n  2020 updaten
never mind. i had to reread it two more times and write three more essays on this. when will the nightmare end. i'll never read this in my free time because it keeps getting shoved down my throat annually.

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anna karenina is daunting as much as it is spellbinding.

spanning 800 pages, tolstoy tells a cinematic tale that has remained beloved for centuries. at its core of the novel is the theme of love and its variants: all happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

despite its many political and existential themes and vast amount of characters, at the heart of the book are two vastly different characters: anna and levin. anna begins a torrid love affair with vronsky, a charismatic and handsome officer, bound to crash and burn. levin timidly chases after kitty, his friend’s sister in law, who he is in love with. both arcs explore the dichotomy between love and lust, idealism in relationships, and the superficiality of infatuation and lust.

i have read this book five times (four times for class)(but technically three and a half because i skipped over levin’s farming scenes three times). and still, i feel inadequate to review this book. but more importantly, each time, i find something new to love and appreciate about this book. this book is dramatic and tragic and heartwarming and devastating all at once.

this is timeless classic for good reason and there are no words to describe how much i adore this book. a must read for winter!

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n  2018 reviewn
Honestly, I thought this was going to be a boring classic (since I was required to read this for school and you know, schools make you read boring books). But I was wrong. Anna Karenina is alive. Unlike other 'classics', Anna is filled with complex remarks about society and class and relationships, in a world that only Tolstoy can write. I was expecting it to have a dull drone, but this book definitely ran on a different frequency.
One thing I loved and admired about Tolstoy was that he never just stopped at a catastrophic event like other writers. He always made sure to show the aftermath, maybe as a cautionary tale to show that actions have consequences. He explores the consequences of being in love versus being in love with the ideal of someone. It was a wild ride and I wouldn't have had it be any other way.

I loved this book with all my heart and one day, I'll reread it without having to write 2000 word essays and analyze every element.

What turned out to be the most interesting to me as I devoured this lush book was Tolstoy's amazing ability to show how we change our minds, or how our minds just do change -- how enamored we become of a person, a place, a whole population, an idea, an ideal -- and then how that great love, which seemed so utterly meaningful and complete, sours or evaporates just days, hours, or even minutes later -- in short, how truly fickle we are. And at the same time, each of the characters was in some way stable -- they had their particular drives, their needs, their anxieties, which gave their changing passions some kind of coherence and thus gave themselves their "selves."

Tolstoy's ability to capture the tiny thoughts that the characters themselves were perhaps unaware of -- preconscious material consisting largely of rationalizations and fears, but also sometimes of genuine compassion -- and to present these thoughts with precision, subtle irony, and tenderness -- was a great delight. (He deals in this preconscious material rather than in unconscious material -- there is nothing symbolic or metaphorical in his writing -- he writes quite naturally of "things as they are." My partner and I enjoyed contrasting him with Kafka.)

I also am very glad that I read an unabridged version. Some of my favorite parts of the book didn't involve the title character -- I loved the mowing and hunting sections -- these were the parts where true joy (and meaning, as Levin finds) were found. And I think these are the parts not included in abridged versions.

Not since I read The Brothers Karamazov have I felt as directly involved in characters' worlds and minds. Fascinating.
I was hooked on Anna Karenina from the opening section when I realized that Tolstoy was brilliantly portraying characters' thoughts and motivations in all of their contradictory, complex truth. However, Tolstoy's skill is not just in characterization--though he is the master of that art. His prose invokes such passion. There were parts of the book that took my breath because I realized that what I was reading was pure feeling: when we realize that Anna is no longer pushing Vronsky away, when Levin proposes to Kitty, and later when Levin thinks about death. The book effectively threw a shroud over me and sucked me in--I almost missed my train stop a couple of times.
That being said, there were some parts that were difficult to get through. I felt myself slowing down in Part VI. I was back in through the remainder of the book once I hit Part VII, but I understand how the deep dive into politics and farming can be off-putting. Still, in those chapters Tolstoy's characters are interacting, and it's incredible to see them speak and respond to one another. It's not only worth the trouble, but deep down, it's no trouble at all. It's to be savored, and sometimes we must be forced to slow down and think about the characters' daily life as they navigate around in their relationships.
A word about this translation. When I was in college I attempted to read the Constance Garnett translation. I didn't stop because it was awful (I think finals came up, then the holidays, then more classes, etc.). However, I never really felt like the words were as powerful as they should have been. Years later, the only image that stuck in my mind was of Levin meeting Kitty at the ice skating rink. I just never really entered the world of Anna Karenina, perhaps my fault more than anything. However, the diction and sentence construction in Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation is poetic and justifies the title "masterpiece." Through this translation I grew to appreciate Tolstoy not just because he told good, philosophical stories, but because he could do so with utmost subtletly and compactness--yes, I think Tolstoy is concise. Each word has its place.
Understandably, many are unwilling to give themselves to this book. Many expect it to do all of the work. But it's an even better read because if the reader works, the experience of reading this book is incredible.

Absolutely absolutely loved the second read.
The brilliant character work, the existential questions and beautiful writing. Great reading experience!

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

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

…this entire thing could’ve been avoided if someone would’ve just given Levin a heroic dose of mushrooms from the start

Tolstoy can bring a scene so close to the eye it's as vividly and comprehensively alive as a memory in one's own mind.

welcome to...ANNA DECEMBERENINA!

it's the start of the month (kinda). i've attempted a (reprehensible) pun on a book title (to everyone's chagrin). there is a notoriously long classic on my currently reading (ill-advisedly).

you know what that means.

IT'S PROJECT LONG CLASSIC TIME, the fan favorite in which i read a very long book divided up into little bits over the course of the month, and usually i drag elle along with me except this month i'm planning something truly nightmarish so i'm starting while she's asleep as an act of terror / peer pressure.

let's do this.


DAY 1: PAGES 1-25
my tbr review of this was "sometimes i like to pretend i'm capable of reading thousand-page books. just for fun," and in this case that pretending includes starting 2 days early and doubling up eventually so that i can read in 25 page chunks.

i'm cool like that.

damn! that opening line! we are off to the races.


DAY 2: PAGES 26-75
didn't even intend to make today my bonus day but this is just so readable. why didn't anyone tell me the 900 page classic from 150 years ago is unputdownable??

i fear i may adore all of these characters.


DAY 3: 76-100
in a state of bliss right now in which i look forward to reading this every day but am relishing it so much that dividing it into sections works perfectly.


DAY 4: 101-125
literally any book is doable in teeny chunks like this. i had negative free time (and a negative interest) today but boom. easy money.


DAY 5: 126-150
the descriptions of emotions in this...sheesh. excellence.


DAY 6: 151-175
and here we have the farming sections i've heard so much about...

in truth if they're like this every time i can handle it. i like poetic descriptions of the descent of springtime as much as the next annoying girl.


DAY 7: 176-200
i am absolutely indulging in vronsky's downfall here. finding pleasure in his every misfortune. his sadness and disappointment spark joy for me.

hate that guy.


DAY 8: 201-225
well jesus anna! we're only at the 25% mark, we can't act like this already!


DAY 10: 226-250
i missed a day. i'm a nightmare person.

now i have to see how many pages i can manage in, generously, 20 minutes.

perhaps unsurprisingly it took 25 and i'm not caught up.


DAY 11: PAGES 251-275
something fun that the universe and i are doing is that we've set up the last three weeks of the year so that i don't only have to finish 24 books, complete two projects, and remain active on seemingly 100 accounts, but i also have the busiest work week(s) i have had in (without exaggeration) 2 years.

without the depressive episode that made the last time so fun.

anyway i may never catch up on this.


DAY 13: PAGES 276-300
guess who's behind. behind again. emma's behind. except she never caught up in the first place so now she's just...50 pages behind instead of 25.

or i guess 75 since i haven't actually read any yet today.

okay NOW 50. why is this book so good??


DAY 14: PAGES 301-350
well, well, well. look who decided to catch up.

biiiiig farming chapters.


DAY 15: PAGES 351-375
part four alert. we pray for mercy from agricultural labor bureaucracy content.

and our prayers are heard <3


DAY 16: PAGES 376-400
KITTY AND LEVIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wow i am so invested in this. even dozens of pages about farming and politics can't divest me. i am in it.


DAY 17: PAGES 401-425
way, way, way too much is happening. it's the halfway point, people! this is no time for climaxes OR happily ever afters, let alone both! we have 400+ pages to cover!


DAY 18: PAGES 426-450
i am uncomfortable with how high stakes everything is. THERE IS SO MUCH LEFT. WHEN I HEFT THIS UNWIELDY VOLUME I AM ONLY AT THE HALFWAY POINT EVEN STILL. I THINK. EVEN THOUGH I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR SEEMINGLY DAYS.


DAY 19: 451-475
honestly i care less about the Christian Art than the farming. sheesh.


DAY 20: 476-500
it's the circleeee of lifeee...


DAY 21: 501-525
what a moral quandary we find ourselves in!


DAY 22: 526-550
okay phew, i'm back on board with being obsessed with anna. it makes me uncomfortable to not like a female character who is constantly committing moral wrongs...feels unnatural.

part 5 done!


DAY 23: 551-575
i'm internally titling this one twenty-five page chunk number 23: the tangled webs we weave. get it together, folks! it's like a sally rooney novel in here.


DAY 24: 576-600
this too realistically conveyed the feeling of being clinically annoyed by a friend of a friend. i feel irritable now.


DAY 28: 601-650
it's the most wonderful time of the year...

read: it's actually december 26, meaning we have actually skipped right to day 28, and i am extremely behind just in time for the end of the year to be right around the corner.

but i'm also behind on my other project, and i'm also behind on my actual literal reading challenge, so we're just going to ignore that for today. no time for worrying, only time for reading.

actually read 50 pages anyway because i am perfect and infallible.


DAY 31: PAGES 651-700
being very brave and reading 50 pages again and also pretending anna isn't on my damn nerves. GIRL STAND UP.

we find ourselves heading into part 7.

never mind. it's not hard to not be bugged by anna. she's the sh*t.


DAY 32: PAGES 701-750
anna is so evil and kitty is so perfect. i love them both.


DAY 33: PAGES 751-817
it appears it is time. hello and welcome to the last day of the anna karenina project.

oh man.


OVERALL
not only was i intimidated by this book's length, i was sure i'd find it unconquerable. even as i started it and found it a pleasure, i was waiting for the other shoe to drop. it never did! i enjoyed this every day, through farming and politics and religion and art.

readable and sweeping, stunning in its writing and its carrying across effortlessly of both the minutiae and the most important topics of life. it's insane how applicable, how of the moment this book is now, across languages and centuries.

read it! i can't believe how long i put it off.
rating: 4.5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was assigned Anna Karenina in a Russian Lit class I took second semester of my senior year of college. I was finishing my senior thesis and didn't make it twenty pages in, and in subsequent years I lugged that Constance Garnett edition around with me from apartment to apartment, never making it past more than those first few chapters before I finally gave up several moves ago and left it in a box on the curb. And when I finally read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, at age thirty-six, I felt I'd dodged a bullet by not getting to this any sooner, because I don't think it would've made such an impression on me.

This is one of the best books I've read, and I'd go so far as to say it's one of the best books that's been written. I'm going to make this the moment I stop a practice begun in my feckless youth and long regretted, of almost never giving five-star reviews no matter how good a book is, and going forward will have an expanded scale. This doesn't mean I think Anna Karenina is a better novel than, say, War and Peace; it only means that I've evolved, with age, in my awarding of these stupid yellow Internet book report stars that I hate.

Reading a great book feels like being in love. The night I started Anna Karenina I went to bed buzzing, almost too happy to sleep and excited to wake up in the morning so that I could continue to read. And it's a relief to have access to such a thrilling sensation, now that I'm a married woman and must avoid the temptations of falling in love with a dashing count, which, I now know, could only end terribly for me and pretty much everyone else.

As we all know, Tolstoy starts this off with his famous observation that "all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The other day I was talking with my sister, who complained that while it sounds good, this isn't actually true. I agree that it doesn't really seem to be the case even in this book, but for me the opening alludes to that magically paradoxical hybrid of specificity and universality that's just what great literature is made of. The characters in Anna Karenina are aristocrats in Tsarist Russia in the 1870s, and live in a world where their messages are sent and their food is cooked and their clothes are washed and their estates are farmed and their butts are wiped by servants and peasants who are considered something less than totally human even when their souls are celebrated and rhapsodized over by their romantic overlords. The characters and their world are exactly placed in one highly specific historical moment, and each person is so exquisitely described and developed that we'd know them immediately if we ever sat next to one of them on the train. The characters in this book are more real than real people, and that's what makes this book simultaneously so specific -- there is no one just like Anna, just like Levin, just like any of these characters -- and yet so general -- there are so many people who are almost like them that we recognize in these characters aspects of people in our own lives, of ourselves. I'm glad I waited to read this book because by the time I did I'd been married, I'd had a child, I'd suffered through romantic relationships that had turned toxic and unsalvageable, so I could admire just how accurately and beautifully all these things were described. Of course, I still hadn't yet harvested wheat or (spoiler alert!) thrown myself under a train, but after reading this I know just how those doing those things must be. The suicide in this book is one of the most incredible passages I've ever read, and will stick with me for the rest of my life. I wouldn't be surprised if I think of it at the moment of my own death, though I guess (well, hope) it's a little premature to say.

Of course, this being Tolstoy, the magnificent death scene can't be the end of it, and is followed by a lengthy and arguably tedious informercial for religious faith and family life. I remember a similar sort of thing at the end of his other long novel and it reminds me a bit of going to see some reconfiguration of a classic punk band a few years ago and being subject to the lead singer's plug for Ron Paul: Tolstoy's got a captive audience and he will hold forth on his tiresome pet ideas, throughout the book in little asides and then with great force at the end. In a normal writer I'd call this a flaw but I suppose in Tolstoy it's an eccentricity he's more than entitled to. It's his prerogative because by the end I felt whatever nutty crap he wanted to pull was well worth it.

I think part of getting old and crotchety and out of touch has been, for me, getting more conservative and lame and stupidly swoony about "the canon" and what constitutes Deathless Literature. Anna Karenina is better than almost anything else I can think of because it lives and breathes, and there's so much in it, and no matter what I do to it -- read it as a resolutely feminist text, as I do, and pretty much ignore the Christian faith stuff that was clearly so central for its author -- it isn't, and can't be, remotely diminished. I can read all the footnotes; I can ignore the footnotes. I can go to commentaries and articles and Nabokov and Bakhtin on the subject of Anna Karenina and what it all must truly mean; I can go back to school for my PhD and devote the rest of my life to its study. Or, I can remain willfully ignorant, as I am, and just enjoy the story, which is all that I've done and all I feel up to, and for me right now that's fine. It makes my own life so much larger, both by illuminating my own lived experience and by expanding and enhancing it to include all these events I haven't lived through, places I haven't been, and people I haven't known. I've had so much more and richer of a life than I could've had without having read this novel. My soul will always remain crushed by what happened to Anna, and even, in spite of myself, strengthened by Levin's religious conversion and the birth of his son. I think another thing I didn't get when I was younger, with my stingy four stars, was how hard that is to do, to write a book that will effect something like that in readers... Or maybe it isn't so hard really, because a lot of books do that for a lot of people. Certainly a lot have done it for me and they for sure weren't all highly respectable Russian Classics.

But there is something especially timeless in here, though, that I don't think I'm imagining. It's so simultaneously of its time but of of our time too, maybe every time, and it's shocking how these old words on the page can be so vital and alive. Some of that I do think comes from the translation, and I sometimes wonder if hip new translations are cheating a bit...? Well, even if they do come with an asterisk, I'd say avoid poor fusty Constance as I highly recommend Pevear and Volokhonsky. Highly recommend this book. Whew. What a read. Gosh.

I tried so hard, but I give up.

Each and every Tolstoy's story, on top of making me annoyed and exasperated, bores me to tears. When I come across critics and reviewers singing praise to him, my eyes start to roll involuntarily. That's the sort of effect the sound of Tolstoy's name, a casual mention of his work and unlocked memories of reading his biography produce in me. Tolstoy certainly didn't practice what he preached,

— it's especially disheartening to realize how, for some reason, he didn't apply his omni-present concept of universal love (that he quite gracelessly shoved down my th readers' throats) to his own family, women and female characters; universal love, my ass. Sounds sweeteningly sick (like so many other things written by bored aristocrats) once you dive deep into his biography... my heart goes out to Tolstoy's amazing, precious, wonderful wife. Sophia Andreyevna should be no less famous than the man who wouldn't be the Tolstoy we know today without her having sacrificed her health, her time, her emotional and physical resources, her whole life at his altar—

and when he endeavoured to, in his half-hearted attempts to abide by his own "behests" and show a good example of "practice what you preach" (in order not to appear a hypocritical babbler), the results were kind of ridiculous and showed just how far-fetched his philosophy was from real life, how detached from the realm of Russian culture. No wonder he had such an epic mental breakdown at the end of his life. Turns out wearing a peasant shirt doesn't bring you closer to understanding the struggles of ordinary people and eventually being able to associate with them outside the little fantasy bubble you had lived in, huh.

In my humble opinion, Tolstoy is the least specifically "Russian" writer there's to find. I know most will disagree, but calling him national writer is a stretch. He was sort of universal, which explains his popularity across the world (unlike Dostoevsky, whose work is specifically Russian by nature, yet so brilliant that it's also universal; I always look with scepticism at anyone who claims to get 109219 meanings behind his work (I want to be you so bad), but when a person with no exposure to Russian culture whatsoever claims to be able to grasp Dostoevsky's ideas, emerged straight from the depths of hell Russian culture and mentality, I digress; they'd be (un)lucky to accomplish basic comprehension lmao)

Sure enough, Tolstoy's ideas and personality were shaped by socio-cultural ambiance of the 19th century Russia. That being said, I find that his work is the least reflective of Russian culture compared to other Russian writers.

(let's just briefly mention that popular culture and elite culture in Russia at that time were so separated from each other that nobility (1-2% of population) and ordinary people might as well have been speaking different languages... a rare occasional genius was able to grasp and show all the nuances of that division).


Tolstoy certainly had some sort of idealistic notions about peasants and peasant life (working class, merchants and other folks didn't interest him that much, from what I gather), which is not surprising. People tend to idealize what they cannot fully comprehend. But this man had the lucky opportunity of arguing his case while being surrounded by luxury, taken care of by his numerous servants (his wife being the main one), bathing in privileges his title had bestowed upon him and reaping the fruits of his aristocratic background. As in, he found himself in the position of a person exposed to the ambiance that encourages knowledge and understanding of simple, unsophisticated life of an average 19th century Russian person:D

I also believe that Tolstoy was one of the most atrociously misogynistic (seriously hateful) writers of his time, the fact that only bears relevance to this mess of a chaotic rant because his hatred shows in his work. It's definitely not reflective of Russian culture (like so many other aspects of his work that are based purely on his preconceived notions and personal beliefs rather than socio-cultural nuances of his time).

Just take a close look at Turgenev, Leskov, Ostrovsky's heroines and you'll see a huge gap between a dull, unflattering and one-dimensional portrayal of female characters of Mr. Leo and multi-layered, complex and vivid images provided by above mentioned contemporaries of his (who, roughly speaking, had similar education, background and social standing).

Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, Chekhov, Kuprin... just to name a few, are a living testament (nice pun, innit it