Why Tolstoy's Anna Karenina Is My Favourite Novel

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Hardcore Literature Lecture Series
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Happy reading!

[pinkopat]

I watched the Keira Knightley movie and it felt so shallow that I had to pick up the novel because I knew there had to be something deeper about it, now that I've read it I see that it has so much to tell and so many ways to look at it. It's such a big story and there are no easy ways to understand it

[dharmakaurkhalsa]

Just finished reading Anna Karenina (audiobook) and have been fascinated by it from the start. Right away it was like stepping into "real life" and never leaving it... even during the "boring" passages, because, yes, sometimes life could be perceived as boring... and the ending, both parts, her suicide and Levin's "awakening" were just such and artful and meaningful for connecting Life and Death and our choices on this journey. Amazingly written. True Talent. Wonderful experience that will stay with me.

[larryreilly]

Just finished Anna! Excellent! Levin is laugh-out-loud funny, and I love your insight about him. One warning to all new readers bears repeating: Do NOT even glance at the introduction. The Intro to my Constance Merritt translation spoils the end in the first paragraph. My wife and I really enjoy your videos - keep them coming!

[celesteluciani]

I fell down the ‘you tube’ rabbit hole and come across your page and I just love how you dissect the literature. Your passion and intellect is warming. Thank you, made my way to your podcast.

[leila]

Great review! Tolstoy put pieces of him in every character that made them vividly come to life. How else could he have described such deep painful emotions of someone going through a mental breakdown to the feeling of pure joy and fear of seeing their newborn baby? Gosh, what a book! Though tedious at times, it will stick with me. As someone who has experienced severe depression at some points in my life, his description of Anna’s mindset towards the end of the book painful rang true. What a novel!

[karelvorster]

If Tolstoy's novel bore its true title, hardly anyone would care to read it. Since it is only a literary work, I will not call it a fraud. Anna Karenina should be called "Constantin Levin", with the subtitle "The Inner Struggles of a Neurotic Russian Gentleman Farmer".

Anna Karenina is a marketing ploy, a literary teaser, a clever appetizer for an age that cannot get enough of tales involving tragic females slipping into adultery. In retrospect, this deceptive title is an important, if unintended clue to the true status of Anna Karenina: that of a secondary character, one that Tolstoy manipulates mercilessly----and does not even bother to describe fully! While we are told of Constantin's every thought, emotion and action in excruciating detail, we know almost nothing about Anna's past; why she falls in love with a man who is like hundreds of other handsome but frivolous Russian officers remains a mystery; her sudden transformation from a compassionate woman who helps reconcile her sister-in-law with her unfaithful husband into a vindictive adulteress is equally puzzling and quite unbelievable; her subsequent life and romance with count Vronsky, her lover, surfaces throughout the book only in disconnected fragments.

Anna is not even an interesting character. Leaving aside the fact that her key moves and decisions are presented by Tolstoy not as personal choices, but as the result of an evil external influence (the Devil?), which by itself should raise a huge red flag for any reader, how can one deny that she is a very common type? Anna is a pathologically selfish, jealous and vengeful creature constantly preoccupied with her power over men. She confuses love with her capacity to attract the other sex exclusively through her feminine charms. Hence her refusal to have children or to get married. In either case, she would no longer be loved for herself (meaning her physical beauty).

Anna is a foil for the relatively happy love affair and married life of Levin, a young dour Russian aristocrat who lives in the countryside---and the real hero of the book. Apparently, Constantin Levin is just a literary reflection of Tolstoy himself. Tolstoy uses him to describe his own moral struggles, struggles we don't care about because Levin, who is clearly a reincarnation of the bumbling Pierre Bezukhov, is such an infuriating fool, such an unlikable character to begin with.Tolstoy also uses this eternal adolescent to drag us not only into hunting parties that stretch through several chapters (Tolstoy hated war but loved hunting!) but also endless conversations about such riveting topics as farm management and administrative decentralization in late nineteenth-century Russia. Tolstoy cannot refrain from mixing genres: he wants to be a novelist, but also a philosopher and a polemicist. And he doesn't use symbolism or the plot to convey his ideas, which is what good writers such as Thomas Hardy do.When it comes to his pet ideas, Tolstoy has no use for subtlety. He just has his puppet characters utter his ideas or those of his opponents directly:welcome to humorless and charmless Platonic dialogues on Russian politics and agriculture! One cannot escape the feeling that Tolstoy writes not so much for others, as for himself, to convince himself of the truth of his latest mystic creed or political fancy, duly conveyed to him by a guileless Russian peasant.

So forget the hype peddled by self-proclaimed specialists. Above all, don't even dream that the book is a kind of feminist manifesto, which, I guess, must be the reason why people are so enthusiastic about the book. Anna Karenina is quite the opposite: it is an unapologetic plea for family and traditional morality that condemns women like Anna, not in so many words(that would be very bad policy in a liberal age) but by depicting their horrible thoughts and demonic minds. So horrible and so demonic you are more than relieved when Anna is finally got rid of (while the male accomplice in this adultery case remains alive!). Do you, you Anna Karenina groupies, realize that the old bearded bigot does not even grant her an atom of motherly love for the child she had with her lover?

Frankly, if you want to read a fine novel written in beautiful prose (Tolstoy's writes the dullest prose in the world) about an unhappy woman and the social injustice to women, forget Anna and make the acquaintance of Tess d'Urberville. If you want to read a delightful novel on Russia, grab A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Thin on content, but what a relief after the preachy Tolstoy!

[kalosja]

Read AK 5 times. For me best novel ever written. In your introduction you lack the condition of censorship T was writing under. Ts ideas of emancipation of state, peasant, women was radical and forbidden.

[khadimndiaye]

I didn’t think this book was boring, the writing is just phenomenal; Tolstoy‘s style is tremendously good.

[fyodor]

Great piece, extremely insightful and concise. I only just discovered your channel and hope to see you discuss more classic literature. To your question I'd love to see you review the various adaptations of the novel. Notwithstanding the premature ending of the Nicola Pagett BBC adaptation it has the best version of Levin for mine. I think part of the problem with short-changing his story arc in any adaptation is that it's hard to do it justice in a feature length movie, and that TV version has the space to come closest, I think.

[paulmaritz]

I sincerely agree with you. To think that the suicide closes the book misses Levin's transcendence and the whole point of his character growth. So well done, agree with that. The omniscient writing analysis was also interersting, thanks!

[judan]

I find that almost every filmed version of the novel trivializes (or at least marginalizes) the relationship of Levin and Kitty, practically making them secondary characters, but without them as a parallel, the relationship of Anna and Vronsky and their "descent" loses poignancy.

[Jiji_watching]

Haha you’re the first one who pointed out the very reason I return to Anna Karenina in every one or two years. I can’t understand the characters’ decisions, and they don’t get out of my head.. ridiculosuly, shakespeare also made this effect on me. Why? Why? Why? And as you read more and more, you realize that Tolstoy is a true mechanic. The boring tik-toks of intricate intallation that preordains the destiny(ending) of the characters.

About video art based on this book, I prefered the Russian musical or the unpopular Russian movie. All the other things produced outside, especially in America, are in my eyes nonsense, couldn’t catch a single mood of the Moscow train’s wind. Ah wish to discuss about this book with you in person, garnishing Antony and Cleopatra..so many words to say.

Thank you for the video.

[whitneypencina]

You captured exactly, to a tee, how I felt after reading this- it has me so much “in its clutches” (in a good way) that I want to reread it- and watch all the movies to see if there is one that does justice to it! Amen!

[ipshitajee]

Can you please suggest the best translation for this book??

[VeronicaSanchez-nnde]

Finished the book yesterday and so far best book of 2024, it’ll be in my top 🔝 ten 🔟 books of all times 😊.

[villagechillershorror]

Funny how your thoughts match mine. Especially, the suicide. It baffles me greatly. And hey, Great vid!!!

[Michael-hwwk]

I am actually surprised by this as I found Anna Karenina fairly straight forward whereas I prefer the complexity of Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. However, I will say that Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich is in my top three favorite novels.

[SIERRATREES]

Thnk you.. Glad to have found your channel. I loved the book and will read it again. I took a lot away from Levin, as a representation of a well lived ; that its through toil and challenges, we grow and learn and it takes time to realize our true purpose . Id like to better understand what the issues were with the reforms. Pressures were building in Russia, and political violence was never far away. The assassination of Alexnder II was around this time ; but I think Tolstoy was trying to point out that Social reform involves human issues, and peoples culture and beliefs have to be considered ; its not all about efficiency gains through modernization and the fallout from dramatic change has to carefully considered.

[anotherblonde]

The key as to why Anna and the horse (horse/whore, both ridden by the count) die, can be summed up by Oscar Wilde's quote "Yet each man kills the thing he loves"

[ramenlover_x]

I AGREE SO MUCH.. i really like the interpretation from Gary Saul Morson.