Reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina is the second of two masterpieces written by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. His first vast work is War and Peace. With The Cossacks, Barnes & Noble included these three novels, complete and unabridged, in its Library of Essential Writers Series published in 2007. I just finished reading Leo Tolstoy last week, Anna Karenina is my first reading of his works.

In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy started with the most quoted line in literary world, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.", which I first saw in my youth without knowing where it was originated. This quote leads readers into a web of complicated love, relationships, families, the moral transgressions and the violations of social norm of Russian high society in the nineteenth-century, and in consequence the tragic death of Anna.

Anna Karenina was unhappily married to Alexei Karenin, fell madly in love with Alexei Vronsky, left her husband and son for Vronsky, gave birth to an illegitimate baby girl by Vronsky, despised by Vronsky's mother, and shunned by her friends in the high society. In the end, she threw herself down a train track, killed, when she perceived that her love for Vronsky was misplaced.

Prince Stephen (Stiva) Oblonsky, Anna's brother, was instrumental in obtaining a favorable divorce term from Alexei Karenin for his sister without much success. Stephen was married to Darya (Dolly) and cheated on his wife throughout most of their marriage. Darya chose to stay for the sake of their children, though unhappy yet secured a respectful position in the society. Darya was sympathetic and very kind to Anna while she was in an agony of despair for her position and was shunned by the society.

A sharp contract to the violent death of Anna was the joyous, honest and solid relationship of Levin and Kitty, who was Darya's youngest sister. Kitty rejected the proposal from Levin when she first met and fell in love with Count Alexei Vronsky. When she learned that Anna and Vronsky were together, she became very ill, went through a deep spiritual transformation, finally accepted Levin who always loved her. They lived a family life in the country, in sync with the social properties as understood by the nineteenth-century Russian high society.

If literature imitates life and the sociopolitical environment at the time of witting, Tolstoy definitely was the master in his time. I was awed by his ability to weave so many complex characters and events into seamless plots in the novel.

My copy of Anna Karenina is 832 pages long and it took me six weeks to read it during my daily commutes on the ferry from Marin to San Francisco in the months of April and May. This novel served me very well as my crash course into Tolstoy's works as it became easier for me to read his War and Peace later. I probably will read it again when I have all the time in the whole world in my retirement.