Last summer, the Neland Women's Book Club sat in a circle and caressed books lovingly, holding them up so we could all see the covers and doing our best to sell everyone else on the books we wanted to read. With 12 slots to fill, one a month, it's hard to make the choices. Roze wanted to read Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. She sold us on it, in spite of the fear and trembling that the combination of the words "Russian novel" and "870 pages" inspired.
Tonight she took the reins as leader, and what a fine job she did. It's a gamble to choose a long, older book, as there is always the fear that maybe only three people will show up. Tonight we had a baker's dozen, and we had a wonderful discussion. We also got prizes. Roze quizzed us with a gift bag full of items--we were supposed to identify what each item had to do with the novel. The tiny bottle of vodka was the most remarked-upon item. And she had a gift bag for all of us, so look out, world.
This in spite of the fact that many of us could not answer the questions. A couple of us had not had time to read the book but only watched the movie or scanned the Cliff's Notes. Which is exactly where I would have been myself if I hadn't read it in an unexplained fit of classics reading 8 years ago. And frankly, I remembered very little. So this discussion both reminded me of what I read back then and opened up the story in new ways.
The book is made up of contrasts. City vs. country. Nobility vs. peasant. Social codes vs. true morality. Male vs. female. Is it any wonder that he wrote a book called War and Peace? And the characters come through clearly because they contrast against each other.
We spent a bit of time wondering why this novel is entitled Anna Karenina, when Levin seems to be the more important character. A couple of theories came up: perhaps the fact that the book was published serially in a magazine over the course of a couple of years meant that the story started out with Anna, but later Levin came to be more important. Or perhaps Anna is the symbol of the old order--nobility that is going down, while the peasants and the hardworking landowners are on the rise.
Many expressed their frustration with Anna and the other characters, tired of reading through their every self-absorbed thoughts. And how could Anna have left her beloved son for this new lover? One of our new friends, Ying He, had a more compassionate point of view of Anna, saying that Anna's tragedy was meeting Vronsky. If she hadn't, she might have found happiness in spending time with her son and in the benefits of her social world, even though her older husband was not ideal. When she met Vronsky, it was like feeling the warmth of a nearby fire, and she wanted more of the heat. In the end she destroyed herself getting to close to the fire. This is, after all, the very nature of temptation--being drawn in by something that enlivens, quickens and warms you, only to find that if you pursue it, you pursue self-destruction. She also mentioned that the choices in real life are not clear-cut; you don't just choose A or B, because there are complex consequences to either choice. In this novel, Tolstoy recognizes and reflects the complexity of those life choices.
Helen mentioned [spoiler alert] that she knew going in that Anna was going to throw herself in front of a train, and at a certain point she was so tired of Anna that she couldn't wait for it to happen. Then she read somewhere that the thought processes as Anna contemplates her demise are some of the most beautifully written in literature. Huh.
We, on the other hand, found some beautiful writing at the moment of Levin's conversion. "He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them. Now it was clear to him that he could only live by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up." Hope for the parent of children who are wandering. Then later, "'Can this be faith?' he thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. 'My God, I thank Thee!' he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled his eyes." Here is where I must admit that I remember nothing of this lovely scene from my long-ago reading. I think at that point I had been working so hard to finish the book that I was reading without comprehending!
Russia was moving into a new paradigm--the serfs had been freed, and the old order was threatened. Tolstoy had made some contributions to social reform for the peasants, and this novel has a romanticized view of peasant life. Levin lives on his land, works in the field with the peasants and enjoys their festivities. The problems of the poor little rich girls seem much more complex than the lives of the people living on the land, perhaps because Tolstoy knew more of those problems. Certainly the people working the land had their own challenges, but we are not so privy to them.
Thelma's husband listened to the entire book on CD with her on a road trip. He said that Anna just needed a job. She, herself, thinks that Tolstoy needed an editor; this story could have been told with much less detail. Meanwhile, Marti suggests that if we met Anna now, we'd just recommend a good therapist to deal with her fragility and anxieties.
Sue recommends highly the PBS Masterpiece Theater version of the book. I'm looking forward to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment