Some reasons to go ahead and read Anna Karenina…
1. Dining with Oblonsky. A cheating husband and a spendthrift but, next to Kitty maybe, the most likable character in the book. He seems to have an understanding of people, he seems to like people as they are, as opposed to Levin. And he knows how to enjoy himself at a restaurant. When he and Levin dine together near the beginning of the book, Levin preoccupied, thinking only of his proposal to Kitty, the whole novel is held up while Oblonsky hums and haws over what to order. Not Levin, not the waiter, certainly not the reader, can resist this picture of voluptuousness: the “sloshy oysters” and Oblonsky with his “moist and shining eyes”…
Stepan Arkadyich fell to thinking.
‘Shouldn’t we change our plan, Levin?’ he said, his finger pausing on the menu. And his face showed serious perplexity. ‘Are they good oysters? Mind yourself!’
‘Flensburg, your highness, we have no Ostend oysters.’
‘Flensburg, yes, but are they fresh?’
‘Came in yesterday, sir.’
‘In that case, shouldn’t we begin with oysters, and then change the whole plan? Eh?’
‘It makes no difference to me. I like shchi and kasha best, but they won’t have that here.’
‘Kasha à la Russe, if you please?’ the Tartar said, bending over Levin like a nanny over a child.
‘No, joking aside, whatever you choose will be fine. I did some skating and I’m hungry. And don’t think,’ he added, noticing the displeased expression on Oblonsky’s face, ‘that I won’t appreciate your choice. I’ll enjoy a good meal.’
‘To be sure! Say what you like, it is one of life’s enjoyments,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘Well, then, my good man, bring us two – no, make it three dozen oysters, vegetable soup …’
‘Printanière,’ the Tartar picked up. But Stepan Arkadyich evidently did not want to give him the pleasure of naming the dishes in French.
‘Vegetable soup, you know? Then turbot with thick sauce, then … roast beef – but mind it’s good. And why not capon – well, and some stewed fruit.’
The Tartar, remembering Stepan Arkadyich’s manner of not naming dishes from the French menu, did not repeat after him, but gave himself the pleasure of repeating the entire order from the menu: ‘Soupe printanière, turbot sauce Beaumarchais, poularrde a l’estragon, macédoine de fruits …’ and at once, as if on springs, laid aside one bound menu, picked up another, the wine list, and offered it to Stepan Arkadyich.
‘What shall we drink?’
‘I’ll have whatever you like, only not much, some champagne,’ said Levin.
‘What? To begin with? Though why not, in fact? Do you like the one with the white seal?’ ‘Cachet blanc,’ the Tartar picked up.
‘Well, so bring us that with the oysters, and then we’ll see.’
‘Right, sir. What table wine would you prefer?’
‘Bring us the Nuits. No, better still the classic Chablis.’
‘Right, sir. Would you prefer your cheese?’
‘Yes, the Parmesan. Unless you’d prefer something else?’
‘No, it makes no difference to me,’ said Levin, unable to repress a smile.
And the Tartar, his tails flying over his broad hips, ran off and five minutes later rushed in again with a plate of opened oysters in their pearly shells and a bottle between his fingers.
Stepan Arkadyich crumpled the starched napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat, and, resting his arms comfortably, applied himself to the oysters.
‘Not bad,’ he said, peeling the sloshy oysters from their pearly shells with a little silver fork and swallowing them one after another. ‘Not bad,’ he repeated, raising his moist and shining eyes now to Levin, now to the Tartar.
Levin ate the oysters, though white bread and cheese would have been more to his liking. But he admired Oblonsky. Even the Tartar, drawing the cork and pouring the sparkling wine into shallow thin glasses, then straightening his white tie, kept glancing with a noticeable smile of pleasure at Stepan Arkadyich.
2. Farming with Levin. A long day of exhausting work. Beautiful imagery.
3. Hunting with Levin and Laska. Again, beautiful imagery: “Smoke from the shooting, like milk, spread white over the green grass.” I like his way with description. White, green. There’s a reserve to it. Nothing over-elaborate.
And then there’s this dog of Levin’s, with his amazingly rich inner life…
She paused briefly, as if to ask if it would not be better to finish what she had begun. But he repeated the order in an angry voice, pointing to a water–flooded hummocky spot where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending to search in order to give him pleasure, ran all over the hummocks and then went back to the former place, and immediately sensed them again. Now, when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and, not looking where she put her feet, stumbling in vexation over high hummocks and getting into the water, but managing with her strong, supple legs, she began the circle that would make everything clear to her. Their smell struck her more and more strongly, more and more distinctly, and suddenly it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was there, behind that hummock, five steps away from her. She stopped and her whole body froze. On her short legs she could see nothing ahead of her, but she knew from the smell that it was sitting no more than five steps away. She stood, sensing it more and more and delighting in the anticipation. Her tense tail was extended and only its very tip twitched. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears pricked up a little. One ear had got folded back as she ran, and she was breathing heavily but cautiously, and still more cautiously she turned more with her eyes than her head to look at her master. He, with his usual face but with his ever terrible eyes, was coming, stumbling over hummocks, and extremely slowly as it seemed to her. It seemed to her that he was moving slowly, yet he was running.
I like these parts…
‘Flush it, flush it,’ cried Levin, nudging Laska from behind.
‘But I can’t flush anything,’ thought Laska. ‘Where will I flush it from? I can sense them from here, but if I move forward, I won’t be able to tell where they are or what they are.’ Yet here he was nudging her with his knee and saying in an excited whisper: ‘Flush it, Lasochka, flush it!’
‘Well, if that’s what he wants, I’ll do it, but I can’t answer for myself any more,’ she thought and tore forward at full speed between the hummocks.
Talk about omniscience.
2. The birth of Levin and Kitty’s child. For my money, the strongest scenes in the whole book, next to those leading to Anna’s suicide, are those that describe the tide of emotions that go through Levin as his wife goes into labour and finally delivers their first child. As Nabokov says, Tolstoy liked the idea of a painful, natural birth. These passages are comic at first - the exaggerated fears - and, later, sublime…
Suddenly there was a scream unlike anything he had ever heard. The scream was so terrible that Levin did not even jump up, but, holding his breath, gave the doctor a frightened, questioning look. The doctor cocked his head to one side, listened, and smiled approvingly. It was all so extraordinary that nothing any longer astonished Levin: ‘Probably it should be so,’ he thought and went on sitting. Whose scream was it? He jumped up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, went round Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and stood in his place at the head of the bed. The screaming had ceased, but something was changed now. What – he did not see or understand, nor did he want to see and understand. But he saw it from Lizaveta Petrovna’s face: her face was stern and pale and still just as resolute, though her jaws twitched a little and her eyes were fixed on Kitty. Kitty’s burning, tormented face, with a strand of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her raised hands asked for his. Seizing his hands in her sweaty hands, she started pressing them to her face.
‘Don’t leave, don’t leave! I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid!’ she spoke quickly. ‘Mama, take my earrings. They bother me. You’re not afraid? Soon, Lizaveta Petrovna, soon …’
She spoke quickly, quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly her face became distorted, and she pushed him away from her.
‘No, it’s terrible! I’ll die, I’ll die! Go, go!’ she cried, and again came that scream that was unlike anything in the world.
Levin clutched his head and ran out of the room. ‘Never mind, never mind, it’s all right!’ Dolly said after him. But whatever they said, he knew that all was now lost. Leaning his head against the doorpost, he stood in the next room and heard a shrieking and howling such as he had never heard before, and he knew that these cries were coming from what had once been Kitty. He had long ceased wishing for the child. He now hated this child. He did not even wish for her to live now; he only wished for an end to this terrible suffering.
‘Doctor! What is it? What is it? My God!’ he said, seizing the doctor by the arm as he came in.
‘It’s nearly over,’ said the doctor. And the doctor’s face was so serious as he said it that Levin understood this ‘nearly over’ to mean she was dying.
Forgetting himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was Lizaveta Petrovna’s face. It was still more stern and frowning. Kitty’s face was not there. In place of it, where it used to be, was something dreadful both in its strained look and in the sound that came from it. He leaned his head against the wooden bedstead, feeling that his heart was bursting. The terrible screaming would not stop, it became still more terrible and then, as if reaching the final limit of the terrible, it suddenly stopped. Levin did not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt: the screaming stopped, and there was a quiet stirring, a rustle and quick breathing, and her faltering, alive, gentle and happy voice softly said: ‘It’s over.’
He raised his head. Her arms resting strengthlessly on the blanket, remarkably beautiful and quiet, she silently looked at him and tried but was unable to smile.
And suddenly from that mysterious and terrible, unearthly world in which he had lived for those twenty–two hours, Levin felt himself instantly transported into the former, ordinary world, but radiant now with such a new light of happiness that he could not bear it. The taut strings all snapped. Sobs and tears of joy, which he could never have foreseen, rose in him with such force, heaving his whole body, that for a long time they prevented him from speaking.
4. Landau, the supposed clairvoyant. A very minor character introduced late in the novel whose whim is responsible for Anna’s being denied a divorce. Like the scene-stealing doctor at the end of Madame Bovary (I remember him being a giant - I don’t know if it says that in the book), this spoilt little troll of a man, just in from France and suddenly the toast of the Russian aristocracy, huddled on the couch and pretending to be asleep, makes an interesting late appearance in the book. He’s there for just one chapter.
5. Anna’s last day, her suicide. Her reasons are half-imagined, illogical, but she follows them to their logical conclusion as though she had no other choice, realizing only when she’s already crouched under the train how she’s only arbitrarily put herself there. I wonder if all suicides aren’t like this.
Some reasons to go ahead and read Anna Karenina…
1. Dining with Oblonsky. A cheating husband and a spendthrift but, next to Kitty maybe, the most likable character in the book. He seems to have an understanding of people, he seems to like people as they are, as opposed to Levin. And he knows how to enjoy himself at a restaurant. When he and Levin dine together near the beginning of the book, Levin preoccupied, thinking only of his proposal to Kitty, the whole novel is held up while Oblonsky hums and haws over what to order. Not Levin, not the waiter, certainly not the reader, can resist this picture of voluptuousness: the “sloshy oysters” and Oblonsky with his “moist and shining eyes”…
Stepan Arkadyich fell to thinking.
‘Shouldn’t we change our plan, Levin?’ he said, his finger pausing on the menu. And his face showed serious perplexity. ‘Are they good oysters? Mind yourself!’
‘Flensburg, your highness, we have no Ostend oysters.’
‘Flensburg, yes, but are they fresh?’
‘Came in yesterday, sir.’
‘In that case, shouldn’t we begin with oysters, and then change the whole plan? Eh?’
‘It makes no difference to me. I like shchi and kasha best, but they won’t have that here.’
‘Kasha à la Russe, if you please?’ the Tartar said, bending over Levin like a nanny over a child.
‘No, joking aside, whatever you choose will be fine. I did some skating and I’m hungry. And don’t think,’ he added, noticing the displeased expression on Oblonsky’s face, ‘that I won’t appreciate your choice. I’ll enjoy a good meal.’
‘To be sure! Say what you like, it is one of life’s enjoyments,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘Well, then, my good man, bring us two – no, make it three dozen oysters, vegetable soup …’
‘Printanière,’ the Tartar picked up. But Stepan Arkadyich evidently did not want to give him the pleasure of naming the dishes in French.
‘Vegetable soup, you know? Then turbot with thick sauce, then … roast beef – but mind it’s good. And why not capon – well, and some stewed fruit.’
The Tartar, remembering Stepan Arkadyich’s manner of not naming dishes from the French menu, did not repeat after him, but gave himself the pleasure of repeating the entire order from the menu: ‘Soupe printanière, turbot sauce Beaumarchais, poularrde a l’estragon, macédoine de fruits …’ and at once, as if on springs, laid aside one bound menu, picked up another, the wine list, and offered it to Stepan Arkadyich.
‘What shall we drink?’
‘I’ll have whatever you like, only not much, some champagne,’ said Levin.
‘What? To begin with? Though why not, in fact? Do you like the one with the white seal?’ ‘Cachet blanc,’ the Tartar picked up.
‘Well, so bring us that with the oysters, and then we’ll see.’
‘Right, sir. What table wine would you prefer?’
‘Bring us the Nuits. No, better still the classic Chablis.’
‘Right, sir. Would you prefer your cheese?’
‘Yes, the Parmesan. Unless you’d prefer something else?’
‘No, it makes no difference to me,’ said Levin, unable to repress a smile.
And the Tartar, his tails flying over his broad hips, ran off and five minutes later rushed in again with a plate of opened oysters in their pearly shells and a bottle between his fingers.
Stepan Arkadyich crumpled the starched napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat, and, resting his arms comfortably, applied himself to the oysters.
‘Not bad,’ he said, peeling the sloshy oysters from their pearly shells with a little silver fork and swallowing them one after another. ‘Not bad,’ he repeated, raising his moist and shining eyes now to Levin, now to the Tartar.
Levin ate the oysters, though white bread and cheese would have been more to his liking. But he admired Oblonsky. Even the Tartar, drawing the cork and pouring the sparkling wine into shallow thin glasses, then straightening his white tie, kept glancing with a noticeable smile of pleasure at Stepan Arkadyich.
2. Farming with Levin. A long day of exhausting work. Beautiful imagery.
3. Hunting with Levin and Laska. Again, beautiful imagery: “Smoke from the shooting, like milk, spread white over the green grass.” I like his way with description. White, green. There’s a reserve to it. Nothing over-elaborate.
And then there’s this dog of Levin’s, with his amazingly rich inner life…
She paused briefly, as if to ask if it would not be better to finish what she had begun. But he repeated the order in an angry voice, pointing to a water–flooded hummocky spot where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending to search in order to give him pleasure, ran all over the hummocks and then went back to the former place, and immediately sensed them again. Now, when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and, not looking where she put her feet, stumbling in vexation over high hummocks and getting into the water, but managing with her strong, supple legs, she began the circle that would make everything clear to her. Their smell struck her more and more strongly, more and more distinctly, and suddenly it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was there, behind that hummock, five steps away from her. She stopped and her whole body froze. On her short legs she could see nothing ahead of her, but she knew from the smell that it was sitting no more than five steps away. She stood, sensing it more and more and delighting in the anticipation. Her tense tail was extended and only its very tip twitched. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears pricked up a little. One ear had got folded back as she ran, and she was breathing heavily but cautiously, and still more cautiously she turned more with her eyes than her head to look at her master. He, with his usual face but with his ever terrible eyes, was coming, stumbling over hummocks, and extremely slowly as it seemed to her. It seemed to her that he was moving slowly, yet he was running.
I like these parts…
‘Flush it, flush it,’ cried Levin, nudging Laska from behind.
‘But I can’t flush anything,’ thought Laska. ‘Where will I flush it from? I can sense them from here, but if I move forward, I won’t be able to tell where they are or what they are.’ Yet here he was nudging her with his knee and saying in an excited whisper: ‘Flush it, Lasochka, flush it!’
‘Well, if that’s what he wants, I’ll do it, but I can’t answer for myself any more,’ she thought and tore forward at full speed between the hummocks.
Talk about omniscience.
2. The birth of Levin and Kitty’s child. For my money, the strongest scenes in the whole book, next to those leading to Anna’s suicide, are those that describe the tide of emotions that go through Levin as his wife goes into labour and finally delivers their first child. As Nabokov says, Tolstoy liked the idea of a painful, natural birth. These passages are comic at first - the exaggerated fears - and, later, sublime…
Suddenly there was a scream unlike anything he had ever heard. The scream was so terrible that Levin did not even jump up, but, holding his breath, gave the doctor a frightened, questioning look. The doctor cocked his head to one side, listened, and smiled approvingly. It was all so extraordinary that nothing any longer astonished Levin: ‘Probably it should be so,’ he thought and went on sitting. Whose scream was it? He jumped up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, went round Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and stood in his place at the head of the bed. The screaming had ceased, but something was changed now. What – he did not see or understand, nor did he want to see and understand. But he saw it from Lizaveta Petrovna’s face: her face was stern and pale and still just as resolute, though her jaws twitched a little and her eyes were fixed on Kitty. Kitty’s burning, tormented face, with a strand of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her raised hands asked for his. Seizing his hands in her sweaty hands, she started pressing them to her face.
‘Don’t leave, don’t leave! I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid!’ she spoke quickly. ‘Mama, take my earrings. They bother me. You’re not afraid? Soon, Lizaveta Petrovna, soon …’
She spoke quickly, quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly her face became distorted, and she pushed him away from her.
‘No, it’s terrible! I’ll die, I’ll die! Go, go!’ she cried, and again came that scream that was unlike anything in the world.
Levin clutched his head and ran out of the room. ‘Never mind, never mind, it’s all right!’ Dolly said after him. But whatever they said, he knew that all was now lost. Leaning his head against the doorpost, he stood in the next room and heard a shrieking and howling such as he had never heard before, and he knew that these cries were coming from what had once been Kitty. He had long ceased wishing for the child. He now hated this child. He did not even wish for her to live now; he only wished for an end to this terrible suffering.
‘Doctor! What is it? What is it? My God!’ he said, seizing the doctor by the arm as he came in.
‘It’s nearly over,’ said the doctor. And the doctor’s face was so serious as he said it that Levin understood this ‘nearly over’ to mean she was dying.
Forgetting himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was Lizaveta Petrovna’s face. It was still more stern and frowning. Kitty’s face was not there. In place of it, where it used to be, was something dreadful both in its strained look and in the sound that came from it. He leaned his head against the wooden bedstead, feeling that his heart was bursting. The terrible screaming would not stop, it became still more terrible and then, as if reaching the final limit of the terrible, it suddenly stopped. Levin did not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt: the screaming stopped, and there was a quiet stirring, a rustle and quick breathing, and her faltering, alive, gentle and happy voice softly said: ‘It’s over.’
He raised his head. Her arms resting strengthlessly on the blanket, remarkably beautiful and quiet, she silently looked at him and tried but was unable to smile.
And suddenly from that mysterious and terrible, unearthly world in which he had lived for those twenty–two hours, Levin felt himself instantly transported into the former, ordinary world, but radiant now with such a new light of happiness that he could not bear it. The taut strings all snapped. Sobs and tears of joy, which he could never have foreseen, rose in him with such force, heaving his whole body, that for a long time they prevented him from speaking.
4. Landau, the supposed clairvoyant. A very minor character introduced late in the novel whose whim is responsible for Anna’s being denied a divorce. Like the scene-stealing doctor at the end of Madame Bovary (I remember him being a giant - I don’t know if it says that in the book), this spoilt little troll of a man, just in from France and suddenly the toast of the Russian aristocracy, huddled on the couch and pretending to be asleep, makes an interesting late appearance in the book. He’s there for just one chapter.
5. Anna’s last day, her suicide. Her reasons are half-imagined, illogical, but she follows them to their logical conclusion as though she had no other choice, realizing only when she’s already crouched under the train how she’s only arbitrarily put herself there. I wonder if all suicides aren’t like this.
