Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Book Review by Esther Lombardi, About.com
Anna Karenina is one of Leo
Tolstoy's greatest literary works. It's the tale of Anna Karenina and her
ultimately tragic love affair with Count Vronsky. This audio production offers
Neville Jason's abridged version of Tolstoy's masterpiece.
What's in the Story
The story for
Anna Karenina apparently came out of an episode in which Leo Tolstoy
arrived at a railway station shortly after a young woman had committed suicide.
She had been the mistress of a neighboring landowner, and the incident stuck in
his mind...
As Tolstoy
biographer Henri Troyat writes, "A dreadful lesson was brought home to
him... He tried to imagine the existence of this poor woman who had given all
for love, only to meet with such a trite, ugly death." Then, Troyat says,
"Her image haunted him for a long time, but not specifically as material
for a book."
When Tolstoy
finally started the story of Anna Karenina, his wife reported in a
letter to her sister, "Yesterday Leo suddenly started to write a novel on
contemporary life. The subject is the unfaithful wife and all the ensuing
tragedy."
So, Tolstoy
creates the character of Anna Karenina, a young woman who finds herself in a
loveless marriage with Karenin. It might not have seemed so intolerable if she
had not met and fallen in love with Count Vronsky.
As a
comparison to Anna's tragic affair, we hear about the relationship between
Kitty and Levin, a conjugal love match. Levin is first rejected by Kitty, since
she has her heart set on Count Vronsky. Since Vronsky's affections are already
taken by Anna Karenina, Kitty's heart is broken and she eventually turns back to
Levin for love and marriage.
In the character of Anna, Tolstoy creates a woman who is perhaps most unhappily destined for tragedy. Anna falls in love with Count Vronsky, only to find that her passions are uncontrollable. She might have continued the relationship in secret, but she defies the "rules," and is forced to pay the ultimate price... She loses all contact with her son; and she is shunned from proper society.
In the character of Anna, Tolstoy creates a woman who is perhaps most unhappily destined for tragedy. Anna falls in love with Count Vronsky, only to find that her passions are uncontrollable. She might have continued the relationship in secret, but she defies the "rules," and is forced to pay the ultimate price... She loses all contact with her son; and she is shunned from proper society.
In the
"Notes," Neville Jason writes, "Thus the forces of society
gradually bear down upon Anna with the same insensibility and inexorable
momentum as the iron monster, which finally crushes the life out of her body on
the railway line."
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