“Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy

It took me the whole of August and some of September to work my way through over 800 pages of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of ‘Anna Karenina’ and it was, of course, a magnificent reading experience. I wish I had known less about the story and the characters before I started – the inevitable consequence of having seen an unforgettable BBC television dramatisation at the impressionable age of twelve in 1977. But there were still some surprises and plenty to admire.

The title suggests that the whole book is focused on one character – Anna – but that is misleading. There are in fact seven major characters and several further minor ones, and one in the form of Konstantin Levin who is really more prominent than Anna. It famously starts with the line about happy and unhappy families, but it is really in essence a novel about love and marriage. At its heart is the contrast between one unhappy marriage that disintegrates and another which is ultimately happy. The reasons are explored through the characters actions. Levin and Kitty’s relationship thrives, despite problems and struggles, because they act dutifully towards one another and make it work. Anna and Karenin’s marriage flounders because of her affair with Vronsky, which turns out to be less satisfactory than she hopes and leads to a forced separation from her son. There is thus a moral message in there, as well as plenty of commentary on Russian society in the 1870s at a time of intellectual and economic turbulence.

The names are, of course, not always easy to keep track of, but in all other respects it is a completely absorbing and quite undemanding read. Some say that they find the passages that are concerned with agricultural reform in the wake of the emancipation of serfs to be tedious. I did not find that, although my interest waned a touch in the chapters when the nobles get together to elect officials. But these sections are more than balanced with others that are just fantastic – the hunting scene seen through the eyes of a dog, Anna’s ultimate mental breakdown seen from her perspective and the utterly splendid passage in which Kitty’s labour when giving birth to her son is seen through the eyes of an ignorant, panicky and excited father in Levin. I guess this was all very innovative for its time and is the reason that the novel can be considered highly influential as well as brilliant.

I also liked the non-judgemental approach Tolstoy takes. He refrains from portraying anyone as too villainous or too heroic. The characters are all very real and are subtly portrayed. They have strengths and weaknesses, mixed emotions, diverse motivations and a capacity for making good and bad decisions. We understand them and care for them all in different ways. It is a deeply serious work of fiction that is concerned with how best to live one's life. Anna Karenina is really no more or less than the ultimate towering achievement of nineteenth century literature.