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!

«Άννα Καρένινα» ή «Κονσταντίν Λιέβιν» (ο βασικότερος πρωταγωνιστής).

“Δεν υπάρχουν συνθήκες, που ο άνθρωπος να μην μπορέσει να συνηθίσει σ’ αυτές, προπάντων, όταν βλέπει ότι όλοι γύρω του ζουν το ίδιο.»

«Με τη λογική, τάχα, έφτασα στο ότι πρέπει ν’ αγαπώ τον πλησίον μου και να μην τον πνίγω; Αυτό μου το ‘παν σαν ήμουν παιδί, κι εγώ με χαρά το πίστεψα, γιατί μου είπαν κείνο που βρισκόταν μέσα στην ψυχή μου. Και ποιος τ’ ανακάλυψε αυτό; Όχι το μυαλό. Το μυαλό ανακάλυψε τον αγώνα για την ύπαρξη και το νόμο, που απαιτεί να πνίξω όλους κείνους, που με παρεμποδίζουν στο να ικανοποιήσω τις επιθυμίες μου. Αυτό είναι το συμπέρασμα του μυαλού. Μα το ν’ αγαπώ τον άλλον, αυτό δεν μπορούσε να τ’ ανακαλύψει το μυαλό, γιατί αυτό δεν είναι λογικό.»

Αυτό είναι το αριστούργημα του Tolstoy, το ανώτερο από τα έργα του. Ένα έπος, αντάξιο των Αδερφών Καραμάζοφ – αντίστοιχο των ομηρικών. Ένα ποικιλόμορφο έργο, πολύ περισσότερο από ένα ρομάντσο, βαθιά φιλοσοφικό, δραματικό, από αυτά που θέτουν ερωτήματα στο πως αντιμετωπίζεις την ζωή, όταν την προκαλείς, όταν ρισκάρεις τη σταθερότητά της, όταν τυφλώνεσαι από το άγνωστο και όταν τελικά δεν μετανιώνεις, γιατί κατάφερες να «ζήσεις» πραγματικά. Δεν προσφέρεται για περαιτέρω σχολιασμό, παρά μόνο για ανάγνωση.

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

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.

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.”

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So what are you reading at the moment?"

"Nothing!"

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

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

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

Here's the journey:

Rereading the famous introductory sentence, I start!

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

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

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

Let the journey begin...

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

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

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

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

Who would have guessed?

I read on...

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

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

Reading on...

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

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

Ethan Hawke recommended this book in Entertainment Weekly. When the man who helped create "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" says something, I listen.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

So begins "Anna Karenina." This is a Russian novel, by Leo Tolstoy no less, so any brief summary is impossible. Instead, I will summarize the summary.

There is the Oblonsky family: Stiva, the cheating husband and Dolly the long-suffering wife (apparently Russians were really keen on American nicknames back in the day). Dolly's sister, Kitty, has two suitors: Levin, a farmer, and Vronsky, a dashing cavalryman. Kitty chooses Vronsky over Levin, breaking Levin's heart, but Vronsky soon falls for Anna, who is married to a bureaucrat named Alexei.

Vronsky and Anna's first meeting is described:

"In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile."

Eventually, Levin wins Kitty and they get married. The book then follows their relationship as it parallels that of Vronsky and Anna. Four million pages later, the story ends. The mirror-twinning is simplistic, as is the moralizing (no Dostoyevsky-like depths of psychological insight here). Clearly, Levin and Kitty represent the right way to do things, while Vronsky and Anna represent the shortest route to the eternal fires of hell. Still, you don't go to Tolstoy for his insight. You go to him for his scope and breadth of imagination. There are dozens of characters, locations, and plots, all going at once. You have to love the guy, and his books, for ambition alone. Someone once said, "If the world could write, it would write like Tolstoy." And it's true. He creates and populates a world on the page. His characters are all a bit one note (Levin = noble peasant; Kitty = purity and goodness; Alexei = boring civil servant; Anna = whore; Vronsky = pimp); however, despite additional dimensions, they are fully realized. In other words, the most complex one-note characters I've come across.

I cannot recommend the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation highly enough. I'd always been afraid of Tolstoy on the basis of density alone. But this translation in the bee's knees. It's clean and literate and - I've been told - really captures the essence of Tolstoy's work. The prose can be quite beautiful. Sometimes you forget you're reading a Russian novel (then Tolstoy reminds you by having Levin engage in a 4,000 page discussion of community property and peasant rights with his brother Sergei; apparently this meant something to 19th Century Russians). There are vivid descriptions of life on Levin's farm, train rides across the steppes, and lavish balls. I especially liked a passage in which a smitten Levin divides all the women in the world into two types: the first type constituted all those women with imperfections and shortcomings; the second type was Kitty. Really - isn't that how each of us falls in love?

The first part of the book sets up the relationships. The next three million pages are devoted to following each couple. Kitty/Levin take the high road; Stiva and Dotty attempt to reach that lofty plain; Anna and Vronsky descend into the pits of despair and guilt and utter ruin. I will not spoil their fate, but it is truly Russian. We all have to pay for our sins.

My gripes. First, there is a lot of foreign languages bandied about. Tolstoy liked to show off. The Russian has been translated to English; however, the French, German, and Klingon phrases are not translated, so you have to keep looking down at the footnotes. This isn't as big a deal as it is in "War and Peace," but it can be distracting. Also, we come to the controversial end of the book. Now, the title is "Anna Karenina," so you might expect the book to end with her storyline. WRONG. You simple fool. It does not end there. No, you have to slog through approximately 12 billion pages of Tolstoy's characters ruminating on the war with Turkey. Then there's Levin's religious rebirth, as he discovers the meaning of life (yes, his meaning is as banal as you'd expect). Some people might think this section of the book is a good reminder of all the wonderful ideas that Tolstoy had; indeed, that he was more concerned with those ideas than his story, and that the tragic love of Anna the Whore and Vronsky the Pimp was but the tree upon which to hang his ideas.

I don't agree. I think the end is a didactic, pedagogic, vaguely misogynistic load of crap. It's like a 19th C. version of "The Purpose Driven Life" has been appended, rather haphazardly, to the end of an otherwise great novel. If I wanted a lecture from a long-dead Russian author, I would've built a time machine, gone back in time, and asked for one.

n  "Leo Tolstoy would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering."n
—Mahatma Gandhi


Through reading this praiseworthy classic, I have been forced to recalibrate my previously unreliable view of this celebrated author.
You see, I was force-fed Tolstoy at college (his writing, not his flesh, silly! Mine wasn't a college for cannibals!) and at the time only carried War and Peace under one arm so I might appear cleverer than I actually was.
So, how amazed was I that Anna K has shown me the fun side to Leo T? He is slyly hilarious. How did I not know this?

Please note that I haven't read this novel in Russian Cyrillic. I acknowledge that my perception owes a great deal to the amazing interpretive work of the translators, but let's imagine that we in the West have enjoyed his work as the great man intended.

The title is something of a misnomer and doesn't do justice to an endearing love story that also captures the disparity between city and country life in 19th-century Russia.
For a start, Anna K isn't the star of the show. That billing falls to our anti-hero, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, a socially awkward, highly intelligent loner who considers himself to be an ugly fellow with no redeemable qualities.
Despite being weighed down by all this existential angst, he worships Kitty Shcherbatskaya, an attractive young princess whom he believes to be out of his league.
Kitty is described as being "as easy to find in a crowd as a rose among nettles."
Tolstoy goes to great lengths to make us understand the inner workings of Levin's mind (For Tolstoy, read Levin: they are one and the same).

Levin's love rival, raffishly handsome Count Vronsky, couldn't be more dissimilar. He is socially adept and careful not to offend, whereas Levin could probably start an argument with a goldfish.

What a fabulous read this is.
Tolstoy's levity and perspicacity shine from every page and the badinage between the main characters is exquisitely observed.
He does though have an idiosyncratic way of writing: adjectives are thickly laid on with a trowel and he loves to use repetition to emphasise a point.

Anna herself is fascinating, and to affirm just how fascinating she is, Tolstoy employs the word fascinating seven times in one paragraph! Look! I've even started doing it myself! How fascinating!

When not beating you about the head with repetition, the Russian master can do majestic descriptive imagery as well as anyone. One simple scene, where Kitty collapses into a low chair, her ball gown rising about her like a cloud, was just perfectly captured.

This is a wonderful story of fated love and aristocratic hypocrisy.
Tolstoy uses Levin as his political mouthpiece to rail against the ills of late 19th-century Russia, and the author's philosophy of non-violent pacifism also directly influenced none other than Mahatma Gandhi.

Anna Karenina is often cited as 'one of the best books ever written'.
So who am I to disagree?

Read the end of Anna Karenina and listen to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mUmdR...

It’ll break your heart.

When I first completed this book, I sat down at my computer and attempted to review it, and all I could come up with was,

“F*ck you, Tolstoy!!”

I know that sounds juvenile, but I still have that feeling. I’m so ANGRY with him for what he did to Anna. I’m so angry that we were barely given a chance to know her. (Yes, I'm aware that she's a fictional character who never actually existed. So? She was real to me!) We learn that she’s beautiful and at the same time very insecure. We learn that she is married, but not happily so. We learn that she is a devoted mother to her son, but not to her daughter. We never really get to learn about the depths of Anna. It’s always Anna in relation to a man. Anna and her husband. Anna and Vronsky. Anna and her son. I guess that speaks to the position of women in society during that time period. Women had no identity of their own.

What I enjoyed most about this book was Tolstoy's ability to allow the reader to get inside the heads of the characters. We learn so much about them through their thoughts -- their fears, their insecurities, their secrets. By enabling us to connect to the internal dialog of the characters, we are introduced to their humanity. As a reader on the outside looking in, I got so annoyed when a character would put so much emphasis on a look or the tone of voice or a gesture of another. But don't we all do that? Isn't that how we experience the world? Unfortunately, often our assumptions about what a look means or a tone of voice means is inaccurate at best. When we ascribe meaning to these little behavioral nuances (which we all do based on our own baggage, right?) we're saying very little about the other person and everything about ourselves. Tolstoy takes his message to the extreme, sure, but it certainly made me sit back and really think about what I assume about others verses the reality of that person.


This book also got me thinking long and hard about what one prioritizes in life. Is it enough to be comfortable and stable, if that comfort and stability mean you are also lonely and dissatisfied? Should we follow our desires and damned be the consequences, no matter what dark rabbit hole they might lead us down? I have to ask myself, am I an Anna or a Kitty? Comfort and contentment or drama and romance: neither of which leaves a person completely satisfied. I don't have any answers. Just many many more questions.


The days are short and the nights are cold and stretch out for an eternity. It's the perfect time to pick up this novel, snuggle in and enjoy the world Tolstoy created for you.


Five bright, gleaming stars...


*** A note about this edition: Luckily I was forewarned NOT to read the introduction before reading the book. The introduction will give away key elements of the plot and thus ruin any surprises the book may have in store for you if you are fortunate, as I was, to not have the ending spoiled for you already.