Review of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

This work, as with all of Tolstoy’s work, is principally didactic. Rosemary Edmonds (the English translator) attempted to sum up the novel with, “No one may build their happiness on another’s pain”. We see this with Vronsky, Anna and Alexei, all characters who chase their own “happiness” at another’s expense. This is in contrast to Kitty and Levin, the heroes of this novel in my opinion, who find their happiness through ~700 pages of pain.

In tune with this, the divinity and virtue of Christian forgiveness spills through all of Tolstoy’s work, but it is particularly pertinent here. What I think Tolstoy tries to communicate is the irrelevance of moral attitude in the connection of souls. We see this in Dolly and Alexei, who forgive their respective spouses for what society would deem sins, for the sake of Duty (Dolly for Oblonsky and Alexei for Anna) and the beauty of empathy (Dolly for Anna and Alexei for Vronsky). This Duty is to the societal structures which make society function, particularly around the function of the family, that being to nurture the next generation. I think there is a Nobility in this, in a Hegelian Philosophy of Right way: a respect for the interwoven roles that constitute a state.

It is said that Tolstoy threw his entire soul into this, his “first true novel”, after which he went “mad” in the post-Turin Nietzschean sense (by which I controversially mean sane again). This divinity of madness seeps through in Part 8: Levin retreats from the competition of Egos by which he once defined himself, instead residing in the jouissance of life activity and duty to the Social.

What appears clear to me is that Tolstoy (like Oscar Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Marx, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Spinoza, Heraclitus, the Buddha, Dorothy Day, Lao Tzu…) points to the root of evil as Individualism. This work adds the interesting modifier of trains. The choo-choo machine symbolises modernity, that which demands things faster. This accelerationism modifies the psyche and tells us our personal happiness and fulfilment are the goal, far from the Eudaimonia of old. We must wait for the choo-choo machines to kills us before our mendacious moment will collapse.

To add a more personal/gossipy side, I think I used to be a Vronsky but am trying to be an Alexei now as the Anna’s of the world disturb me. While everyone’s goal should be the way of the Bodhisattva that Levin embodies (whose narrative follows Tolstoy’s own life), I still have duties to fulfil.