May 14, 2007 07:31 PM
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I laid my hands on the novel Anna Karenina when I was doing my M.A first year from DU in the year 2004. A novel by Russian writer LEO TOLSTOY, it was first published in serial installments from 1873-77. Due to the clash between the author and editor the novel's first complete appearance arose in book form. Tolstoy considered this book his first true novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet PUSHKIN. Tolstoy started reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character. Some critics called it a trifling romance of high life and others declared it as ‘flawless work of art’.
Tolstoy amalgamated real and fictional events throughout his narrative. Characters in Anna Karenina debate on significant sociopolitical issues affecting Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such as the proper role of the serfs in society, education reform, and women's rights. Tolstoy's depiction of the characters in these debates, and of their arguments, allows him to anonymously communicate his own political beliefs to his audience. Characters often attend social functions that Tolstoy attended, and he includes in these passages his own observations of the ideologies, behaviors, and ideas running through contemporary Russia through the thoughts of Konstantin Levin. The broad array of situations and ideas depicted in Anna Karenina allows Tolstoy to present a treatise on his era's Russia, and, by virtue of its very breadth and depth, all of human society. This stylistic technique, as well as the novel's use of perspective, greatly contributes to the thematic structure of Anna Karenina.
Anna is the jewel of St. Peterbergh society until she leaves her husband for the handsome and charming military officer, Count Vronsky. By falling in love, they go beyond society's external conditions of trivial adulterous dalliances. But when Vronsky's love cools, Anna cannot bring herself to return to the husband she detests, even though he will not permit her to see their son until she does.
Unable to return to a life she hates, she kills herself. A common way to interpret Anna's tragedy, then, is that she could neither be completely honest nor completely false, showing a HAMLET like inner conflict that eventually drives her to suicide. Anna throws herself under a train at the end of the story, Tolstoy supposedly did not want readers to sympathize with her supposed mistreatment, but rather to recognize that it was her inability to truly commit to her own happiness or self-truth which led to her ignominious end.
It is narrated from a third-person-omniscient perspective, shifting between the perspectives of several major characters, focusing on its dual protagonists (Anna and Levin).Each of the novel's eight sections contains internal variations in tone: it assumes a relaxed voice when following Stepan Oblonsky's thoughts and actions and a much more tense voice when describing Levin's social encounters. Much of the novel's seventh section depicts Anna's thoughts fluidly, following each one of her ruminations and associations with its immediate successor. This section, and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the novel, is one of the earliest examples of ‘stream of consciousness’ as done by such later authors as JOYCE, WOOLF and FAULKNER.
As per the Tolstoy's Confession: Tolstoy talks of adulterous "liaisons" in aristocratic Russian society:
A dear old aunt of mine, the purest of creatures, with whom I lived, was always saying that she wished for nothing as much as that I would have a relationship with a married woman. 'Rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut.' ("Nothing forms a young man properly like an affair with a married woman.")
Another theme in Anna Karenina is that the aristocratic habit of speaking in French instead of Russian is another form of society's falseness. There is even one passage that could possibly be interpreted as a sign of Anna's eventual redemption in Tolstoy's eyes:
For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making such a song and dance with our banalities?
The Confession contains many other autobiographical insights into the themes of Anna Karenina.
Perspectives to read from:
Tragic romance, Morality issues or anti-intellectualism, Aritrocracy , Societal pressure and acceptance of flaws, Parallel realtions-illicit VS acceptable , Religious hypocrisy-- orthodox , christianity, Imagery, Irony of statement “we make war so that we can live in peace”
TAKE CARE
ANGIE:)
