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.

Everyone has their crazy reasons for reading a book. I was never really planning to read "Anna Karenina" in my lifetime at all. Alas, I saw a trailer of the 2012 film recently and it was breathtaking! Something about Keira Knightley is art. Something I cannot pinpoint as a mere mortal, but she always has the knack to make me believe that characters could live and breathe beyond the books. So why didn't I watch the full movie? For the stupid reason that I can't sit still just being a passive audience for more than 30 minutes nowadays, but I can spend scandalous amounts of time engaged in a book. And for the unexplainable reason that Keira Knightley made me read it!

This took me a while to finish. For one, the tome is as thick as a door-stop. Second, the plot is like a Russian nesting doll but in reverse, every layer of "Anna Karenina" reveals a bigger story than the last. Although the movie posters might make it look like some kind of Harlequin-style bodice-busting romp, don't be fooled. This ain't a feel-good rom-com. This isn't even a brooding psychosexual melodrama with a happy ending. This is a novel that tackles the romantic and the political. It addresses the philosophies that govern nations and families. It's an unhappy novel with an unhappy ending.

So if you are a sensible reader (or a lazy one) more prudent with your selections, why should you pick up this book? Well it would actually be easier for me to dissuade you to read "Anna Karenina". Why shouldn't you read Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece? You shouldn't read this if you're looking for a novel to make you feel passionately about a fictional love affair and then set down the novel and sigh "Ah! The Beatles were right, all you need is love!" Because if you're looking for that, please pick up something else. This novel will break your heart. It will make you question every adage about the warm and fuzzy power of love.  Love brings to Anna, pitch-black despair, social ostracization, the loss of dignity and sense of self, and, ultimately the desire to throw herself under a dang train!  If all you want is 24/7 kisses and sighs, go find something with Fabio on the cover. Because while the novel delivers what is one of the greatest love stories, in my opinion, ever written, it also delivers a bunch of other equally masterful plot lines about politics, society, labor issues and religion. This isn't a novel that's just about two people's heartbreak. It's about the turmoil and frustrations that plague an entire nation.

If you are still interested after all that, I guarantee you will treasure this read. Why should you read "Anna Karenina"? Well, read this novel if you want to know what kind of scope and power a novel can have. It is abound with people with varying struggles and convictions, and with presence as strong as the primary characters. This novel is as massive as the country of Russia. Its depiction of society and politics is as intricate as St. Basil's Cathedral, and its insight into human nature is as piercing as a winter in Siberia. This is something a movie just can't encompass. Happy reading!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of a few classics that I loved reading. It's phenomenal.

“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?!

nothing could have prepared me for this, i am a complete trainwreck (pun intended)

People are going to have to remember that this is the part of the review that is entirely of my own opinion and what I thought of the book, because what follows isn't entirely positive, but I hope it doesn't throw you off the book entirely and you still give it a chance. Now... my thoughts:

I picked up this book upon the advice of Oprah (and her book club) and my friend Kit. They owe me hardcore now. As does Mr. Tolstoy. This book was an extremely long read, not because of it's size and length necessarily, but because of it's content. More often than not I found myself suddenly third a way down the page after my mind wandered off to other thoughts but I kept on reading... am I the only one with the ability to do that? You know, totally zoning out but continuing to read? The subject I passed over though was so thoroughly boring that I didn't bother going back to re-read it... and it didn't affect my understanding of future events taking place later on in the book.

Leo Tolstoy really enjoys tangents. Constantly drifting away from the point of the book to go off on three page rants on farming methods, political policies and elections, or philosophical discussion on God. Even the dialogue drifted off in that sort of manner. Tolstoy constantly made detail of trifling matters, while important subjects that added to what little plot line this story had were just passed over. Here is a small passage that is a wonderful example of what constantly takes place throughout the book:

"Kostia, look out! There's a bee! Won't he sting?" cried Dolly, defending herself from a wasp.

"That's not a bee; that's a wasp!" said Levin.

"Come, now! Give us your theory," demanded Katavasof, evidently provoking Levin to a discussion. "Why shouldn't private persons have that right?"

No mention of the wasp is made again. Just a small example of how Tolstoy focuses much more on philosophical thought, and thought in general, more than any sort of action that will progress the story further. That's part of the reason the story took so long to get through.

The editing and translation of the version I got also wasn't very good. Kit reckons that that's part of the reason I didn't enjoy it as much, and I am apt to agree with her. If you do decide to read this book, your better choice is to go with the Oprah's Book Club edition of Anna Karenina.

The characters weren't too great either and I felt only slightly sympathetic for them at certain moments. The women most often were whiny and weak while the men seemed cruel and judgemental more often than not. Even Anna, who was supposedly strong-willed and intelligent would go off on these irrational rants. The women were constantly jealous and the men were always suspicious.

There's not much else to say that I haven't already said. There were only certain spots in the book which I enjoyed in the littlest, and even then I can't remember them. All in all I did not enjoy this book, and it earned the names Anna Crapenina and Anna Kareniblah.

But remember this is just one girl's opinion, if it sounded like a book you might enjoy I highly advise going out to read it. Just try and get the Oprah edition.

تولستوی و داستایوسکی
نویسنده ای، جایی گفته بود که "داستایوسکی، نویسنده ی دوران جوانیه و تولستوی، نویسنده ی دوران بزرگسالی."
این جمله خیلی برای من خوشایند بود. هر چی دنیای داستایوسکی، پر از شور و جنون دوره ی جوانیه، دنیای تولستوی، سرشار از وقار و ملایمت دوره ی بزرگسالیه.
اولی، مثل طوفان تابستونیه: ویران کننده و سهمناک.
دومی، مثل بعد از ظهر بهاریه: خنک و رخوت انگیز.

هم توی این رمان و هم توی جنگ و صلح، یه شخصیت مهم هست که سرگشته است و به دنبال جواب میگرده (اینجا، کنستانتین لوین و توی جنگ و صلح، کنت بزوخوف) اما شخصیت سرگشته ای که تولستوی تصویر میکنه هم آروم و ملایمه. به خاطر همین تفاوت بزرگ، تصور من از تولستوی، تا مدت ها، یه پیرمرد جاافتاده بود، به خلاف داستایوسکی که تصورم ازش، یه جوان دانشجو بود و فکر میکردم که تولستوی مقدم بر داستایوسکی بوده. بعدها فهمیدم که داستایوسکی سنش خیلی بیشتر از تولستوی بوده و زودتر مرده.

این رمان
شاید خیلی ها این رمان رو تحت عنوان "عاشقانه" طبقه بندی کنن. از یه جهت درسته. عنوان کتاب، زنیه که ماجراش حول عشق میگرده. اما جدای از این، به نظرم این رمان خیلی هم عاشقانه نیست.

اول از همه، عشق آنا کاملاً از بین میره و زندگیش به طرز بی رحمانه ای نابود میشه.
ثانیاً، این نابود شدن عشق، در راه بیان یه حکم اخلاقیه. زندگی کنستانتین لوین و کیتی نابود نمیشه، به خاطر این که این مشکل اخلاقی در عشق اون ها نبوده. پس به رغم رمان های عاشقانه، عشق مطلقاً یه امر مثبت تلقی نمیشه، بلکه اصول مهم تری هستن که اونا مشخص میکنن چی مثبته و چی منفیه.
به نظر میرسه تولستوی میخواد به عشق آنا برچسب "هوس" بزنه و اونو از "عشقی" که نجات بخش زندگی انسان ها و یگانه پیام مسیح میدونه متمایز میکنه. اگه این نظرم درست باشه، پس آنا در حقیقت نقش منفی داستانه و کنستانتین لوین نقش مثبته. این که عاشق اصلی داستان نقش منفی باشه، دلیل دیگه ایه بر اینکه داستان خیلی هم عاشقانه نیست.

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



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



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



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



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



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



2 stars

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

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

هكذا بدأت الرواية

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

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

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

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

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

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