Anna Karenina (1873 to 1877), Leo Tolstoy

For the plot, click here.

With this cherished project, I needed to ensure that the start was at the right time.
Anna Karenina took more than a week for me to complete.

I started reading the book once I got back to Pune after my academic stint at Hyderabad. It was important for me to read the right book, for coming after what we finally decided can be termed 'academic disillusionment induced depression', what I read could either make or break me. I am glad I chose Anna Karenina. Since I really loved this book, and felt like I needed to document my wonder at the artistic genius of Leo Tolstoy, I thought I should start here.

The first few pages of the book was different from my experience of classics so far. It opens up right into Stiva's and Dolly's drama. The domestic tussles and how to deal with an adulterer of a husband immediately makes you wonder how it would have been if the gender role had been reversed. And here begins Tolstoy's genius. He provides you with answers to the very questions you were about to ask to the text. Anna's affair with Vronsky is the answer to that question.

Stiva's affair comfortably nestles in Dolly's pardon. Anna's affair spirals into multiple tragedies, destructing the people with her - naming the ruin of two perfectly good gentlemen, as Vronsky's mother says. The only difference in these affairs is that Stiva loves Dolly, while Anna can't imagine loving Karenin. It is this passionate love that later Dolly also covets when she visits Anna. Interestingly, Dolly cannot pardon her husband wholeheartedly, but longs for the excitement that Anna's scandalous life offers. This novel speaks of inadequacies and the primal human trait - to want something more. These lives are all about trying to make their situation better.

Things that make this rendition of domestic drama magnificent:

1. Tolstoy's narration: the book speaks of Russia, its life, the people, class struggles, the grass and the sky. The life of that era is alive in front of you. The people are real, the emotions are real. The struggles tug at your heart as well.
2. Characterization: when the narrative features the point of view of a dog, and makes you feel the jumpy affection that a creature could feel to its master, you know that the author is one capable of capturing fine character point. A large number of characters have their viewpoints. They speak of their troubles and go away. Tolstoy can tap into each character, assess what they actually are, and what they want for themselves.
3. Emotions: each character is rounded. With their own personal demons, each a product of the decisions of their thinking mind, the emotions that each of the characters feel make us a part of all that happens in the novel. The reader becomes the agony aunt to each of the characters, patiently listening to them resolving their position in life.
4. Unbiased descriptions: he awards the rustic life as much detail as he does the aristocratic politics. Each character is thus in a a soup of their time and place in history, and the socio-emotional tone of their society. Not one perspective is deemed higher than the other. He fondly talks of the simplicity of rustic relationships in the same manner that he shocks you with a peasant woman's callous attitude towards her child's death (as she has one too many). The urban bribe-culture is paired with the wishes of well-meaning politicians making good reforms. 
5. Encountering ideas: Tolstoy works with concepts like spirituality and religion, life and death, marriage and love, rich and poor, urban and rural with wisdom. He understands that human nature will always sway in between these binaries. This is the primary conflict of all the characters in the novel as well.  

There are a number of ideal characters - Kostya, Varenka, Sergei, Alexei Karenin, Dolly (to name a few). These characters are selfless, trying to make the world around them a better place, and they all go through their own crises that shape them further into a universal ideal of 'goodness'. The principal virtue that Tolstoy seems to advocate is the ability of a character to question. He therefore values the questioning mind of these characters. But it is the moments of doubt that show what their true worth is. Without their flaws, these characters couldn't dream of being perfect. 

This novel isn't about resolution. Tolstoy hints to a tragedy right from the beginning - there is not another way for the plot to proceed. Society must triumph over Anna. 

But a smaller tragedy is the one where Sergei Ivanovitch and Varenka succumb to limbo. Both individuals are too pure in themselves that they cannot fathom the inclusion of another person. Even as they wish it, the 'moment' passes and they must remain alone. This is the only pang that Tolstoy leaves you with. This is the element of surprise, the one unresolved haunting piece in the novel.

In fact, nothing is about resolution in the novel. It's about coming to terms with individuality in an increasingly complex world. The novel ends calmly with Kostya ruminating over his choices when it comes to spirituality. But his thoughts are his own; he decides against letting his wife know of these changes in his thought process. His thoughts aren't final either, for he fully understands the transitory nature of his thoughts. He continues to be a person who will have his ups and downs and will still try to survive. Because, this book tells me, life is all about survival and the pursuit of peace.