Anna Karenina: Poetic Painting Of Human Emotions

By Staff

Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 14:14

Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realistic fiction Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is sketching subtlest human gestures and human emotions in a fictional canvas. Real characters, splendid imagination, dare style and a deep look into the contemporary society adds colours to the writer's pen. Although published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical Ruskii Vestnik; the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.

The novel is divided into eight parts. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In the beginning of this novel Leo Tolstoy imagined of a woman from a high class society who had committed adultery. However instead of characterizing the woman as guilty, he painted her picture as a pitiful woman. It is believed that Tolstoy got inspired by Pushkin's heroine Zinaida Volsky to characterize Anna.

Tolstoy wrote and rewrote the novel several times to make it a perfect masterpiece after his War And Peace. He created his own autobiographical character Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, who becomes a major protagonist in the novel. Both Anna and Levin challenge the criteria in the society for a passionate involvement with their own desires which offers a taste of freedom and a trap for destruction.

Anna is the jewel of St. Petersburg society until she leaves her husband for the handsome and charming military officer, Count Vronsky. The lovers go beyond society's external conditions of trivial adulterous dalliances. However Vronsky's love cools and Anna cannot bring herself to return to the husband she detests. Unable to return to a life she hates, she kills herself.

Levin is a wealthy landowner from the provinces who could move in aristocratic circles, but who prefers to work on his estate in the country. Levin tries unsuccessfully to fit into high society when wooing the young Kitty Shcherbatsky in Moscow; he wins her only when he allows himself to be himself.

Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered to form a bridge between realist and modernist novel. The narration is from a third-person-omniscient perspective, shifting between the perspectives of several major characters. Set in the latter half of the nineteenth century Russia, the novel gives glimpses to the country's socio-political issues. He also draws contrasts between the peace and wholesomeness of the country and the decadence of urban society. As a whole the novel contains the nucleus of Tolstoy's programme for non-violence and abstention from worldly riches. This idea makes the novel a classic of all times and Tolstoy as one of the world's most venerated teachers.

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