Anna Karenina: Long-overdue Must-read

I first opened this book in mid November last year. Then I read it every day, some more than others, and now, two and a half months later, I finally finished reading my long-shelved literature classic: Anna Karenina. As the novel was originally written in Russian, the copy I read was an English version. There are seven popular English translations and the one I read was translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, with 817 pages for the text alone.

The novel is a masterpiece of what is called literary realism, written by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy and published in 1878. Tolstoy called it his first true novel, though he had previously published other brilliant works, most notably War and Peace, which was widely acclaimed. The story of the novel centers on an extramarital affair between Anna, the wife of a senior statesman (Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin), and cavalry officer Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky that scandalizes the social circles of Saint Petersburg and forces the young lovers to flee to Italy in search of happiness. However, upon their return to Russia, their lives unravel further.

While it is best known as a novel about adultery, the novel deals with broad themes of betrayal, faith, family, marriage, Imperial Russian society, desire, and the differences between rural and urban life, against the backdrop of the huge historical and social changes sweeping through Russia during the late nineteenth century. As such, the historical and social aspects are just as important as the personal and psychological aspects of the novel. Having read it through and having referred to several book reviews, now I understand why something that might have otherwise been deemed immoral turned out to be one of the greatest novels ever written

The scope and content of the book is so wide and rich, and much of it was appreciated but indescribable, so in this blog I'll touch on just a few points that interest me most, or those on which I found words to reflect. The first one is the idea of Christian forgiveness that recurs regularly and is clearly one of Tolstoy’s main topics of exploration in the novel. On the other hand, the very epigraph to the novel—“Vengeance is mine; I will repay”—values vengeance, the opposite of forgiveness. This opening thought haunts the entire novel, culminating in Anna’s dramatic death in Part 7.

Another is its iconic opening lines: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." To my amazement, a term coined "the Anna Karenina principle" was derived from these lines, which is defined as "a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms an endeavor to failure. Conversely, a successful endeavor is one for which every possible deficiency has been avoided."

Among the many literary devices Tolstoy employed, I find symbols the most compelling, particularly Frou-Frou, the beautiful, pricey racehorse that Vronsky buys and then accidentally kills at the steeplechase race. On a figurative level, Frou-Frou is a clear symbol of Anna, or of Vronsky’s relationship with her—both of which are ultimately destroyed. The symbol of the racehorse implies much about the power dynamic between Anna and Vronsky. The horse is vulnerable and completely under Vronsky’s control, just as in an adulterous affair in Russian society in the 1870s, it is the woman who runs the greater risk of being harmed. For Vronsky the race, or the pursuit of a charming married woman, is a form of entertainment in which he chooses to participate. But for both Frou-Frou and Anna, the race or the affair is a matter of life and death. 

The other notable symbol is the train. Anna first makes her ill-fated acquaintance with Vronsky in a train station, and she sees the death of a railway worker after this meeting as a bad omen. The omen is fulfilled when Anna throws herself under the train near the end of the novel, literally making the railway her killer. The image shows where this tragedy takes place: Obiralovka railway station, later renamed Zheleznodorozhny (an adjective meaning "railway" in Russian). Located 23 km east of Moscow, the railway station began service in 1861 and was abolished in 2015. 

Of the many themes Tolstoy explored in the novel, I was interested in the philosophical value of farming as this was the first time I had experienced it through reading. This theme is reflected in the novel through long passages describing how Levin, the co-protagonist (alongside Anna), lives in the countryside, deeply engaged in farming and interacting with peasants. It showcases idyll, a genre of literature dating from ancient times, portraying farmers and shepherds as more fulfilled and happier than their urban counterparts due to their closeness to the soil, hence leading to a better life and a clearer vision of faith and happiness.

Interestingly, many critics read Levin as a self-portrait of Tolstoy, whose first name is Lev. There is much common ground that they share, most notably Levin’s confession of faith at the end of the novel, paralleling Tolstoy’s turning to religion after writing Anna Karenina. To this end, Sophia Tolstaya, Tolstoy's wife 16 years his junior, is widely considered to be his inspiration for the character of Kitty, the competent and empathetic wife of Levin. Tolstoy and Sophia had 13 children, of whom eight survived childhood. Sophia acted as the copyist for War and Peace, copying and editing the whole manuscript seven times. She did this at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes.

The other thing I learned from the book is Pan-Slavism, a movement that took shape in the mid-19th century. It is a political ideology aimed at fostering unity among Slavic peoples (the image shows the Slavic speaking countries of Europe. South Slavs appear in dark green, East Slavs in green, and West Slavs in light green). It had its greatest impact in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires—including the Byzantine, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman, and Venetian empires—had ruled the South Slavs for centuries. At the end of the novel, the desperate and broken Count Vronsky goes to Serbia to fight in the Serbo-Turkish War, where he seeks adventure, or even death, as penance for his famously ill-fated affair.

Equally educational for me is the 1861 serf emancipation and its aftermath that forms the backdrop of the novel. The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto freed 23 million Russian serfs—approximately seven times the 3.5 million enslaved African Americans emancipated by Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Proclamation. My worldview was broadened by learning the historical context in the novel.

Finally, in the novel Levin watches a performance of King Lear on the Heath at the theater. It is a fictional musical fantasia based on King Lear, Shakespeare’s tragedy about isolation and mistrust in love, which is said to mirror the experiences of Anna and Levin in the novel. This is interesting because King Lear is on my reading list and I look forward to drawing parallels when reading it later.