Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
This was another monster book that took me a couple months to get through. I knew I wanted to read Tolstoy, but couldn’t bring myself to read War and Peace after spending the last couple months reading Dostoevsky. So one day I was browsing the library, saw they had a brand new copy of Anna Karenina on the shelves and just checked it out on a whim.
The book starts out with a now famous line:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
I learned that this quote has been given a name of the Anna Karenina principle and is used fairly broadly, and even in fields like statistics. The idea is that happy families (or other concepts) share a unique set of principles that make them happy, but any variety of attributes could make a family unhappy.
I found this story to be easier to follow and less dense then Dostoevsky, at least from a philosophical perspective. That may actually be unfair though. Dostoevsky seems to bring his philosophical discussions to the forefront, allowing open discussion between characters. But this novel perhaps does the same, just embedded more covertly in the story.
I was listening to a podcast that mentioned Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and compared the two. While they were discussing Tolstoy, they mentioned how upper class Russians wanted to read stories about their lives that they could relate to. It feels like Tolstoy set out to appease people in that regard with this book. I don’t know much about high society Russia in that time period, but the novel definitely evokes what I imagine the lifestyle was like for those in the highest class. Balls and fancy meals, princesses and princes, politics, casual debates on policy and topics like education and immigration, etc.
It’s interesting to read about what life was like in some regards, but it can feel like it’s dragging on in others. I was in a slump about 50-60% through and Tolstoy spent a couple chapters talking about one of the main characters getting into painting, and talking with an artist. I struggled to pay attention. It’s also mentally tough to be 450 pages into a book, reading about something that feels benign, and knowing that there are still over 400 pages to go. Those are the moments you just put your head down and push through.
Tolstoy was very good at describing the thoughts and feelings of each of his characters. I felt that I deeply understood them in their various crisis’, pains, joys, etc. He also does a really good job of changing the tone of writing depending on which characters he is describing. Anna’s husband Alexei is very practical and civil. He is in politics and cares a lot about how he is perceived in society. Therefore he talks in a very proper and rigid manner. Tolstoys writing for Alexei is a very different tone than it is for Levin, or Anna, or Kitty. His ability to change tone and write in a way that makes you feel like you really understand the core of each character is impressive.
His writing in general is great. There is a scene where Levin goes out to help his workers mow his fields with scythes. The scene is literally just Levin mowing the fields all day with his workers. The work is really hard, but its a beautiful day out, and the character really enjoys the experience. The way it was written was just so well described it made me want to go and mow a field myself.
The books main plot centres around Anna. She is married, but ends up having an affair with another man. Another really notable writing skill of Tolstoy is evident in how he describes the progression. First is the obvious infatuation. Anna isn’t happy with her husband, and feels like so many problems will be solved with this new man (Vronsky). But as they begin their relationship, they inevitably learn that the grass isn’t greener. They deal with the shame of what they have done. On top of cheating and maintaining her relationship with Vronsky even once her husband found out, she also abandons her son. Despite doing all of this in an attempt to finally be happy, both characters realize that they are not happy, and their relationship with each other and others degrade quickly and ultimately lead to a tragedy at the end.
Though Anna has the book named after her, there are other main characters central to the novel, the other most important being Levin. Levin is said to be a portrait of Tolstoy himself. Apparently many details were taken from Tolstoy’s life and applied to Levin (including misplacing his shirt for his wedding). Levin also comes to faith at the end of the book, which Tolstoy himself apparently converted to Christianity after writing Anna Karenina.
I thought this was a nice description of Levin, so thought I’d paste it in instead of butchering a description myself:
Independent-minded and socially awkward, Levin is a truly individual character who fits into none of the obvious classifications of Russian society. He is neither a freethinking rebel like his brother Nikolai, nor a bookish intellectual like his half-brother Sergei. He is not a socialite like Betsy, nor a bureaucrat like Karenin, nor a rogue like Veslovsky. Levin straddles the issue of Russia’s fate as a western nation: he distrusts liberals who wish to westernize Russia, rejecting their analytical and abstract approach, but on the other hand he recognizes the utility of western technology and agricultural science. In short, Levin is his own person. He follows his own vision of things, even when it is confused and foggy, rather than adopting any group’s prefabricated views. Moreover, Levin prefers isolation over fitting in with a social set with which he is not wholly comfortable. In this he resembles Anna, whose story is a counterpart to his own in its search for self-definition and individual happiness.
Despite his status as a loner, Levin is not self-centered, and he shows no signs of viewing himself as exceptional or superior. If Tolstoy makes Levin a hero in the novel, his heroism is not in his unique achievements but in his ability to savor common human experiences. His most unforgettable experiences in the novel—his bliss at being in love, his fear for his wife in childbirth—are not rare or aristocratic but shared by millions. Anyone can feel these emotions; Levin is special simply in feeling them so deeply and openly. This commonality gives him a humanitarian breadth that no other character in the novel displays. His comfort with his peasants and his loathing of social pretension characterize him as an ordinary man, one of the Russian people despite his aristocratic lineage. When Levin mows for an entire day alongside his peasants, we get no sense that he is deliberately slumming with the commoners—he sincerely enjoys the labor. Tolstoy’s representation of Levin’s final discovery of faith, which he learns from a peasant, is equally ordinary. In this regard, Levin incarnates the simple virtues of life and Tolstoy’s vision of a model human being.