Those
who had read this book before found that it was more interesting on second reading,
and in a way they got more out of it. Especially about the “second story”,
Levin and Kitty, since the first time round one naturally focused more on Anna
Karenina herself.
Tolstoy
wrote the book as a serial. One of the reasons he wrote it was to send a new
message to readers, about the relationship between work and education. It
is a family story – all the main characters are connected. But between them
they represent the whole range of levels of Russian nineteenth-century society.
The Shterbatskys – the peasants – Nicholas Levin and Marya Nikolaevna.
Bookclubbers were surprised to find how easy the book was to read, compared with nineteenth-century
literature in English. We had read different translations, but no-one had any
difficulty in reading it and everyone had found it a compelling read. The chapters
are very short, and the language and sentences are clear. The ideas are not
necessarily so straightforward or easy to catch. In practically every chapter,
there are phrases, sentences and episodes that are loaded with significance –
anyone who had a copy of their own and who was in the habit of highlighting
meaningful passages, would soon have virtually the whole book covered in yellow
stripes.
One
of the most fascinating things about the book is the picture it provides of the
Russian world of the nineteenth century. It was a world in which money meant
everything (as indeed it does in today’s world), whether at the peasants’ level
or at that of the upper classes. What was noticeable was the sheer unreality of
the lives lived by the nobility. There is a very strongly-marked contrast
between the society men who went from soirée to theatre to club (yes, the men’s purposelessness is what strikes
one most; I suppose we find it easier to accept the idea of upper-class women
leading such a meaningless existence?) and the peasants, with their simple
happiness and their farniente, the
ability to persevere in hard, gruelling work while taking every opportunity that
came along of doing nothing. The peasants are shown as leading happy, even
carefree lives. They live on the land and have strong families, companionship,
and folk traditions. However, they have neither education nor culture, so their
level of happiness is limited and narrow.
The
question of religious faith runs through the whole book – it is a question, a problem.
It is evident in Karenin, a cold fish who has never really thought about how he
ought to treat his wife, or whether their relationship could be different. He
has been living an artificial life made up of official duties and official
responsibilities, but with no real human relationships and no actual friends at
all. He undergoes a religious experience when Anna seems to be dying after
giving birth, while still in his house, to Vronsky’s daughter. Karenin finds
that he can humble himself, and forgive her and even Vronsky, totally, in a
Christ-like way. However, this conversion, real though it is, does not last.
Karenin ends up being fascinated by the Christian-Scientist-type teachings of Countess
Lydia Ivanovna, even though he realises, deep down, that this new version of
Christianity is false and shallow.
Levin
himself, who seems to be an autobiographical character for Tolstoy, wrestles
much more deeply with his faith, as he does with everything in the intellectual
realm. To begin with he tries to make sense of the Russian social set-up as it
is at that time, and to rationalise and improve the agricultural work done by
the peasants – recently liberated from serfdom. He is foiled by the peasants
themselves, who are one and all convinced that any change or innovation must
necessarily be bad, and, if proposed by a landowner, must be a trick to get
something out of them. Levin is a man of integrity and natural humility, and
continues questioning, reading, and arguing about the purpose of life and human
nature. However, it is noticeable that again and again, he tries to engage
people in discussion about these things unsuccessfully, even when he is sure they
have very interesting viewpoints to contribute; and when he argues, he never
manages to convince anyone of his point of view.
Levin
goes to confession to a Russian Orthodox priest before his wedding, as Church
rules require. And, with characteristic honesty (unlike Oblonsky), he says frankly
that he doubts the existence of God. The priest is not scandalized, but really
does help him to look towards faith instead of away from it. When Kitty has a
difficult labour, Levin finds himself praying with real faith, but experiences
it more as a feeling that doesn’t last (there is an obvious parallel here with
Karenin). However, he keeps on trying to find his way to faith in order to make
sense of his life, and human existence. In the end he realises that in all his
philosophising, reading and arguing, he has been “seeking food in toy shops and
tool shops” – determinedly looking for spiritual sustenance in all the wrong
places – and that he really does have a faith on which he can construct his
life.
Vronsky
and Anna are the main characters of the “first story” in the book, as Levin and
Kitty are of the “second story”. Vronsky’s philosophy of life, which seems to
be characteristic of his class and generation, was merely a set of hard and
fast rules for getting on in society. Practically every time he is mentioned,
his “even white teeth” also feature. The most extensive and detailed episode
involving him is the horse race where he literally rides his horse to death in
an unsuccessful attempt to win; he destroys Anna as he had destroyed the horse.
There is an astonishing passage when he and Anna first become lovers, where Tolstoy
describes Vronsky’s attitude towards Anna in terms of the attitude of a
murderer towards his dead victim. The last time Vronsky comes into the book, on
his way to find death at the battlefront, he is suffering from a severe ache in
all his teeth.
Anna
is, of course, a much more interesting character, and we come much closer to
her than we ever do to Vronsky. What ruins her life is firstly her inability to
love her husband, and secondly, her pathological jealousy. Neither of these is
entirely her fault, but she never had any help in tackling these problems. Nowadays
she is generally seen as a tragic heroine. It is easy to see how this view can do a lot
of harm: a woman who is not entirely happy in her marriage for some reason,
reads Anna Karenina and thinks, “Ohh
how romantic – just like me – I’m just like her…” and looks for a way of
escape, instead of looking to see where the problem lies (including in her own
behaviour) and trying to solve it and put her marriage on a better footing.
There
are masses of other characters in the book, all of whom are compellingly realistic
even though they are relatively “minor parts”.
It
is a fascinating book to read from all sorts of different angles. At the level
of sociology, it is worth comparing with books about other societies – most obviously,
of course, Dickens, Gaskell, and other nineteenth-century English writers who
describe the whole range of society; and writers of similar scope in other
countries.
