În locul unei recenzii inutile, aș menționa în nota de față cartea lui J. Peder Zane (pare un pseudonim) intitulată The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books (Norton, 2007). Dintr-un motiv simplu.

Autorul a întrebat (mai bine de) 125 de scriitori despre cărțile lor preferate (o ierarhie de 10 titluri), a primit răspunsuri (unii le-au evitat), și a alcătuit un top ten. Pe primul loc s-a situat Anna Karenina. Sigur, nici o listă de acest fel nu e definitivă. Și nici infailibilă. Dacă ancheta s-ar face în 2021, lista ar arăta probabil diferit.

Cu toate acestea, dincolo de oscilațiile gustului și judecăților noastre, dincolo de hachițele unei epoci, cîteva cărți ar fi nominalizate din nou și din nou. Dintre ele, presupun că n-ar lipsi Anna Karenina. Nu pentru c�� Tolstoi a lucrat 5 ani la roman (1872 - 1877), ci fiindcă Anna Karenina ridică o problemă capitală (și cît se poate de actuală): ce se întîmplă cînd societatea exclude un individ / o femeie din rîndurile ei, din pricina faptelor și credințelor celui / celei repudiat(e)? În romanul lui Tolstoi, răspunsul e inevitabil: individul e zdrobit. Nimeni (nici bărbat, nici femeie) nu are puterea să înfrunte blamul (morala, legile) societății. Te supui sau pieri.

A trecut aproape un secol și jumătate de la publicarea cărții lui Lev Nikolaevici Tolstoi. Și e firesc să ne întrebăm dacă s-a schimbat ceva în tot acest timp. Trăim oare într-o societate mai tolerantă? Ar supraviețui astăzi Anna Karenina? Nu m-aș grăbi să dau un răspuns pozitiv...

P. S. Am uitat să pun top ten-ul lui J. Peder Zane. Iată:

1. Lev Tolstoi, Anna Karenina
2. Gustave Flaubert, Doamna Bovary
3. Lev Tolstoi, Război și pace
4. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
5. Mark Twain, Aventurile lui Huckleberry Finn
6. William Shakespeare, Hamlet
7. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marele Gatsby
8. Marcel Proust, În căutarea timpului pierdut
9. Anton Chekhov, Povestiri
10. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Uzunluğuna rağmen tek bir cümlesinin bile fazla hissedilmediği Leo Tolstoy’un ölümsüz eseri "Anna Karenina", efsanevi yazarın toplumsal olayları ve birey duygularını olağanüstü tasvir yeteneğiyle anlatarak adeta şov yaptığı bir başyapıt niteliğinde. Ataerkil toplumların kadınları nasıl mağdur ettiğini tüm acımasızlığıyla okuyucuya sunan Tolstoy aslında bizlere tam anlamıyla bir trajedi sunuyor. Kadınlara eğitim bile verilmemesini savunan zamanının Rus aristokratlarının kadınları adeta bir figür olarak gördüğü kitapta Tolstoy, zamanının ötesinde bir karakterle tüm genellemeleri yıkarak sadece toplumu eleştirmekle kalmıyor aynı zamanda yenilikçi düşünceleriyle bir reforma imza atıyor. Toplumun empoze etmesiyle gerçekleştirilen aşksız evliliklerin zamanla nasıl çatırdağını gözler önüne seren kitapta erkeklerin itibarlarını zedelememek uğruna dine karşı gelmemek adı altında etik olmayan neredeyse her şeyi kabul ederek hem kendilerini hem de eşlerini nasıl mağdur ettiklerini okuma şansı buluyoruz. Hayatlarını yaşamayan karakterlerin nasıl yıkıcı tercihler yapabildiğini bizlere gösteren Tolstoy, okuyucuya sunduğu bir diğer aşk hikayesiyle evliliklerin aşkla olduğu takdirde bireylerin birbirlerine nasıl değer kattıklarının altını çiziyor. Levin ve Anna’nın madalyonun iki farklı yüzünü oluşturduğu kitabı okurken açıkçası Tolstoy’un karakter geçişlerine hayran kaldığımı belirtmeliyim. Filmlerde olduğu gibi aynı plan sekansı andıran geçişlerle hikayeyi bütün halinde götüren efsanevi yazarın neden gelmiş geçmiş en iyi yazara olarak kabul edildiğini bir kez daha gördüm. İlk defa bir romanda bilinç akışı anlatım yöntemini kullanarak karakterin kafasında neler geçtiğini tüm ayrıntılarıyla bize anlatan Tolstoy’un edebiyatı nasıl değiştirdiğine yedinci bölümde tanıklık ediyorsunuz. Tüm yanlışlarına rağmen aslında Anna Karenina’nın yaşadığı dram bir yandan içinizi acıtırken diğer yandan karakterin yaptığı yanlış tercihleriyle mağdur olmakta ısrar etmesine sinir oluyorsunuz. Öte yandan, Levin toplumun onun hakkında ne düşündüğünü umursamadan ideallerine bağlı kalması ve mağdur olmamayı tercih etmesi iki karakter arasındaki en önemli farkı oluşturuyor.

Aile, birey, kıskançlık, sadakat, sevgi, tutku, ölüm ve yaşam gibi kavramları derinlemesine anlatan kitabın kuşkusuz odak noktasına aldığı inanç teması ise yeni bir paragrafı hak ediyor. Din kavramının toplumların tüm kesimini nasıl avucunun içine aldığını tüm gerçekliğiyle anlatan "Anna Karenina"da Levin’in dinin amacını sorgulamaya başladığı son bölüm gerçekten takdire şayan. İyi birey olmanın dinle alakası olmadığını, tüm dinlerin bunun üzerine kurulu olduğu halde toplumlar tarafından nasıl dezenformasyona uğradığını anlatan Tolstoy’un finali iyi bir insan olmayı hayatın temeline yerleştirdiği finali oldukça etkileyici. Buna ek olarak Tolstoy’un iyilik barındırdığı söylenen kutsal kitapların içinde bulunan şiddet temalarını ortaya çıkarması da zamanının çok ötesinde.

"Anna Karenina" gerçekten bambaşka bir deneyim. Keşke hiç bitmeseydi dediğim kitaplardan biri ve bende artık bambaşka yere sahip. Uzunluğuna rağmen kaldığım yerden sayfayı açtığımda okuduklarımın hepsini hatırladığımı tek kitap. Edebiyatın zirve noktası varsa sanırım işte burası.

18.09.2017
İstanbul, Türkiye

Alp Turgut

http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...

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.

¡¡ 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.

مراجعتي للرواية في الرابط ادناه، حلقة بعنوان ليه لازم نقرأ انا كاريننا

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ9wu...

In the beginning, reading Anna Karenin can feel a little like visiting Paris for the first time. You’ve heard a lot about the place before you go. Much of what you see from the bus you recognize from pictures and movies and books. You can’t help but think of the great writers and artists who have been here before you. You expect to like it. You want to like it. But you don’t want to feel like you have to like it. You worry a little that you won’t. But after a few days, you settle in, and you feel the immensity of the place opening up all around you. You keep having this experience of turning a corner and finding something beautiful that you hadn’t been told to expect or catching sight of something familiar from a surprising angle. You start to trust the abundance of the place, and your anxieties that someone else will have eaten everything up before your arrival relax. (Maybe that simile reveals more about me than I’d like.)

My favorite discovery was the three or four chapters (out of the book’s 239) devoted to, of all things, scythe mowing—chapters that become a celebratory meditation on physical labor. When I read those chapters, I felt temporarily cured of the need to have something “happen” and became as absorbed in the reading as the mowers are absorbed in their work. Of course, the book is about Anna and Vronsky and Levin and Kitty and Dolly and poor, stupid Stepan Arkadyich. It’s about their love and courtship and friendship and pride and shame and jealousy and betrayal and forgiveness and about the instable variety of happiness and unhappiness. But it’s also about mowing the grass and arguing politics and hunting and working as a bureaucrat and raising children and dealing politely with tedious company. To put it more accurately, it’s about the way that the human mind—or, as Tolstoy sometimes says, the human soul—engages each of these experiences and tries to understand itself, the world around it, and the other souls that inhabit that world. This book is not afraid to take up any part of human life because it believes that human beings are infinitely interesting and infinitely worthy of compassion. And, what I found stirring, the book’s fearlessness extends to matters of religion. Tolstoy takes his characters seriously enough to acknowledge that they have spiritual lives that are as nuanced and mysterious as their intellectual lives and their romantic lives. I knew to expect this dimension of the book, but I could not have known how encouraging it would be to dwell in it for so long.

In the end, this is a book about life, written by a man who is profoundly in love with life. Reading it makes me want to live.

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.

OMG

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.

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.

“Anna Karenina,” my friend told me, “is one of the few books that have influenced how I live my life from day to day.”
tt
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?
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.
tt
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.

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.