I have finished reading my first Russian novel. I realize this is not a very big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I'm feeling more than a little proud of myself for this small life accomplishment. It took me four solid months (February-May) to complete this 817 page monster but, to put that in perspective, I also read 11 other books (and started on 2 more) during the time I was working my way through this one and I really think that if I had given this novel my undivided attention, I could have read it in a much shorter span of time.
Anna Karenina was written by the famed Leo Tolstoy and first published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 with the first complete version of the novel appearing in 1878. Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Fyodor Dostoyevsky declared it "flawless as a work of art", William Faulkner described the novel as "the best ever written", and in a Time poll as recent as 2007 it was voted by 125 authors as the "greatest book ever written". Pretty high praise.
There are no less than 11 major English translations of Anna Karenina with the 1901 Constance Garnett translation (later revised in 1965 by Kent and Berberova) and the 2000 Pevear and Volokhonsky translation being the two foremost translations according to scholars. I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky version and while I often found myself wondering how much of the author's tone and impressions might have been lost in translation, I found the novel to be very readable and would recommend this translation to anyone looking to read Anna Karenina.
The book itself is divided into 8 parts which are each broken up into several small sections (the longest having 35 sections and the shortest having 19).
In Anna Karenina, we meet a myriad of characters but the main stories center around Anna herself and a man named Levin. While these two main characters do interact in the book, their stories are mostly separate from one another. Anna's story is mainly about her adulterous affair with the affluent bachelor Count Vronsky while Levin's story details his life as a wealthy country landowner, his marriage, the birth of his first son, and his struggle to accept the Christian faith.
The novel explores a variety of topics including gender, morality, religion, politics, and social class. Tolstoy's themes emerge naturally from the lives of his characters and I was constantly questioning what the author's personal views and motives for writing the novel might be. Tolstoy doesn't explicitly moralize and leaves it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions about the behavior of his characters.
I was very impressed with Tolstoy's ability to capture the human experience in his writing, and I understand why this novel is considered a pinnacle in realist fiction. I could relate to the characters' experiences and emotions, and I often found myself wanting to slap Anna for her poor choices or getting impatient with her jealous inner diatribes against whoever she was mad at. I sympathized with Levin during his little marital scrapes and got annoyed with him whenever he went off on one of his whiny rants. Tolstoy had a gift for writing the human condition accurately but simply.
The name game in this novel got very confusing, not only because my brain isn't used to complicated Russian names but also because the same character could be referred to by any number of complicated Russian names at any point in the book. Bless the translator who would just simplify this and call each person by one easy nickname for the entirety of the novel. (Scholars disagree with me on this, but I don't care. These names are ridiculous, y'all.) I also couldn't care less about the politics in the story. Parts 3 and 7 were particularly slow as I slogged through the evaluations of the feudal system that existed in Russia at the time and the political meetings several of the male characters attended to vote politicians in and out of office. Shoot me.
I was also extremely underwhelmed by the ending of the novel. A seemingly minor plot point (Levin's faith) turned out to be the entire subject of the conclusion of the book and while it was interesting to peek into the Russian religious views of the 19th century, I was left feeling disappointed with some of Levin's spiritual conclusions particularly as they related to differing religious beliefs. The novel ended somewhat abruptly for me despite its crazy 817 page length.
So would I recommend Anna Karenina? Not necessarily. Russian literature isn't for everyone. I personally have eight Russian novels on my Life List, and I think Anna Karenina was a great one to start with. If you're looking to branch into the Russian authors or round out your reading life that way, I definitely would recommend Anna Karenina. If you're wondering if this novel is indispensable to a well-rounded list of classic literature, I'll have to reserve my opinion on that until I get a few more of these Russians under my belt. Ultimately I'm glad I read it, and I sincerely hope I didn't peak too soon by choosing "the greatest book ever written" for my first Russian novel.
Have you read any of the Russian greats? Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pasternak, Nabokov? Which ones are an absolute must? Which one should I tackle next? Have you read Anna Karenina? What did you think of it? I can't wrap up this post without giving a shout-out to my little band of lit lovers who read this one with me. Y'all kept me going, and I'm looking forward to our discussion of this beast of a novel!
