How do you write a review for a beloved classic? A novel many consider one of the best ever written? I’ve now read Anna Karenina once, and I feel I need to read it at least two more times before I do it justice. Classics, after all, are not books you get to judge, not until your own tastes have matured to a certain point, after marinating in wisdom, life, and other great literature.
Classics are works that judge you. If you don’t like a classic, that means your tastes are wrong. Period. Most people will die before they prove an exception to that maxim, before they could ever offer a proper critique, though many try as if they were lobbing invectives at the sun.
So this isn’t a review of Anna Karenina, but a stumbling, drunken appreciation of it. My goal is to get you to read it. That’s it. Joshua Gibbs once said that the goal of teaching a classic in high school is to infuse enough love and curiosity into the student so they would willingly choose to read that classic again later in life, and profit from it. And so that is my humble aim. To get you to read it.
Except for Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina is the easiest classic I’ve ever read, despite being the longest classic I’ve ever read. Halfway through reading it, in anticipation of reading it again, I purchased another copy with a different translation. That’s not something I did for Crime and Punishment.
From the first page, I was hooked and ready for the journey. I think you’ll experience something similar. In many ways, it felt impossibly modern, as if it had been written just a decade ago and someone had successfully pulled off an elaborate prank.
The Friends You Made Along the Way
We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art. We are to take it as a piece of life.
Matthew Arnold
And you’ll find many pieces of life in this book, pieces you recognize as if Tolstoy had been peeping in your window. You’ll see yourself. You’ll see your friends. You’ll see your enemies. The first time you read, everything is new, yet so many things are familiar.
One moment, Tolstoy will describe a posture or attitude you’ve always known and recognized but never quite been able to sculpt into something coherent, but as soon as you read it, the swirl in your mind solidifies and you say, “Yes!” Sometimes audibly. Or sometimes you just chuckle.
From Levin working up the courage and bumbling out a proposal, to the description of “happy terror” two people in love feel as they embark into the unknown, to a mother who, one moment, is so proud of her children she could burst, and then later think they are some of the most wicked children in the world, it’s all familiar and real.
When Anna’s husband greets her at the train station, he says, “Yes, as you can see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after marriage, burned with impatience to see you.” But he says it, and I quote:
…in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a tone of jeering at any one who should say in earnest what he said.
Is this not the modern Millennial posture? Earnestness is not allowed, because to be earnest is to open yourself up to disappointment or ridicule. It is this sarcasm that will prevent Anna’s husband from being sincere and earnest when it is most critical, when she is being seduced by another man.
Every single character is flesh and blood, with veins and muscles and tears and laughter and hopes and heartache, and the ink on the page might as well be the breath of life that animates them inside your head. It drips with life. And you can’t help getting swept up in the drama.
Tolstoy loves these characters. Even his villains. You can sense that he wishes they made different choices. Nearly every character has something admirable about them, and you know that, as far as human judges go, Tolstoy would give you a fair hearing even while stripping away all of your pretensions.
Wisdom for Life
And because you know you are in good hands, hands that have proven themselves time and again, hands that know the contours of the world and the people that walk around in it, you trust the occasional asides and wisdom it tosses out. Both obvious and direct, but also painted on a particular character. There is much to learn and reflect on.
For example, describing Vronksy:
He did not know that this mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seems to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.
Vronsky has some of the same faults as Austen’s Wickham from Pride and Prejudice, but while Austen, ever coy and in her own brilliant way, only shows the crater caused by Wickham, Tolstoy gives us the full portrait and exactly why Vronsky is terrible. Not only that, we immediately recognize the tendency in others or ourselves. Any one of us men could be a Vronsky.
Then Tolstoy will throw us an insight into childhood, which makes us take stock of our own hearts.
Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
And this quick homage to marriage spouted off quickly by a loyal friend.
“But I’m married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one’s wife, if one loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.”
You’ll also learn that adultery doesn’t “just happen.” The great sin that kicks off the drama was first coaxed and coddled into being with discontentment, unwise imaginations, improper yet “innocent” conversations, and other small steps that fanned the ember into a dangerous flame. Let the reader take heed, lest he also fall.
The act itself never gets a wide-angled, lingering shot from the camera. We only bear witness to the direct aftermath, described in such haunting, depressing language that would make any reasonable person recoil at the thought of mimicking such a deed.
As Anna lies sobbing on the floor, begging forgiveness, Vronksy is described as follows:
He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder.
There is no wink at evil, no enticement to the forbidden.
Blue Collar Prose
The prose refuses to point to itself and instead dances out of the way. No blinking lights to call attention to its own brilliance. It is content to be a perfectly clean window into its world. Simple and effective. You don’t read this book for the prose. Like muscles, the prose is meant to perform a job, not preen about in tight shirts, glistening in the sun. And it performs the job admirably. Certainly, the translation (by Constance Garnett) has something to do with this, but she required something to translate, and the final product must have fidelity to the original.
Beware Modern Study Guides
Anna Karenina is a book you can get a lot out of, even as a casual reader. A good teacher could lead you to greater insight and appreciation, but for the layperson, it’s not needed. You certainly don’t need a modern study guide. It’s more likely to lead you into the woods to get lost and devoured by an evil witch than give you any help.
My used copy of the book included Spark Notes as a bonus. I expected them to be lame. I expected them to try to pick my pocket. Instead, they tried burn my house down. I am dumber for having read parts of this guide.
Predictably, its analysis of Anna attempts to frame her as a proto-feminist hero, one who is simply trying to be true to herself. She might not have committed suicide if the shackles of society’s expectations hadn’t strangled her. It also tries to soften her abandonment of her son by insisting she still cared for him because she snuck in to see him on his birthday. That’s like seeing a wolf vomit up the hind leg of a rabbit and conclude that it’s apologizing for its bout of carnivorism.
No.
The wolf only had some indigestion, just like Anna had a sudden bout of motherly feelings. The wolf will continue to devour rabbits, and Anna will continue to ignore her son.
The real kicker, the part that proves whoever wrote this guide should be forced to do manual labor on a chain gang instead of subjecting readers to such nonsense, is the attempt to describe the "forgiveness" motif.
During this explanation, it cites the novel's epigraph: "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."
According to the Spark Notes, this is meant to haunt the novel and convey that forgiveness is, perhaps, not the ultimate virtue after all. Not once does it mention where the quote is from, nor its greater meaning.
Does someone engaged in literary analysis really not recognize a relatively well-known quote from the Bible? And then ignore that context?
God Himself is saying, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay." You are not to engage in vengeance, because it belongs to him.
For the Spark Notes to suggest that "Vengeance is mine. I will repay" is somehow oppositional to the idea of forgiveness is, itself, unforgivable. All of the ink used to print it is wasted, and would have been better off used for drawing mustaches on the people gracing the covers of old dentist office magazines.
It fills me with horror that someone can buy a Spark Notes guide and think they're getting accurate information about a work of art. Don’t do it. Just read the book at your own pace and enjoy the journey.
Read This Book
I’m telling you to read this book because I think you will enjoy it. I think you will be surprised by it. I think you will be delighted by it. There might be certain points where you will be tempted to quit, but I think the momentum you build up will carry you through.
While reading a classic can sometimes feel like eating your vegetables, as if you’re a child starting at broccoli that’s been boiled to a bland, pale, tasteless torture, contemplating the future of a sad night without dessert, this novel is like discovering butter, salt, and cheese and the magic those ingredients can perform on almost any food that’s “good for you.”