Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

[giselle]

This thread is more a cry for help than an ordinary discussion. I've been (trying) to read Anna Karenina and have finished part 1. I'm enjoying the read but I know that I'm not getting what I should out of it. So if anyone can contribute to this thread with thoughts on the book or on Leo Tolstoy or other relevant matters I would be indebted.

[realiz]

I have finally started this book, but have only reached page 50. What translation are you reading? Mine is by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

I don't think I'll be very much help in trying to understand this book, or Tolstoy, but I am just planning to read and think.

I am enjoying the character Stepan who I see as somehow uncomplicated. Here he is with is marriage possible disintegrating and he can still go out and enjoy a nice meal with a friend and chat pleasantly with acquaintances and he doesn't quite understand how these things could go wrong in his life.

[giselle]

I have the same translation. I read Part 1 but then I did not go further partly because I was waiting to see if anyone else wanted to discuss the book. Also, I went back and reread some parts and did a little background research on the internet, which i plan to share on here once i find some useful stuff.

I'm not that concerned about understanding all the deep meanings but I am interested in the Russian society context of the time and perhaps a little bit on how Tolstoy's thoughts and ideas are woven into the book. I think the book will be thought provoking enough without a lot of heavy analysis. If you haven't already done so, I think the Introduction is worth reading.

I found the way the 'society' people view the 'country' as unsophisticated and dull and thought of rural people with disdain quite interesting. Levin's departure to the country and his activites there do not place him in high standing with this society crowd upon his return. The impression I have is of an insular culture of the titled and the prominent families set apart somewhat from the common masses.

I thought the skating sequence was great but for Levin, quite painful. When Kitty first approaches him and he is thinking of her in glowing terms, placing her on a pedestal so that her first words seem so ordinary, she asks "Have you been here long?". Levin seems so awkward in this skating scene, mostly because of the way he has elevated her, that it's impossible to see him succeeding when the dashing Vronsky appears and competes for her hand.

Other characters both within Kitty's family and outside aligned themselves with either Levin or Vronsky making it very much their business and played an active role in trying to manipulate the situation one way or the other. Sadly for Levin, his proposal to Kitty was doomed before he opened his mouth and he knew it and flubbed his line.

[realiz]

I have been growing quite involved in the story and have read up to (I'm guess here) page 250. I took your adviced and went back to the introduction because I had not read it yet, a habit of mine is to read introductions after I finish a novel. I was actually disappointed that I read it and remembered why I ususally read this at the end.

One of the the things I didn't really want to know at this point was the character traits Tolstoy originally had for Anna changed with his first few drafts, that originally he had her as a less admirable woman in the beginning and her husband as the one who would invoke more sympathy. To me, knowing this now makes her less 'real' somehow. I also wished I did not read that Levin's character, it is thought, is based on Tolstoy himself, that many of Levin's views of life are those of Tolstoy. I think this interfere's with me using my own judgement on how I see him. I think I would have rather had this information after I was finished and see then how it differed from my own interpretation of the novel.

I found the way the 'society' people view the 'country' as unsophisticated and dull and thought of rural people with disdain quite interesting.

I think this is a reoccuring theme and is evident today in large city societies. I also think that Tolstoy gives us a few differing views on this, but maybe that is into part 2.

What I found interesting is the way the word love is used. I am not sure about the translation factor and if in Russian there is more than one word that is translated as the English word love. I have often thought, and maybe expressed in on BT already, that we really need more than one word. One way that it seems not to be used in this novel is the way we use it today to mean the deeper committed love, or real love, as some call it, as opposed to the passionate, consuming, condition of infatuation.

Levin loves Kitty as a dream or fantasy of a perfect wife for the life he has envisioned for himself. Stepan just wants to be free to fall in and out of love (lust) while having the comfortable structure of home, family, and friends as his base. Vronsky, still thinking about him, is completely self-centered in his desire. From the moment he sees Anna, he wants her, is consumed by her, and has absolutely no compunction about going after what he wants regardless of who he trods on, as though his inner desires supercede all other considerations. It doesn't even appear that he questions his right to do so (how can it be wrong, if it feels so right?...we can see parallels in today's society).

Now with Anna, we are given a picture of someone everyone loves, even the children, she is good, kind, practical (this shows in her advice to Dolly), and happy. Then bang, she is flirting and falling for her new friend's love. Tolstoy very intelligently changed her from his original plan according to the introduction to demonstate the overwhelming power of this type of attraction and to have us sympathize with her rather than judging her harshly. Vronsky could succumb easily to this force, but Anna?

There are a couple good quotes from the book that I want to discuss, but I do not have the book with me right now. I am intrigued by the way Tolstoy can show us through individual character thought processes, almost as if he is not trying to, give great insight into human nature. It is done brilliantly, and to me, probably because I have not read Russian literature, also seem so refreshingly unique. I guess that shows my literary unworldiness.

[giselle]

I was actually disappointed that I read it and remembered why I ususally read this at the end.

sorry about that, hope you still enjoy the book. I think the reader is always free to interpret a novel and its characters as they wish.

[realiz]

I'm sure reading the introduction will give me a greater understanding of the novel, but I only wonder what my thoughts would have been without it? This is not going to interfere with my enjoyment of it, at all, and I know I am free to take advice or ignore it, so feel free to give it.

[giselle]

realiz

Now with Anna, we are given a picture of someone everyone loves, even the children, she is good, kind, practical (this shows in her advice to Dolly), and happy. Then bang, she is flirting and falling for her new friend's love. Tolstoy very intelligently changed her from his original plan according to the introduction to demonstate the overwhelming power of this type of attraction and to have us sympathize with her rather than judging her harshly. Vronsky could succumb easily to this force, but Anna?

Anna does "succumb" to Vronsky's charms and I would say she does so quite easily. What does that suggest? Was she happy with her life before she met him? I'm not sure, what do you think?

I agree that love has many faces (reminds me of Love in the Time of Cholera). We have only one word for love but we do use qualified terms like committed love and romantic love. Tolstoy's characters are moving into, around and out of relationships and in doing so they are posing questions to the reader about life, love and morality. Are we to judge the "quality" of their love or the worth of their love or perhaps the morality of their love? Or are we to remain objective and say that we are in no position to judge? This is quite an engaging book.

Part II was an enjoyable read. I found the bird hunting scene with Stepan and Levin to be quite revealing of their characters. I noticed that Tolstoy gives the hunting dog a line as Levin has been building up his strength to discuss Kitty with Stepan and face what he expects will be the end of any hope that she could be his. There is a peacefulness to this scene and a sense of bonding between the two men and I think Levin is loathe to interrupt this peace by asking about Kitty. But in the end he is compelled to broach this subject for fear of not getting an answer to a burning question. It's quite poetic the way he receives "good news", from his standpoint, and at that moment the dog "speaks" and then they shoot a bird together.

[realiz]

Anna does "succumb" to Vronsky's charms and I would say she does so quite easily. What does that suggest? Was she happy with her life before she met him? I'm not sure, what do you think?

I think that Anna had an immediate attraction to Vronsky and was drawn to him, when I said she did not 'succumb' I meant giving her feelings full rein of her behavior the way Vronsky did. When you say that Anna succumbed to Vronsky's charms it sounds like his chasing her caused to her to feel the way she, when in reality the feelings were already there. Was she happy before this? She appeared to me to be satisfied with her life, content, until the awakening of feelings when meeting Vronsky. But there was a hint, about a sadness that was evident in Anna, observed maybe by Kitty?

One quote I was thinking about, talking about judging morality, was, not really a quote as this is from memory as I do not have the book with me, Vronsky knew that he was not looked upon (by a particular group) as ridiculous for his love as he would have been if he was chasing a woman who was single and had scorned him, but because Anna was married there was somehow a magic, or beauty, about it. I know that I have not got this right, but I'll find it later and quote it...but maybe you remember the line I am talking about. This struck me as really odd, can you imagine trying to win a married woman's love as somehow being more admirable than going after someone available? I think of all the romantic comedies of today where a man never gives up on the girl he loves and is seen as a hero in the eyes of young women, not ridiculous. But chasing a married woman? A scoudrel, which maybe is better than what a woman chasing a married man is thought of as.

We seen this same theme of the stigma of being not loved back by someone available when Vronsky walks away from Kitty. Much of her depression seems to come, not from losing the one she loves, but the embarrassment of it all. Kitty is young, pampered, and protected, but as she spends time in Germany we can see her beginning to think about life and feelings and learning about who she is. She realizes that you can't pretend to be who you are not and the good deeds need to come from the heart.

I also liked the hunting scene with Stepan and Levin. We can also see Levin's character coming out with the philosophical discussions he has when his brother is visiting. Especially interesting was the differences in their views of farm workers. Now here is where my knowledge that Levin is modeled after Tolstoys own philosophy might interfere with interpretation, but in my view Levin's attitude is that these are just people equal to me, so I shall treat them that way, where his brother is saying these people are not equal and therefore deserve our pity and moral help (or interference) in their lives. Levin is also quite a realist with his view that we can't really engage in anything that is not somehow to our personal benefit.

I am hoping that as the book progresses that Levin's relationship will develop with Kitty along these lines, that it will be more than a romance of the heart, but also the minds.

[Penelope]

I'm just leaving this post to let you know I am reading this thread now, but I don't want to comment because of what happens in the book.

I have two film versions of this book........so my comments on the actual text would not be quite pure, and it is a long, long time since I read it.

I am going to read another Russian writer......Turgenev.

[marchwind02]

I am a seventeen year old senior with two jobs, president of 2 clubs, vice-president of two others and have an active social life but I finished this 868 page book with not regrets. It was one of the best books I have ever read. I started by forcing myself to read it, it was summer and I wanted to prove that I could read it. By the time I got to the sixth page I realized what an error I made by judging a book by its length. At times it gets boring, like when Lenin is at his farm but it is all significant. Read it, I would read it 5 more times if I could.