FINALLY finished
Anna Karenina after 6 or 8 weeks. I never had a long uninterrupted evening of
reading, only time to consume short bits here and there, but I enjoyed reading it
slowly, immersing myself in the world of late 19th century Russia,
becoming friends with the characters, trying to discern Tolstoy’s view of the
world and beyond.
After starting
to lose interest early on, as I mentioned at Reading for Believers, I slogged on a bit, but once I got to
the part where Levin and Kitty’s romance begins to bloom, I was fully immersed,
committed. I’m grateful that I did
continue. A couple weeks after finishing
the book, I’m still thinking about my excursion to Russia 150 years ago, and
finding similarities in the plot to events of today, although I remain foggy
about the politics of Russia at this time.
My book is the
translation by Constance Garnett, in 1960’s red heavy duty cloth library binding with 8 illustrations of
Tolstoy, his wife, Vivien Leigh and Greta Garbo as Anna, and St. Petersburg. It’s
a book with physical heft to match its intellectual/moral weight.
Several days
after finishing the book, I watched the movie with my neighbor who hadn’t read
the book. I think I prefer Vivien Leigh
to Keira Knightley. Knightly seems too slight. I picture Anna as mature, having
some voluptuousness about her, in contrast to Kitty’s petite youthfulness. Garbo might even be closer, but it’s hard to
tell from the images. I also thought
Vronsky looked way too much like a youthful Gene Wilder. Not attractive. Jude Law’s Karenin was better looking and
more sympathetically played.
I didn’t realize
the movie was filmed in a way to suggest the audience was viewing a play. It
was an interesting device to move the audience between scenes at the beginning
of the movie, but after awhile I found it distracting. I wanted the distance between audience and characters bridged, but the interruptions caused by the filmmakers with the stage
sets and behind the scenes images created more distance. When in an actual
theater watching a play, the theater recedes to the background, but the film
kept bringing the set into the viewers’ consciousness. I can guess at a variety
of reasons for filming this way, having to cram an 800 page book into 2 hours
being one. Perhaps another might be to
suggest the artistry of Tolstoy’s creation? At any rate, I tired of the
intrusions of the filmmakers’ artistry, but not of Tolstoy’s, although I did
find the shot of rejected Karenin viewed from behind staring at the footlights
particularly affective. (But seeing him
reach into his little cabinet holding his silver boxed prophylactics was a
turn-off, one of a few variations from the text.) I can’t find any sympathy in
my heart for the campy horse race.
The film also failed to indicate the importance of Levin’s conversion.
To be honest, I couldn’t understand very well what the old peasant was saying,
even though my neighbor has a fancy hi-def TV with stereo surround sound set
up. Everything looks almost 3-D on it.
I can't help feeling that the ending of
the novel and the conversion get slightly because it seems tacked on for balance. Should the book end with Anna’s death? I
halfway think Levin’s conversion should take place before her fall, but then
perhaps there wouldn’t be the message that life goes on for those left behind
after death, which is a part of what Levin struggles with. Is there irony
between bereft Vronsky going off to fight in the idealistic Servian war, while
Levin, who finally grasps the significance of living for the good, for love of
neighbor, not for the belly, stays behind to farm?
I typed up some favorite
passages and was going to try to compose some coherent post, but time has escaped me, so I'm throwing up my notes and moving on:
Levin, is “a
character that’s all of a piece” according to Oblonsky, the unfaithful husband
of Dolly. “You despise public official
work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while
with the aim – and that’s not how it is. You want a man’s work, too, always to
have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided – and that’s
not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made
up of light and shadow.” Levin makes all kinds of noble promises to himself on
the way home from the city after being declined by Kitty (102)
Anna convinces
herself that she has nothing to be ashamed of after reading a romance novel. “It
was distasteful to her to read, that is , to follow the reflection of other
people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.” She feels outside
of herself.
Later, she
refuses to listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch’s appeal to her love. He admits his love for her: “I love you. But I
am not speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our
son and yourself.” He looks away from her when she comes to bed. Is he sincere
in his declaration of love? Or does he use her? Is she justified in betraying
him? “She both feared his speaking and
wished for it. But he was silent.” He feels she is possessed by “the spirit of
evil and deceit,” and he is caught in that spirit also.
A difference
between the film and the book: after the consummation of their passion, the
movie has Anna saying “murderer.” The book has Vronsky feeling like a murderer
– “That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their
love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been
bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness
crushed her and infect him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before
the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what
he has gained by his murder.”
Not pretty.
Already happiness has fled – she never can find the moment of calm to
articulate the “sense of shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into
a new life.” She dreams of having both Alexey’s as husbands – happy in the
dream, but a nightmare when she awakes.
Vronsky becomes
angry at meddlers, but he “felt in his soul that they, all these people were
right.” He does not like lying and deceit, and he is haunted by loathing for
himself, Alexandrovitch, and the whole world. He sees that Anna had pride and
peace, if not happiness, before; now she has nothing. So he determines to run
away.
Seryoshka cannot
make out how to feel. He is embarrassed
around his mother and Vronsky at the summer villa, uncomfortable around his
emotionally distant father, and distracted around his tutors. But was it right
for Countess Lydia to lie to him about his mother being dead?
Kitty’s stay at
the German spa – she learns to see outside of herself, although she feels some
hypocrisy because the sick artist falls in love with her and makes his own wife
miserable.
Dolly’s stay
near Pokrovskoe – she has pleasure in her children. Levin admires them and
feels comfortable around them. “All the same, she could not help saying to herself
that she had charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of
children such as is not often to be met with, and she was happy in them, and
proud of them.” 290. The peasant women admire her healthy children. Dolly is happier here in the country than in
the town. But Levin has trouble believed Dolly that Kitty might change her
mind. Then the children fight and Dolly loses her pleasure in them in front of
Levin. He resolves not to speak French to his chilren and distort their nature.
Levin does not
think of the peasants in broad terms; they are always changing – his brother Sergey
thinks of the peasants with sympathy but doesn’t understand them. He stereotypes. Levin recognizes
self-interest as the mainspring of action; Sergey wants to think it is
goodwill. But in the end Levin does come to see that goodwill towards his
neighbor is necessary to find meaning in life. Yet Tolstoy seems to present
Sergey in a way that makes the reader find him idealistically deluded. Perhaps the key is that Levin KNOWS his
neighbor – he feels goodwill towards the peasants because he works next to
them. They are individual men, not a group of people.
Levin cuts hay
well only when he loses self-consciousness. He envies the health and mirthfulness
of the peasants – makes him feel alienated from the world and physical
labor. He sees that “ it was in his
power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was
leading for this laborious, pure, and social, delightful life.” He seeks to
give over his old life and useless education and live more simply, but doesn’t
know how. Waking, he sees the coach with Kitty drive by, and realizes that only
marriage to her would bring meaning to his life. His love makes it impossible
to live any other life.
Alexey Karenin
resolves he is not to blame for Anna’s fall, so he cannot be unhappy. HE has done nothing. So he thinks he is not unhappy,
although his life is miserable. Anna
sees this goodness of his part as mean, driving her to worse ruin. She cannot go on living in deceit. Vronsky
had been living according to principles, but now they begin to crumble. He is
in debt. He now has made Anna pregnant.
He has to give up his ambition. He also walks away from what made him a man in
order to try live with Anna.
Levin’s brother
Nikolay’s visit puts Levin into thoughts of death. Nikolay may not survive. Levin can only grasp
at work as reason to live.
Meanwhile
Vronsky has to entertain a visiting prince in St. Petersburg. Anna becomes
jealous. She has changed morally and physically, and her face has “an evil
expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a
faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for
which he picked and ruined it.”
Levin and
Oblonsky meet and discuss the meaninglessness of life – Oblonsky sees it as
justification for his immoral ways. Levin sees it as a source of peace even
though not of charm. His ideas seem meaningless.
450 Levin and Kitty’s
happiness: sweet.
Karenin forgives
Anna completely as she is near death. He
resolves not to abandon her or reproach Vronsky. He had “pity for her and remorse for having
desired her death, and most of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once
conscious, not simple of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual
peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing
that was the source of his sufferings had become the source fo his spiritual
joy: that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating,
had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.” But she could not stand
the situation. 465 Vronsky nearly kills
himself. She is sorry she didn’t die.
Finally V and A
leave the country together and go to Italy. A feels she has shrugged off a
drowning man in order to live. “Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete
realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon
felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand
out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men
make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires.”
– What grows in his heart is a desire for desires “ennui” (a kind of acedia?)
Kitty and Levin
go to Nikolay in a provincial town. Levin can barely look at Nikolay’s emaciated
body, but Kitty nurses him with kindness.
Levin is touched, and Nikolay dies with dignity.
Meanwhile,
Karenin is tortured by his position. Lidia bosses him around and will not let
Anna see Seryozha, Vronsky’s sisterinlaw won’t see Anna, even Countess Betsy
won’t receive her with good company She sneaks to see Seryozha and is even more
unhappy.
In Pokrovskoe,
Kitty and Levin have their first argument/jealousy about Vassenka Veslovsky,
the flirt. Levin takes a stand and makes him leave. Dolly goes to see Anna and is tempted by her
luxurious life, but she sees the unhappiness underneath them all. Vronsky thinks a divorce will help and asks
Darya to help convince Anna to ask for one.
Vronsky and Anna continue to quarrel about his absences. He refuses to
give up his “masculine independence.” (710
Levin and Kitty
go to Moscow for her lying in. He goes to political meetings out of
curiosity. Levin doesn’t follow it all
and sees through the new nobility. One old fellow points out how a good
gardener doesn’t cut down an old tree to make room for flower beds, but keeps
it as center of his landscape, but the new nobles want to cut things down. Levin goes to visit Anna one night while he
is drunk, and is charmed by her to Kitty’s dismay, but he recognizes his
fall. Levin marvels at how quickly they
run through money in town.
As time goes on,
Anna cannot love her little girl. She sends for Vronsky when he has gone to his
mothers, but when he doesn’t telegraph back she perceives rejection. She is
taking morphine, as Princess Varvara notices.
As Kitty labors,
Levin is thrown into fear. He realizes how much he loves her as she suffers “She
was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her sufferings, and rejoicing in
them, and loving them. He saw that something sublime was being accomplished in
her soul, but what?... It was beyond his understanding.” 778 It inspires him to pray, even though he has
had doubts and has been a rationalist.
He rushes to the doctor and rushes about the house, but the labor goes
on and on. Again “in spite of his long and, it as it seemed, complete
alienation from religion, that he turned to God just as trustfully and simply
as he had in his childhood and first youth.”
He cannot love the baby at fist, until he begins to recognize him,
because he is another opportunity for pain. He has hurt his mother, and he is
cause for attachment and suffering.
Anna’s mental
state spirals downward. All is hateful. She goes to say goodbye to Dolly and
sees Kitty and envies her. She can’t
tell of her misery because she chose it. Is she saved at the moment when, after she
missed the first carriage, she crosses herself? “That familiar gesture brought
back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and
suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was torn apart, and
life rose up before her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she
did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at
the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the
red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the
carriage, and lightly as though she would rise again at once, dropped onto her
knees, . . . [tries to rise up} ‘Lord,
forgive me all!’ she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. … And the light
by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and
evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had
been in darkness, flickered, began to
grow dim, and was quenched forever.” 844
begin pt. 8 –
the eighth day
Why include this
part about Sergey and the Servian wars? To show that Vronsky is off to
sacrifice himself for a meaningless cause.
To show how people pity him.
Levin still
struggles with his “sense of terror at his lack of knowledge. . . . part of a whole order of ideas, in which no
knowledge of what he needed was possible.”
His doubts give him cause to fret and doubt. divided against
himself. Sees that some men still
believe like Lvov and the old prince. And the scientific men give no
explanation of his questions. And he believes from his prayers at his wife’s
labor. He reads materialists and finds
no answer. He even is close to suicide
because he can’t find meaning to life and what to live for. He gives up
questioning and goes back to the country.
“When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of
the presence of an infallible judge in his soul. determining which of two
possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon
as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.” 869
What convicts
him is hearing the peasant Platon praised “Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives
for his soul. He does not forget God.” – this is an inspiration to Levin. He lives not for his own wants but for God.
He sees them in a flash of light. He
looked for miracles in the past, but sees now that rational beings can only
live for their bellies, while the religious man lives for truth, what is good. “that knowledge cannot be explained by the
reason – it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.’ (873) –
Faith has no cause and no effects, as Levin sees himself. He doesn’t change automatically. And he went
on living. Intellect and pride kept him from seeing the answer in his knowledge
of good and evil, which is given to him.
“But loving one’s neighbor reason could never discover, because it’s
irrational” (876 does this reflect on Karenin?) (on doctrines 878) He is
impatient with his brother and bothered by his guests, but he does not let go
of his faith. In conversation about the
war, he sees that many see the cause, but not the people who will die. He also
comments how the will of the people” often neglects the millions who don’t have
an opinion (the peasants.). Public opinion cannot be guide for right and wrong.
Kitty calls Levin
in to see the baby. He thinks of telling her but is still working out his new
faith. He wonders about other religions – is truth confined to Christianity? He realizes how much he loves her, especially after
the threat of the storm. “I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the
different religions of all mankind. I am questioning the universal
manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I
about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all
doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express
that knowledge in reason and words…(896)” He thinks about stars and rotation .
. . “just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and
uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a
single meridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and
uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, which has been and will
be always alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and
which can always be trusted in my soul. The question of other religions and
their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility of
deciding.” “This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened
all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the felling for my child. There
was no surprise in this either. Faith – or not faith – I don’t know what it is
– but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering and has
taken firm root in my soul. . . I shall go on. .. losing my temper… scolding
her, expressing my opinions tactlessly . . . but my life now, my whole life
apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more
meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness,
which I have the power to put into it.” 897
finis
Anna and Vronsky didn’t live for goodness but sought
happiness in selfish indulgence. They saw no reason to suffer or sacrifice their desires, but
when they threw away the things that gave them meaning (son and work) they
destroyed themselves.
