One of my first blog posts about classic literature was about Crime and Punishment, a long Russian novel by Fyodr Dostoevsky. Today, we’re returning to Russia to explore a different author from the same time period: Leo Tolstoy.
Tolstoy’s most famous novel, War and Peace, is a 1,200 page monstrosity that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, but if quarantine keeps up for much longer, I’m looking forward to getting to it soon!
My focus for today, however, is a slightly less famous but still lovely novel, Anna Karenina. I made the mistake of choosing this novel for a high school research project, giving myself a one-month time limit to read 800 pages of dense story. But after I finished the four long weeks full of staying up late to read, I decided it was worth it.
Anna Karenina tells the stories of two parallel lives: Anna, who cheats on her husband and leaves him for a lover, ultimately killing herself due to her decision, and Levin, who is initially rejected by the woman he loves but ends up finding a happy marriage and a peaceful life.
While Crime and Punishment is a great novel because of its ability to dig deep into someone’s mind over a short time period, Anna Karenina is phenomenal because it can tell the story of two people’s entire lives, in enough detail that readers feel as if they know the characters.
When I think back to the novel itself, I remember very few actual events that occurred in it; only the major plot points of the story. The majority of the novel is devoted to the type of writing so specific to Tolstoy: it just describes the vibes of the story. Even if I remember nothing a character did, I can still remember some vague feeling or mood about them.
About halfway through the book, Tolstoy spends around 50 pages describing a character cutting grass. It sounds boring, but I found it to be one of the most engaging parts of the book: it allows readers to gain an understanding of the characters, as well as Tolstoy’s thoughts on social class.
In fact, much of the book is dedicated to Tolstoy’s thoughts on social class. Tolstoy was born and raised in the Russian aristocracy, and he remained there through a tumultuous time in Russia, when the country was becoming Westernized and radical ideas about economic equality were gaining traction.
Tolstoy imbues the novel with his hatred for the Russian upper class, and his desire to live a simpler life outside of it. The result is a novel that romanticizes poverty to an extreme degree, but obviously values the idea of living a simple life.
Tolstoy once said of Anna Karenina that if he tried to say what it all meant, he would end up rewriting the entire novel. More than anything, it is a portrait of Russia through one person’s eyes during a time of high tensions and great change.
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