Anna Karenina

Some books have a way of parsing through your thoughts and framing them precisely and exquisitely in ways that you couldn't even dream of. 

Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy is one such book and deserves all the acclaim it has been bestowed with. It is by no means an easy book - not because of labored writing or a flawed plot, but because of the deep and dark themes that lace the story. It is a tale of fatalism, plagued with uncertainty and unknowability. 

I have been procrastinating on picking up the book for a very long time but reading the following excerpt from an article in the New Yorker and an upcoming break were the last nails that hooked me to the story. 

"In “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin writes that, for Tolstoy, wisdom consists in the ability “to grasp what human will and human reason can do, and what they cannot.” The only way to find those limits is to struggle against them, but gently, with the goal of finding and accepting them. You can’t think your way to the limits. You have to feel your way, learning through experience and suffering. And there is a risk in experimenting with what will and will not work in life, which is that it might not work. You might move to New York to pursue your dreams, and end up with no career to speak of. You might think you can wait to find the perfect spouse, but wait too long, and end up alone. You might think you can have that affair and still have the love of your spouse and children—but you may be mistaken about what’s possible, and lose everything.

There’s a deep conservatism to this way of thinking. It’s fatalistic, in an off-putting way, since it suggests that the limits of what’s possible are just not knowable in advance, and that experience and tradition are probably our best guides."

And despite its many dark themes, the story is unforgettable as it explores life from the perspectives of so many characters with great finesse and perception. Here are some of the many wonderful phrases and instances where the sentiments echoed with me and in that resonance, I caught a faint glimmer of hope. 

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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.” 

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”

“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”

“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.”

“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

"Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it."

"No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit.'"

"I think… of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love."

"I often think men have no understanding of what's not honorable though they're always talking of it,"

How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!" "Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling. "No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like horses— and you have them; dogs— you have them; shooting— you have it; farming— you have it." "Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't," said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society —owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity— to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life.

"With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better."

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash tray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No, you're not going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you." This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself.

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood , but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.

"The most utterly loathsome and coarse : I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you ?" she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister's eyes. "Father began saying something to me just now…. It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it's not the truth, but I can't drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them— I can't bear to see them. It seems to me they're taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. 

"The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: 'Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.' That's the only way she can forgive me."

In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class , vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

The old prince , like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had grown accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the prince's touchiness. She saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of society, that a mother's duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty's age formed some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men's society; drove about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their husbands was their own affair , and not their parents'. "Marriages aren't made nowadays as they used to be," was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not learn from any one. The French fashion— of the parents arranging their children's future— was not accepted; it was condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of match-making by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same thing: "Mercy on us, it's high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned business. It's the young people have to marry; and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose." It was very easy for anyone to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to be her husband . And, however much it was instilled into the princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her elder sisters.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's wife. Why one ought to have confidence— that is to say, complete conviction that his young wife would always love him— he did not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived. For the first time the question presented itself to him of the possibility of his wife's loving someone else, and he was horrified at it.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh, mercy! why do his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.

In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer.

Anna. "I remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is…. Who has not been through it?"

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what , are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day— that is, forget oneself .

"It's this, don't you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you're very much all of a piece. That's your strong point and your failing. You have a character that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too— but that's not how it is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the aim— and that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided— and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

In life, we sometimes relinquish our freedom too easily, while, at other times, we struggle unwisely against laws that will not change. Give in too easily, and you drift through life; struggle too much, and you suffer for it.

The thing about Levin is that, through some accident of temperament and circumstances, he ends up figuring things out. He struggles and shapes his own destiny just enough to be happy, while never going out of bounds, and ending up like Anna, or like his brother Nikolai, a political radical, who dies impoverished and angry. Somehow, over the course of the book, Levin achieves everything he wants: he is married to Kitty, and they have a beautiful family. And yet, he senses, he has not really improved himself in his soul, and he has done nothing to deserve his happiness. He still feels powerless, pointless, useless. “Happy in his family life,” Tolstoy writes, “a healthy man, Levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.” In the end, he is carried along by the flow of life, and keeps on living. He finds his way to a diffuse kind of faith. There will be no radical transformations, he realizes, either romantic or religious. What is, is. He will try his best to be a good person, within the constraints that his circumstances and nature have placed upon him, and that will be good enough:

I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray—but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!