Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina was a book that I read back when I was twelve; it was a thick book with a pretty name and a pretty cover; “I’m probably going to like this,” I thought. At that time, I overestimated my reading capabilities. I was expecting to finish the book in a few weeks but ended up never finishing it after about two months of reading it. Why? Because it was too “sinful”, I thought: it was, after all, a story of a woman committing adultery. Twelve-year-old me was frightened at the prospect and decided to stop.

Four years later, I started reading it again back from the very start. It’s funny how you can see yourself change just by re-reading a book. With my sixteen-year-old eyes, I was able to love the book so much more.

Anna Karenina, as a book itself, succeeds in being a very well-written and engaging one. There were hardly any dull chapters, and I was constantly hooked to read and read more because of how well Tolstoy paints his characters and makes them come alive for us readers. It was truly a “moving picture” experience; I could vividly see, picture, and even better, feel for all his characters. In fact, the way Tolstoy brings us into each of the minds of his characters really did remind me that at the core of it, we all have our own souls, thoughts, and feelings, and even the most horrid character is just trying to act according to his principles and character. For instance, perhaps for Anna, Karenin is “the villain” of her story; she hates him, hates his passiveness, hates his calm - yet, Karenin himself is struggling through many things, and how can he help all those things Anna hates about him since it’s something that’s simply a part of him? Or, let’s say, Anna is “the villain” of Karenin’s story: she has betrayed and disgraced him. Yet, we also know all that is going on behind Anna’s actions - her struggles, her pain, her temptations, her perplexed state of thought - and that drives us to not judge too quickly.

The main recurring theme in this book, of course, is love: and I love how this book discusses it. The apparent contrast between Anna’s and Kitty’s love life is something that strikes me the most - at first, it seems as if Anna has won. But by the end, we would think the opposite. And I believe that Tolstoy points out the difference as stemming from a selfish or selfless love. Levin’s and Kitty’s were both a love that strives to be selfless - although they still had their disagreements (as we were shown) - well, because their love (from the very first) started out more “unromantically”, with Kitty rejecting him and all - yet each time, they’re able to look past their disagreements because they hold each other as more important - they treasure their relationship more than their own pride. For instance, during the first few months of their marriage, Kitty never wanted to be parted long from Levin; but by the end of the book, she was willing to let him go, though she was “sorry he goes there so often”, yet she knows that he is happier that way, and she is happy about it too (773). On the other hand, though Anna’s love at first seems like a more romantically-driven love, it soon proves futile and fickle because of its nature: it all centers on themselves. From the very start, although it looked as if their love was a really passionate and love-conquers-all type, it was really just a “love-conquers-all-for-myself” type. Even the end of Anna’s life was brought about because she wanted to punish Vronsky, wanted to make him feel sorry for her:

And death, as the sole means of reviving love for herself in his heart, of punishing him, and of gaining the victory in that contest which an evil spirit in her heart was waging against him, presented itself clearly and vividly before her. (p 740)

In the end, when she was at her wits’ end and completely frustrated with all that is happening in her life, she even said of Vronsky: “I never hated anyone as I hate that man!” What a striking statement, when we’ve first heard her say she hated Karenin most, and that Vronsky compared to Karenin was an angel. Anna herself confessed later on, saying:

My love grows more and more and more passionate and egotistic, and his dwindles and dwindles, and that is why we are separating… And there is no remedy. For me, everything centers in him, and I demand that he should give himself up to me more and more completely. But he wants more and more to get away from me. Before we were united we really drew together, but now we are irresistibly drifting apart, and it cannot be altered. He tells me I am unreasonably jealous, and I have told myself that I m unreasonably jealous, but it is not true. I am not jealous, but dissatisfied… If I could be anything but his mistress, passionately loving nothing but his caresses - but I cannot and do not want to be anything else. And this desire awakens disgust in him, and that arouses anger in me, and it cannot be otherwise.

Later on, she even questioned her love for Serezha:

Serezha? I thought I loved him, too, and was touched at my own tenderness for him. Yet I lived without him and exchanged his love for another’s and did not complain of the change as long as the other love satisfied me.

And the more and more she thought this way and realized the selfishness of life, the more and more she succumbed to a jarring pessimism:

It was so clear to Anna that no one had any cause for joy that this laughter jarred on her painfully, and she wished to stop her ears, not to hear it.

It’s all untrue, all lies, all deception, all evil!…

Yet in the end she still wavered and sought forgiveness:

“Where am I? What am I doing? Why?” She wished to rise, to throw herself back, but something huge and relentless struck her on the head and dragged her down. “God forgive me everything!” she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling…

At the very end, even Vronsky could feel the selfishness of her love:

He tried to recall his best moments with her but they were for ever poisoned. He could think of her only as triumphant, having carried out the threat of inflicting on him totally useless but irrevocable remorse.

A love so selfishly lived can only end this way.