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Anna Karenina (HB)
Brand New
Hardcover
Published January 1, 2024
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About the author
Leo Tolstoy
7,827 books29k followersLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 22, 2024
"In Anna Karenina is expressed a view of human guilt and criminality. People are portrayed in abnormal circumstances. Evil existed before them. Caught in the whirl of deceit, people commit crime and fatally perish."
This small excerpt from Dostoevsky's long review (can it be called a review?) in the Diary of a Writer, summarises the essence of the novel.
Though the novel is named after its female protagonist, this is equally a story of Levin, the other major character whose story runs in parallel with Anna's. I absolutely appreciated this subtle parallelism of two stories, wherein Anna plays a more active and external role while Levin is the inner voice. Perhaps that's why it is named only after Anna and not Levin, for the active essence of one's life is more viable from a society's point of view.
Levin leads a normal life with hardly any extraordinary events that might be interesting and scandalous in contrast with Anna's extra-marital affair. All through the book, we witness an inner battle that goes in, a story within a story, which highlights the essential questions of life and God. An inner transition goes through his soul which loops in the reader in his world. Levin also represents Tolstoy's own fictional representation and channels the very question that bothered the author himself.
"There's less charm in life when one thinks of death but there is more peace."
He is the soul of the book.
On the other hand, we have Anna, the human aspect of the book. Married at a very young age with a man for whom duty is above everything else, she finds herself in a loveless marriage. She is perhaps not consciously aware of it initially, but all changes for her when she meets Count Vronsky. She finds herself trapped in a scandalous affair when her heart overtakes her senses.
It is not a love story, it is a story about life and the various consequences human beings have to face due to their impulsive decisions. It proves how love is not enough and the societal norms that structure the human life plays a pivotal role in every aspect of these choices. Anna Karenina is a woman in the nineteenth century, and that in itself is a prison. She lives in a time when all a woman can be is what her man makes her. From a respectable society woman to an immoral woman, Anna's story is tragically human and challenges the very pillars of society in the most unconventional sense ever.
“But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.” Dostoevsky wrote this in The Brother Karamazov and somehow this goes well with Anna and Vronsky's story in the second half of the book.
As mentioned, this is not a story of love but life, hence even though there was no questioning the love between Vronsky and Anna, the guilt and criminal implications of such a love were too hostile for both of them to ignore, and the result of such a love is only misery and torment.
This small excerpt from Dostoevsky's long review (can it be called a review?) in the Diary of a Writer, summarises the essence of the novel.
Though the novel is named after its female protagonist, this is equally a story of Levin, the other major character whose story runs in parallel with Anna's. I absolutely appreciated this subtle parallelism of two stories, wherein Anna plays a more active and external role while Levin is the inner voice. Perhaps that's why it is named only after Anna and not Levin, for the active essence of one's life is more viable from a society's point of view.
Levin leads a normal life with hardly any extraordinary events that might be interesting and scandalous in contrast with Anna's extra-marital affair. All through the book, we witness an inner battle that goes in, a story within a story, which highlights the essential questions of life and God. An inner transition goes through his soul which loops in the reader in his world. Levin also represents Tolstoy's own fictional representation and channels the very question that bothered the author himself.
"There's less charm in life when one thinks of death but there is more peace."
He is the soul of the book.
On the other hand, we have Anna, the human aspect of the book. Married at a very young age with a man for whom duty is above everything else, she finds herself in a loveless marriage. She is perhaps not consciously aware of it initially, but all changes for her when she meets Count Vronsky. She finds herself trapped in a scandalous affair when her heart overtakes her senses.
It is not a love story, it is a story about life and the various consequences human beings have to face due to their impulsive decisions. It proves how love is not enough and the societal norms that structure the human life plays a pivotal role in every aspect of these choices. Anna Karenina is a woman in the nineteenth century, and that in itself is a prison. She lives in a time when all a woman can be is what her man makes her. From a respectable society woman to an immoral woman, Anna's story is tragically human and challenges the very pillars of society in the most unconventional sense ever.
“But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.” Dostoevsky wrote this in The Brother Karamazov and somehow this goes well with Anna and Vronsky's story in the second half of the book.
As mentioned, this is not a story of love but life, hence even though there was no questioning the love between Vronsky and Anna, the guilt and criminal implications of such a love were too hostile for both of them to ignore, and the result of such a love is only misery and torment.
Displaying 1 of 1 review