I look forward to my daily reading of this book the same way I anticipate a delicious dessert! Visiting the spa with Kitty felt so familiar that I half expected Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain to enter the scene. Did anyone else think that Thomas Mann must have been a reader of Anna Karenina?
I must say that Levin’s conversation with his brother about his lack of interest in using his position in the zemstvo to provide medical care and schools for the peasants gave much food for thought. On the one hand his brother is right, it would improve their lives. On the other hand, in Levin’s back to the land view, interference in the peasants’ way of life would not be welcome nor an improvement. Age old dilemma of governance and the rich and poor.
My favorite quote from this installment: “Hard as Stepan Arkadyich tried to be a solicitous father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.”
I love that quote about Stepan so much too! You know exactly what type of person he is based on that short description. It definitely made me chuckle and also feel for poor Dolly...
The section at the spa made me think about how often in books a visit to somewhere new changes people - Anne Elliot going to Bath, Lucy Honeychurch in Florence and many others. Kitty doesn't feel as if she's returned to be as she was, but she becomes someone different. I liked that she was still capable of a tantrum - a reminder that none of us is perfect.
The social comedy - Madame Stahl's snobbery and the Prince's response - is a totally different tone to what we've had before. But then we get Varenka's backstroke which changes things again. If Varenka seems too perfect, we then realise how vulnerable her position is.
The countryside section is magnificent. I was taken with the line, "words for him removed the beauty of what he was seeing". A brave description for someone who deals in words.
The conversations between the two half-brothers were interesting. Although may appear not concerned about the local people, he does have a connection. It was also noticeable that Dolly seemed at ease with the locals as well.
And then Levin seeing Kitty. It almost mirrored Anna and Vronsky - but instead of a train, Kitty is in a carriage. But there's still that flash of something.
I'm now having to toy with the idea of going to Chichester to see the new play there - but I'm not sure about watching a version that can't cover everything in the book. Oh, well...
Bren, I love your comparisons to Anne Elliot and Lucy Honeychurch. I wouldn't have thought of them, and they're perfect examples of works that use a change of scene to let characters reset their lives. My mind went to the Reno scenes in "The Women." Certainly a more low-brow example than Austen and Forster -- but we just read "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," so Henry casts a wide net!
I am so engrossed in these dramas that I didn't even realize the parallel transformations of Kitty and Levin, so thank you for pointing out that which I now see is obvious.
I, too, am a parent of small children, and I delighted in the scenes with Dolly's children. It is absolutely true that there are shining bits of gold among all the sand. I am a reluctant stay-at-home parent (thanks, covid), and I understood Dolly's fraught relationship to her children's behavior. How does Tolstoy understand and eloquently describe the inner lives of so many different roles and ages / stages in life?
Still loving this. Could not wait 8 months for the next installment and glad we don't have to!
I know! It's extraordinary, isn't it? It reminds you that reading great literature is always a lesson in psychology, anthropology and how to be a better human . . .
I resonated deeply with Levin’s disillusionment. He has worked hard and had a dream for his life and there is a moment when that dream fell to pieces. When that happens the need to return to the earth and simplify life feels natural. The scything feels to me like a metaphor of how simple and rhythmic life can be if we let it come to us row after row. There is no fighting there is no what ifs there is a sense of being one with the soil that grew us and losing oneself in the moment.
"I resonated deeply with Levin’s disillusionment. He has worked hard and had a dream for his life and there is a moment when that dream fell to pieces."
Your comment has outsized meaning for me. (...humble-bragging ahead...sorry...)
A number of years ago, I was fortunate enough to get on "Jeopardy!" and then to win enough games to land in the Tournament of Champions. A dream come true, to say the least. And I took the whole enterprise very seriously. I'm a freelance writer, so I could arrange my work schedule around the rigorous study schedule I undertook. I memorized lists, then randomized them in a giant slideshow of facts, so I'd have to follow an Olympics clue with an architecture clue, then a pop music clue and an antiquities clue.
For some reason, Jeopardy skipped a year of its Tournament, so I had TWO YEARS to study. I never shirked a day for TWO YEARS. I meant to win.
And while I made it far enough in the Tournament for bragging rights and a pretty good chunk of money, I didn't win. After TWO YEARS. Is there a stronger word than disillusionment?
Family had come to watch me play. When they left, I grieved my loss. (Well, I felt reeeeeallllly sorry for myself, let's put it that way.)
What rescued me was gardening. It happened to be spring, and it was time to do all the planning and planting and pruning I'd neglected the year before because I was studying. And it was the repetition -- the digging holes for flower after flower along my front walk and my back fence -- the moving the ladder from tree to tree to cut back as much as I could reach -- the cleaning of the roof and the gutters and the porches. It was the repetition of feeling the earth and smelling the earth that brought me back, that got me out of my head and back into my life.
I think about that spring every year when I start to feel daunted by the list of chores. I thought about it when I read about Levin and his scythe. And I thought about it when I read your comment. I hope you don't mind my indulgence...
Yes, thanks for sharing Alan. This, I feel, is just another way of describing what Natalia Ginzburg has alighted on in her introduction (that I’ve put in my comment earlier), that those who survive are those that see wonder in the ordinary.
Thank you for sharing your story Alan! I feel heard :) yes when you pour yourself into something and then you come face to face with an outcome that tells you it wasn’t enough - those are moments of reckoning. It’s so beautiful that gardening saved you. Life has funny ways of stating the simple truths we need to hear the most.
Alan, my sister was on Jeopardy two years ago. She didn't win her first show, and the whole experience was simply fun and excitement for her. Interesting how our perception of success changes as we succeed and how it alters our overall impression of things.
I’m so glad to be reading AK with this slow read group. On my own, I’m afraid I might have glossed over the mowing chapters and missed Tolstoy’s gorgeous descriptions. I also enjoyed Levin’s talk with Dolly. Sounds like she convinced him that this horribly embarrassing and emasculating rejection that has been haunting him all this time was really not that big a deal after all. I like Dolly a lot more after this installment.
Agree with you about Dolly. It was so interesting to finally see her for herself and not only in her relationship with Stepan. I was surprised that she was so astute in her observations about Kitty and Levin, but then had weirdly overdramatic reactions to her own children. She was really proud of them and thought they were so amazing but then witnessed one quarrel and despaired that they were wicked and poorly brought up, when they were obviously just acting like normal children do.... I'm wondering if maybe she subconsciously sees her children as a reflection of herself and that's why she can't observe them in a more detached manner? I'm definitely curious to see how she evolves (or doesn't maybe).
I reread that chapter, and I think you may be right. Maybe she has difficulty seeing herself as anything other than Stepan's wife or the children's mother, which is sad. The novel does seem to be a lot about appearances and rules of behavior...how a good mother should act, how a landowner should act around the peasants, and so on.
I did enjoy Levin's response to the children's behavior. After assuring Dolly that it's normal for children to behave that way, he secretly thinks, "but MY children will never be like that." lol
Indeed, a man who has no children judging someone else's parenting. This is how it started, I would love to check later in his life how it's going. :-)
I think the whiplashing on her opinion of her children is about how, yes, her entire world is caretaking and raising these children and also about how children's behavior is always a reflection on the mother. (Some things never change.) Dolly's identity is as a mother, and there are such high expectations on her that her assessment of her mothering is volatile.
You're totally right that appearances seem to be what matter most, at least for the upper-class characters (see also Karenin's reaction to Anna's confession that she hates him and is having an affair).
Levin's internal opinion that Dolly's children aren't well behaved because she speaks to them in French was so hilarious!
It seems Tolstoy has grown as a writer. In War and Peace, he sent Prince Andre off to a spa and never tells the reader why or what happens. It felt like a ploy to get him offstage. Here, it is an important part of Kitty’s growth, an organic part of the book
One of my favorite quotes from this installment in Chapter XII:
“The singing women approached Levin, and it seemed to him that a thundercloud of merriment was coming upon him.”
After reading Henry’s commentary about the scything festival, I have a strong desire to book a trip and experience this thundercloud of merriment myself!
All of your comments are so insightful and enjoyable to read!
I hear Henry reading it as "He LOVES her" while I read it as "He loves HER." This is just after he thinks maybe he'll give up his individualistic life and enjoy the pure laborious life, and marry a peasant girl. Then he sees her face (yeah, I heard the song in my head), and he is a believer.
I like how Lenin decides how his life will now be - yes, this is it - only to have it all change once again. I imagine his comment about how his children will not be like Dolly's will meet the same fate. So human. (And now the song is in my head). :)
"By this contrast with herself she especially attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that in her, in her way of life, she would find a model for what she now sought so tormentingly: interests in life, virtues in life, outside the social relations of a girl with men, which Kitty found repulsive, picturing them now as a disgraceful exhibition of wares awaiting their buyers."
Seems to me like Varenka's character is meant to serve as Kitty's Manic Pixie Dream girl, motivating her towards a more meaningful existence, making her realize there's a big, wide world beyond the social circles she is confined to, and interacting with it can be fun and useful. Is Varenka going to get a reappearance later? I hope so, but I doubt it.
It's interesting that Princess Schrebatsky chooses to inform Kitty about Nikolai Levin simply as a "bad man"! And she runs with it, noting that "by his habit of twitching his head, now provoked in her an irrepressible feeling of disgust" Wow! Is that enough to judge a man on?
In the long debate with Sergei, Levin refusing to continue with the local council because he doesn't believe in the education or providing medical facilities to the peasants didn't make sense to me.
It's incredible that the very estate from which the sale of wood goes to fill Stepan's pocket, "having taken almost all the money..went to Petersburg to fulfil the most natural and necessary duty...that of reminding the ministry of himself...spent his time merrily and pleasantly at the races and in summer houses" yet he couldn't be bothered to do the bare minimum to have the same estate house ready for his wife and kids, who are shifting there to cut down expenses! Dolly has to take care of 6 children without her husband. Without himself bothering to come, he sends his friend over to check in on her. Combined with the repeated infidelity, what a terrible husband. My heart goes out to Dolly.
Thanks so much for these comments Poonam – yes, reading Levin is definitely a morally mixed experience from a 21st-century perspective. It's also hard to unpick how far Tolstoy endorses Levin's views (quite far, I suspect). I do agree with others, though, that his variety of ethics makes him feel all the more human. It will be fascinating to see where he ends up in his societal views . . .
Thank you Henry for your response and thanks for hosting this slow read. I hadn't imagined I'd have so much fun reading this huge tome. It's amazing to see all the characters emerge and the details come together, like a giant picture unfurling before our eyes. Even though I'd read this book recently, I guess I must've skimmed through a lot of the details.
I'm going to have to reread about "manic pixie dream girls" because that term and Varenka don't seem to have much in common.
Ugh, you reminded me how much I disliked the Levin who wouldn't shake hands with Ryabinin as he wouldn’t with a waiter earlier. Here, he isn't interested in civic duty, doesn't believe in medicine, thinks education makes workers worse, and doesn't see himself ever needing or benefiting from institutions. Why fix roads? His carriages manage just fine. Sigh.
The two brothers are on opposite sides of the argument, but both come to see some sense in the other view or just don't feel like arguing it anymore: Sergey says, "Our difference of opinion amounts to this: You make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of advancement."
The MPDG is usually a romantic interest for the male protagonist, which doesn’t apply here, even though Kitty begins by expressing her love for Varenka,her mother even calls it an infatuation. The rest of the bit about Varenka: she exists only to provide emotional support to one of the most important protagonists Kitty, she teaches her important life lessons, while receiving nothing in return. Seems to fit.
I see your thinking but it still doesn’t fit for me. I don’t see Varenka as quirky. And the wikipedia entry for MPDG has a well written counter argument against the term.
8 months! Crikey. Glad we’re doing it monthly Henry! The whole section with Levin finding the rhythm of using a scythe was very hypnotic. I did wonder how many times you could use the word ‘scythe’ in those pages! But it seemed to work. Meanwhile, in my edition, I have a short introduction written by Natalia Ginzburg in 1945. I hope it’s okay to share it here. It speaks in general terms about the book and assumes knowledge of the fundamental plot lines. So, avoid if you don’t know that, it’s just that it seems appropriate to where we have arrived in the book:
In Anna Karenina guilt is represented as an obstacle, or rather as an insurmountable barrier to the achievement of happiness; while outside of guilt, along the paths of one who has created without destroying anything, happiness flourishes and sprouts allowing for a wider and more intense human understanding. Alongside Anna and Vronsky, who cannot be happy together, we see how Levin and Kitty ultimately obtain with ease, despite some internal debate, what is denied to the other two: but Kitty has been able to forget Vronsky and, by renouncing him, to renounce the poetic ideals, rich in charm and external beauty, rich in worldly merits, of her youth. By renouncing these ideals, Kitty discovers that reality, the usual and customary reality, far from being petty or squalid, is very precious and very beautiful. This is the story of many of Tolstoy's characters: the discovery of reality and the delight of perceiving in reality something precious and unexpected, something that dreams did not contain, and which makes the awareness of one's own being possible. But Anna Karenina will never come to know this reality: her life with Vronsky will never become real, because he will never lose in her eyes the enchantment of their first meeting, always remaining for her as a fleeting and elusive good; and Anna is incapable of loving the daughter she has had with Vronsky, not only because the affection of her legitimate, distant son torments her and forbids her any new maternal feeling, but also because her passion for Vronsky nothing creative, nothing just can arise, only jealousy and rancor can arise. Usually Tolstoy's characters, having discovered the reality they were seeking without knowing it, and having achieved the great happiness that comes from certainty and the awareness of their own being, die or disappear from the scene. But Anna Karenina instead dies struggling in doubt and darkness: "Where am I? What am I doing? And why?" she thinks at the moment she kills herself: and this is the last of a crowd of questions that have oppressed her heart in the final days of her life, in that desperate wandering of hers in search of some meaning that she has not found. Returning in the carriage from Kitty's house, after her last visit to them, she sees the children eating a dirty ice cream bought on the street, she sees an old man making the sign of the cross, and everything seems to her like the expression of her own disgust. "Vespers are ringing. Why these churches, these bells, these lies?" she says in her convulsive soliloquy. In Kitty's happiness she has seen only a foolish resignation to a banal fate: unable to have Vronsky, Kitty has settled for the boring Levin. "We all have a sweet tooth for good things... If not Vronsky, then dirty ice cream..." Before meeting Vronsky, Anna was a calm and happy woman, who gave confidence and peace to anyone who approached her; she thought she was content with her fate: her life went on peacefully in domestic and worldly cares, she had a son she loved, a husband she respected, and she asked for nothing more. But after meeting Vronsky this apparent security and inner clarity disappears: she suddenly becomes aware of the fearful emptiness that surrounds her. In the new life that is beginning for her, she tries in vain to unite with love some of the pleasures that had made her previous life easy and pleasant: social and worldly customs, the sympathy and approval of friends and acquaintances: but every attempt fails, as when, at the theatre, she sees herself publicly offended by a lady, indignant at meeting in society a woman who has abandoned her husband. Thus every avenue of worldly enjoyment is closed to her, just as the greatest and highest of the feelings of pride and affection that have enlightened her in the past are closed and denied to her; she will only be able to see her son Seryozha again through subterfuge and for brief moments: and this is the hardest punishment for Anna Karenina. However, in her life with Vronsky, Anna feels no regret for her past life, apparently so happy and contented; because, having now known love, that happiness of that time seems artificial and empty to her; a few hours before killing herself, she remembers her own relations with her husband, which were also called love, she sees his dull eyes and his hands with blue veins, and she shivers with disgust. So she does not even have the painful voluptuousness of nostalgia.
So Anna Karenina dies empty-handed: she has conquered nothing, she has understood nothing. But Vronsky, like Anna, does not understand or conquer anything: and when, after Anna's death, he volunteers to fight the Turks, this also means nothing to him, it is only a means of escaping the memory of Anna's bloody body.
Thanks so much for sharing this fabulous introduction Royston – how fascinating that Ginzburg was selected to introduce the novel in 1945! I love what she says about 'the delight of perceiving in reality something precious and unexpected, something that dreams did not contain, and which makes the awareness of one's own being possible'. It will be interesting to return to this intro, especially once we reach the end of the novel.
I loved the imagery of the fields and meadows seemingly moving and heaving, having been set in motion to the sound of the women peasants’ singing. Such a small but spectacular description.
I actually finished reading this early but am late to commenting, mores the pity because I loved this section. Kitty at the spa was a mini-novel, wasn’t it? I feel like we could use more of her father and Varenka in the narrative, but if this all we get I’m still satisfied.
Thank you for the scything information. I am fascinated that it’s made a comeback as a leisure pursuit. I think Levin might find that funny!
I loved the grass cutting. I was planning a weekend of gardening, but it's raining. Having the yard to work in has gotten me through some tough mental times. I really can connect with the repetitive, mindless chore to clear the mind.
Tolstoy does love the sky. Levin looking up at the clouds reminded my of Andre and his lofty skies in War and Peace. The sky brings him hope.
Okay, the popularity of scything with fairs and festivals and whatnot was a delight to read. I was reflecting that we didn't have that in the US (that I know of), and then I remembered that I do have a "Seymour" grass cutter and have felt something of that "flow" as I call it of getting the rhythm just right, swinging it one-handed. I don't know that I appreciated it, though, because we bought an electric grass cutter we use almost exclusively to keep the tall grass down around the house, essential to fire mitigation in the wildland urban interface where I live. I feel like I'm speaking a foreign language. Suffice it to say, there are pine trees, scrub oak, and tall grass, and that combination can catch fire, and we've had some big ones in Colorado. A similar tool is used in the movie "Cool Hand Luke" by the work crew. Anyway here is a link to a Seymour grass/weed cutting tool that brought me as close as possible to scything: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Seymour-S500-Industrial-30-in-Steel-Straight-Edge-Bunch-Cutter/38754268
I look forward to my daily reading of this book the same way I anticipate a delicious dessert! Visiting the spa with Kitty felt so familiar that I half expected Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain to enter the scene. Did anyone else think that Thomas Mann must have been a reader of Anna Karenina?
I must say that Levin’s conversation with his brother about his lack of interest in using his position in the zemstvo to provide medical care and schools for the peasants gave much food for thought. On the one hand his brother is right, it would improve their lives. On the other hand, in Levin’s back to the land view, interference in the peasants’ way of life would not be welcome nor an improvement. Age old dilemma of governance and the rich and poor.
My favorite quote from this installment: “Hard as Stepan Arkadyich tried to be a solicitous father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.”
I love that quote about Stepan so much too! You know exactly what type of person he is based on that short description. It definitely made me chuckle and also feel for poor Dolly...
I did wonder like you about Thomas Mann, and your favorite quote is one that I underlined and even folded the page so I can go back to it.
I like how you think, lol!
The section at the spa made me think about how often in books a visit to somewhere new changes people - Anne Elliot going to Bath, Lucy Honeychurch in Florence and many others. Kitty doesn't feel as if she's returned to be as she was, but she becomes someone different. I liked that she was still capable of a tantrum - a reminder that none of us is perfect.
The social comedy - Madame Stahl's snobbery and the Prince's response - is a totally different tone to what we've had before. But then we get Varenka's backstroke which changes things again. If Varenka seems too perfect, we then realise how vulnerable her position is.
The countryside section is magnificent. I was taken with the line, "words for him removed the beauty of what he was seeing". A brave description for someone who deals in words.
The conversations between the two half-brothers were interesting. Although may appear not concerned about the local people, he does have a connection. It was also noticeable that Dolly seemed at ease with the locals as well.
And then Levin seeing Kitty. It almost mirrored Anna and Vronsky - but instead of a train, Kitty is in a carriage. But there's still that flash of something.
I'm now having to toy with the idea of going to Chichester to see the new play there - but I'm not sure about watching a version that can't cover everything in the book. Oh, well...
Wonderful comments Bren – I also loved that line 'words . . . removed the beauty' – I do know what he means! But very brave as you say . . .
If anyone else is within travelling distance of Chichester, here are the details of the stage adaptation Bren mentions: https://www.cft.org.uk/events/anna-karenina
Bren, I love your comparisons to Anne Elliot and Lucy Honeychurch. I wouldn't have thought of them, and they're perfect examples of works that use a change of scene to let characters reset their lives. My mind went to the Reno scenes in "The Women." Certainly a more low-brow example than Austen and Forster -- but we just read "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," so Henry casts a wide net!
I am so engrossed in these dramas that I didn't even realize the parallel transformations of Kitty and Levin, so thank you for pointing out that which I now see is obvious.
I, too, am a parent of small children, and I delighted in the scenes with Dolly's children. It is absolutely true that there are shining bits of gold among all the sand. I am a reluctant stay-at-home parent (thanks, covid), and I understood Dolly's fraught relationship to her children's behavior. How does Tolstoy understand and eloquently describe the inner lives of so many different roles and ages / stages in life?
Still loving this. Could not wait 8 months for the next installment and glad we don't have to!
I know! It's extraordinary, isn't it? It reminds you that reading great literature is always a lesson in psychology, anthropology and how to be a better human . . .
I resonated deeply with Levin’s disillusionment. He has worked hard and had a dream for his life and there is a moment when that dream fell to pieces. When that happens the need to return to the earth and simplify life feels natural. The scything feels to me like a metaphor of how simple and rhythmic life can be if we let it come to us row after row. There is no fighting there is no what ifs there is a sense of being one with the soil that grew us and losing oneself in the moment.
"I resonated deeply with Levin’s disillusionment. He has worked hard and had a dream for his life and there is a moment when that dream fell to pieces."
Your comment has outsized meaning for me. (...humble-bragging ahead...sorry...)
A number of years ago, I was fortunate enough to get on "Jeopardy!" and then to win enough games to land in the Tournament of Champions. A dream come true, to say the least. And I took the whole enterprise very seriously. I'm a freelance writer, so I could arrange my work schedule around the rigorous study schedule I undertook. I memorized lists, then randomized them in a giant slideshow of facts, so I'd have to follow an Olympics clue with an architecture clue, then a pop music clue and an antiquities clue.
For some reason, Jeopardy skipped a year of its Tournament, so I had TWO YEARS to study. I never shirked a day for TWO YEARS. I meant to win.
And while I made it far enough in the Tournament for bragging rights and a pretty good chunk of money, I didn't win. After TWO YEARS. Is there a stronger word than disillusionment?
Family had come to watch me play. When they left, I grieved my loss. (Well, I felt reeeeeallllly sorry for myself, let's put it that way.)
What rescued me was gardening. It happened to be spring, and it was time to do all the planning and planting and pruning I'd neglected the year before because I was studying. And it was the repetition -- the digging holes for flower after flower along my front walk and my back fence -- the moving the ladder from tree to tree to cut back as much as I could reach -- the cleaning of the roof and the gutters and the porches. It was the repetition of feeling the earth and smelling the earth that brought me back, that got me out of my head and back into my life.
I think about that spring every year when I start to feel daunted by the list of chores. I thought about it when I read about Levin and his scythe. And I thought about it when I read your comment. I hope you don't mind my indulgence...
Yes, thanks for sharing Alan. This, I feel, is just another way of describing what Natalia Ginzburg has alighted on in her introduction (that I’ve put in my comment earlier), that those who survive are those that see wonder in the ordinary.
I plan to visit it after the reading as I wanted to avoid spoilers :)
Thank you for sharing your story Alan! I feel heard :) yes when you pour yourself into something and then you come face to face with an outcome that tells you it wasn’t enough - those are moments of reckoning. It’s so beautiful that gardening saved you. Life has funny ways of stating the simple truths we need to hear the most.
I'm glad you shared, Alan. What an incredible experience.
I'm glad that gardening brought you back. What a great connection with the story.
Alan, my sister was on Jeopardy two years ago. She didn't win her first show, and the whole experience was simply fun and excitement for her. Interesting how our perception of success changes as we succeed and how it alters our overall impression of things.
Congratulations on an impressive run!
Thank you for sharing Alan - I really appreciate it.
I’m so glad to be reading AK with this slow read group. On my own, I’m afraid I might have glossed over the mowing chapters and missed Tolstoy’s gorgeous descriptions. I also enjoyed Levin’s talk with Dolly. Sounds like she convinced him that this horribly embarrassing and emasculating rejection that has been haunting him all this time was really not that big a deal after all. I like Dolly a lot more after this installment.
Agree with you about Dolly. It was so interesting to finally see her for herself and not only in her relationship with Stepan. I was surprised that she was so astute in her observations about Kitty and Levin, but then had weirdly overdramatic reactions to her own children. She was really proud of them and thought they were so amazing but then witnessed one quarrel and despaired that they were wicked and poorly brought up, when they were obviously just acting like normal children do.... I'm wondering if maybe she subconsciously sees her children as a reflection of herself and that's why she can't observe them in a more detached manner? I'm definitely curious to see how she evolves (or doesn't maybe).
I reread that chapter, and I think you may be right. Maybe she has difficulty seeing herself as anything other than Stepan's wife or the children's mother, which is sad. The novel does seem to be a lot about appearances and rules of behavior...how a good mother should act, how a landowner should act around the peasants, and so on.
I did enjoy Levin's response to the children's behavior. After assuring Dolly that it's normal for children to behave that way, he secretly thinks, "but MY children will never be like that." lol
Indeed, a man who has no children judging someone else's parenting. This is how it started, I would love to check later in his life how it's going. :-)
Exactly!
I agree – and maybe we'll get a chance to do that!
I think the whiplashing on her opinion of her children is about how, yes, her entire world is caretaking and raising these children and also about how children's behavior is always a reflection on the mother. (Some things never change.) Dolly's identity is as a mother, and there are such high expectations on her that her assessment of her mothering is volatile.
You're totally right that appearances seem to be what matter most, at least for the upper-class characters (see also Karenin's reaction to Anna's confession that she hates him and is having an affair).
Levin's internal opinion that Dolly's children aren't well behaved because she speaks to them in French was so hilarious!
Me too Sandra
It seems Tolstoy has grown as a writer. In War and Peace, he sent Prince Andre off to a spa and never tells the reader why or what happens. It felt like a ploy to get him offstage. Here, it is an important part of Kitty’s growth, an organic part of the book
Nice comparison – thanks Paula!
One of my favorite quotes from this installment in Chapter XII:
“The singing women approached Levin, and it seemed to him that a thundercloud of merriment was coming upon him.”
After reading Henry’s commentary about the scything festival, I have a strong desire to book a trip and experience this thundercloud of merriment myself!
All of your comments are so insightful and enjoyable to read!
Thank you Ashley!
Henry, love your commentary and also all the readers’ comments. This is a wonderful reading experience for me—my first Tolstoy.
I'm so glad - thank you Brian.
I hear Henry reading it as "He LOVES her" while I read it as "He loves HER." This is just after he thinks maybe he'll give up his individualistic life and enjoy the pure laborious life, and marry a peasant girl. Then he sees her face (yeah, I heard the song in my head), and he is a believer.
And this reminds me of The Most British Thing Ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFRoX1EV3zQ
Nice point – I like that alternate emphasis . . .
I like how Lenin decides how his life will now be - yes, this is it - only to have it all change once again. I imagine his comment about how his children will not be like Dolly's will meet the same fate. So human. (And now the song is in my head). :)
"By this contrast with herself she especially attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that in her, in her way of life, she would find a model for what she now sought so tormentingly: interests in life, virtues in life, outside the social relations of a girl with men, which Kitty found repulsive, picturing them now as a disgraceful exhibition of wares awaiting their buyers."
Seems to me like Varenka's character is meant to serve as Kitty's Manic Pixie Dream girl, motivating her towards a more meaningful existence, making her realize there's a big, wide world beyond the social circles she is confined to, and interacting with it can be fun and useful. Is Varenka going to get a reappearance later? I hope so, but I doubt it.
It's interesting that Princess Schrebatsky chooses to inform Kitty about Nikolai Levin simply as a "bad man"! And she runs with it, noting that "by his habit of twitching his head, now provoked in her an irrepressible feeling of disgust" Wow! Is that enough to judge a man on?
In the long debate with Sergei, Levin refusing to continue with the local council because he doesn't believe in the education or providing medical facilities to the peasants didn't make sense to me.
It's incredible that the very estate from which the sale of wood goes to fill Stepan's pocket, "having taken almost all the money..went to Petersburg to fulfil the most natural and necessary duty...that of reminding the ministry of himself...spent his time merrily and pleasantly at the races and in summer houses" yet he couldn't be bothered to do the bare minimum to have the same estate house ready for his wife and kids, who are shifting there to cut down expenses! Dolly has to take care of 6 children without her husband. Without himself bothering to come, he sends his friend over to check in on her. Combined with the repeated infidelity, what a terrible husband. My heart goes out to Dolly.
Thanks so much for these comments Poonam – yes, reading Levin is definitely a morally mixed experience from a 21st-century perspective. It's also hard to unpick how far Tolstoy endorses Levin's views (quite far, I suspect). I do agree with others, though, that his variety of ethics makes him feel all the more human. It will be fascinating to see where he ends up in his societal views . . .
Thank you Henry for your response and thanks for hosting this slow read. I hadn't imagined I'd have so much fun reading this huge tome. It's amazing to see all the characters emerge and the details come together, like a giant picture unfurling before our eyes. Even though I'd read this book recently, I guess I must've skimmed through a lot of the details.
I'm excited to see how the characters evolve.
I'm going to have to reread about "manic pixie dream girls" because that term and Varenka don't seem to have much in common.
Ugh, you reminded me how much I disliked the Levin who wouldn't shake hands with Ryabinin as he wouldn’t with a waiter earlier. Here, he isn't interested in civic duty, doesn't believe in medicine, thinks education makes workers worse, and doesn't see himself ever needing or benefiting from institutions. Why fix roads? His carriages manage just fine. Sigh.
The two brothers are on opposite sides of the argument, but both come to see some sense in the other view or just don't feel like arguing it anymore: Sergey says, "Our difference of opinion amounts to this: You make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of advancement."
The MPDG is usually a romantic interest for the male protagonist, which doesn’t apply here, even though Kitty begins by expressing her love for Varenka,her mother even calls it an infatuation. The rest of the bit about Varenka: she exists only to provide emotional support to one of the most important protagonists Kitty, she teaches her important life lessons, while receiving nothing in return. Seems to fit.
I see your thinking but it still doesn’t fit for me. I don’t see Varenka as quirky. And the wikipedia entry for MPDG has a well written counter argument against the term.
Thanks, Henry, I love reading the article on scything - thanks for pointing us towards it.
8 months! Crikey. Glad we’re doing it monthly Henry! The whole section with Levin finding the rhythm of using a scythe was very hypnotic. I did wonder how many times you could use the word ‘scythe’ in those pages! But it seemed to work. Meanwhile, in my edition, I have a short introduction written by Natalia Ginzburg in 1945. I hope it’s okay to share it here. It speaks in general terms about the book and assumes knowledge of the fundamental plot lines. So, avoid if you don’t know that, it’s just that it seems appropriate to where we have arrived in the book:
In Anna Karenina guilt is represented as an obstacle, or rather as an insurmountable barrier to the achievement of happiness; while outside of guilt, along the paths of one who has created without destroying anything, happiness flourishes and sprouts allowing for a wider and more intense human understanding. Alongside Anna and Vronsky, who cannot be happy together, we see how Levin and Kitty ultimately obtain with ease, despite some internal debate, what is denied to the other two: but Kitty has been able to forget Vronsky and, by renouncing him, to renounce the poetic ideals, rich in charm and external beauty, rich in worldly merits, of her youth. By renouncing these ideals, Kitty discovers that reality, the usual and customary reality, far from being petty or squalid, is very precious and very beautiful. This is the story of many of Tolstoy's characters: the discovery of reality and the delight of perceiving in reality something precious and unexpected, something that dreams did not contain, and which makes the awareness of one's own being possible. But Anna Karenina will never come to know this reality: her life with Vronsky will never become real, because he will never lose in her eyes the enchantment of their first meeting, always remaining for her as a fleeting and elusive good; and Anna is incapable of loving the daughter she has had with Vronsky, not only because the affection of her legitimate, distant son torments her and forbids her any new maternal feeling, but also because her passion for Vronsky nothing creative, nothing just can arise, only jealousy and rancor can arise. Usually Tolstoy's characters, having discovered the reality they were seeking without knowing it, and having achieved the great happiness that comes from certainty and the awareness of their own being, die or disappear from the scene. But Anna Karenina instead dies struggling in doubt and darkness: "Where am I? What am I doing? And why?" she thinks at the moment she kills herself: and this is the last of a crowd of questions that have oppressed her heart in the final days of her life, in that desperate wandering of hers in search of some meaning that she has not found. Returning in the carriage from Kitty's house, after her last visit to them, she sees the children eating a dirty ice cream bought on the street, she sees an old man making the sign of the cross, and everything seems to her like the expression of her own disgust. "Vespers are ringing. Why these churches, these bells, these lies?" she says in her convulsive soliloquy. In Kitty's happiness she has seen only a foolish resignation to a banal fate: unable to have Vronsky, Kitty has settled for the boring Levin. "We all have a sweet tooth for good things... If not Vronsky, then dirty ice cream..." Before meeting Vronsky, Anna was a calm and happy woman, who gave confidence and peace to anyone who approached her; she thought she was content with her fate: her life went on peacefully in domestic and worldly cares, she had a son she loved, a husband she respected, and she asked for nothing more. But after meeting Vronsky this apparent security and inner clarity disappears: she suddenly becomes aware of the fearful emptiness that surrounds her. In the new life that is beginning for her, she tries in vain to unite with love some of the pleasures that had made her previous life easy and pleasant: social and worldly customs, the sympathy and approval of friends and acquaintances: but every attempt fails, as when, at the theatre, she sees herself publicly offended by a lady, indignant at meeting in society a woman who has abandoned her husband. Thus every avenue of worldly enjoyment is closed to her, just as the greatest and highest of the feelings of pride and affection that have enlightened her in the past are closed and denied to her; she will only be able to see her son Seryozha again through subterfuge and for brief moments: and this is the hardest punishment for Anna Karenina. However, in her life with Vronsky, Anna feels no regret for her past life, apparently so happy and contented; because, having now known love, that happiness of that time seems artificial and empty to her; a few hours before killing herself, she remembers her own relations with her husband, which were also called love, she sees his dull eyes and his hands with blue veins, and she shivers with disgust. So she does not even have the painful voluptuousness of nostalgia.
So Anna Karenina dies empty-handed: she has conquered nothing, she has understood nothing. But Vronsky, like Anna, does not understand or conquer anything: and when, after Anna's death, he volunteers to fight the Turks, this also means nothing to him, it is only a means of escaping the memory of Anna's bloody body.
Thanks so much for sharing this fabulous introduction Royston – how fascinating that Ginzburg was selected to introduce the novel in 1945! I love what she says about 'the delight of perceiving in reality something precious and unexpected, something that dreams did not contain, and which makes the awareness of one's own being possible'. It will be interesting to return to this intro, especially once we reach the end of the novel.
This was great -- thanks!
I loved the imagery of the fields and meadows seemingly moving and heaving, having been set in motion to the sound of the women peasants’ singing. Such a small but spectacular description.
Beautiful!
I actually finished reading this early but am late to commenting, mores the pity because I loved this section. Kitty at the spa was a mini-novel, wasn’t it? I feel like we could use more of her father and Varenka in the narrative, but if this all we get I’m still satisfied.
Thank you for the scything information. I am fascinated that it’s made a comeback as a leisure pursuit. I think Levin might find that funny!
I loved the grass cutting. I was planning a weekend of gardening, but it's raining. Having the yard to work in has gotten me through some tough mental times. I really can connect with the repetitive, mindless chore to clear the mind.
Tolstoy does love the sky. Levin looking up at the clouds reminded my of Andre and his lofty skies in War and Peace. The sky brings him hope.
Okay, the popularity of scything with fairs and festivals and whatnot was a delight to read. I was reflecting that we didn't have that in the US (that I know of), and then I remembered that I do have a "Seymour" grass cutter and have felt something of that "flow" as I call it of getting the rhythm just right, swinging it one-handed. I don't know that I appreciated it, though, because we bought an electric grass cutter we use almost exclusively to keep the tall grass down around the house, essential to fire mitigation in the wildland urban interface where I live. I feel like I'm speaking a foreign language. Suffice it to say, there are pine trees, scrub oak, and tall grass, and that combination can catch fire, and we've had some big ones in Colorado. A similar tool is used in the movie "Cool Hand Luke" by the work crew. Anyway here is a link to a Seymour grass/weed cutting tool that brought me as close as possible to scything: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Seymour-S500-Industrial-30-in-Steel-Straight-Edge-Bunch-Cutter/38754268
I love it! I think that definitely counts as scything . . .