#euryidce

i’ve heard somewhere that tolstoy meant to condemn anna when he started writing the book, but that along the way, he began to sympathize with her. that conflict defines the book. i wanted to shake him and ask “but what does it mean? do you hate her? do you love her?” and it’s both, really.

tolstoy was a very opinionated man, a very philosophical and political and religious man, and that is the essence of his writing. his characters are incredibly human, infuriatingly so, and he likes to bring them up from the gutter (of society) and into the Right Way to Live (the country). i mean, levin in anna karenina and pierre in war & peace are essentially self-insertions, mouthpieces for tolstoy’s own opinions. as such, they contrast with the other characters, the truly flawed ones who do not get redemption, like anna.

which is what pisses me off so much about anna karenina. i am not a religious person, and so i rebel against the idea that you have to know god to be happy. i disagree that society and fashion and singing and dancing are just vanity, to be discarded if you want to live a good life. instead of admiring levin i adored and feared and pitied anna. this was not tolstoy’s intention.

levin, the ideal, ends up happily and purely married to kitty, living in the country with his serfs, close to god. anna, who committed a sin and tried to build her life around it, is obviously not the ideal. they are foils; to tolstoy one is meant to be better than the other. 

but then there’s the juxtaposition between anna and her brother stiva, who cheated on his wife and had no repercussions; then there’s the juxtaposition between anna, who is shunned from society after running away with her lover, and vronsky, that very same lover, who is still welcomed by that very same society. how classic is that double standard? how are we supposed to not feel compassion for anna as she loses her friends, her son, her sanity, for trying to be happy (even if it was reckless)? it’s a tragedy, not a condemnation.

and in watching the war & peace miniseries, i felt the same way. mostly because of natasha, who veers in the same direction as anna but then finds redemption and is happily married–but at what cost? (this is not explicit in the miniseries, but the epilogue, which i’ve looked into). to me, she loses her soul. she becomes a perfect wife who thinks only of her family, who doesn’t sing anymore because it’s frivolous. this ethereal, bright, reckless girl who dances to a folk song out of sheer instinct doesn’t sing. (and she doesn’t end up with andrei, which is brilliant writing, way to break my heart, but also just cruel and unnecessary punishment after that dance scene, and i don’t appreciate either the way tolstoy “redeems” andrei, but who am i kidding, that’s what tolstoy fucking does.)

it’s an injustice that tolstoy does that to natasha, it’s unfair, it’s (frankly) sexist. tolstoy had some issues with that little prejudice, in my opinion. it’s present in anna karenina–but also acknowledged with the double standards, whether he meant to acknowledge it or not. 

you see how incredibly frustrating this is??? how complicated and circular and “but then this, and then here, and then there’s that” the themes are??? tolstoy is a brilliant writer not just for the things he meant to do, but also the things he tried so hard not to do. for the exhausting inner conflict and poignant tragedy he creates by making us fall in love with someone and at the same time trying to condemn her (or change her, in the case of natasha).

i am sorry you didn’t like anna karenina (and that i just ranted about it for so long) because even though it infuriates me, it makes me think and wonder and weep, and that’s why it has so much power, to me. i’ve never read a book that so agitated my mind. i have no doubt that i’ll have the same feelings for war & peace when i finally read it (after i’m recovered from the miniseries), and there’s a kind of magic in that, in the conflict he creates. his novels are imbued with opinion but also brimming with compassion he perhaps didn’t want to feel. they’re full of humanity that can’t always be reined in by order and simplicity. tolstoy created a world, and it ran away from him, took on a life of its own.

anna karenina is tolstoy’s argument with himself, and for me, reading tolstoy is having an argument with him. i find truth in the book despite tolstoy, but also because of his extraordinary gift for writing human, fallible, yet still entrancing characters.