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.

Passing Through the Human Passions
"...Let him first cast a stone at her"



I read this Tolstoy masterpiece for the first time 7 years ago, coming to it with a cynicism formed by my mistaken impression that it was simply about Anna Karenina's terminal adulterous affair and her despicable selfishness toward her son. I thought the novel would, no doubt, effectively demonstrate the tragic consequences of self-centeredness and the absence of a moral compass. Beyond that, I was a cynic.

My skepticism was misguided. While Anna K's affair with Count Vlonsky is the primary tale being told, this must be viewed within the context of the novel's three other relationships to appreciate the purified beauty of this masterwork.

Both of the Russian Giants (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) sculpt consistently around themes of

the relationship between a husband and a wife;

a human's relationship to and with God;

the mortal struggles
--of faith versus doubt, and
--of monogamy and morality versus free will and the pleasures of the flesh; and,

below the firmament, the ongoing and infinite war between the forces of good and evil.

These themes are arguably nowhere more breathtakingly composed for study, contemplation and interpretation for all time, by scholars, thinkers, students and lovers of literature, than in this transcendent tragedy.

Anna Karenina's illicit romance with the younger, adonic Count Vronsky is mainscreen. I recall seeing an article shortly after reading this novel revealing that Tolstoy began with the idea of making a fallen married woman, condemned for her actions, sympathetic to readers for her human weaknesses and her lot in life (or something to this effect). He wanted to test Jesus' admonition in the Bible to those about to stone to death a woman caught having sexual relations outside her marriage: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." John 8:7, KJV.

In addition to the eponymous affair, the novel also follows:

^ The verecund, thinking farmer Levin and his courtship of and marriage to the gorgeous, shallow and vestal Kitty (who was once infatuated with Vronsky);

^ The mired uxorial partnership between Anna's brother, the unsteady, unfaithful social-hound Stiva Oblonsky and his loyal wife Dolly (Kitty's sister), who is the exemplary, unappreciated mother of his children, and who finds herself having muliebral daydreams of a scorching affair of body and soul with another man; as well as,

^ Anna's relationships with her controlling, cuckolded husband Karenin and with her poor, innocent son.


Tolstoy created this stunningly gorgeous mindtrip over a terrain he drew in a way that would emotionally drain the reader* and provoke her thoughts and feelings such that she might find an obscure piece of her soul revealed.

In my opinion, this is the best novel ever written.

As a daughter of a Russian literature teacher, it seems I have always known the story of Anna Karenina: the love, the affair, the train - the whole shebang. I must have ingested the knowledge with my mother's milk, as Russians would say.

n  n

My grandpa had an old print of a painting hanging in his garage. A young beautiful mysterious woman sitting in a carriage in wintry Moscow and looking at the viewer through her heavy-lidded eyes with a stare that combines allure and deep sadness. "Who's that?" I asked my grandpa when I was five, and without missing a beat he answered, "Anna Karenina". Actually, it was "A Stranger" by Ivan Kramskoy (1883) - but for me it has always remained the mysterious and beautiful Anna Karenina, the femme fatale of Russian literature. (Imagine my childish glee when I saw this portrait used for the cover of this book in the edition I chose!)

n  n

Yet, "Anna Karenina" is a misleading title for this hefty tome as Anna's story is just the tip of an iceberg, as half of the story is devoted to Konstantin Levin, Tolstoy's alter ego (Count Leo's Russian name was Lev. Lev --> Levin), preoccupied with Russian peasantry and its relationship to land, as well as torn over faith and his lack of it, Levin whose story continues for chapters after Anna meets her train.

But Anna gives the book its name, and her plight spoke more to me than the philosophical dealings of an insecure and soul-searching Russian landowner, and so her story comes first. Sorry, Leo Levin.

n  n

Anna's chapters tell a story of a beautiful married woman who had a passionate affair with an officer and then somehow, in her quest for love, began a downward spiral fueled by jealousy and guilt and societal prejudices and stifling attitudes.

"But I'm glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldn't like would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I?"

On one hand, there's little new about the story of a forbidden, passionate, overwhelming affair resulting in societal scorn and the double standards towards a man and a woman involved in the same act. Few readers will be surprised that it is Anna who gets the blame for the affair, that it is Anna who is considered "fallen" and undesirable in the society, that it is Anna who is dependent on men in whichever relationship she is in because by societal norms of that time a woman was little else but a companion to her man. There is nothing new about the sad contrasts between the opportunities available to men and to women of that time - and the strong sense of superiority that men feel in this patriarchial world. No, there is nothing else in that, tragic as it may be.

"Anything, only not divorce!" answered Darya Alexandrovna.
"But what is anything?"
"No, it is awful! She will be no one's wife, she will be lost!"

n

No, where Lev Tolstoy excels is the portrayal of Anna's breakdown, Anna's downward spiral, the unraveling of her character under the ingrained guilt, crippling insecurity and the pressure the others - and she herself - place on her. Anna, a lovely, energetic, captivating woman, full of life and beauty, simply crumbles, sinks into despair, fueled by desperation and irrationality and misdirected passion.

"And he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time, at a railway station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last moment."

A calm and poised lady slowly and terrifyingly descends into fickle moods and depression and almost maniacal liveliness in between, tormented by her feeling of (imagined) abandonment and little self-worth and false passions which are little else but futile attempts to fill the void, the never-ending emptiness... This is what Tolstoy is a master at describing, and this is what was grabbing my heart and squeezing the joy out of it in anticipation of inevitable tragedy to come.

"In her eyes the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas, desires, with all his spiritual and physical temperament, was one thing—love for women, and that love, she felt, ought to be entirely concentrated on her alone. That love was less; consequently, as she reasoned, he must have transferred part of his love to other women or to another woman—and she was jealous. She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having got an object for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she transferred her jealousy from one object to another."

n

Yes, it's the little evils, the multitude of little faces of unhappiness that Count Tolstoy knows how to portray with such sense of reality that it's quite unsettling - be it the blind jealousy of Anna or Levin, be it the shameless cheating and spending of Stiva Oblonsky, be it the moral stuffiness and limits of Arkady Karenin, the parental neglects of both Karenins to their children, the lies, the little societal snipes, the disappointments, the failures, the pervasive selfishness... All of it is so unsettlingly well-captured on page that you do realize Tolstoy must have believed in the famous phrase that he penned for this book's opening line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Tolstoy is excellent at showing that, despite what we tend to believe, getting what you wanted does not bring happiness.

"Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. "

n

And yet, just like in real life, there are no real villains, no real unsympathetic characters that cause obstacles for our heroes, the villains whom it feels good to hate. No, everyone, in addition to their pathetic little ugly traits also has redeeming qualities. Anna's husband, despite appearing as a monster to Anna after her passionate affair, still is initially willing to give her the freedom of the divorce that she needs. Stiva Oblonsky, repulsive in his carelessness and cheating, wins us over with his gregarious and genuinely friendly personality; Anna herself, despite her outbursts, is a devoted mother to her son (at least initially). Levin may appear to be monstrous in his jealousy, but the next moment he is so overwhelmingly in love that it's hard not to forgive him. And I love this greyness of each character, so lifelike and full.

And, of course, the politics - so easily forgettable by readers of this book that carries the name of the heroine of a passionate forbidden affair. The dreaded politics that bored me to tears when I was fifteen. And yet these are the politics and the questions that were so much on the mind of Count Tolstoy, famous to his compatriots for his love and devotion to peasants, that he devoted almost half of this thick tome to it, discussed through the thoughts of Konstantin Levin.

n  n

Levin, a landowner with a strong capacity for compassion, self-reflection and curiosity about Russian love for land, as well as a striking political apathy, is Tolstoy's avatar in trying to make sense of a puzzling Russian peasantry culture, which failed to be understood by many of his compatriots educated on the ideas and beliefs of industrialized Europe.

"He considered a revolution in economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury."

I have to say - I understood his ideas more this time, but I could not really feel for the efforts of the devoted and kind landowner striving to understand the soul of Russian peasants. Maybe it's because I mentally kept fast-forwarding mere 50 years, to the Socialist Revolution of 1917 that would leave most definitely Levin and Kitty and their children dead, or less likely, in exile; the revolution which, as Tolstoy almost predicted, focused on the workers and despised the loved by Count Leo peasants, the revolution that despised the love for owning land and working it that Tolstoy felt was at the center of the Russian soul. But it is still incredibly interesting to think about and to analyze because even a century and a half later there's still enough truth and foresight in Tolstoy's musings, after all. Even if I disagree with so many of his views, they are still thought-provoking, no doubts about it.

"If he had been asked whether he liked or didn't like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike "the people" as something apart he could not, not only because he lived with "the people," and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of "the people," did not see any special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and "the people," and could not contrast himself with them."

========================
It's a 3.5 star book for me. Why? Well, because of Tolstoy's prose, of course - because of its wordiness and repetitiveness.

Yes, Tolstoy is the undisputed king of creating page-long sentences (which I love, by the way - love that is owed in full to my literature-teacher mother admiring them and making me punctuate these never-ending sentences correctly for grammar exercises). But he is also a master of restating the obvious, repeating the same thought over and over and over again in the same sentence, in the same paragraph, until the reader is ready to cry for some respite. This, as well as Levin's at times obnoxious preachiness and the author's frequently very patriarchial views, was what made this book substantially less enjoyable than it could have been.

--------
By the way, there is an excellent 1967 Soviet film based on this book that captures the spirit of the book quite well (and, if you so like, has a handy function to turn on English subtitles): first part is here, and the second part is here. I highly recommend this film.

And even better version of this classic is the British TV adaptation (2000) with stunning Helen McCrory as perfect Anna and lovely Paloma Baeza as perfect Kitty.

What is the most important thing about Anna Karenina? Is it the first line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"? This sounds so true but it isn't really.

Is it that Anna experiences much more intolerance for her unfaithfulness and leaving her husband than does her brother who screws around like a dog? Is it Konstantin Levin's attempts to marry into the aristocracy and his problem with religion? Or is the entire story just Tolstoy's way of seducing the reader into reading the political nub of the story, the feudalism that was at the heart of all politics, morality and social position.

I enjoyed the book when I read it, but I have to say I skimmed over a lot of the politics and did wonder which in Tolstoy's heart is the story he wanted to tell, love stories or political ones?

How I came to read Anna Karenina, appendicitis and an air hostess ending with a rotten tomato. I read this book when I was 13. I had a test on it in two days and hadn't even opened it so I said I had stomach ache and went to the school sick room. This was a tall, narrow room with a tiny window about 8' up and painted with shades of olive green and aubergine (eggplant). If you weren't sick going in.. those colours.... But I was away in Russia with Anna, her husband Alexei and Count Vronsky whom I swooned over. In the early hours of the morning, I really had stomach ache. At 4 a.m. I had an emergency appendectomy in a nursing home with an operating theatre. I was very sick indeed and in bed for weeks. Had I brought it on myself?

Never mind. Next day three things happened, one bad and one good and one fantastic. My period came on for the first time. I was a Woman! Yes! I told my mother and my grandmother leaned over from the visitor chair and slapped my face very hard, "That's to take the shock of the blood away." She said.

Then the good. My mother said I had been waiting for this day and she really let loose at my grandmother. They had a very fierce row. It was wonderful. My mother didn't love me and she never ever defended me or involved herself with me in any way. Memories of being slapped herself I suppose. My mother was very pretty and was the first of her family to be married. On her wedding day, her mother slapped her face as she put the veil on her. "Ruth should have been married first, not you." Ruth was her much less attractive and zealously-religious older sister. (She mellowed).

Everyone else in the nursing home was old except for an air hostess of 21. She didn't have a private room and didn't like being with the old people so would wander into mine to sit and read and eat all my chocolates, of which I had endless boxes. She brought her books - Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Zola. So for nearly three weeks my days were filled with reading, talking about books with my new friend and eating chocolates all day long.

I was actually thrown out of the nursing home. The food there was terrible. One lunchtime there was something forgettable and salad. The tomato was perfect-looking but mushy, almost liquid so I threw it out of the window and it landed on one of the nuns who was beside herself with anger. I didn't care, my friend had left a few days before, left her books for me too in exchange for some fancy ribbon-bowed boxes of chocolates.

We wrote for a bit, were penpals, but eventually that died. The age gap and where we were in our lives was too far apart. But I will always remember her and the fabulous books she introduced me too. Thank you Helen.

I will never forget Anna Karenina, apart from Tolstoy's political rants and plight of the peasants etc, the book was a pure gold, convoluted love affair. It was like all the best books are, total immersion in another world populated by real people whose lives outside of those described you could easily imagine, not just "well-drawn characters". Austen, Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Zola were just as good, all of them worlds I lived in when I read their books.

Review 1/2020 Rewritten 15th Jan 2020 to include more about the book.

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

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

At long last I can put another notch in my literary belt. It has been a long time coming. For whatever reason the thought of reading Tolstoy has always intimidated me. Perhaps I was worried that I would not, well in truth, not so much like it really as understand it. Phftttt that was never really an issue and surprise, surprise I enjoyed this story even if I did find parts of it excruciatingly tedious.

At its core Anna Karenina is a love story. It centers about the lives of seven people and if you are thinking that is an odd number for a love story then it behooves me to remind you that odd numbers and love do drama make. And there is drama to be found here. I am not a historian or a polymath but for me the real genius in Tolstoy’s writing lay in his characterization. Like them or not, love them or hate them, Tolstoy certainly was successful in making me care about every one of these people. I believe he achieved this in no small part by allowing me access to their inner most thoughts and feelings. This is a story about so much more than love, it is also about friendship, betrayal and pride and anger and life’s tedious little rituals whose roots are oft tended by societies outrageous expectations. But it is also about farming, hunting, politics and faith. In other words, life, and I cannot help but believe that Leo Tolstoy loved and had a great passion for life.

A very strange thing happened to me as I read this. It was like an out of body experience that involved two passages in particular. One was about mowing or scything the fields. Levin took it upon himself to spend a day with his labourers achieving this task and he invited me along. Tolstoy described this process, and Levin’s as well as the workers passion and energy for the task, so well that I was completely transported and embodied Levin as he perfected his technique and muscles burning found his rhythm. Seriously mowing the grass! The second scene, even more alarming to me to admit was about hunting great snipe. Trust me when I tell you that I have zero interest in hunting or the loss of life for beast, fish or fowl associated with this activity. Clearly I neglected to tell Tolstoy because he took me there to those marshes as Levin set his dog to flush them out and rifle in hand, cast his eyes skyward. If anyone had ever suggested to me that either one of these activities would hold me spellbound for pages, no doubt I would have felt their face for the flush of a raging fever. Colour me humbled then by the skill of a great writer.

Based on the title of this book I was initially surprised how many words and pages were spent on Konstantin Levin but as I continued to read a pattern seemed to emerge. And as sad and tragic as it was and even though I could see the shadows on the wall, I could not tear my eyes away. I liked Anna as it happens and the course her life took resonated deeply within me. I wanted more for her and Vronsky as well. As the story opens Anna is a well respected and a much sought after member of society whereas Levin is socially awkward, stiff, difficult and lacking in self esteem. Each of these characters goes about their day to day lives and makes choices within their own realms of experience and in keeping with their own moral compass. I must stop myself from saying more as I have no wish to spoil this story for would be readers but…..  Anna’s trajectory is a downward spiral whereas Levin is lifted up to the gates of domestic bliss and contentedness and as a reader my views on each of them mirrored that reversal in trajectory.

This is a classic and a tome. It is wordy and parts of it can be tedious. These Russian writers are indeed loquacious. It is also worthy. Your time and effort will be richly rewarded.

There are two problems with reading anything by Leo Tolstoy. 1) That guy seriously needed an editor with a forceful personality, as his most famous books are far too long. 2) It's nearly impossible to keep the characters apart, because they all have something like 10 different names depending on the situation and social setting (this is true of much of Russian literature, though for me it's worst by far with Tolstoy).

I don't remember much about this book, to be honest, as I read it in the summer of 1998. I do remember that by less than halfway through I didn't want to finish it, and I only did finish it through sheer force of will (I have this thing about finishing books I've started). So I didn't want to read half of it and I couldn't keep straight who anyone was...why the hell did I initially give this 2 stars? Gotta downgrade it to 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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?!

“Anna Karenina,” my friend told me, “is one of the few books that have influenced how I live my life from day to day.”
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This statement touches on a question I often wonder about: Can reading great fiction make you a better person? I don’t mean to ask whether it can improve your mental agility or your knowledge of the world, for it undoubtedly does. But can these books make you kinder, wiser, more moral, more content? The answer to this question is far from self-evident. And maybe we should be doubtful, when we consider how many disagreeable Shakespeare fans have probably existed. Nevertheless, I suspect that most of us are inclined to say yes, these books do improve us. But how?
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Here are my answers. First, many great works of fiction tackle the moral question directly: What does it mean to be good? How do you live a good life? What is the point of it all? Dostoyevsky is the exemplary author in this respect, who was intensely, almost morbidly, preoccupied with these questions. Second, great fiction often involves a social critique; many well-known authors have been penetrating guides into the hypocrisies, immoralities, and stupidities of their societies. Dickens, for example, is famous for spreading awareness of the plights of the poor; and Jane Austen performed a similar task in her novels, though much more quietly, by satirizing the narrow, pinched social rules the landed gentry had to abide by.
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Finally, we come to great literature’s ability to help us empathize. By imagining the actions, thoughts, feelings, desires, and hopes of another person—a person perhaps from a different time, with different values—we learn to see the world from multiple points of view. This not only helps us to understand others, but also helps us to understand ourselves. And this is important, since a big part of wise living (in my experience at least) involves the ability to see ourselves from a distance, as only one person among many, and to treat ourselves with the same good-natured respect as we treat our good friends. And the master of empathy is undoubtedly Leo Tolstoy.
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Leo Tolstoy was a contradictory man. He idolized the peasants and their simple life, and he preached a renunciation of worldly riches; and yet he maintained his aristocratic privileges till the end of his life. He considered marriage to be of enormous importance in living a moral life, and yet his relationship with his wife was bitterly unhappy and he ended up fleeing his house to escape. And as Isaiah Berlin pointed out in his essay on Tolstoy’s view of history, he yearned for unity and yet saw only multiplicity in the world. I can’t help attributing this contradictoriness to his nearly supernatural ability to sympathize with other points of view, which caused him to constantly be pulled in different directions.
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This is on full display in Anna Karenina, but I can’t discuss this or anything else about the book without copious spoilers. So if you are among the handful of people who don’t know the plot already, here is your warning.
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Like so many authors, Tolstoy here writes about a “fallen” woman who ends up in a bad situation. But unlike anyone else, Tolstoy presents this story without taking any clear moral stance on Anna, her society, her betrayed husband, or her lover. It is, for example, close to impossible to read this simply as a parable of the immoral woman getting her just desserts. What was Anna supposed to do? She would have condemned herself to a life of unhappiness had she stayed with Karenin. And it can hardly be said that she was responsible for her unhappy marriage, since marriages in those days were contracted when women were very young, for reasons of power and wealth, not love. Tolstoy makes this very clear, and as a result this book can be read, in part, as a feminist critique of a society that severely limits the freedom of women and condemns them to live at the mercy of their fathers and husbands.
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But this is not the whole story. If it is impossible to read this book as a parable of an immoral wife, it is equally impossible to read it as the heroic struggle of a wronged women against an immoral society. Anna is neither wholly right nor wrong in her decision. For in choosing to abandon her husband, she also chooses to abandon her son. Admittedly, it was only the social rules that forced her to make this choice, but the fact remains that she knowingly chose it. What’s more, unlike in Madame Bovary, where the deceived husband is not a sympathetic character, Tolstoy brings Karenin to life, showing us an imperfect and limited man, but a real man nonetheless, a man who was deeply hurt by Anna’s actions.
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A similar ambiguity can be seen in the relationship between Anna and Vronsky. Tolstoy never makes us doubt that they do truly love one another. This is not the story of vanity or lust, but of tender, affectionate love—a love that was denied Anna for her whole life before her affair. For his part, Vronsky is also neither wholly bad nor good. He wrongs Karenin without any moral scruples; but his love for Anna is so deep—at least at first—that he gives up his respectability, his position in the military, and even his good relationship with his family to be with her. I cannot admire Vronsky, but it is impossible for me to condemn him, just like it is impossible for me to condemn Anna or Karenin, for they were all making the choices that seemed best to them.
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The final effect of these conflicts is not a critique of society nor a parable of vice, but a portrayal of the tragedy of life, of the unhappiness that inevitably arises when desires are not in harmony with values and when personalities are not in harmony with societies.
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The other thread of this book—that of Levin and Kitty—is where Tolstoy tells us how to be happy. For Tolstoy, this involves a return to tradition; specifically, this means a return to rural Russian tradition and a concomitant shunning of urban European influence. Levin and Kitty’s happy life in the countryside is repeatedly contrasted with Vronsky and Anna’s unhappy life in the city. Levin is connected with the earth; he knows the peasants and he works with them, while Vronsky only associates with aristocrats. Levin is earnest, provincial, and clumsy, while Vronsky is urbane, cosmopolitan, and suave. Kitty is simple, unreflecting, and pure-hearted, while Anna is well-read, sophisticated, and passionate.
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The most obvious symbol of Europeanization is the fateful railway. Anna and Vronsky meet in a train station; Vronsky confesses his love to Anna in another train station; and it is of course a train that ends Anna’s life. Levin, by contrast, catches sight of Kitty as he sits in the grass in his farm, while Kitty goes by in a horse-drawn carriage. Anna and Vronsky travel to Italy to see the sights, while for Levin even Moscow is painfully confusing and shallow.

This contrast of urban Europe with rural Russia is mirrored in the contrast of atheism with belief. Like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy attributed the growing disbelief in Christianity to the nefarious influence of the freethinking West. In Tolstoy’s view—and in this respect he’s remarkably close to Dostoyevsky—Russians were mistaken to gleefully import European technologies and modes of thought without paying attention to how appropriate these new arrivals were to Russia. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wanted Russia to develop its own path into the future, a path that relied on an embrace of the Christian ethic, not an attempt to fill the vacuum left by religion with socialism and science.
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The final scene of this novel—where Levin renounces his old free-thinking ways and embraces Christianity—is the ultimate triumph of Russia over Europe in Levin’s soul. But this is where the book rings the most hollow for me. For here Tolstoy is attempting to put up one mode of life as ideal, while his prodigious ability to see the world from so many points of view makes us doubt whether there is such a thing as an ideal life or one right way of viewing the world. At least for me, Tolstoy's magnificent empathy is the real moral lesson I have taken away from this book. His insights into the minds and personalities of different people is staggering, and I can only hope to emulate this, in my own small way, as I fight the lifelong battle with my own ego.

Look it seems to be a favorite novel among so many great novelists - Nabokov, Faulkner, Kundra, Joyce even Dostoevsky but I happen to be more in agreement with Rebecca West when she says, "And plainly Anna Karenina was written simply to convince Tolstoy that there was nothing in this expensive and troublesome business of adultery"

If you read novels to be somewhere and sometime else (and don't mind that place to be boring) this will work for you. It is a perfect chronicle of its times. The trouble is I happened to be a very sensual reader. You see I am a book-izer and date a lot of books at the same time, and take different books to dinner and bed on the same day. Whenever I see a book anywhere I start imagining myself in bed with it and can't help running my hand on its body. And above all, there must be very good reasons if the relationship is to last more than a few days. Unfortunately, this one happens to feel like a long, stale marriage.

Marriage! I guess that is the real theme of the book rather than adultery. The subject has occupied minds of people for so long that there aren't too many new jokes I can make about it, I mean the best ones like how in case of a murder, the victim's spouse is the foremost suspect are already taken. Moreover, I don't fully understand the concept of marriage - this once I was about to congratulate this newlywed couple but I was just trying to imagine their life after marriage before the chance to do so occurred and ended up saying "condolences". That because "May your souls rest in peace" seemed like hoping for too much. The reason being that I think of 'being alive' to mean to let you feel all sorts of things. Now once a person gets married, (S)he is expected not to feel attracted, fall in love, etc outside marriage. And so to that extent the person is dead. And of course, there are all the sacrifices you are supposed to make for your children, etc (a lot of people are into that too!) which won't let a person enjoy his/her life fully.

Now, it is just the kind of thing that if it wasn't for the sake of habit, people would have given up long ago. I still think they will do so someday. If you trust a person, you don't need to bound them, right? With love, my understanding is far worse - I mean if someone loves his/her spouse and wants the later to be happy, shouldn't they be more like "Go on, darling, have some fun!" instead of jealously guarding them? That, by the way, is Levin's (Anna's antagonist) method - to ask his wife not to meet men with whom she happened to laugh.

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"Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls...
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."
- Kahlil Gibran.
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Still, because of some sort of barbaric instinct the heart wants to hold on to the person, it is invested in, to possess them like objects so as to be sure of their presence in one's life. It seeks promises, unbreakable oaths, until-death-or-divorce-do-us-aparts, more and more bounds - anything to save one from the fear of losing beloved. And where this need for security over each other's possession is mutual, a marriage takes place. Except, of course, all such promises are useless, no one can control his/her feelings by choice, and so no one should ask the other or promise such a thing. In fact, everything people do to gain security (or whatever form) only feeds the feeling of insecurity.

Only insecure and untrusting people seek promises and

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Where you presume on security is where you set yourself to fail. All things given in love are gifts and no prices should be asked in return. Karein, Anna's husband realizes this at some point in the story and is able to fight back the famous agony of a cheated husband at least for a while. (If only I was to have a cookie for each book with adultery and jealous spouses in it I have read, I would have .... you know, diabetes. There should be some kind of restriction on each, like the no-mention-of-Hitler-in-debates rule, like a book with adultery in it doesn't win Nobel prizes or something .... but then Marquez wouldn't have won his prize, you know what, scratch that.)

Anyways, Tolstoy's argument against infidelity doesn't seem true to me. Anna didn't suffer because she cheated on her husband. She suffered because of three different reasons at different points.

First, because she had a conscience which is always a burden. How can feeling guilty about anything that can ever serve a purpose is beyond me. Guilt is a monster that like that Greek vulture which constantly fed on the heart (of Prometheus) without ever improving the victim's lot, and conscience is nothing except a set up to create a feeling of guilt among people. And to think there are people who feed this concept to their children! Terrorists never felt guilty of their actions, pregnant teenagers often do. A better world could be created if people teach compassion to their children.

Secondly, people, she is surrounded by. Many would say those were wrong times, times are not wrong, people are. Vronsky wants her, other people think of her as fallen women, the stupid divorce law ... you get the picture.

Thirdly, in the last parts, when she feels jealous lover Vronsky. It is not a self-induced fear of being cheated as often seen in people who cheat themselves - like Macbeth's fear who being usurper himself constantly fears being usurped, but rather the same old insecurity we just talked about. She has given away her son for him. We tax our loved ones for sacrifices we make them for them. It was too great a sacrifice for Vronsky to redeem in any way except by becoming a homely for her which he couldn't.

The novel has a misnomer. It should have been better named Levin, the author stand-in gets more attention than Anna Karenina. We read several boring chapters in which he gives his theories for agriculture, peasant education, etc which, though it might make the book more realistic, also makes it much larger and boring than it need be (something similar to what deviations and jokes do to this review). There are several beautiful moments in this novel but they are lost in the sea of monotonous realism, a combination that doesn't work with a sensual reader like me. The third star is almost entirely due to the last chapters of Anna's life. If it wasn't for that, I would have thought that it is Stockholm syndrome associated with large books that make people love this one.