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.

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.

Amazing!

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.

GREAT, in the highest sense of the word.
Characters as deep and alive as the ocean, themes as diverse and as innumerable as grains of sand, a writing as powerful as a thunderstorm, as beautiful as a serene dawn, and as incomprehensible at times and yet all the more fascinating as this mysterious and neverending universe itself, and we have, in my opinion, the greatest work on life, freedom, faith, fate, love, suffering, and the human HEART ... - Anna Karenina!

Mount Olympus of Books Award

I have only given four books this honour

I read this three times but all of them pre-GR. I hope to read this again soon and write a proper review.

At the end of Gogol's Dead Souls a Troika gallops off leaving the author to ask with a flourish where it is speeding off to. Gogol on his death bed was struck by a severe case of religion and had the rest of the novel put on the fire (some pages were rescued), but symbolically, as a question about Russia and which direction the country should be travelling towards the image hangs over the literature and politics of nineteenth century Russia, above all perhaps in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.


The Ideological Novel
Tolstoy claimed that he had constructed great arches into this novel. No one has ever managed to find them, but what is clear is the clear choice the author lays out before us in this highly ideological novel. One the right hand is the good couple, Kitty and Levin, whose lives (entirely coincidentally of course) are modelled on Tolstoy's own marriage (at least those bits of it which were fit to print). They live in the countryside. They are close to the core of 'true Russianness', they farm in a Russian style, and Levin at least is aware of the beauty of the natural world. While on the left hand is the road to perdition, the moral corruption of western Europe, adulterous women, Saint Petersburg life, drugs, and steam trains. This road, we are shown through the life of Anna Karenina, ends in suicide, and by extension is leading the nation towards self-destruction.

But as a novel it more or less works, largely because Anna herself is a sympathetic character. Since her husband is not portrayed as anything other than a withered, joyless individual, her longing for life and happiness is entirely convincing. The writing, in scenes like Levin mowing (one man, two man, three men and their dog...) or duck hunting, the horse race or Anna's time in Italy, is beautiful and in the case of Anna works against the ideological drive of the novel (apparently, but then if evil were not attractive..!). But ultimately for Tolstoy an upper class woman outside of marriage, having a child and therefore a sexual relationship with a man, is a problem and one that can only be resolved through her death. The resolution of that woman problem through her death is hardly unique to Tolstoy, it is the fall back answer for Dickens in Bleak House too. Some simple, natural occurrences were apparently far too scandalous to be even contemplated in print.


The Agricultural Novel
The story of the 'Russian' couple, Kitty and Levin is in contrast to the 'western' relationship of Anna and Vronsky. On the one hand destruction running on fixed rails and powered by steam, runs over lives even as it runs over the landscape. Mechanical, alien and above all foreign the correct direction or answer is meant to lie in the countryside. Early in the novel Oblomov the titular hero has a dream of timeless unchanging life in the countryside. Oblomov (ie Mr Cloud if we loosely rendered him into English) refuses to change, the wisdom of not wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater becomes the folly of not even wanting to part with the bathwater. This is what Tolstoy advances in Anna Karenina as a seriously considered idyll.

What we get in Anna Karenina is a fetishisation of communal agriculture and working with hand tools, most vividly realised as Levin symbolically and literally finds his rhythm as he learns how to swing his scythe and mow. As a literary set piece it is fantastic. As an idealisation of a form of life deeply Romantic, it has had, and continues to have, a deep appeal for the extreme left and far right in Russian politics. As practical agriculture it was already deeply misleading even in its day. Levin is a stand in for Tolstoy (Tolstoy was a firm believer in 'write what you know'), but in real life Tolstoy's agriculture was subsided by his literary output (actively managed by his wife who did her best to retain control over printing rights) and after Tolstoy's death the family house had to be sold to service the families debts, the large wooden structure was disassembled like flat pack furniture and carted off.

For both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky the shock of Russia's awkward transitioning from confident gendarme of Europe, to desperately industrialising and becoming more like western Europe with new fangled representative institutions and jury trials was appallingly vivid. A idealised partly spiritual, entirely nationalistic, identity was the answer, yet as a result Tolstoy's peasants are less realistic than Turgenev's in Sketches from a Hunter's Album. Then on the eve of the emancipation of the serfs, the condition of the peasants was the great problem holding back Russia, however two decades later the problem has become the solution. The irony of the peasants induced by the promise of a barrel of vodka to build a school in Chekhov's My Life is unimaginable in Tolstoy. For him the glass of vodka for the mowers is part of the natural order of the countryside over which no shadow of alcoholism ever seems to fall. The successful estate management of the Yusupovs or the successful non-communal small farms of southern Russia and the Ukraine was not what Tolstoy was interested in. Instead he sought to cleave to the romance of the inefficient (in the sense of not being market orientated) form of communal agriculture in which Master and man worked together as a unit. Here was something safe and in his view more worth while than everything symbolised by the steady puffing locomotive.


The Horse Race
The first time I read  I imagined Vronsky as a pretty man and therefore contemptible like a foppish star of the silver screen (it is true that I am prejudiced, but at least occasionally I am honest about it). The second time with surprise I noticed the description of his red neck and hairiness. This was somebody with a real physical presence and a tangible virality. Somebody suddenly like me, red and hairy. Karenina choosing between his brisk redness and her husband's washed out greyness has an immediacy and a naturalness about it. The sensuality of the novel, whether mowing the meadow, hunting ducks or washing before the horse race is one of it's strengths.

The horse race is one of the high lights of this aspect of the novel. Visceral, immediate but also crudely symbolising the relationship between Anna Karenina and her lover, the Guards Officer Vronsky. Anna watches the race from a socially acceptable distance - she is on account of her adultery not someone who can be received in polite society. Vronsky rides the filly, trained by another man, only to feel her back break at an awkward jump as they are within sight of the finish line. He survives, she doesn't. The suffering of another is a public spectacle. The metaphor is crude, the whole set piece sharp and vivid.

Within the widely separated covers of Anna Karenina, one of Henry James' "loose baggy monsters" if ever there was, there are slimmer novellas about relationships, the state of agriculture, the physicality of life and love that are crying to be let out. Are the parts more than the sum of the whole? Or does the physical mass add to the reading experience?

What one gains from reading classics is an embodied understanding that people in the past – those whom we now consider the characters of history – did not feel as though they were part of history, part of a time already gone. To them, the world unfolded everyday much the same as it does for us. They couldn’t possibly have known about the known or unknown unknowns awaiting them in the year 2021; they were merely going forward, in the “current” year of 1786, 1883, or 1924. One aspect of humanity is constant, linking the current generation to previous generations, to those very same years mentioned, possibly even further back. This link has been rock-solid for hundreds of millions of years, predating the human species. This link is emotion.

Emotion is where we begin with Anna Karenina, with one of the most quoted first lines in literature (possibly second only to A Tale of Two Cities): ”All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This stream of emotion continues throughout the novel, one that can actually be called a novel, as opposed to the living, breathing body of work that is War and Peace. Many were quick to tell me that it was ridiculous to try and compare the pace of Anna Karenina to that of War and Peace, and I see their point. The same undercurrent of emotion makes for a constant whirlwind reading experience, and the 800 pages don’t feel nearly as long, whereas the 1200 or so pages of War and Peace felt like nearly double the length. So why did I feel more exhausted at the end of this book than the other? Again, emotion. This is not to take anything away from Natasha, Pierre, or Andre. They are once-in-a-lifetime characters, they inhabit a universe all on their own… but it was only through reading about Levin, Vronsky, Kitty, Dolly, Oblonsky, and of course, Anna, that I realized that I may have been looking at the cast of War and Peace with an academic indifference, perhaps at best an academic interest. I can’t begin to count the number of times where I felt exalted, excited, dejected, or crushed. Round and round I went, cycling through this mammoth, and I have now had some time to think about what stood out for me.

First, hardly a ground breaking piece of analysis, but it is apparent to me that Levin is the Tolstoy stand-in. In a way, he is the character most lovingly created, crafted to mirror the author’s life in an almost perfectly synchronized manner. The novel was split up into 8 parts, and each part had a number of very short chapters. We would be taken back and forth between the narratives of Levin and Anna in 4-5 chapter chunks, and I could not help but find myself more attracted to the story of Levin! I guess I have a type: give me a main character that is struggling with existence and the meaning of life over one who is lost in love any day of the week, although the latter is still marvelous.

The prose! I was in love, taking time to walk around and read certain paragraphs out loud. There were some choice tidbits of nature writing that I would want to frame and come back to. Hardly a surprise, as Tolstoy enjoyed spending time in the country. When I get the chance, I myself love to get away from the city and spend a few days in cottage country – reading about the foaming springs, the morning mist, the old grass, the meadows… what a treat. Certainly an underrated part of the book, I feel. Here is how I imagined it:



Despite the beauty of the nature writing and innovative use of POV at times (we even get to see the thoughts of a dog for a few sentences), the idea of jealousy is what has stuck around for me. First of all, the experience. How claustrophobic is it to sense the pangs of this feeling? How shameful? Is there any other emotion so innately taboo? We are more than happy to cover up any signs of jealousy and envy from the perception of others, but we are especially skilled at doing so with ourselves. Anger is a convenient substitute, often finding its target in the beloved. But what about the mental gymnastics? What if we have admitted to ourselves, through sheer will power or luck that we are jealous? How do we express it? Do we come out with it, laying it out in a “healthy manner”, communicating and trying to straighten out our feelings? Perhaps. What then, when the beloved denies what we know to be true? What is next? You have made the first move, and you have lost. Do you persevere? Seems like a losing battle to me. The growth of that hostile and secretive dynamic, that ball of implicit emotion in between the two partners, is it inevitable at a point? This will be with me for a while.

All in all, a must-read. Once again, we see the intensely observant nature of Tolstoy as a human being. To have the ability to cover so much is monumental – he touches on the usual, philosophy, loss of faith, meaning of life, existential crises, the role and benefit of religion, etc. But he also discusses less “abstract” concepts – the sheer happiness of seeing your children achieve, the calm joy of a comfortable relationship, the rewards of connection with new acquaintances. There is plenty for everyone. In order to stay true, however, I must point out my main gripe with Tolstoy. It is obvious that he is a writer that can transcend himself constantly, writing eternally true nuggets into all of his works. We won’t argue that. But he has a not-so-subtle way of proselytizing, openly preaching about his ideals and philosophy – 6 or 7 times out of 10, this is accompanied with an eyeroll from the reader. Why is this genius taking entire chapter-long breaks in the middle of the most intense parts of the narrative to discuss peasant/serf uprisings and whether this is moral? Why are we discussing the issue of virtue signalling and war when it has nothing to do with the flow of the story? As I have been poking around in Nabokov’s lectures on Russian literature, I see that he agrees with me. This makes me feel even more justified in my belief, because…well… Nabokov. I will end with his view on the topic, because I don’t want to end every review with a positive closer:

n  ”Many people approach Tolstoy with mixed feelings. They love the artist in him and are intensely bored by the preacher; but at the same time it is rather difficult to separate Tolstoy the preacher from Tolstoy the artist – it is the same deep slow voice, the same robust shoulder pushing up a cloud of visions or a load of ideas. What one would like to do, would be to kick the glorified soapbox from under his sandalled feet and then lock him up in a stone house on a desert island with gallons of ink and reams of paper – far away from the things, ethical and pedagogical, that diverted his attention from observing the way the dark hair curled above Anna’s white neck.”n

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.

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.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

This opening sentence sums up the main theme of this great work: family relationships. Tolstoy has chosen three families to work on the different aspects of this theme. The first family is that of Anna and the second family is that of Levin and Kitty. The third and a little less prominent than the other two is the family of Dolly and Stepan.

Anna's story, for which the book is well known and loved, occupies a greater part of the book. Anna is young. Having married a man nearly twenty years elder to her at a very young age, Anna is not exposed to the feelings of love and passion a woman would feel for a man. Alexey, an ambitious man who treats her wife to every material comfort, fails to give Anna the care, attention, and love which she needed. Anna's later reference to her husband as "he is not a man but a machine..."shows how unfeeling he has been towards her. The comforter and saviour of her life was his son, Seryozha, for whom she had devoted her life while being a dutiful wife. But the fateful meeting with Count Vronsky changes her path of life. Anna's realization of what is missing in her life coupled with the newborn feelings of love and passion for Vronsky takes her through a destructive and tragic path.

The widespread view on Anna's story is that of a woman's infidelity in carrying out an adulterous affair. While this view is correct, there is more to it than that of mere adultery. The relationship between the threesome is complex. Anna is bound by duty and honour to her husband while she passionately loves Vronsky. She is torn between wronging her husband and her desire to live happily with the man she loves. Moreover, Anna is worried about the consequences that her action would have on her relationship with her precious son. Her son and Vronsky are the love of her life but one excludes the other. For this reason, she refuses a divorce thus willingly demoting her to a humiliating position by living as an "immoral woman" in the eyes of the society. Her self-sacrifice of character simply to retain her relationship with her son is to be admired and pitied. And though at times, Anna was infuriating, the story is written in such a way that it was difficult to blame her. This is why Anna has become a tragic heroine.

Vronsky and Alexey (either could be seen as the villain in this tragic story according to the personal views of the reader) on the other hand are both victims in their own right. Both are to be sympathized, perhaps Vronsky a little more than Alexey, as he gave up all his life ambitions for his love for Anna.

In contrast to Anna's tragic story, a "happy" conventional family is provided by Levin and Kitty. Despite the differences of character, temperament, views, and beliefs Levin and Kitty manage to carry on a successful and loving marriage. The family relationship between Levin and Kitty is modeled on Tolstoy's own convictions on marriage.

The relationship between Dolly and Stepan comes between these two extremes. In the light of Stepan's infidelity and his expensive way of living, Dolly and her children suffer considerably. Dolly would like to walk out of the marriage. But her children, convention, and her religious beliefs all contribute to her indecision on the course of action. A vain belief that her husband's conduct is not "infidelity of the heart" keeps her going on with her "sham" marriage.

The book consists of two separate yet interconnected plots: One is the plot woven around Anna and the other is the plot woven around Levin. Former, with its complex emotions, social conventions coupled with women's position legally and socially, provides for the excitement and life of the entire work. The latter, more or less modeled on Tolstoy's life, provides for the political, philosophical, social, and religious views of the author as well as an insight into the author's life struggles. I liked both plots. Each has complemented the other to produce a complete work in every sense. And the characters which were modeled by Tolstoy's observance of the society were felt real. There were no characters that one could call artificial.

Above all what is most striking is the beautiful writing of Tolstoy. His use of metaphors is very clever and marvelous. Reading the book was like eating a rich and thick layered piece of cake. No matter how many layers are peeled, its taste does not diminish.

Words would not do justice to say how much I loved this work. It is one brilliant and marvelous piece of work. A work can be a great classic, but to become a masterpiece, the author has to steer it above common ground. And Tolstoy has achieved this end quite brilliantly.

Hitting that "I'm finished" button rarely feels so good. I hardly ever let myself take on challenging or long reads like this anymore; and I will admit that at some points during this book I thought, "Why am I doing this?!" But this book has been a hurdle for me for the last 5-6 years and I'm so glad to have finally completed it.

The audiobook, narrated by the fabulous Maggie Gyllenhaal, is definitely a big help. I listened to the whole thing, but also utilized the ebook at points to stay focused while listening to her reading it. That isn't something I do for a lot of books, but I found it helpful here.

Other than that, I really don't have much to say about the book itself, only because there's so much one could say about it. I knew the gist of the story, having seen adaptations of it on screen and read the first 1/4 or so a while back. But a lot of this book is plotless discussions or inner-monologues from characters about aristocracy, government/politics, religion, love, etc. So to sum it up in a review here seems a futile gesture.

I really grew to love Levin and Dolly the most of all characters, while Anna was particularly aggravating at times. It's more of a character-driven story, though, so having a balance amongst the characters was helpful to keep the story moving and giving you moments of joy alongside moments of despair.

Will I ever read this again? Unlikely. But I'm glad that I've finally read it and can check that off my bookish bucket list.