Every time I read Anna Karenina by Count Leo Tolstoy, I am absolutely more in love with his natural talent for writing excellent novels, and the flavor of classic Russian literature. He vividly portrays the emotions and thoughts of each of his characters, from the hall porter to the hunting dog. It’s incredible. I’ve never read a book by an author who understands all walks of life so well, and who can make the reader relate to each one, as if they were in the shoes of the characters in the book.
Oftentimes I stop and wonder how he knows the emotions of the women in his novel so well. For instance, Anna Karenina is absolutely terrified of her husband’s (staged by the end) magnanimous attitude. She loves Vronsky, and yet is still held in reserve through most of the book. It follows through till the end, when she despairs and ends her life. But it’s more complex than that, and actually explains what she is feeling and thinking at each stage in her rise and decline.
Anna is an enigma to everyone except the reader and the author. She’s absolutely stunning, yet her life is nothing at all like we would imagine it to be from outward appearances. I don’t envy her in the least bit. The heartache that she caused all those around her, including her son and her own self, leaves nothing to envy. I pity her, not in a judgmental way, but from the viewpoint of someone who understands that we all make mistakes… just sometimes the mistakes we make are on a grander scale than we can comprehend.
Tolstoy adds in bits and pieces of information between all the lines. Different scenes in the novel make one think – such as when Vronsky decides to become a painter, and attempts to capture the essence of Anna Karenina. “He liked the graceful and showy French manner more than any other, and in this manner he began painting a portrait of Anna in Italian costume, and to him and to everyone who saw it this portrait seemed very successful.” Vronsky has developed an obsession with an Anna Karenina that he has made up, painted himself will all his high airs, and for now the painting of Anna seems succesful.
Later on he is annoyed with a professional artist who comes to paint a portrait of Anna, because that one is so accurate and so real, capturing everything that he couldn’t draw out of her. He stops working on his portrait, frustrated and ashamed.
Amazing book. A “must-read” for all those who haven’t picked it up. You think that you know some good authors that have a well-defined plot and reveal their characters well, then I suggest you read this book of Leo Tolstoy’s and compare. War and Peace is much the same, though I found it a bit more mechanical than Anna Karenina.
Leo Tolstoy continues to impress and amaze all those aspiring authors who follow in his shoes, providing an example of what it is truly like to create a work of art using language and paper.
If you have read it, let me know what you think about it. Or about Russian Literature, in general – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin…
