120. ANNA KARENINA

Leo Tolstoy 1877

Translated by Constance Garnett

An absorbing unforgettable saga! I so thoroughly enjoyed this hefty novel, set in 19th century Russia, as much a story of Konstantin Levin as the story of Anna Karenina. Levin is the rock of virtues, a landowner living in the country, always aiming to better himself through hard work, spirituality and consistency, albeit unsettled with every choice he makes including marrying Kitty and starting a family. Anna is the parallel flawed heroine, living in the city, at once simple and seemingly content, but always restless and unsatisfied. When Anna, then married to Alexy meets Vronsky at a train station, and despite an ominous start, they fall in love and defy the social expectations of their time. "Why, what is the meaning of such desperate passions?" is the passage that sums up their love story for me.

'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'(opening line)

'Stephan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for his good-humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black hair and eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good-humor on the people who met him.'(17)

'He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round her.'(29)

'Kitty had been seeing Anna everyday; she adored her, and had pictured her invariable in lilac. But now seeing her in black, she felt that she had not fully seen her charm. She saw her now as some one quite new and surprising to her. Now she understood that Anna could not have been in lilac, and that her charm was just that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress could never be noticeable on her. And her black dress, and all that was seen was she-- simple, natural, elegant, and at the same time gay and eager.'(75)

'As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life, seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: 'No, you're not going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you.'(87)

'Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment stuck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken.'(113)

'Alexy Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's wife... Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving some one or other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself.'(134)

'This child's presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him farther and farther away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin. This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that showed them the point to which they departed from what they knew, but they did not want to know.'(173)

'The chief problem of the philosophy of all ages consists just in finding the indispensable connection which exists between individual and social interests. But that's not to the point; what is to the point is a correction I must make in your comparison. The birches are not simply stuck in, but some are sown and some are planted, and one must deal carefully with them. It's only those peoples that have an intuitive sense of what's of importance and significance in their institutions, and know how to value them, that have a future before them-- it's only those peoples that one can truly call historical.'(231)

'The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most blissful moments.'(237)

"Yes, I understand it all now," said Darya Alexandrovna. "You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust, -- a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say."(253)

'Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky.'(282)

'Every one took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin... She and Levin had a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.'(363)

'Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of their desires... He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire of desires-- ennui. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object.'(431)

'She tried to please him, not by her words, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that she now lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself in reveries on what might have been, if she had not been married and he had been free.'(474)

"... and if one loves any one, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be..."(566)

'And she remembered that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon. "Just as though she half-shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything," thought Dolly.'(580)

"It is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the other. I can't have them together, and that's the only thing I want. And since I can't have that, I don't care about the rest. I don't care about anything, anything. And it will end one way or another, and so I can't, I don't like to talk of it. So don't blame me, don't judge me for anything. You can't with your pure heart understand all that I'm suffering."(591)

'And though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to him. Just as before, only by love, and by charm could she keep him. And so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by morphine at night, could she strife the fearful thought of what would be if he ceased to love her.'(613)

'He wants to show me that his love for me is not to interfere with his freedom. But I need no proofs, I need love. He ought to understand all the bitterness of this life for me here in Moscow. Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off.'(649)

'And suddenly, from the mysterious and awful far-away world in which he had been living for the last twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself all in an instant borne back to the old every-day world, glorified though now, by such a radiance of happiness that he could not bear it. The strained chords snapped, sobs and tears of joy which he had never foreseen rose up with such violence that his whole body shook, that for long they prevented him from speaking.'(659)

'In order to carry through any understanding in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.'(681)

'All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them.'(691)

'But he had not done either, but had gone on living, thinking, and feeling, and had even at that very time married, and he had many joys and had been happy, when he was not thinking of the meaning of his life. What did this mean? It meant that he had been living rightly, but thinking wrongly.'(736)

"I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it."(754)

a Barnes and Noble Edition, 2003

754 pages

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