One of the best novels I've ever read and expect to read. Levin's farming dilemmas were as interesting – if not more so – than the central romantic tragedy. I hope to return to it again and again. The grand variety of life – from the sublime to the ridiculous – is in these pages. I bow down to Tolstoy, the master, who sees and knows all.

GREAT GODDDDDDD

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

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” – W. B. Yeats

Catching up…

I was a 16-year-old romantic when I first read this book. I was in love with my first boyfriend, and I believed in happily ever after. My high school English instructor had challenged us to read “Anna Karenina,” and I was willing to take the challenge, not only because of all those things I mentioned, but I liked the idea that part of her name was shared with my own.

Also, at that impressionable age, I was up for romance and epic love stories, and well, my English teacher touted this book as the greatest work of literature ever written.

Gratefully, it was a semester reading project, so we had time to finish the 800+ pages and our book reports. I don’t remember what I said in my book report, but I do remember getting an “A” in English. How is it that I remember, that?!

When the Russian elite first read this idyll to their vanity, they must have fallen headlong into the reflecting pool right after Narcissus. For now, you see, not only are they rich and powerful, but according to Tolstoy they’re also supremely virtuous. The theme of this book does the trick.

Say a painter decides to do a Madonna and Child. Looking around, he frowns as he sees that this subject has already been painted thousands of times in every possible way over the ages. To stand out, he decides to paint the biggest, baddest Madonna and Child ever. Such is Tolstoy’s approach to the book’s theme, an admiring homage to God, family and class.

Though the author paints on a sprawling canvas, this theme handcuffs the plot, which gets so predictable that it can be seen hundreds of pages in advance more or less what will happen. This same sprawl handcuffs character development because the characters have to be all bad or all good in order to make the author’s point. So the book needs exemplary writing in order to work.

Here, however, Tolstoy never really trusts us to extract the message from his story. He tends to spell it out for us in case we didn’t get it the first time. After a few promising paragraphs, or pages, the prose gets eclipsed by remarks better suited to religious tracts, the kinds with cartoon crosses and all caps, and a penchant for showing up anonymously in public places. As a result, too much of the author can be seen and not enough of his story.

Further damaging the narrative is the laughable misogyny by which the Stepford-wife females make fools of themselves. At one point, for example, three upper class women victoriously demonstrate to a dazzled peasant cook that their recipe makes the tastiest jam. All through the book, the corset-yanking writer pulls out every cliché, right down to the hooker with a heart of gold who, mortified by her own scarlet shame, literally (with a shawl) effaces herself before a ruling-class woman of virtue and promptly exits the stage after a disgraceful cameo.

We’d have a veritable encyclopedia of sexism except that these caricatures must in turn compete with more subtle excoriations of liberals. The eponymous Anna, her eyes glittering, showcases the step-by-step descent into nihilism that liberalism causes, abetted by freethinkers and possibly even by atheists. Though more subtle, this condemnation is still much too obvious to the reader.

Choking on dogma, the story scrapes bottom awhile. But luckily, about page 700, the author drags the manuscript off the mortuary table and applies shock. Over the next 240 pages, he tones down the agitprop, and Levin’s generally well written epiphany in the last 60 pages shoves this Frankenstein past the finish line.

The author tries to mine the same vein as Dostoevsky, another religious conservative. But where Dostoevsky succeeds brilliantly, Tolstoy fizzles. The urge to moralize so impedes the narrative flow that it ruins the effect. What’s left is an archipelago of excellent prose floating on a pond of unctuous treacle.

I wanted to give this novel at least some credit for these stretches of good writing. But sadly, the distractions in the writing conspired with a predictable plot and monochromatic characters to turn this book into a train wreck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the end of Gogol's Dead Souls a Troika gallops off leaving the author to ask with a flourish where it is speeding off to. Gogol on his death bed was struck by a severe case of religion and had the rest of the novel put on the fire (some pages were rescued), but symbolically, as a question about Russia and which direction the country should be travelling towards the image hangs over the literature and politics of nineteenth century Russia, above all perhaps in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.


The Ideological Novel
Tolstoy claimed that he had constructed great arches into this novel. No one has ever managed to find them, but what is clear is the clear choice the author lays out before us in this highly ideological novel. One the right hand is the good couple, Kitty and Levin, whose lives (entirely coincidentally of course) are modelled on Tolstoy's own marriage (at least those bits of it which were fit to print). They live in the countryside. They are close to the core of 'true Russianness', they farm in a Russian style, and Levin at least is aware of the beauty of the natural world. While on the left hand is the road to perdition, the moral corruption of western Europe, adulterous women, Saint Petersburg life, drugs, and steam trains. This road, we are shown through the life of Anna Karenina, ends in suicide, and by extension is leading the nation towards self-destruction.

But as a novel it more or less works, largely because Anna herself is a sympathetic character. Since her husband is not portrayed as anything other than a withered, joyless individual, her longing for life and happiness is entirely convincing. The writing, in scenes like Levin mowing (one man, two man, three men and their dog...) or duck hunting, the horse race or Anna's time in Italy, is beautiful and in the case of Anna works against the ideological drive of the novel (apparently, but then if evil were not attractive..!). But ultimately for Tolstoy an upper class woman outside of marriage, having a child and therefore a sexual relationship with a man, is a problem and one that can only be resolved through her death. The resolution of that woman problem through her death is hardly unique to Tolstoy, it is the fall back answer for Dickens in Bleak House too. Some simple, natural occurrences were apparently far too scandalous to be even contemplated in print.


The Agricultural Novel
The story of the 'Russian' couple, Kitty and Levin is in contrast to the 'western' relationship of Anna and Vronsky. On the one hand destruction running on fixed rails and powered by steam, runs over lives even as it runs over the landscape. Mechanical, alien and above all foreign the correct direction or answer is meant to lie in the countryside. Early in the novel Oblomov the titular hero has a dream of timeless unchanging life in the countryside. Oblomov (ie Mr Cloud if we loosely rendered him into English) refuses to change, the wisdom of not wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater becomes the folly of not even wanting to part with the bathwater. This is what Tolstoy advances in Anna Karenina as a seriously considered idyll.

What we get in Anna Karenina is a fetishisation of communal agriculture and working with hand tools, most vividly realised as Levin symbolically and literally finds his rhythm as he learns how to swing his scythe and mow. As a literary set piece it is fantastic. As an idealisation of a form of life deeply Romantic, it has had, and continues to have, a deep appeal for the extreme left and far right in Russian politics. As practical agriculture it was already deeply misleading even in its day. Levin is a stand in for Tolstoy (Tolstoy was a firm believer in 'write what you know'), but in real life Tolstoy's agriculture was subsided by his literary output (actively managed by his wife who did her best to retain control over printing rights) and after Tolstoy's death the family house had to be sold to service the families debts, the large wooden structure was disassembled like flat pack furniture and carted off.

For both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky the shock of Russia's awkward transitioning from confident gendarme of Europe, to desperately industrialising and becoming more like western Europe with new fangled representative institutions and jury trials was appallingly vivid. A idealised partly spiritual, entirely nationalistic, identity was the answer, yet as a result Tolstoy's peasants are less realistic than Turgenev's in Sketches from a Hunter's Album. Then on the eve of the emancipation of the serfs, the condition of the peasants was the great problem holding back Russia, however two decades later the problem has become the solution. The irony of the peasants induced by the promise of a barrel of vodka to build a school in Chekhov's My Life is unimaginable in Tolstoy. For him the glass of vodka for the mowers is part of the natural order of the countryside over which no shadow of alcoholism ever seems to fall. The successful estate management of the Yusupovs or the successful non-communal small farms of southern Russia and the Ukraine was not what Tolstoy was interested in. Instead he sought to cleave to the romance of the inefficient (in the sense of not being market orientated) form of communal agriculture in which Master and man worked together as a unit. Here was something safe and in his view more worth while than everything symbolised by the steady puffing locomotive.


The Horse Race
The first time I read  I imagined Vronsky as a pretty man and therefore contemptible like a foppish star of the silver screen (it is true that I am prejudiced, but at least occasionally I am honest about it). The second time with surprise I noticed the description of his red neck and hairiness. This was somebody with a real physical presence and a tangible virality. Somebody suddenly like me, red and hairy. Karenina choosing between his brisk redness and her husband's washed out greyness has an immediacy and a naturalness about it. The sensuality of the novel, whether mowing the meadow, hunting ducks or washing before the horse race is one of it's strengths.

The horse race is one of the high lights of this aspect of the novel. Visceral, immediate but also crudely symbolising the relationship between Anna Karenina and her lover, the Guards Officer Vronsky. Anna watches the race from a socially acceptable distance - she is on account of her adultery not someone who can be received in polite society. Vronsky rides the filly, trained by another man, only to feel her back break at an awkward jump as they are within sight of the finish line. He survives, she doesn't. The suffering of another is a public spectacle. The metaphor is crude, the whole set piece sharp and vivid.

Within the widely separated covers of Anna Karenina, one of Henry James' "loose baggy monsters" if ever there was, there are slimmer novellas about relationships, the state of agriculture, the physicality of life and love that are crying to be let out. Are the parts more than the sum of the whole? Or does the physical mass add to the reading experience?

***Spoiler alert. If you have read this book, please proceed. If you are never going to read this novel (be honest with yourself), then please proceed. If you may read this novel, but it may be decades in the future, then please proceed. Trust me, you are not going to remember, no matter how compelling a review I have written. If you need Tolstoy talking points for your next cocktail party or soiree with those literary, black wearing, pseudo intellectual friends of yours, then this review will come in handy. If they pin you to the board like a bug over some major plot twist, that will be because I have not shared any of those. If this happens, do not despair; refer them to my review. I’ll take the heat for you. If they don’t know who I am, then they are, frankly, not worth knowing. Exchange them for other more enlightened intellectual friends.***

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

Anna Arkadyevna married Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a man twenty years her senior. She dutifully produced a son for him and settled into a life of social events and extravagant clothes and enjoyed a freedom from financial worries. Maybe this life would have continued for her if she had never met Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, but more than likely, her midlife crisis, her awareness of the passage of time, would have compelled her to seek something more.

”They say he’s a religious, moral, honest, intelligent man; but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has been stifling my life for eight years, stifling everything that was alive in me, but he never once even thought that I was a living woman who needed love. They don’t know how he insulted me at every step and remained pleased with himself. Didn’t I try as hard as I could to find a justification for my life? Didn’t I try to love him… But the time has come, I’ve realized that I can no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, that I am not to blame if God has made me so that I must love and live. And what now? If he killed me, if he killed him, I could bear it all, I could forgive it all, but no, he….”

Her husband was enamored with her, but then so was everyone who met her, male or female. Maybe he was too contented with their life together and, therefore, took their relationship for granted. He was two decades older, so the passions of romance didn’t burn with as hot a flame. She wanted passion from him even if it was to murder her lover and herself. Even if it was something tragic, she wanted something to happen, something that would make her feel... something.

I couldn’t help thinking early on that the problem wasn’t with her husband, certainly nothing that a new lover could fix for very long. The same face was always going to greet her in the mirror. The same thoughts were always going to swim their way back to the surface. We can not mask the problems within ourselves by changing lovers. The mask will eventually slip, and all will be revealed.

Ugly can be very pretty.

Is there such a thing as being too beautiful? Can being so beautiful make someone cold, disdainful, and unable to really feel empathy or even connected to those around them? Her type of beauty is a shield that insulates her even as her insecurities swing the sword that stabs the hearts of those who despise her and those who love her.

”She was enchanting in her simple black dress, enchanting were her full arms with the bracelets on them, enchanting her firm neck with its string of pearls, enchanting her curly hair in disarray, enchanting the graceful, light movements of her small feet and hands, enchanting that beautiful face in its animation; but there was something terrible and cruel in her enchantment.”

My favorite character in this epic was Konstantin (Kostya) Dmitrich Levin. He was a well meaning, wealthy landowner who, unusually for the times, went out and worked the land himself. He got his hands dirty enough that one could actually call him a farmer. He was led to believe by his friends and even the Shcherbatsky family that their youngest daughter, Kitty, would be an affable match for him. Kitty’s older sister Dolly was married to Stepan (Stiva) Arkadyich Oblonsky, who was the brother to Anna Karenina.

Stiva was recently caught and forgiven for having a dalliance with a household staff, but no sooner was he out of that boiling water of that affair before he was having liaisons with a ballerina. This did lead me to believe that life would never be satisfying for either Stiva or his sister Anna because there was always going to be pretty butterflies to chase as the attractiveness of the one they had began to fade.

Before Vronsky became gobsmacked by Anna, he was leisurely chasing after Kitty and leading her on just long enough for Kitty to turn Levin’s marriage proposal down flat. That was like catching a molotok (hammer) right between the eyes as a serp (sickle) swept Kostya off his feet. Interestingly enough, later in the book Levin met Anna Karenina, after he has married Kitty (you’ll have to read the book to discover how this comes about), and he was captivated by Anna.

It was almost enough for me start chain smoking Turkish cigarettes or biting my nails down to the quick while I waited for the outcome. Substitute Anna for Jolene, and you’ll know what I was humming.

”She had unconsciously done everything she could to arouse a feeling of love for her in Levin, and though she knew that she had succeeded in it, as far as one could with regard to an honest, married man in one evening, and though she liked him very much, as soon as he left the room, she stopped thinking about him.”

If she was irritated with Vronsky, one day maybe she would just seduce Levin for entertainment... because she could.

I must say that I didn’t think much of Vronsky at the beginning of the novel, but as the plot progressed I started to sympathize with him. Tolstoy was brilliant at rounding out characters so our preconceived notions or the projections of ourselves that we place upon them are forced to be modified as we discover more about them.

Levin had his own problems. He had been reading the great philosophers, looking for answers. He found more questions than answers in religion. He abandoned every lifeboat he climbed into and swam for the next one. ”Without knowing what I am and why I’m here, it is impossible for me to live. And I cannot know that, therefore I cannot live.”

The problem that every reasonably intelligent person wrestles with is that no matter how successful we are, no matter how wonderful a life we build, or how well we take care of ourselves, we are going to die. It is irrefutable. Cemeteries don’t lie. Well, there is a lot of eternal lying down going on, but no duplicity. None of us are going to escape the reaper. No one is ascending on a cloud or going to the crossroads to make a deal with the Devil. We all have to come face to face with death, and we can’t take any of our bobbles, accolades, or power with us. So the question that Levin ended up asking himself, the Biggest question even beyond, why am I here? is:

Why do anything?

Without immortality, everything we attempt to do can seem futile. Some would make the case that we live on in our kids and grandkids. I say bugger to that. I want more time!

Well, there are ways to be immortal, and one of them is to write a masterpiece like Anna Karenina that will live forever.

By the end, I am ready to throttle Anna until her pretty eyes bug out of her head and her cheeks turn a vibrant pink, but at the same time, she seemed to be suffering from a host of mental disorders. She was so cut off from everyone and so disdainful of everyone. ”It was impossible not to hate such pathetically ugly people.” The “friends” she had had been ostracized from her by her own actions. I had to believe her loathing of people was a projection of how she felt about herself. She needed some time on Carl Jung’s couch, but he was a wee tot when this book was published. She needed to find some satisfaction in the ordinary and quit believing that a change in geography or in lovers was ever going to fix what was wrong with herself.

She had such a destructive personality. One man tried to kill himself from her actions and another contemplated the act. She was maliciously vengeful when someone didn’t do something she wanted them to do; and yet, I couldn’t quite condemn her completely. Her feelings of being stifled were perfectly natural. We all feel that way at points in our lives. We feel trapped by the circumstances of our life. Her attempt to break free in the 1870s in Russian society was brave/foolish. She sacrificed everything to chase a dream.

The dream ate her.

This book is a masterpiece, not just a Russian masterpiece but a true gift to the world of literature.

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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.