Good fiction has the power to transport us into worlds we can never know, minds we cannot see, portions of the time-space continuum otherwise inaccessible. Really good fiction goes beyond this. For me, excellence in fiction is a matter of enveloping the reader in a full emotional experience wherein the lines between paper and person blur.
Many books have done this for me. They stand out in my mind not just for their superlative prose, whimsical characters, and masterfully woven storylines, but because for the hours spent with those books in my hands (and often many hours between reading sessions), I WAS Meg Murry, or Turtle Wexler, or Ellie Arroway. Walking across my sleepy summer hometown after reading The Stand in one marathon sitting, I was genuinely shocked to find others who had survived. The Road left me similarly mystified. I rocked and smelled sea salt in my landlocked home whilst swimming through The Waves. I kept a mother's vigil along Paula's bedside.
Sometimes it seems these books find me, rather than the other way around. When I was a less encumbered person, I would frequently wander through the stacks of a library or the crowded aisles of a bookstore and just wait for my next friend (or six) to beckon to me. Sometimes one of these friends whispers softly to me, "take me home now, but save me, we're not ready to dance just yet…" Anna Karenina was one such friend.
Ten years ago, I felt I'd received a golden ticket: a dream job, a marvellous fiancé, a new house, and all moving expenses paid to a beautiful city on the other side of the world. Years of tumult and cacophony finally resolved into one harmonious tonic. There were many arrangements to make in a short time, but one item on my to-do list that I eagerly completed was using up my credit at the local bookstore and filling my shipping container with as many books as practicable as my drug of choice was painfully expensive on those golden shores.
I bought a full box of books that day. Some titles were long-standing must reads, some simply looked too inviting not to adopt, others stood on the shelf with a hooker's attitude slurring, "you know you're going to need me some day." Anna Karenina made it clear I needed her, not the other way around.
I knew nothing of the story nor of Tolstoy that day. I hadn't seen the movie (I will not watch films based on novels I think I may want to read until after reading the book) and had never really understood the many references made to it. But it was a literary masterpiece I simply had to have.
For ten years Anna sat on my bookshelf. Sometimes her presence was a comfort, knowing we would spend time together some day. Other times she mocked me; taunting me for not dedicating enough time to reading and for neglecting her for so long. But finally, the time arrived. The imperative I needed arrived exactly when I needed it: a member of the local bibliophile group put out a call to start a reading group to discuss Russian classics. I bit. I found myself immersed in the most important story I could possibly read this year.
Tolstoy's microscopic analysis of his character's inner workings is a super-human feat. Who knows whether or not he was an Aspie (although his semi-autobiographical character Levin certainly seems to silently scream for this diagnosis), but I cannot imagine anyone studying human thoughts, feelings, motivations, and actions in such excruciatingly exacting detail unless they found them perplexing. The meticulous analysis of his characters, their grapplings with inner conflicts, and their unique ways of selecting paths through societal/emotional minefields is both exquisite and enlightening. It allows the reader to thoroughly experience the agony of making a difficult choice, without needing to suffer the real-life consequences of that decision.
I find Vronsky the most fascinating character. His actions are appalling on so many levels, and yet Tolstoy explains his logic so seamlessly there is no room for question.
"Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others are surrounded by the same complexity as he is. So it seemed to Vronsky. And he thought, not without inner pride and not groundlessly, that anyone else would long ago have become entangled and been forced to act badly if he had found himself in such difficult circumstances. Yet he felt that to avoid getting entangled he had to do the accounts and clear up his situation there and then."
"Vronsky's life was especially fortunate in that he had a code of rules which unquestionably defined everything that ought and ought not to be done. The code embraced a very small circle of conditions, but the rules were unquestionable and, never going outside that circle, Vronsky never hesitated a moment in doing what ought be done. These rules determined unquestionably that a card-sharper must be paid but a tailor need not be, that one should not lie to men but may lie to women, that it is wrong to deceive anyone but one may deceive a husband, that it is wrong to pardon insults but one may give insults, and so on. These rules might not all be very reasonable or very nice, but they were unquestionable, and in fulfilling them Vronsky felt at ease and could hold his head high. Only most recently, in regard to his relations with Anna, had he begun to feel that his code of rules did not fully define all circumstances, and to envisage future difficulties and doubts in which he could no longer find a guiding thread.
His present relations with Anna and her husband were simple and clear. They were clearly and precisely defined in the code of rules by which he was guided.
She was a respectable woman who had given him her love, and he loved her; therefore she was a woman worthy of equal and even greater respect than a lawful wife. He would have let his hand be cut off sooner than allow himself a word or a hint that might insult her or fail to show her that respect which a woman may simply count on.
His relations with society were also clear. Everyone might know or suspect it, but no one should dare to talk. Otherwise he was prepared to silence the talkers and make them respect the non-existent honour of the woman he loved.
His relations with the husband were clearest of all. From the moment of Anna's love for him, he had considered his own right to her unassailable. The husband was merely a superfluous and interfering person. No doubt his position was pathetic, but what could be done? One thing the husband had the right to do was ask for satisfaction, weapon in hand, and for that Vronsky had been prepared from the first moment.
But recently there had appeared new, inner relations between himself and her that frightened Vronsky with their indefiniteness. Just yesterday she had announced to him that she was pregnant. And he felt that this news and what she expected of him called for something not wholly defined by the code of rules that guided him in his life. He had indeed been caught unawares, and in the first moment, when she had announced her condition to him, his heart had prompted him to demand that she leave her husband. He had said it, but now, thinking it over, he saw clearly that it would be better to do without that; and yet, in saying so to himself, he was afraid – might it not be a bad thing?"
Then, of course, there is Anna herself. Tolstoy's letters indicate that he was originally wholly unsympathetic to Anna and found her actions and decisions utterly reprehensible. He wished to cast her in a most pejorative light and reserve all consideration for her wronged husband. But as he painstakingly wrote, re-wrote, and revised his novel, he developed much deeper understandings of these two characters and their internal drivers. Anna's husband becomes the self-absorbed, pious, unflinchingly ambitious master who cares nothing of feelings and everything of propriety, whereas she morphs into a most tortured and pitiable soul, caught between her two greatest loves, her ultimate responsibility, and an unmovable husband.
"Though Anna had stubbornly and bitterly persisted in contradicting Vronsky when he told her that her situation was impossible and tried to persuade her to reveal everything to her husband, in the depths of her soul she considered her situation false, dishonest, and wished with all her soul to change it. Coming home from the races with her husband, in a moment of agitation she had told him everything; despite the pain she had felt in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband left, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything would be definite and a least there would be no falsehood and deceit. It seemed unquestionable to her that now her situation would be defined forever. It might be bad this new situation, but it would be definite, there would be no vagueness or falsehood in it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband by uttering those words would be recompensed by the fact that everything would be defined, she thought. That same evening she saw Vronsky but did not tell him about what had happened between her and her husband, though to clarify the situation she ought to have told him.
When she woke up the next morning, the first thing that came to her was the words she had spoken to her husband, and they seemed so terrible to her now that she could not understand how she could have resolved to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words had been spoken, and Alexi Alexandrovich had left without saying anything. 'I saw Vronsky and didn't tell him. Even at the very moment he was leaving, I wanted to call him back and tell him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I hadn't told him at the very first moment. Why didn't I tell him, if I wanted to?' And in answer to this question, a flush of shame poured over her face. She understood what had kept her from doing it; she understood that she was ashamed. Her situation, which had seemed so clarified last night, now suddenly appeared to her not only not clarified, but hopeless. She became terrified of the disgrace which she had not even thought of before. When she merely thought of what her husband was going to do, the most terrible notions came to her. It occurred to her that the accountant would now come to turn her out of the house, that her disgrace would be announced to the whole world. She asked herself where she would go when she was turned out of the house, and could find no answer.
When she thought of Vronsky, she imagined that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be burdened by her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt hostile to him because of it. It seemed to her that the words she had spoken to her husband, and which she kept repeating in her imagination, had been spoken to everyone and that everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to call her maid and still less to go downstairs to see her son and the governess. …
Annushka left, but Anna did not begin to dress; she went on sitting in the same position, her head and arms hanging down, and every once in a while her whole body shuddered, as if wishing to make some gesture, to say something, and then became still again. She kept repeating: 'My God! My God!' But neither the 'my' nor the 'God' had any meaning for her. Though she had never doubted the religion in which she had been brought up, the thought of seeking help from religion in her situation was as foreign to her as seeking help from Alexei Alexandrovich. She knew beforehand that the help of religion was possible only on condition of renouncing all that made up the whole meaning of life for her. Not only was it painful for her, but she was beginning to feel fear before the new, never experienced state of her soul. She felt that everything was beginning to go double in her soul, as an object sometimes goes double in tired eyes. Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know. …
The reminder of her son suddenly brought Anna out of that state of hopelessness which she had been in. She remembered the partly sincere, though much exaggerated, role of the mother who lives for her son, which she had taken upon herself in recent years, and felt with joy that, in the circumstances she was in, she had her domain, independent of her relations with her husband and Vronsky. That domain was her son. Whatever position she was in, she could not abandon her son. Let her husband disgrace her and turn her out, let Vronsky grow cool towards her and continue to lead his independent life (again she thought of him with bitterness and reproach), she could not desert her son. She had a goal in life. And she had to act, to act in order to safeguard that position with her son, so that he would not be taken from her. She even had to act soon, as soon as possible, while he had not yet been taken from her. She had to take her son and leave. Here was the one thing she now had to do. She needed to be calm and to get out of this painful situation. The thought of a matter directly connected with her son, of leaving with him at once for somewhere, gave her that calm."
Yet Alexei does not allow Anna to simply walk away. She faces her Gordian knot: Alexei will not grant her a divorce nor simply let her take their son, she must stay, repent for her actions, and "eradicate the cause of their discord" else all she knows and loves is lost. He values the status quo above all else and she is powerless to fight against it lest her son become collateral damage.
I am only half way through the book, but I know enough spoilers to be aware that Anna does not come to a happy ending. Her grappling provides so much perspective and insight. The story is as timeless as the setting is dated. It serves as an excellent reminder that those who do not learn from history, even fictional personal histories, are destined to repeat it.
