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A review by grb8
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4.0
Obviously not much I can say about Karenina that hasn’t already been said by better minds.
But I will say this is an absolute masterclass in character. Almost never have I read such dense, considered characters. Each of them so well-reasoned and understandable. Tolstoy really fluidly lends himself to their perspective too, speaking through them as muses, where you can’t totally tell where he’ll sign his name on one side or the other until the end.
It is a novel about the only thing there really is — the search for life’s purpose. I think the reality of the human struggle in best represented here in Levin’s time on the farm in the third section. He subjects himself to the Sisyphean labor of tending the land and then, when he gets good enough at that, decides to take on the more impossible task of reworking the entire Russian economic and farming system. His journey for meaning and fulfillment in his life (eventually found in Christian moralism and faith — so with that what you will) is where I think Tolstoy more directly represents our visceral struggle. Laboring by necessity, without reason or purpose until we find it. But, even then it’s not done. As Levin finds with Nikolai, even after discovering what he finds to be a fulfilling life and purpose, it all feels for naught with the unavoidable end of death. And then we start from scratch.
Anna’s relationship with Vronsky as foil to Levin’s with Kitty asks the same questions through a different lens: love. Do we have a say in our love? Which loves are worth pursuing for the self and, more abstractly, for all?
Anna’s relationships are the poles. With Karenin, it’s purely economical and a business relationship in the social economy more than a romantic one. With Vronsky, it’s all passion and — at its worst — selfishness. Neither of them totally honest or considered. Anna, like her brother Stiva, end up being parables of what happens when our desires go unchecked, no matter what they’re inspired by.
Levin, in the end, is an endorsement of rigid morals and discipline. Limiting yourself to what you know — or trust — is most right. When he fears Kitty is attracted to Veslovsky they stay up till 3 am to hash it out. When she fears Levin is attracted to Anna, they once again work through it. It’s an honest portrait of a working relationship that’s less glamorous than the passion of Anna and Vronsky but more stable and — of course — more acceptable. An admission that everyone feels what Stiva and Anna feel at times but some of us are strong enough to take just one loaf of bread.
Here’s the problem I think I have, at least in its messaging. In the first half of the novel, Anna’s judge is not god or something unknowable, it’s society itself. Her great worry is public opinion and her triumph in the second part is eschewing that in pursuit of passion. Anna is undoubtably sympathetic and — along with the recurring considerations of changes coming to Russian society and government — we’re led to rightfully condemn the influence of tradition and societal standard on human passion and behavior.
In the end though, Tolstoy makes it clear — with Anna’s death and Stiva’s ruining — that things are better with these pressures in place. But his justification is a religious one. One that opens more questions, questions that Levin touches on, but ultimately puts to rest in favor of earnest faith.
And while I don’t disagree that Anna and Stiva’s passions and sometimes selfishness were rampant and foolhardy, I don’t think the justification totally gives them enough credit for being simply human in a way that itself is brave (more so Anna than Stiva here).
While I may have questions and problems with the total religious justification in the end, Tolstoy still touches on the human relation to the sublime and our eternal struggle for purpose and fulfillment:
"He knew and felt only that what was transpiring was similar to that which had transpired a year before in the provincial town hotel at his brother Nikolai’s deathbed. But that had been grief — and this was joy. Still, both that grief and this joy were identically outside all life’s ordinary conditions; they were like an opening in that ordinary life through which something sublime appeared. What was transpiring had come about with identical difficulty and agony; and with identical incomprehensibility, the soul, when it did contemplate this sublime something, rose to a height as it had never risen before, where reason could not keep up." (649, Schwartz translation)
But I will say this is an absolute masterclass in character. Almost never have I read such dense, considered characters. Each of them so well-reasoned and understandable. Tolstoy really fluidly lends himself to their perspective too, speaking through them as muses, where you can’t totally tell where he’ll sign his name on one side or the other until the end.
It is a novel about the only thing there really is — the search for life’s purpose. I think the reality of the human struggle in best represented here in Levin’s time on the farm in the third section. He subjects himself to the Sisyphean labor of tending the land and then, when he gets good enough at that, decides to take on the more impossible task of reworking the entire Russian economic and farming system. His journey for meaning and fulfillment in his life (eventually found in Christian moralism and faith — so with that what you will) is where I think Tolstoy more directly represents our visceral struggle. Laboring by necessity, without reason or purpose until we find it. But, even then it’s not done. As Levin finds with Nikolai, even after discovering what he finds to be a fulfilling life and purpose, it all feels for naught with the unavoidable end of death. And then we start from scratch.
Anna’s relationship with Vronsky as foil to Levin’s with Kitty asks the same questions through a different lens: love. Do we have a say in our love? Which loves are worth pursuing for the self and, more abstractly, for all?
Anna’s relationships are the poles. With Karenin, it’s purely economical and a business relationship in the social economy more than a romantic one. With Vronsky, it’s all passion and — at its worst — selfishness. Neither of them totally honest or considered. Anna, like her brother Stiva, end up being parables of what happens when our desires go unchecked, no matter what they’re inspired by.
Levin, in the end, is an endorsement of rigid morals and discipline. Limiting yourself to what you know — or trust — is most right. When he fears Kitty is attracted to Veslovsky they stay up till 3 am to hash it out. When she fears Levin is attracted to Anna, they once again work through it. It’s an honest portrait of a working relationship that’s less glamorous than the passion of Anna and Vronsky but more stable and — of course — more acceptable. An admission that everyone feels what Stiva and Anna feel at times but some of us are strong enough to take just one loaf of bread.
Here’s the problem I think I have, at least in its messaging. In the first half of the novel, Anna’s judge is not god or something unknowable, it’s society itself. Her great worry is public opinion and her triumph in the second part is eschewing that in pursuit of passion. Anna is undoubtably sympathetic and — along with the recurring considerations of changes coming to Russian society and government — we’re led to rightfully condemn the influence of tradition and societal standard on human passion and behavior.
In the end though, Tolstoy makes it clear — with Anna’s death and Stiva’s ruining — that things are better with these pressures in place. But his justification is a religious one. One that opens more questions, questions that Levin touches on, but ultimately puts to rest in favor of earnest faith.
And while I don’t disagree that Anna and Stiva’s passions and sometimes selfishness were rampant and foolhardy, I don’t think the justification totally gives them enough credit for being simply human in a way that itself is brave (more so Anna than Stiva here).
While I may have questions and problems with the total religious justification in the end, Tolstoy still touches on the human relation to the sublime and our eternal struggle for purpose and fulfillment:
"He knew and felt only that what was transpiring was similar to that which had transpired a year before in the provincial town hotel at his brother Nikolai’s deathbed. But that had been grief — and this was joy. Still, both that grief and this joy were identically outside all life’s ordinary conditions; they were like an opening in that ordinary life through which something sublime appeared. What was transpiring had come about with identical difficulty and agony; and with identical incomprehensibility, the soul, when it did contemplate this sublime something, rose to a height as it had never risen before, where reason could not keep up." (649, Schwartz translation)