشان برساند (چیزی شبیه به کلید اسرار!) و اگر رفتار و عقاید شخصیتی مخالف با عقاید تولستوی باشد، او را در نهایت تنبیه می‌کند!
یادم هست که چنین حالتی را در داستان کوتاه «شیطان» هم دیده بودم. تولستوی در هر دو داستان می‌خواهد به خواننده نشان دهد بی‌بند و باری جنسی و هوسرانی در نهایت عواقب بدی به دنبال دارد.
آنا کارنینا و ورونسکی «تصور می‌کنند» می‌توانند از محدودیت‌های تحمیل‌شده توسط سنت و جامعه بگریزند، اما در نهایت شاید همین محدودیت‌های سنت و جامعه است که عشق/هوس آن‌ها را تباه می‌کند.
تجلی تولستوی و نظریاتش در قالب «لوین»
نمی‌دانم چرا اسم لوین در عنوان کتاب نیست، چون هم به نوعی قهرمان داستان است، هم شخصیت و زندگی لوین، به وضوح برگرفته از شخصیت و زندگی خودِ تولستوی است.
لوین یک ارباب و زمیندار ثروتمند روستایی است که زندگی در روستا و رسیدگی به امور کشاورزی را به زندگی شهری ترجیح می‌دهد و این زندگی‌نامه‌ی خودِ تولستوی است و دیدگاه‌های سنتی لوین به وضوح مورد تأیید تولستوی هم هست. تولستوی معلومات وسیعش در مورد کشاورزی و زندگی روستایی را به وسیله‌ی لوین به خواننده نشان می‌دهد و حتی گفته می‌شود ماجرای گم کردن پیراهن لوین در مراسم ازدواج، ماجرایی است که برای شخص تولستوی اتفاق افتاده!
در ضمن تولستوی در قالب شخصیت لوین نظراتی دارد که برای خواننده‌ی امروزی عجیب و بیش از حد سنتی و محافظه‌کار می‌نماید، مثلا از نظر لوین توسعه‌ی راه‌آهن به ضرر جامعه‌ی روسیه بوده یا صنعتی شدن کشاورزی برای جوامع غربی خوب است، ولی روش‌های سنتی در جامعه‌ی روسیه بیشتر جواب می‌دهد.
دیدگاه‌های مسیحی
مسیری که لوین از ابتدا تا انتهای کتاب از نظر اعتقاد به خدا و مسیحیت و کشمکش‌ها و پرسش‌های مذهبی طی می‌کند، احتمالا مسیر تکامل اندیشه‌ی دینیِ شخصِ تولستوی است. دیدگاه‌های مسیحی در جای‌جایِ کتاب به چشم می‌خوردند. مثلا پیام مسیحی «اگر کسی به گونه‌ات سیلی زد گونه‌ی دیگرت را نیز پیش بیاور» یا «مسیح به صلیب کشیده شد تا کفاره‌ی گناهان مسیحیان باشد» چند جا تکرار می‌شود. در پایان کتاب، این کشمکش لوین با دین به اوج می‌رسد. به نظر من پررنگ بودن بیش از حد دیدگاه‌های مسیحی، به داستان تکامل اعتقادی لوین کمی حالت شعارگونه داده است.

پی‌نوشت۱: در میانه‌ی خواندن کتاب شک کردم که کتاب -با توجه به موضوعش- سانسوری دارد یا نه، به همین خاطر تصمیم گرفتم با نسخه‌ی انگلیسی، چند مورد از موارد مشکوک را چک کنم! انتشارات معروف پنگوئن در مجموعه آثار کلاسیک خود ترجمه‌ی انگلیسی آنا کارنینا را نیز ارائه کرده است. خوشبختانه سانسوری در کتاب پیدا نکردم و ترجمه‌ی سروش حبیبی مثل همیشه دقیق و با کیفیت بود.
پی‌نوشت۲: پیشنهاد می‌کنم از ابتدای کتاب نام شخصیت‌ها را روی کاغذ بنویسید (امان از اسامی روسی!) اگر حوصله‌ی نوشتن نام‌ها را ندارید، ترجمه‌ی انگلیسی انتشارات پنگوئن در ابتدای کتاب بخشی برای معرفی شخصیت‌ها دارد که مناسب است.

Tolstoy draws a portrait of three marriages or relationships that could not be more different. Anna Karenina is rightly called a masterpiece. Moreover Tolstoy does not spare on social socialism and describes the beginnings of communism, deals with such existential themes as birth and death and the meaning of life.
Tolstoy’s narrative art and his narrative charm are at the highest level. He also seems like a close observer of human passions, feelings and emotions.
All in all I was touched by his book because it was one of the most impressive books I have ever read.

"Kendi yüceliğinin yüksekliğinden bana bakmasına bayılıyorum". Sayf 55

"Belki de sahip Olduğum şeylere sevindiğim, sahip olmadıklarıma da üzülmediğim için mutluyum."

Sayf 167

"Kadın dediğin öyle bir yaratık ki istediğin kadar incele, gene de hiç bilmediğin yanlarıyla karşılaşıyorsun..."
Sayf 168

"Insana akıl, onu huzursuz eden şeylerden kurtulması için verilmiştir."

Sayf. 758

At the lunch table today in school, a colleague asks me:

"So what are you reading at the moment?"

"Nothing!"

This is obviously not my staple answer, being a voracious reader and also the diehard school librarian, so I feel I have to give some context:

"I am having a book hangover, or no, I am in mourning! Anna Karenina just died on me, for the second time! I read the last pages yesterday and still feel the physical pain in my body. I can't pick up anything else right now!"

How many books leave you aching? I discussed with my children yesterday, and there are not that many. This is one of them. And I will just leave the review the way it is below, an evolving account of my second reading of this unforgettable story. I have no doubt that if I attempt it a third time, some 25 years from now, I will mourn her again, as if she died yesterday. In my heart, she did.

Here's the journey:

Rereading the famous introductory sentence, I start!

I don't agree with it, actually, even though I used to quote it as one of those brilliant summaries of the human condition. However, with life experience, my perspective has changed. It's the happy families that are as diverse as the universe! Unhappiness is incredibly similar in all families, once you start to scratch the surface and speak to other people.

That is also why unhappy families recognise themselves in the great fiction describing their ordeals.

It is so much more interesting to see how people manage to break the spell of unhappiness in creative ways and form new communities that are put together using the shining shards of their broken past to shape new patterns. So now that I am rereading Anna Karenina for the first time in two decades, I want to find her creative happiness in her dull conventional unhappiness!

Let the journey begin...

I read about a quarter of the novel in a long, continuous go with interruptions that remind me of Vronsky's, Karenin's and Anna's repetitive everyday duties that are concealing the consuming passion (in my case for this book!) that dominates all thoughts and actions.

And I am as enraged as I tend to get only when reading very, very good books that challenge my equilibrium. I wonder if we will ever see a society that is free from the vice of regarding machine life as a virtue?

I read on, knowing all too well how Tolstoy solves the riddle of Anna...

Midway through the book I discover something new in myself as a reader. When I read Tolstoy as a young girl, I felt the oppressive weight of his long descriptions of Russian society and agriculture (and of war and strategy in War and Peace) and I was skimming through Levin's struggles with practical and theoretical issues of farming to get back to the Karenin-Anna-Vronsky triangle. Now I find it most stimulating to have a break from the emotional collapses to dive into harvesting and bad weather in the countryside!

Who would have guessed?

I read on...

Three quarters done I need a break from Levin. His personality is so brilliantly drawn that I feel physically anxious around him. If a reader walks on eggshells around a character, you know that he masters the skill of brooding and manipulative self-centredness! Detecting and punishing thoughtcrime did not enter the world with Orwell. It is a staple ingredient of patriarchy, and in people like Levin, notoriously unable to let go of their own self-importance or to see the world as something bigger than their fragile ego, it becomes a caricature - but a painful one that does not stimulate laughter.

Can we go back to Vronsky and Anna breaking down, please, Mr Tolstoy? The tragedy hurts less than this maniac torturing his pregnant wife with his head full of drama!

Reading on...

"In what is she to blame? She wishes to live."

The tragedy encapsulated in these thoughts! Dolly, the woman broken by conventional life, thinking about Anna, broken by breaking free...

Powróciłam znów do "Anny Kareniny" po dziesięciu latach od pierwszej lektury - tym razem w nowym przekładzie Jana Cichockiego. Przekład jest nowy, ale klasyczny, nienapuszony i piękny. Miłość tego nagradzanego tłumacza do frazy, do słowa widać w każdym zdaniu. Czyta się z prawdziwą przyjemnością, a historia poszukiwania szczęścia Lewina i Kitty, dramatyczne dzieje Wrońskiego i Anny, rodzinne bolączki Dolly i Stiwy znów pochłonęłam z zachwytem. Arcydzieło.

I seriously really enjoyed this it's one of those that stays with you and the philosophy of it x I'm thinking of it days later, the intelligence streams off it! However I felt it slightly long and there wasn't enough Anna

A few months ago I read Anna in the Tropics, a Pulitzer winning drama by Nilo Cruz. Set in 1920s Florida, a lector arrives at a cigar factory to read daily installments of Anna Karenina to the workers there. Although the play takes place in summer, the characters enjoyed their journey to Russia as they were captivated by the story. Even though it is approaching summer where I live as well, I decided to embark on my own journey through Leo Tolstoy's classic nineteenth century classic novel. Although titled Anna Karenina after one of the novel's principle characters, this long classic is considered Tolstoy's first 'real' novel and his take on a modernizing country and on people's lives within it.

The novel begins as Anna Karenina arrives in Moscow from Petersburg to help her brother and sister-in-law settle a domestic dispute. Members of Russia's privileged class, Darya "Dolly" Alexandrovna discovers that her husband Stepan Arkadyich "Stiva" Oblonsky has engaged in an affair with one of their maids. Affairs being a long unspoken of part of upper class life, Dolly desires to leave her husband along with their five children. Anna pleads with Dolly to reconcile, and the couple live a long, if not tenuous, marriage, overlooking each other's glaring faults. While settling her brother's marriage, Anna is reminded of her own unhappy marriage, setting the stage for a drama that lasts the duration of the novel.

Tolstoy sets the novel in eight parts and short chapters with three main story lines, allowing for his readers to move quickly through the plot. In addition to Stiva and Dolly, Tolstoy introduces in part one Dolly's sister Kitty Shcherbatsky, a young woman of marriageable age who is forced to choose between Count Vronsky and Konstantin Dmitrich Levin. At a ball in Kitty's honor, Vronsky is smitten with Anna, temporarily breaking Kitty's heart. Even though Levin loves Kitty with his whole heart, Kitty refuses his offer in favor of Vronsky, and falls into a deep depression. Levin, seeing the one love of his life reject him, vows to never marry.

Anna becomes a fallen woman and rejects her husband in favor of Vronsky, fathering his child, leaving behind the son she loves. Even those closest to her, including family members, are appalled. A G-D fearing woman in a religious society is supposed to view marriage as sacred. Yet, Anna does not value her loved ones' advice and chooses to live with Vronsky. Despite a comfortable, upper class life, Anna is in constant internal turmoil. Spurned by a society that clings to its institutions as marriage and the church, Anna chooses love yet isolation from all but Vronsky and their daughter. Her ex-husband is viewed as a strict adherent to the law, cold, and unsympathetic, and will not grant a divorce. Even though Anna is clearly in the wrong, Tolstoy has his readers sympathizing with her situation, rooting for a positive outcome. He brings to light the plight of lack of women's rights, especially in regard to divorce, and has one hoping that Russia changes her ways as she modernizes.

If Anna's situation sheds light on the worst of Russian society and Dolly's reveals its stagnation, then Kitty, who later marries Levin, shows how the country begins to modernize. Kostya and Kitty marry for love, rather than gains in society. Believed by many to be Tolstoy's alter ego, Levin is an estate farmer who is well aware of the rights of his tenant farmers called muzhiks. Along with his brother Sergei Ivanovich, Levin works toward agrarian reform. Both men, Sergei Ivanovich especially, is swept up in the communist ideals that are beginning to form, in rejection of the tsarist governing of the country. Tolstoy diverges pages at a time to farming reforms and one can see in these pages his own beliefs for the future of Russia in the late 19th century.

Through the three principle couples: Stiva and Dolly, Vronsky and Anna, and Levin and Kitty, Tolstoy presents the old, changing, and new Russia. Having Levin introduce farming mechanisms from the west and Vronsky participate in a Slavic war, Tolstoy presents a Russia that is no longer completely isolated. He reveals how communism begins to shape up as farmers are no longer happy as tenants and many privileged classes adhere to newer values. Meanwhile, through Dolly, Anna, and Kitty, Tolstoy also presents how a woman's role in this society changes, including schooling and her place in a marriage. As the twentieth century nears, Russian life is no longer set in antiquated ways.

Had I not read a drama set in the tropics, I most likely would not have journeyed to 19th century Russia. I enjoyed learning about Leo Tolstoy's views on life there and how he saw late 19th century Russia as a changing society. I found the plight his title character depressing while reading about Levin and Kitty to be uplifting as Russia moves toward the future. Tolstoy's words are accessible in spite of the novel's length, a testament to the stellar translation done by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. A true classic, I enjoyed my time with the characters in Anna Karenina, and rate Tolstoy's premier novel 5 shining stars.

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” – W. B. Yeats

Catching up…

I was a 16-year-old romantic when I first read this book. I was in love with my first boyfriend, and I believed in happily ever after. My high school English instructor had challenged us to read “Anna Karenina,” and I was willing to take the challenge, not only because of all those things I mentioned, but I liked the idea that part of her name was shared with my own.

Also, at that impressionable age, I was up for romance and epic love stories, and well, my English teacher touted this book as the greatest work of literature ever written.

Gratefully, it was a semester reading project, so we had time to finish the 800+ pages and our book reports. I don’t remember what I said in my book report, but I do remember getting an “A” in English. How is it that I remember, that?!

❄️THIS IS MY UPDATED REVIEW FOR ANNA KARENINA❄️

I think most readers are aware of the penultimate ending of the novel, not necessarily because they've read it or even seen a film version, like the one in which Kiera Knightley plays the lead role, but they've "heard about it somewhere." I say penultimate because the novel goes on well past Anna's death and, so far as l'm concerned, to no good effect. I found it dragged whereas the rest of the novel moved along well enough for me.

The actual ending basically consists of a religious tract, disguised as Levin's struggle over embracing the Russian Orthodox faith, like everyone else he knows, and then a tract on the politics of war, again centering around Levin's feelings and the concept of pacifism. In fact, Levin takes up the rest of the novel after Anna's death, interesting because the novel begins with him being rejected by the woman he loves. We come full circle with him, as it were, where he is somewhat at peace and somewhat not, at the conclusion. I would say he is my favorite character, a man close to the land and close to the (mostly) humble people who work it. Do we see Tolstoy in this man?

War and Peace came first (1867), Anna Karenina second
(1878), and I feel like Tolstoy is restless at the end of Karenina and wants to do other things than write a novel - such as bring more theology and philosophy into his writings and life. Indeed, "Tolstoy came to reject most modern Western culture, including his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, as elitist "counterfeit art" with different aims from the Christian art of universal brotherly love he sought to express." [Wiki]

Anna Karenina was highly readable and enjoyable, and its length did not matter to me one bit. The writing was exceptional. I only found Anna's personality disorder more and more difficult to deal with. The poor soul. She was so tormented. The only thing that gave her any consistent relief was draughts of morphine.

Madeline Anthony, editor of an Audible blog on the novel informs us that "the plot of Anna Karenina was inspired by the story of a real woman—the mistress of one of Tolstoy’s friends who, after learning that her lover had been neglecting her for another woman, threw herself in front a freight train.

"The character of Anna was inspired by Alexander Pushkin's daughter, Maria Hartung. Meeting the young woman at a ball, Tolstoy was struck by her beauty and, after engaging in a conversation, also by her bold opinions on literature and art."

It is at once a romance, a tragedy, and a novel of life upon life upon life - it seems like everything that matters to us on this earth is embodied in one of the characters, one of the love affairs, in one of the many lengthy conversations, or one of the subplots or the main plot itself - that is, Vronsky's relationship with Anna, and Levin's relationship with Kitty or Ekaterina - and I prefer her full name it’s so lovely.

Levin (which is what the title should be, since he is the main character, the real hero and the focus of the book!) (But who would read the book with that title, I know!)

If you don't want to know the ending, don't read this review, though I won't actually talk about what happens to Anna specifically, something I knew 40 years ago without even reading the book. I didn't read the book to find out what happens to her. I knew that. Probably many of you know or knew the ending before reading the book. And this isn't so much a review as a personal reflection. I was tempted, finally, after decades of NOT reading it, to now, approaching my 60th birthday, finish it, all 818 pages, tempted to just simply write: Pretty good! :) But I resist that impulse, sorry (because now, if you so choose to read on, you will have to read many more than those two words. . .).

This is as millions of people have observed over the past 140 years, a really great book, and those of you who are skeptical of reading "Great Books" or "classics" may still not be convinced, but this has in my opinion a deserved reputation of one of the great works of all time, and one of the reasons it IS so good is because it speaks humbly and eloquently against pomposity and perceived or received notions of "greatness." Why do I care about its place in the canon? I guess I really don't. I just think some books deserve the rep they get from the literary establishment, and some deserve the rep they get from the wider reading public. This one is a great literary accomplishment AND a great read, in my opinion, and deserves to be read and read widely by more than just the English major club. And I say this as one who prefers Dostoevsky to Tolstoy; I seem to prefer stories of anguish and doubt to stories of affirmation and faith, and the atheist/agnostic literary club I belong to is maybe always going to favor doubt and anguish over faith and hope and happiness. But to make clear: This surely is a book of faith, of family, of affirmation, of belief in the land, nature, goodness, and simple human joys over the life of "society" with all of its pretension. Yes, all that affirmation is true of the book in spite of what happens to Anna.

I write this in particular contexts, as we all do when we read and write. If I had read this book in my more cynical early twenties, when I actually started it once (and again a few times over my life time and never finished), when I had no kids, I might not have liked it much. If I had read this right after Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, or in the years I was first reading Under the Volcano, Kafka, Camus, what I think of as my existentialist years, I might have found it too. . . life-affirming. But today I have kids, and as seemed to have happened with Chris Ware, as evidenced by his more positive Building Stories, having kids changed everything for me, and in a good way. In harsh times, you need stories of hope and goodness, and Levin's story is a timeless story of hope and goodness.

Another context: I am particularly shaken as I write this by the 20 kids dead in a Connecticut elementary school in Sandy Hook yesterday, with, too, a good teacher, principal, and school psychologist and others who have given their lives to doing good for children, senselessly slaughtered. This is a murderous country, the most murderous in the world, killings devastating my Chicago on a daily basis maybe especially this year, but every damned year. And despair/suicide is possibly more prevalent than ever. Maybe it is time for a bit of reordering priorities toward goodness, and finishing this book as my news feeds gave me updates on the tragedy provides an interesting contrast in experiences, rendering different but altogether persuasive truths about the nature of the world.

Tolstoy was himself, the translator Richard Pevear writes in his fine, brief introduction, in some sense writing a response to the nihilists who were as he saw it in fashion in late nineteenth century Russia, in Moscow, in Europe, in the world. Tolstoy was himself searching for meaning in life and struggling with faith and beliefs in a way he didn't ever struggle about again (or as much) after this book, and the struggle makes for the greatness, in my opinion. His late book Resurrection, by contrast, has none of the struggle about faith that this book has in it. It's mostly a binary world, all Good and Evil, a didactic allegory. Pevear says one of the two main characters, Levin, the country farmer struggling to also write his ideas about farming, is the most fully realized self-portrait that Tolstoy created, and he is on the main pretty delightful. Grumpy at times, stubborn, moody and not witty, a kind of no-nonsense traditionalist I certainly would have been annoyed at regularly if I knew him, Levin is often a kind of comical character, self-deprecatingly clueless as he approaches the Big Events of his life: His brother's death, his proposal to Kitty, the birth of his first child. These are also moments of real angst/anguish and passion and comedy/tragedy, written with great flourish and amazing detail, great sections of the book, pretty thrilling to read, in my opinion.

These are, Tolstoy tells us, in the main what life (and literature) is and should be mainly about, love and death, and they deserve loving attention for us, as are also the striving for goodness and faith. The current art scene of the time, in especially Moscow's theater and art and literature scenes, the world of fashion, the culture of massive-debt-incurring spending on a lavish lifestyle, all this Tolstoy skewers through the comical eyes of the simple farmer Levin, who at his best is so attached to the land, to family, to love, to good talk, and good friendship. But he is not a stereotype, he is a great character, fully realized.

And what can we say of Anna, the other main character, his sort of opposite? Well, if you want to look for what is in some sense a "moral" of this huge tome of a book, this might be it:

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”

Or, if you want to be happy you will want to make choices that Levin makes instead of Anna's tragic choices--but Anna, in having been originally intended by Tolstoy (thanks to Pevear here for his introduction) as an immoral woman, a woman corrupted by city values, is never really only that, any more than Levin can be seen as a holy man. Tolstoy is creating literature here, not a didactic tract, and we see all along that Tolstoy falls in love with Anna as she emerges through his creation of her in his novel, and she is thus for him and us real and fascinating, a human being, and a wondrous one in many ways, one of the great women of literature, without question. You don't have to agree with her choices or like her, but she will come to life for you as few characters ever will. And many of you will fall in love with her as Tolstoy did. As I did, I'll admit.

There's one time Tolstoy has his two main characters meet, and this is a great evening, where the simple Levin actually is obviously attracted to Anna in so many ways, and not just the physical attraction all men and women seem to have for her. Levin, like Tolstoy, sees that Anna is vital, viscerally alive, she's fascinating, interesting; okay, she IS a romantic heroine, but she is a romantic heroine that anyone reading romances should read. The women of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, these are "romances" but they are all so much more, that sweep you into the world in richer and deeper ways. Anna Karenina is, like War and Peace, like The Brothers Karamazov, a rich cultural forum, a series of linked meditations on farming and politics and religion and family and relationships and war and the meaning of life, not just about sex and romance. You get so much out of it, as it is all about reflecting on and teaching you how the mundane aspects of our lives are worth paying attention to (I know the bulk of readers absolutely hate the farming and politics sections of the book, but I would contend it is all relevant to Tolstoy's webbed narrative reflection on the meaning of life).

And Anna, in the very center of this tale, as a kind of twin contrast to Levin, but not a simple one (they are both suicidal at times; they both are moody and struggle and are essentially lonely for much of the book), is one shimmering, tragic character we can't simply dismiss for submitting to and crushing her life (as she does) through lust for Vronsky. We come to understand her well, we come to understand why she does what she does and why we must pity her and even support her, love her. I know a lot of people have not come to this position about her, they dismiss her as a shallow twit who throws her life away for an also shallow, callous dashing fellow, but in the end we even come to like Vronsky and pity him, and admire his resilience. He IS also an attractive character, in many ways, in spite of his shallow aspects. And maybe we are even sympathetic for them in this forbidden, unwise love. I know I am. We care for them.

Of the other main characters, I liked Kitty, Levin's wife (who deals with the dying of her husband's brother so deftly as opposed to her clueless husband) a lot, and who becomes attracted to Vronsky too in a way as so may women seem to do. Levin's two brothers are both great, and provide the basis for rich conversations. The Dolly/Oblonsky pair are yet another view of a married relationship. I even like the portrait of the sad, stiff Karenin, the diplomat we can see is a good man, certainly not a great lover for Anna, but we see his struggles and come to feel sorry for him, I think. He's not an ideal match for the passionate Anna, maybe, but he's a good and essentially blameless man. I like all the minor characters we get to meet, too, the people Tolstoy finds more genuine than all the upper crust he mocks and derides and, you know, also cares about. This is a great book, my friends, with some great characters and great scenes.

And now to the movie? I read one blurb that said without Tolstoy's gorgeous writing, any movie version of Anna Karenina will only be a soap opera, and that is what I feared. . . and that is what I found in seeing it. The movie couldn't begin to capture Tolstoy's reflections on life and love and birth and death. It was a melodrama, a good one but not great or rich as the novel.

And what do English readers miss, as my friends who read Russian and have grown up reading his prose IN Russia say? That his use of the Russian language is unparalleled, gorgeous, breathtaking. Well, I don't know the language in which Tolstoy wrote, but this translation of his tale is pretty amazing, I think. But in any language, read it, my friends.

PS I have also recently read Madame Bovary, which I also liked in spite of the main character's (also) bad choices. I liked Anna K even more, though.

WARNING: This is not a strict book review, but rather a meta-review of what reading this book led to in my life. Please avoid reading this if you're looking for an in depth analysis of Anna Karenina. Thanks. I should also mention that there is a big spoiler in here, in case you've remained untouched by cultural osmosis, but you should read my review anyway to save yourself the trouble.

I grew up believing, like most of us, that burning books was something Nazis did (though, of course, burning Disco records at Shea stadium was perfectly fine). I believed that burning books was only a couple of steps down from burning people in ovens, or that it was, at least, a step towards holocaust.

If I heard the words "burning books" or "book burning," I saw Gestapo, SS and SA marching around a mountainous bonfire of books in a menacingly lit square. It's a scary image: an image of censorship, of fear mongering, of mind control -- an image of evil. So I never imagined that I would become a book burner.

That all changed the day Anna Karenina, that insufferable, whiny, pathetic, pain in the ass, finally jumped off the platform and killed herself.

That summer I was performing in Shakespeare in the Mountains, and I knew I'd have plenty of down time, so it was a perfect summer to read another 1,000 page+ novel. I'd read Count of Monte Cristo one summer when I was working day camps, Les Miserable one summer when I was working at a residential camp, and Shogun in one of my final summers of zero responsibility. A summer shifting back and forth between Marc Antony in Julius Caesar and Pinch, Antonio and the Nun (which I played with great gusto, impersonating Terry Jones in drag) in Comedy of Errors, or sitting at a pub in the mountains while I waited for the matinee to give way to the evening show, seemed an ideal time to blaze through a big meaty classic. I narrowed the field to two by Tolstoy: War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I chose the latter and was very quickly sorry I did.

I have never met such an unlikable bunch of bunsholes in my life (m'kay...I admit it...I am applying Mr. Mackey's lesson. You should see how much money I've put in the vulgarity jar this past week). Seriously. I loathed them all and couldn't give a damn about their problems. By the end of the first part I was longing for Anna to kill herself (I'd known the ending since I was a kid, and if you didn't and I spoiled it for you, sorry. But how could you not know before now?). I wanted horrible things to happen to everyone. I wanted Vronsky to die when his horse breaks its back. I wanted everyone else to die of consumption like Nikolai. And then I started thinking of how much fun it would be to rewrite this book with a mad Stalin cleansing the whole bunch of them and sending them to a Gulag (in fact, this book is the ultimate excuse for the October Revolution (though I am not comparing Stalinism to Bolshevism). If I'd lived as a serf amongst this pack of idiots I'd have supported the Bolshies without a second thought).

I found the book excruciating, but I was locked in my life long need to finish ANY book I started. It was a compulsion I had never been able to break, and I had the time for it that summer. I spent three months in the presence of powerful and/or fun Shakespeare plays and contrasted those with a soul suckingly unenjoyable Tolstoy novel, and then I couldn't escape because of my own head. I told myself many things to get through it all: "I am missing the point," "Something's missing in translation," "I'm in the wrong head space," "I shouldn't have read it while I was living and breathing Shakespeare," "It will get better."

It never did. Not for me. I hated every m'kaying page. Then near the end of the summer, while I was sitting in the tent a couple of hours from the matinee (I remember it was Comedy of Errors because I was there early to set up the puppet theatre), I finally had the momentary joy of Anna's suicide. Ecstasy! She was gone. And I was almost free. But then I wasn't free because I still had the final part of the novel to read, and I needed to get ready for the show, then after the show I was heading out to claim a campsite for an overnight before coming back for an evening show of Caesar. I was worried I wouldn't have time to finish that day, but I read pages whenever I found a free moment and it was looking good.

Come twilight, I was through with the shows and back at camp with Erika and my little cousin Shaina. The fire was innocently crackling, Erika was making hot dogs with Shaina, so I retreated to the tent and pushed through the rest of the book. When it was over, I emerged full of anger and bile and tossed the book onto the picnic table with disgust. I sat in front of the fire, eating my hot dogs and drinking beer, and that's when the fire stopped being innocent. I knew I needed to burn this book.

I couldn't do it at first. I had to talk myself into it, and I don't think I could have done it at all if Erika hadn't supported the decision. She'd lived through all of my complaining, though, and knew how much I hated the book (and I am pretty sure she hated listening to my complaints almost as much). So I looked at the book and the fire. I ate marshmallows and spewed my disdain. I sang Beatles songs, then went back to my rage, and finally I just stood up and said "M'kay it!"

I tossed it into the flames and watched that brick of a book slowly twist and char and begin to float into the night sky. The fire around the book blazed high for a good ten minutes, the first minute of which was colored by the inks of the cover, then it tumbled off its prop log and into the heart of the coals, disappearing forever. I cheered and danced and exorcised that book from my system. I felt better. I was cleansed of my communion with those whiny Russians. And I vowed in that moment to never again allow myself to get locked into a book I couldn't stand; it's still hard, but I have put a few aside.

Since the burning of Anna Karenina there have been a few books that have followed it into the flames. Some because I loved them and wanted to give them an appropriate pyre, some because I loathed them and wanted to condemn them to the fire. I don't see Nazis marching around the flames anymore either. I see a clear mountain night, I taste bad wine and hot dogs, I hear wind forty feet up in the tops of the trees, I smell the chemical pong of toxic ink, and I feel the relief of never having to see Anna Karenina on my bookshelf again.

Whew. I feel much better now.

***Spoiler alert. If you have read this book, please proceed. If you are never going to read this novel (be honest with yourself), then please proceed. If you may read this novel, but it may be decades in the future, then please proceed. Trust me, you are not going to remember, no matter how compelling a review I have written. If you need Tolstoy talking points for your next cocktail party or soiree with those literary, black wearing, pseudo intellectual friends of yours, then this review will come in handy. If they pin you to the board like a bug over some major plot twist, that will be because I have not shared any of those. If this happens, do not despair; refer them to my review. I’ll take the heat for you. If they don’t know who I am, then they are, frankly, not worth knowing. Exchange them for other more enlightened intellectual friends.***

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

Anna Arkadyevna married Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a man twenty years her senior. She dutifully produced a son for him and settled into a life of social events and extravagant clothes and enjoyed a freedom from financial worries. Maybe this life would have continued for her if she had never met Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, but more than likely, her midlife crisis, her awareness of the passage of time, would have compelled her to seek something more.

”They say he’s a religious, moral, honest, intelligent man; but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has been stifling my life for eight years, stifling everything that was alive in me, but he never once even thought that I was a living woman who needed love. They don’t know how he insulted me at every step and remained pleased with himself. Didn’t I try as hard as I could to find a justification for my life? Didn’t I try to love him… But the time has come, I’ve realized that I can no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, that I am not to blame if God has made me so that I must love and live. And what now? If he killed me, if he killed him, I could bear it all, I could forgive it all, but no, he….”

Her husband was enamored with her, but then so was everyone who met her, male or female. Maybe he was too contented with their life together and, therefore, took their relationship for granted. He was two decades older, so the passions of romance didn’t burn with as hot a flame. She wanted passion from him even if it was to murder her lover and herself. Even if it was something tragic, she wanted something to happen, something that would make her feel... something.

I couldn’t help thinking early on that the problem wasn’t with her husband, certainly nothing that a new lover could fix for very long. The same face was always going to greet her in the mirror. The same thoughts were always going to swim their way back to the surface. We can not mask the problems within ourselves by changing lovers. The mask will eventually slip, and all will be revealed.

Ugly can be very pretty.

Is there such a thing as being too beautiful? Can being so beautiful make someone cold, disdainful, and unable to really feel empathy or even connected to those around them? Her type of beauty is a shield that insulates her even as her insecurities swing the sword that stabs the hearts of those who despise her and those who love her.

”She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her full arms with the bracelets on them, enchanting her firm neck with its string of pearls, enchanting her curly hair in disarray, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her small feet and hands, enchanting that beautiful face in its animation; but there was something terrible and cruel in her enchantment.”

My favorite character in this epic was Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin. He was a well meaning, wealthy landowner who, unusually for the times, went out and worked the land himself. He got his hands dirty enough that one could actually call him a farmer. He was led to believe by his friends and even the Shcherbatsky family that their youngest daughter, Kitty, would be an affable match for him. Kitty’s older sister Dolly was married to Stepan (Stiva) Arkadyich Oblonsky, who was the brother to Anna Karenina.

Stiva was recently caught and forgiven for having a dalliance with a household staff, but no sooner was he out of that boiling water of that affair before he was having liaisons with a ballerina. This did lead me to believe that life would never be satisfying for either Stiva or his sister Anna because there was always going to be pretty butterflies to chase as the attractiveness of the one they had began to fade.

Before Vronsky became gobsmacked by Anna, he was leisurely chasing after Kitty and leading her on just long enough for Kitty to turn Levin’s marriage proposal down flat. That was like catching a molotok (hammer) right between the eyes as a serp (sickle) swept Kostya off his feet. Interestingly enough, later in the book Levin met Anna Karenina, after he has married Kitty (you’ll have to read the book to discover how this comes about), and he was captivated by Anna.

It was almost enough for me start chain smoking Turkish cigarettes or biting my nails down to the quick while I waited for the outcome. Substitute Anna for Jolene, and you’ll know what I was humming.

”She had unconsciously done everything she could to arouse a feeling of love for her in Levin, and though she knew that she had succeeded in it, as far as one could with regard to an honest, married man in one evening, and though she liked him very much, as soon as he left the room, she stopped thinking about him.”

If she was irritated with Vronsky, one day maybe she would just seduce Levin for entertainment... because she could.

I must say that I didn’t think much of Vronsky at the beginning of the novel, but as the plot progressed I started to sympathize with him. Tolstoy was brilliant at rounding out characters so our preconceived notions or the projections of ourselves that we place upon them are forced to be modified as we discover more about them.

Levin had his own problems. He had been reading the great philosophers, looking for answers. He found more questions than answers in religion. He abandoned every lifeboat he climbed into and swam for the next one. ”Without knowing what I am and why I’m here, it is impossible for me to live. And I cannot know that, therefore I cannot live.”

The problem that every reasonably intelligent person wrestles with is that no matter how successful we are, no matter how wonderful a life we build, or how well we take care of ourselves, we are going to die. It is irrefutable. Cemeteries don’t lie. Well, there is a lot of eternal lying down going on, but no duplicity. None of us are going to escape the reaper. No one is ascending on a cloud or going to the crossroads to make a deal with the Devil. We all have to come face to face with death, and we can’t take any of our bobbles, accolades, or power with us. So the question that Levin ended up asking himself, the Biggest question even beyond, why am I here? is:

Why do anything?

Without immortality, everything we attempt to do can seem futile. Some would make the case that we live on in our kids and grandkids. I say bugger to that. I want more time!

Well, there are ways to be immortal, and one of them is to write a masterpiece like Anna Karenina that will live forever.

By the end, I am ready to throttle Anna until her pretty eyes bug out of her head and her cheeks turn a vibrant pink, but at the same time, she seemed to be suffering from a host of mental disorders. She was so cut off from everyone and so disdainful of everyone. ”It was impossible not to hate such pathetically ugly people.” The “friends” she had had been ostracized from her by her own actions. I had to believe her loathing of people was a projection of how she felt about herself. She needed some time on Carl Jung’s couch, but he was a wee tot when this book was published. She needed to find some satisfaction in the ordinary and quit believing that a change in geography or in lovers was ever going to fix what was wrong with herself.

She had such a destructive personality. One man tried to kill himself from her actions and another contemplated the act. She was maliciously vengeful when someone didn’t do something she wanted them to do; and yet, I couldn’t quite condemn her completely. Her feelings of being stifled were perfectly natural. We all feel that way at points in our lives. We feel trapped by the circumstances of our life. Her attempt to break free in the 1870s in Russian society was brave/foolish. She sacrificed everything to chase a dream.

The dream ate her.

This book is a masterpiece, not just a Russian masterpiece but a true gift to the world of literature.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

Dacă am socotit bine, avem cel puțin 4 traduceri diferite ale capodoperei lui Tolstoi. Litera (prin Anca Irina Ionescu), Humanitas (prin Adriana Liciu) și Polirom (prin Emil Iordache) au propus versiuni noi. Am citit prima dată romanul în traducerea lui M. Sevastos, Ștefana Velisar-Teodoreanu și R. Donici.

Înainte de a cumpăra și această versiune, m-a bîntuit multă vreme un citat dintr-un articol de G. Ibrăileanu. Mi-l semnalase un prieten. Cred că lIbrăileanu a fost unul dintre marii admiratori ai literaturii ruse. Se spune că pentru a citi Război și pace sau Anna Karenina, își lua două săptămîni de concediu de la Universitate și nu mai ieșea din casă. Am căutat articolul din care știam doar un pasaj, îl reproduc imediat, și l-am găsit într-un volum din colecția „Biblioteca școlarului” a Editurii Tineretului, intitulat sec Studii literare (1962, pp.153-161). Să citim, deci, pasajul în cauză:

„La douăzeci de ani, gata de toate jertfele pentru aceea pe care o așteptam, ne indignăm împotriva lui Vronski că nu se jertfește pentru Anna lui pînă la anihilarea propriei personalități. La patruzeci, pricepem că Vronski a făcut pentru ea tot ce poate face omenește cel mai ideal bărbat din lumea reală” (p.154).

Cam toți cititorii trec prin aceste stări antinomice, cam toți îl urîm la sfîrșitul cărții pe Vronski și îl acoperim cu ocări, pentru ca, mai tîrziu, să-i privim cu oarece înțelegere nu numai pe contele Alexei Kirilovici Vronski, dar și pe soțul cel prozaic al Annei, stimabilul și mărginitul Alexei Alexandrovici Karenin. Despre urechile cu geometrie variabilă ale celui din urmă am scris deja în altă parte. Aș observa, în treacăt, că prenumele celor doi bărbați din viața Annei sînt identice.

Mă întorc la articolul lui G. Ibrăileanu. Criticul începe cu o discuție a folosului re-citirii: cu fiecare lectură înțelegem mai mult și mai bine o carte, citim diferit la vîrste diferite (cazul lui Vronski: vinovat - nevinovat), cartea însăși se modifică, așa cum și noi ne schimbăm. Decît o carte recentă și proastă, mai bine un roman verificat de timp...

G. Ibrăileanu spune că, în iubirea ei pătimașă, devoratoare, Anna Karenina devine prea posesivă, prea suspicioasă. Anna găsește că Vronski nu se ridică la înălțimea patimei ei totale. Mai mult, femeia începe să fie torturată de gîndul că Vronski n-o mai iubește (ceea ce nu e deloc adevărat). Există un „egoism al iubirii”, constată pe bună dreptate criticul ieșean (pp.156-157). Madame de Staël a spus bine: iubirea este „un égoïsme à deux”.

Dar asupra următorului fragment îmi propun să mă mai gîndesc: „În ce constă marea nefericire a Annei? Nu o mai iubește Vronski? Așa crede ea, dar fără să aibă dreptate. Fără îndoială, Vronski s-a schimbat, e cam enervat, fiindcă ea îl hărțuiește, îl spionează, îl persecută și, fără să vrea și fără să-și dea seama, face [aproape orice] ca să-i devină o povară” (p.156).

G. Ibrăileanu afirmă că sinuciderea Annei Karenina e un hazard, dar acest hazard trebuia să se întîmple...