Thoughts On... Anna Karenina

In literature, a love story is rarely just a love story. A love story is often a proving ground. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke advises an aspiring poet and admirer to avoid the subject of love, until he has mastered his form enough to be able to handle it. Haruki Murakami, in writing Norwegian Wood, also understood the form of the love story as a stylistic challenge, in which to strip his work bare of surrealist bricolage.

Following the tapestry of human relationships that is War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is epic. Yet, like Joshua Rothman and others, I do not view it as a love story. Characters express and explore love, between mothers and daughters (extensively), mothers and sons, friends and comrades, brothers, and of course, between spouses and would-be spouses. The piquancy of each relationship is given enough space that each relationship seems important, and a means unto itself. But love is often a source of misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Despite the unspoken financial and emotional dependency that characters may claim from each other, each character is assured of his or her own goodwill, so much that the insinuation of bad faith or self-interest hurts. An unfaithful husband is hurt by the possibility that his interest in his wife's property prompts his reconciliation with her. A faithful lover is hurt by the suggestion that he has grown tired of her. And a dutiful husband is hurt by the thought that he wishes to control the thoughts of his unfaithful wife. Truly the road to hell is well-paved. 

Often, the characters feel driven not by what they wish to do, but what they believe others expect of them. It is by losing faith in themselves and their partners, that they lose their humanity and deprive themselves of joy. Anna suspects Vronksy of loving her out of duty, and at once, their star-crossed relationship is shredded. 

While Anna's act of jumping in front of a train seems capricious, it seems driven by the need for certainty. It is an act that she cannot take back once the train has a hold of her, proceeding to dumbly do whatever machines do. Anna pretends to loathe machines, but at least she respects them for doing what they must. She talks of her husband, Karenin, as if he is a machine, disconnected and incapable of love. But he forgives her in stages, much to her utter disappointment. Ultimately a real machine, and not the human Karenin, is able to give Anna the release and vindication that her upright husband and devoted lover could not.

It is hard to imagine how love, devotion to one's family, and the desire to be valued, could lead to such a strong death wish as the one expressed by the main character. But Tolstoy makes no apologies. Interestingly, Vronsky leaves the memory of Anna for the battlefront. The book could have been titled, This is What Drove A Young Man to Volunteer for the Servians. But I am glad that it was not so titled, because I would like to believe that Anna Karenina's brief, wondrous existence was meant to matter. So many circumstances and petty fights could have led to a different outcome, one is tempted to say. But perhaps not! There seems to be no particular justice in the book regarding who lives and who dies. Do any of the characters deserve to suffer? Probably not. Yet they do, and with perplexing contradictions of temper. The notions of science, medicine, religion, and politics fall short of curing the characters of their sometimes overwhelming beliefs.

Anna's final moments involve a search for clarity and conviction, whereas the happy Levin's final appearance reveals that he does not share the thought which had so entranced him a moment earlier. Perhaps the secret to happiness is an embrace of uncertainty, limits, and the small weaknesses and hypocrisies of group life; a mere trifle before the altar of happiness. Tolstoy's work seems to say, all is fair in love and war.