Vanathy wanted to read 'Anna Karenina' and asking for it. I told her that it may not be appropriate reading for her age (she is 12) and suggested some other classics she can try out. And found today that she has added the book in the queue in Iloveread.in for reading. Like me, the girl does not take 'no' for an answer. So, I just took the book out and kept in her bookshelf for her reading.
I am no prude and I have read more intense graphical books when I was twelve anyway. It was not a question of the appropriateness of the content but the emotional weight the book carries.
"Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?"
I remember the night I read 'Anna Karenina' - it was a big book and I just couldn't put it down and it was worse the next day as the fate of Anna kept reverberating through the mind. If there is one book that can wreck you emotionally, it is this one (of course, 'Crime and Punishment' and the 'Brothers Karamazov' will run a closer race here!).
It is not the moral quagmire the book gets into - but rather the juxtaposition of pride versus humility - which forms the backbone of the book and in the characters of Anna and Levin, this contrast comes out to the fore.
" I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be."
The story of a fallen woman is not a novelty. It was told to death - literally and metaphorically - by the French (is there a French novel without some sort of a scandal?). What Tolstoy is so good at - is to bring the philosophical musings of that state of affair and show the progressive change from a calm, poised women that Anna is at the start of the novel in the train to the depressed, unhappy women who meets the carriage of another train close to the end of the novel.
" He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were
the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking."
The love triangle of Anna, Karenin and Vronsky is poised to end in tragedy and it sure does in the end. However, Tolstoy tells the story completely in a sepia tone. There is nothing good or bad here - but just a relative telling of the truth. That the novel muses a lot on this will make the reading tedious at times but reading as an adult reader, it is easy to understand the 'windiness' of the book.
The book, though is a love story, like every other novel of Tolstoy, is also a philosophical work which explores love, guilt, desire, happiness and the socio-economic conditions of the day. That may seem a lot to cover but the book moves into everything with everyone professing opinion on everything and a lot of descriptions of those olden days of Russian life.
"They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life"
Levin's life is shown in contrast to Anna's and Levin is a heap of contrasts - proud at first - and at some point, flirts with Anna as well. But it is his musings on his life as a landowner and his life with Dolly which forms the contrast. Levin has his faults - he acknowledges each of them - but also is willing to work on them and correct himself. The Christian righteousness is the path he chooses - however difficult it may be for him to traverse.
The concept of happiness - as it applies to an individual - is explored by the failure of every character in the novel to find it. Vronsky, when he finally gets Anna, does not feel overwhelmingly happy as he expected to be. Anna, when joining Vronsky, grows more depressing and suspecting rather than being happy.
"Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
The complexity of being in a 'happy' state is a recurring theme in Tolstoy's novels along with being 'guilty' of something. The guiltiness of doing something - here, Anna's love for Vronsky or Levin's guiltiness for being a landowner - comes in the way of achieving happiness always.
The Christian morality of the society (or the morality as defined in every society) thrives by associating guilt with any activity that brings happiness - thus, as Levin finds out in the end, choosing to be a Christian (or to obey the societal norms) is the way to keep the guilt at bay. But this righteousness is as much Christian as Nihilist. This Tolstoy understood and probably abhorred. He explores this nihilist tendency of the self-righteousness in 'War and Peace' in more detail though.
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."
However, the book for me, is more an exploration of happiness than about guilt. Tolstoy - at least in the days of writing Anna - is trying to balance between love and the associated guilt produced by the society on love itself and was exploring the plight of Anna as caught in it. He does not ,mercifully, engage in sermonizing as in his later works ('The Kreutzer Sonata' comes to mind with a shudder!).
So, the emotional baggage you are going to be saddled with by the time the book is finished is a burden to bear but it is one's choice to bear it happily.
"Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?"
I remember the night I read 'Anna Karenina' - it was a big book and I just couldn't put it down and it was worse the next day as the fate of Anna kept reverberating through the mind. If there is one book that can wreck you emotionally, it is this one (of course, 'Crime and Punishment' and the 'Brothers Karamazov' will run a closer race here!).
It is not the moral quagmire the book gets into - but rather the juxtaposition of pride versus humility - which forms the backbone of the book and in the characters of Anna and Levin, this contrast comes out to the fore.
" I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be."
The story of a fallen woman is not a novelty. It was told to death - literally and metaphorically - by the French (is there a French novel without some sort of a scandal?). What Tolstoy is so good at - is to bring the philosophical musings of that state of affair and show the progressive change from a calm, poised women that Anna is at the start of the novel in the train to the depressed, unhappy women who meets the carriage of another train close to the end of the novel.
The love triangle of Anna, Karenin and Vronsky is poised to end in tragedy and it sure does in the end. However, Tolstoy tells the story completely in a sepia tone. There is nothing good or bad here - but just a relative telling of the truth. That the novel muses a lot on this will make the reading tedious at times but reading as an adult reader, it is easy to understand the 'windiness' of the book.
The book, though is a love story, like every other novel of Tolstoy, is also a philosophical work which explores love, guilt, desire, happiness and the socio-economic conditions of the day. That may seem a lot to cover but the book moves into everything with everyone professing opinion on everything and a lot of descriptions of those olden days of Russian life.
"They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life"
Levin's life is shown in contrast to Anna's and Levin is a heap of contrasts - proud at first - and at some point, flirts with Anna as well. But it is his musings on his life as a landowner and his life with Dolly which forms the contrast. Levin has his faults - he acknowledges each of them - but also is willing to work on them and correct himself. The Christian righteousness is the path he chooses - however difficult it may be for him to traverse.
The concept of happiness - as it applies to an individual - is explored by the failure of every character in the novel to find it. Vronsky, when he finally gets Anna, does not feel overwhelmingly happy as he expected to be. Anna, when joining Vronsky, grows more depressing and suspecting rather than being happy.
"Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”
The complexity of being in a 'happy' state is a recurring theme in Tolstoy's novels along with being 'guilty' of something. The guiltiness of doing something - here, Anna's love for Vronsky or Levin's guiltiness for being a landowner - comes in the way of achieving happiness always.
The Christian morality of the society (or the morality as defined in every society) thrives by associating guilt with any activity that brings happiness - thus, as Levin finds out in the end, choosing to be a Christian (or to obey the societal norms) is the way to keep the guilt at bay. But this righteousness is as much Christian as Nihilist. This Tolstoy understood and probably abhorred. He explores this nihilist tendency of the self-righteousness in 'War and Peace' in more detail though.
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."
However, the book for me, is more an exploration of happiness than about guilt. Tolstoy - at least in the days of writing Anna - is trying to balance between love and the associated guilt produced by the society on love itself and was exploring the plight of Anna as caught in it. He does not ,mercifully, engage in sermonizing as in his later works ('The Kreutzer Sonata' comes to mind with a shudder!).
So, the emotional baggage you are going to be saddled with by the time the book is finished is a burden to bear but it is one's choice to bear it happily.
3 comments:
Nice to know about Vanathy's literary interests and her determination.
I was clueless on what Anna Karenina is about and read it just a few years back, so I am not sure how my younger self would have reacted to it. So would love to know what she feels about it.
It's a nice review but my take on the book is slightly different, it sounded more like a warning - You can't run away from all the guilt. Happiness is only during the brief period when they are not sure of their mutual love. And what follows after it is worries, guilt rides, morality, insecurity and everything. And finally the end, nothing more painful than that. It totally is like the warning pic on a cigarette wrapper.
In fact Dolly's character is loosely based on Tolstoy's wife, and Levin's on himself, so I felt he sort of pushes his ideas of righteousness.
Nevertheless the book has some of the best ever quotes, I think the opening line ( Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way ) is by itself one of the best ever and no one can fail to fall in love with this classic.
I agree with you on the morality of the tale itself. The way I look at it - happiness of any form is fleeting - there is never a state of being happy all the time. The reason being the guilt associated with almost everything that brings happiness to oneself. And this guilt ties back to the self-righteousness as defined by the religions, customs etc.
So, the question - to me - is to see what price is happiness? is guilt, a right way to stop a person from pursuing his/her happiness? If Anna were to be trapped in the marriage with Karenin forever - without that fleeting moment of happiness she was able to get with Vronsky - what good is that life for her? the same question can be asked in reverse as well.. it is an interesting question to ponder on and it has so much relevance to the Indian society ..
Rather, the loosening of this fabric of righteousness is something that happened in the western society and I am not sure of happiness, but has razed a lot of guilt away.
Anna's story wouldn't have made much sense in the 21st century Russia anyway..
However, thanks for the comment..
True. It's too deep for sure.
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