Discussion: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (spoilers)
 

Mobile Read Book Club May Discussion.

A Russian romance novel? What's it about? What did you think of the book, the characters, the setting, the time period.

Let's discuss this tome.

Reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is like a long journey-- seeing sights through the eyes of someone from a different age and culture and with so much lost in translation. The Russian was translated the French was not. I studied French in high school and could understand some of it -- but I needed it translated too. At times I was lost and had to make myself read on regardless. Other times I could smell the rain and feel the hurt and doubt of Tolstoy's characters. I give it three stars but it was far above me and my capacity to understand.

The story was about upper class Russians who were either very wealthy, very in debt or wanting to be. They only found meaning in life or happiness when they sought who they really were and not what the world pushed them to be.

Like I do today, they struggled about why they were fighting Muslems in far off lands and what being "religious" meant.

I need to spend a lot of time "mulling over" the thoughts of Tolstoy. I might even get brave and take on "War and Peace" but not any time soon.

I just started Anna Karenina Friday so really have nothing to add...maybe later. But your comment...

...triggered the memory of a, well, two lengthy book reviews I copied and put in the Calibre metadata of my copy of War and Peace. Both (Michael Dirda of the Washington Post and the other from the New York Review of Books whose author I failed to note) were lauding the then (2007) new translation by "the widely acclaimed team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky " (Dirda). The NYRB review had nothing good to say about the standard Costance Garnett translation, quoting Joseph Brodsky that the "reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren't reading the prose of either one. They're reading Constance Garnett."

I did buy the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation based on the reviews, started it and was actually enjoying it but got interrupted and never went back to it. Think I will start it again this Fall.

Give a holler and I'll post or PM you a copy of the reviews.
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All that politicking to nudge Anna past the finish line first, and now where are all the peeps?

I've hesitated, because I"m going to be a philistine. This was far from the greatest novel ever written, as some of the hype would have it. For such a long book it read very easily. There were lyrical descriptions of the land and of events, and the characterizations overall were compelling. I loved how it showed that people are at base strangers to each other, no matter how loved and understood.

I suspect some of my issues were related to the Garnett translation. In addition, I don't know enough about late 19th-century Russia and the recent emacipation of the serfs to appreciate the nuances of the story. However, there were two serious flaws not related to the translation and the setting. Most seriously, I don't think the character of Anna was entirely successful. We are told she's wonderful, magnetic, and so on, but we don't see that. As the story progresses and she becomes neurotic and nasty, it's hard to keep in mind the supposedly transcendent personality that Tolstoy intended to evoke. And while Levin's agricultural witterings might have been more compelling if I had known more about the economic situation, ending the story with his religious epiphany and not with Anna's swan dive was a ridiculous exercise in conceit by the author regarding his Marty Stu.

OK, shoot me.

Seriously, I enjoyed it. I know I liked it more when I read it as an adolescent, which is the age to be reading Victorian novels anyway.

My apologies, but I tried to read it and gave up (I wasn't keen on it in the first place, tbh). Just not my cup of lapsang souchong.

I'm still reading it.

I read 1984 instead...and enjoyed it. I put AK on my list for "later".

I agree.

Seems like it could have used a good editor. Some parts dragged for me (Levin's agriculture part, the politics part, why the part about Kitty on vacation), and it did seem to end abruptly.

I did like the character development and the different views of the characters.

Some of the history was interesting; for example, that people were fiscally irresponsible, just like today. :)

An enjoyable read, but I don't think I'll re-read it.

Actually, I think Levin and Anna were equally central to the story. They were like two sides to the same coin with similar passionate personalities. Anna was trapped in cold or frivolous relationships, while Levin found happiness with. Kitty.

Late in the book when they finally meet, Tolstoy implies that Anna and Levin would have made a good couple if things had been different.

Tolstoy might have implied it, but I disagree. Sheer maliciousness caused Anna to fascinate Levin, doubly unforgivable given her history with Kitty. Levin might have been good for Anna, but I don't think she'd have been good for him. She wouldn't have tolerated not being the focal point of his existence (the root of her problem with Vronsky) and Levin had big ambitions.

You guys are making this sound a lot more interesting than I'm finding it. I've been falling asleep after about five pages...two extra coffees tonight.
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I thought it was just OK.

Of the two main characters I liked Levin (who feels like a stand in for Tolstoy himself) more than Anna. Some of Levin's rants were interesting and I felt him grow as a character throughout the novel. I really liked Anna at first, but later not so much. She's a vibrant, beautiful and has a magnetic personality, but as we progress and she can't find any type of happiness she becomes kind of pathetic. The character development was pretty well done, but overall things felt a bit disjointed and some parts felt as if they could have been cut as all they were doing was making the book longer.

I'm still reading AK, as I realized it was a book I couldn't read straight through. It was a translated work (not all works translate over well) and I don't have a lot of knowledge of the Russian culture and that time period. Due to that, I decided to spend some time trying to keep that in mind when reading. I didn't know that this was first put out as a serial.

I viewed the beginning Anna just like the society she was in. We saw the surface. We were on the outside looking in. This was the "face" she showed to others (and seemed to carry over to her interactions with others at first). I thought her manner, dress, movement, conversation, and remembering names of the little ones, etc. were a perfect fit for what we were to see as the the society of that time.

The beginning of the book already let me know that all was not as we see with Tolstoy's famous words, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Stiva's and Dolly's differing values and the introduction of Levin and Anna reminded me of Regency class society of England. The very small upper class showed (lived?) an ordered, privileged surface while ignoring the poverty of the lower classes. I felt Levin was used to show some of the plight of the rural peasants and how others of his class saw his zeal as just a young man's enthusiasm. Ideals vs reality of the class in which he was a part; he would grow-up.

I'm still reading and thinking, so I may change my perception of the overall novel and characters, but so far I am really enjoying the view into Russian class culture of the time.

I think both of these were significant factors in my reaction. At one point, I decided largely to avoid translated works, because IMO they almost never are successful. But I know it can't be helped, and for critical works a translation (even only adequate) is vastly preferable to not knowing it at all.

I know the second affected me a lot. For this category I nominated the first Palliser novel by Trollope (zero interest, lol!) and it would have been approximately the same time period. But I'm reasonably familiar with English politics and culture of the mid-19th century and I know I would have been fascinated by the minutia that fleshed out my understanding. My eyes wouldn't have glazed over as they did with Levin's agricultural theories, since all I know about that time period in Russia is that Alexander II had freed the serfs and their lot worsened in the short term.

You make a good point about serialization. It was typical of those doorstop Victorian novels, but it presents problems with the structure when read as a whole. One of my objections was the anti-climax of Levin's religious conversion, instead of ending the book with Anna's suicide. But the Levin bit was added later (a mistake, IMO) when it didn't make it into the original release.

A lot of great comments so far. I have always thought Anna Karenina deserves its ranking as a classic novel, though truth be told I have always enjoyed War and Peace more. It is hard to put ones self into the characters of novel, especially Anna, as we live in such different times. The constraints of religion and society were so much more overwhelming, back then marriage really was thought to be until death do part, not until one decides that he or she just doesn't want to be married anymore.

Tolstoy certainly was writing about and from the point of view of the upper class. Even in Levin's interactions with peasants he [Levin] takes a paternalistic attitude and does not really question his right to profit from their labor.

I thought that at times Tolstoy's character development was brilliant. As an example the entire Chapter 8 of Part II which is devoted to who Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin was as a person and his relationship to Anna.

I also felt that the religious awakening of Levin at the end of the novel did not sit well. To have ended with the suicide of Anna would have been too abrupt, but I would have been fine with it ending with Chapter 5 in Part VIII. The fate of Vronsky (at least in the near term) was settled at that point. I think though that Tolstoy developed the contrast between Vronsky and Anna on one hand, and Levin and Kitty on the other to make an over arching moral statement. What I have always taken away from Tolstoy (both from AK and War and Peace) is that he believed there was such a thing as “The Russian Soul” and that was intimately tied to the land and agriculture, and also to faith in the traditional church. Levin and Kitty are rewarded for adherence while Anna an Vronsky are punished for straying. The remaining part of the novel, including Levin becoming religious was part of this.

A telling quote:

(Part VI Chapt. 25).

Of less importance, but I found it interesting that Tolstoy wove in two trends prevalent in the sort of upper class society of the time, not just in Russia but Europe and America as well. One was the high interest in spiritualism and mysticism. Charlatans like Landau thrived in that atmosphere.

Also Tolstoy certainly implied that by the time of her death Anna was addicted to morphine. Perhaps contributing to her suicidal state?

I'm midway through Part IV. I'll be ready to join this conversation sometime around August.

I decided to quote just this part of your post, because I mostly agree with everything else that was said on here, but as far as character development goes, this one left me wanting. I guess you could argue that Tolstoy tries to give an insight into his characters' psychological motivations, but in the case of Anna Karenina, this didn't come across for me. It felt like every chapter served to intensify her neurosis. And while that can be justified given her situation, the last few chapters concerning her and Vronsky just came off as unbearable. Alright, she had an opium problem, that much was obvious. But still, when every exchange serves as a setup for a meaningless conflict which always has the same structure with slightly different wording, it became almost senseless to me. Her inner monologues became so annoying by the end that I couldn't believe her thoughts had any progression. Always the same thoughts, over and over and over. I know, she was ill, but it still felt oh so contrived to me. I don't know..
Concerning the narrative descriptions of characters' mental lives, I still haven't read a better novel than Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

Anyway, what I really wanted to bring up was that it seemed to me that Tolstoy threw in quite a few comments into the story that appear totally offhand, as though they were meaningless but sound really important at the time. Let me give you an example of what I mean: Levin and Kitty's wedding. In that chapter, there's a passage where the narrator says (of Kitty): All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life."

Now, when I read that she was repulsed by him, it sticks in my mind, and all the time I wait for some sort of working through of this repulsion, but it's never resolved in the book. It's just left dangling there, glossed over as it seems and never mentioned again. It just felt... overlooked. And I think I found a couple more instances of this, but can't find the highlights now.

Perhaps the Russian word translated as "repulsion" has a less negative connotation than the English equivalent.

Think of repulsion as the simple opposite of attraction. All couples have qualities that attract one another and other qualities that repel. It's a matter of the importance one places on these differences.

I know a preacher who will carefully prepare his sermons to culminate in his message for the morning He will skillfully accomplish this. Then, instead of closing his bible and walking away with his mission wonderfully accomplished, he would continue on with embellishments to his point losing the power of his closing. I think Tolstoy did the same thing. Part Eight would have been better left out or worked in before the death of Anna.

But maybe he had a different message that I missed completely.

I never thought of it as a linguistic issue. That could be it, thanks.

My curiosity overcame my frugality upon discovering a Pevear/Volokhonsky translation on Amazon.

P/V:
" All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still incomprehensible to her, with whom she was united by some feeling still more incomprehensible than the man himself, now drawing her to him, now repulsing her, and all the while she went on living in the circumstances of her former life. Living her old life, she was horrified at herself, at her total, insuperable indifference to her entire past:..."

Garnett:
"All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to all her own past,..."

Seems to me P/V is saying he was the actor, drawing and repulsing her, the exact opposite of what Garnett is saying.

I've skimmed other parts and the difference is amazing. I would say Garnett is wordier, more stilted...but of course she was translating at the turn of the century. Not totally because it cost 15 bucks, ugh, I prefer Pevear and Volokhonsky and will read the rest of the book with it.

Pevear and Volokhonsky is supposed to be pretty good. I went with the Maude translation and thought it fine.

I've been reading AK one or two sections at a time, especially, since I found out this was originally put out serialized over almost 4 years -- from wikipedia: "...a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over issues that arose in the final installment; therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form." -- I can see how this would do well when published over time like that. For myself, I need the time to think about it, as I read.

I am also curious as to the translated word choices and became even more intrigued by the comments by bobertson, arkietech, Ben G, and CharlieBird. So, of course, instead of doing what I am suppose to be doing, I did some searching based on the below quote from CharlieBird.

I found the Russian book and the passage under discussion, below. Google translate doesn't do it justice and I would love to know how a native Russian speaker would translate it.

I am not familiar with Tolstoy enough to know what his "voice" would be or what his style would be in the word phrasing or choices, so of course, I am now wondering how much I am really missing when reading a translation.

:rofl: Who's up for reading the entire novel rendered into English by Google Translate? :p

Well, this explains a lot..
Thanks a lot for the comparison, CharlieBird. Much appreciated.
Now I wish I'd overcome my frugality as well. Maybe in another life.

I still have 10% left to read, and I agree that the book could have used a good editor.
But I also think that these lengthy parts (like Lewjin's agriculture part and his experiences at the elections) help the reader to understand the characters.

Totally agree. I know for a fact Spanish loses much in translation. But what I really want to know is how in the hell you ever found that passage in the Russian edition. It took me about an hour in the English version using the search key.
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:laughter: thru lunch and still w/a ePage image clearly in my mind.

Between this and your August comment yesterday...well, you are just too funny.
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can someone explain how to do a multiple quote post?

Long complicate story about me and understanding those around me. Just picture me with lots of translation dictionaries reading about word meanings and use, then later on using the internet for as many as I could find, just to learn if what was being written or said was what it really was, so I could respond or understand. Then picture me using back translation to see if it really does mean that. Think of your Spanish example and how it doesn't always back translate correctly and misses the meaning that is being conveyed in the original language. I found that meaning can also rely on culture understanding beyond just the what a word means. You can also see syntax and word choice used and get an idea of the original language family which helps in giving an idea of the meaning of a word choice used (even when it is not how it is normally used).

Which is why I know I am missing so much in this book.

So, I had a general idea of place in storyline and started looking for the area used, then translated parts and pieces until I found the section. :)
Right next to the quote button (on the right side) is a smaller button. Just click all those you want to multi quote and then when you are at the last one, just hit the regular quote button. The window will open with all your multi quotes and the final quote one. :)

What struck me about the character of Anna was how her behavior fits that of someone suffering from the personality disorder known as Borderline Personality Disorder.

Explaining her behavior as a personality disorder sounds simplistic but if you've ever worked with or had to deal with someone who has this disorder, the similarity is uncanny. Her actions, her moodiness, her self-destructive behavior seemed predictable if I asked "What would a person with BPD do next"?

I think Tolstoy's genius was in describing this disorder so well without having any name for it (although I think Dostoyevsky used the term "infernal woman" or less often, "infernal man" ). Having read AK, I realize it was around long before it was described in the medical literature.

jay

If Anna Karenina was not to your taste, perhaps you would prefer this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Android-Kareni.../dp/1594744602

:offtopic: Slightly off-topic: Tolstoy was an interesting cat, from what I've read. He professed to have a deep and profound love for "humanity", but couldn't be bothered to like individual people. :eek:

I am impressed speechless with this picture. And consider the double translation, say Russian to English to Spanish or Arabic!

¿I also wondered at your OS? As I recall Vista was ranked at the bottom by most of the 'experts'.
(thanks for the posting explanation)
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BPD, yes, very much so. Thanks for sharing. I am liking AK a lot more, directly attributable to my late start reading it and this thread.
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That's funny - I'm entirely opposite.

Don't be too impressed, it was solely a survival skill and one I am still not too great at. :D My first love was XP then when it was not able to be _saved_, I had to move to Vista. Not my favorite, but still running well and strong, so I'll live with it until it dies. :)