Bill MacKenty

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Anna Karenina and more on the Slavic Heart

I’m continually trying to understand Polish culture and society. My readings into Russian culture have proven highly instructive, and enormously helpful. Anna Karenina - by Leo Tolstoy has proven to be vexing, instructive, and quintessentially Russian.

Stylistically, this book is interesting, quite a bit of “inner dialog” and 3rd person observation which I find slightly annoying. I’m told this sort of “omniscient narrator” is normal for the time this book was written - but as mentioned above, at times I found it a bit much ("to the depths of his soul, Vronsky wanted to kiss her").

The characters and settings are delightful. I sense the place and people quite clearly. Especially the portrayal of Russian aristocracy - it’s magnificent and disturbing - the relationship between the peasantry and the aristocracy.

The book is dripping in symbolism (the guy who gets cut in half by a train, the horse who breaks his back, the sexual / ecstatic mowing of the field) - it’s almost to obvious for me. Why does Tolstoy point so strongly at these things? Perhaps he is pointing less strongly at things I’ve missed!

=== Spoiler Below ===

Anna Karenina dies. I found her to be a quiet and silent presence in the book - she loved another man, and that was a central plot point, but it’s almost like she was the center of gravity around which this book moved. She didn’t say a whole lot. Patriarchal? I don’t know.

I’m so happy I read this book - it’s like a very rich dinner that I need to eat slowly, and savor. But as I continue to struggle to understand Polish culture (and Russian culture) I realize the more I know, the less I know.