I had a bit of an epiphany reading this section - although I am probably just late to the party and everyone else realised this ages ago! I've always assumed that the opening lines of 'Anna Karenina' referred to Anna and her family, but it does actually refer to all the families involved: Levin and Nikolai, Dolly and Stepan, Kitty and her family as well as Anna and Karenin - they all have their own individual ways of making their lives miserable. (Regular readers of my ramblings can take the Ira Gershwin quotation as read.)
In compare and contrast mode, I thought about how different Anna's experience is from Masha in 'Three Sisters' where her husband seems to understand her situation but does not reproach her and wants to build bridges. (Not to mention Ibsen's 'Lady From The Sea' where giving Ellida her freedom makes her decide to stay. Karenin could learn a lot from them.
Levin is starting to become my favourite character. (Maybe I recognise a fellow over-thinker in him.) He wants to be better, to do better - but forgets that he needs to take people along with him. I recognise that in me as well. His pessimism, though, is a bit wearing - even when he makes improvements, he focuses on the problems not the successes.
I was amused by the 'don't look at the cleavage! God, I'm looking at the cleavage' section. Having previously invoked Chekhov and Ibsen, this was making me think of 'Carry On'!
I saw something (possibly on Substack) along the lines 'Anna Karenina' is the wrong title for the book and, unfortunately, mislaid it before I had time to read it. I think I can see where the article was coming from: although Anna and Vronsky set off a lot of the action, we are as invested in Dolly, Kitty, Levin and Stepan. Invested in, but also feeling each of them could benefit from a damned good talking-to!
Wonderful comments Bren – I love those comparisons to Chekhov and Ibsen. I agree absolutely – in the section we've just read, someone describes Anna as 'a heroine from a novel' – and I'm starting to feel that her storyline exemplifies all the melodrama and artifice of a traditional novel – whereas Levin's storyline feels more grounded in reality. Perhaps Tolstoy was experimenting and playing with conventions of the novel form, which is why he explicitly described this work – unlike War and Peace, for example – as 'a novel'.
I was warned that vast portions of this novel were about “tedious farming”. However, I love Levin on his estate and his striving to make agriculture more productive.
It may be that I am old now but it’s every bit as fascinating as Anna and her tortured love affair. I don’t think the novel would work half so well without either half of the story.
I think Tolstoy is the king of describing “tedious farming” - his descriptive power, just as in War and Peace really makes the land a fundamental protagonist
Interesting that you say this, because as a 25 year old, reading this for the first time, that’s exactly how I saw Levin’s portion of the story. However, as a 49 year old, I find myself enjoying it perhaps a little bit more than Anna/Vronsky storyline
I will join the voices of many commenters and add that Levin indeed is one of my favorites in this novel. He is basically an economist who farms and I am an agricultural economist so I had no hope okay ? When he meets his brother and comes to the realization “ I work, I want to do something, and I’ve forgotten that everything will end, that there is - death “ oof take my heart already. And also sharecropping does not necessarily translate to Soviet ideologies - I mean sure Lenin uses Tolstoy’s work to prop himself up but sharecropping as a form of agreement is actually pretty sound Econ implemented all over the world regardless of ideologies.
Wonderful to get an agricultural economist's angle on this! And reassuring to know that Levin's method doesn't inevitably lead to left-wing dictatorship!
Thanks for saying this because I felt like Levin's ideas were good and seemed fair, so reading about how Lenin used these ideas to oppress and murder people, I felt like I really misunderstood something. I should have realized it wasn't fully genuine on Lenin's part.
We are all dependent upon farming to stay alive, but today we are most of us so disconnected from the details of farming that we rarely think about it. In 19th century Russia almost everyone was dependent on farming, either as a landowner, even if they lived in the city, or as a peasant, eking out their lives for themselves as well as providing a profit for their masters. These chapters about Levin’s experiments to improve things on the farm have probably been percolating in Tolstoy’s imagination since the time he wrote about Pierre’s similar actions in War and Peace, but he didn’t give us this level of detail in that book. No wonder it took him 8 months to complete this installment! I though Levin would become nature boy and really connect with the land and its people, but honestly our upbringing and lived experiences make it difficult to embody a true understanding of others’ point view. Tolstoy does a nice job here of presenting both sides.
I agree, Tolstoy seemed to have gathered his thoughts in a more systematic manner to address the problem of making the land pay here. I am glad I read War & Peace first. It shows how Tolstoy progressed as an author between the two big books.
Hi, I want to ask , don’t you think it is strange that during all the thought process of Anna and Vronsky and during their conversation, Anna’s pregnancy is not mentioned ? Such an important event! I don’t know if I’m missing something but for me it was very strange.
Such a good point! Very little time has actually passed in the Anna-Vronsky storyline, of course – we're still only a few days after the day of the race, when she first discovered she was pregnant and told Vronsky – but still, you might imagine it would have entered her thoughts more than it has!
To me, the only character who’s showing much growth or change in this section is Anna’s fetus! Everyone seems to be in some sort of holding pattern, and no one makes any real, lasting decisions. That makes the inevitability of the child seem even stranger.
Bren said the characters all need a good talking to and that is where I am with the book. I'm annoyed with all of them and want to shake them ala "Moonstruck." "Snap out of it!
I feel bad because I loved every moment of War and Peace and do not feel the same here. But also my Kindle book is lagging very slowly probably because I have over-highlighted the chapters so far and now I can't anymore. Ugh. At least hearing and reading the discussion is making me feel better about the book. I picked up the audio book so maybe that will help as well.
I have such a desire to lecture the characters on the Anna side of the story: "Well, here come the consequences of your actions, what a surprise!"
I actually love Levin and Kitty and their slowly circling story. Even with all their very human errors, it seems more practical and grounded. However, a novel all about practical and grounded people making mistakes while they build toward a stable life wouldn't be all that exciting.
Good point Susan - I agree, I like the slow circling – but perhaps that's why the novel needs the Anna-Vronsky story to balance the grounded realism with spicy melodrama!
I am also loving the chapters about Levin and his vision for Russian agriculture. Like DG, this is no surprise for me, either, as I’ve been involved in farming (practice and policy) most of my life and am currently writing a book about the ownership of seeds and intellectual property. It’s so much fun to be inside Levin’s head as he wrestles with these complex ideas, and Henry’s commentary continues to be extremely interesting!
Well, apart from the fact that almost nobody mentioned again the life changing event of Anna being pregnant (I realized that Vronsky did think about that) , I wanted to add some more comments. Even though we already knew Karénin was cold, ambitious and just pragmatic, it was shocking reading his thoughts processing to finally conclude that he just needed to “shake off the mud she has spattered on him”, and he justified his revenge appetite in Religion. But again, no one is totally free and pure as we could see how even Anna was in part enjoying some gossips and social life. Of course, anyway we can always see who is suffering more in all this turmoil: Anna, of course.
The section dedicated to farming and Levin, I must confess, was harder for me to read. But your insights and analysis, thanks again @henryeliot, as well as comments from the group, had helped me to realized the relevance of the philosophical discussions at that time in history.
Im starting today the next section, and I am looking forward to the next installment discussion!
I really agree that the stuff on the economics of farming was surprisingly interesting! In fact, this whole section felt terribly contemporary to me. Karenin and his war of the "special commissions": "Three new commissions were appointed..." Yay! Not... And the problems Levin ponders -- how best to organize labour and cultivate land, when all sides have a different set of interests and a bad history to get over; how to balance authority and co-responsibility; how to get people on board with new ideas; how to figure out whether ideas that have been developed elsewhere are applicable in your situation -- all these questions feel like things we still haven't really learnt to do. "Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and unity of interests" -- it's what most people would want, but how hard it is to get there...
Okay, some things that struck me. In chapter 14, Karenin writes, "Our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, you, and OUR son," but goes on to threaten, "In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and YOUR son." Ouch.
But my favorite is Anna's reply two chapters later: "I have received your letter. -A"
I found the whole section on farming very interesting, about land and who should own it and farm it, about peasants and education.
I live in Mexico where the issue of land is what sparked the Mexican Revolution, the landowners and their treatment of the Mexican peasant. There was also the issue of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship but basically the revolution was about land. I live in the state of Morelos where Zapata was from and the number of wrecked haciendas (sugar cane) scattered around are a constant reminder of the battles fought to control, own and work the land. The laws resulting from the revolution and relating to land are still in place today.
Levin exploited the peasants like everyone else. But he read and studied too, but without too much success, there were no easy answers to the age-old problem, what "… he, Levin, and all Russian peasants and landowners should do with their millions of hands and acres to make them as productive as possible for the general prosperity of all".
Yes, it's a novel but it's also a place where Tolstoy could let rip with his ideas. All so interesting.
I had a bit of an epiphany reading this section - although I am probably just late to the party and everyone else realised this ages ago! I've always assumed that the opening lines of 'Anna Karenina' referred to Anna and her family, but it does actually refer to all the families involved: Levin and Nikolai, Dolly and Stepan, Kitty and her family as well as Anna and Karenin - they all have their own individual ways of making their lives miserable. (Regular readers of my ramblings can take the Ira Gershwin quotation as read.)
In compare and contrast mode, I thought about how different Anna's experience is from Masha in 'Three Sisters' where her husband seems to understand her situation but does not reproach her and wants to build bridges. (Not to mention Ibsen's 'Lady From The Sea' where giving Ellida her freedom makes her decide to stay. Karenin could learn a lot from them.
Levin is starting to become my favourite character. (Maybe I recognise a fellow over-thinker in him.) He wants to be better, to do better - but forgets that he needs to take people along with him. I recognise that in me as well. His pessimism, though, is a bit wearing - even when he makes improvements, he focuses on the problems not the successes.
I was amused by the 'don't look at the cleavage! God, I'm looking at the cleavage' section. Having previously invoked Chekhov and Ibsen, this was making me think of 'Carry On'!
I saw something (possibly on Substack) along the lines 'Anna Karenina' is the wrong title for the book and, unfortunately, mislaid it before I had time to read it. I think I can see where the article was coming from: although Anna and Vronsky set off a lot of the action, we are as invested in Dolly, Kitty, Levin and Stepan. Invested in, but also feeling each of them could benefit from a damned good talking-to!
Wonderful comments Bren – I love those comparisons to Chekhov and Ibsen. I agree absolutely – in the section we've just read, someone describes Anna as 'a heroine from a novel' – and I'm starting to feel that her storyline exemplifies all the melodrama and artifice of a traditional novel – whereas Levin's storyline feels more grounded in reality. Perhaps Tolstoy was experimenting and playing with conventions of the novel form, which is why he explicitly described this work – unlike War and Peace, for example – as 'a novel'.
The cleavage section did make me chuckle, and I never really thought about Tolstoy as a comedic writer!
I completely agree!
I was warned that vast portions of this novel were about “tedious farming”. However, I love Levin on his estate and his striving to make agriculture more productive.
It may be that I am old now but it’s every bit as fascinating as Anna and her tortured love affair. I don’t think the novel would work half so well without either half of the story.
I think Tolstoy is the king of describing “tedious farming” - his descriptive power, just as in War and Peace really makes the land a fundamental protagonist
I love that idea – of the land as protagonist . . .
I felt the same way reading Moby Dick. Everyone complains about the whaling details but I found them fascinating.
Me too!
Interesting that you say this, because as a 25 year old, reading this for the first time, that’s exactly how I saw Levin’s portion of the story. However, as a 49 year old, I find myself enjoying it perhaps a little bit more than Anna/Vronsky storyline
I will join the voices of many commenters and add that Levin indeed is one of my favorites in this novel. He is basically an economist who farms and I am an agricultural economist so I had no hope okay ? When he meets his brother and comes to the realization “ I work, I want to do something, and I’ve forgotten that everything will end, that there is - death “ oof take my heart already. And also sharecropping does not necessarily translate to Soviet ideologies - I mean sure Lenin uses Tolstoy’s work to prop himself up but sharecropping as a form of agreement is actually pretty sound Econ implemented all over the world regardless of ideologies.
Wonderful to get an agricultural economist's angle on this! And reassuring to know that Levin's method doesn't inevitably lead to left-wing dictatorship!
Thanks for saying this because I felt like Levin's ideas were good and seemed fair, so reading about how Lenin used these ideas to oppress and murder people, I felt like I really misunderstood something. I should have realized it wasn't fully genuine on Lenin's part.
This was the section where I was like, “we’re reading a RUSSIAN novel now!”
We are all dependent upon farming to stay alive, but today we are most of us so disconnected from the details of farming that we rarely think about it. In 19th century Russia almost everyone was dependent on farming, either as a landowner, even if they lived in the city, or as a peasant, eking out their lives for themselves as well as providing a profit for their masters. These chapters about Levin’s experiments to improve things on the farm have probably been percolating in Tolstoy’s imagination since the time he wrote about Pierre’s similar actions in War and Peace, but he didn’t give us this level of detail in that book. No wonder it took him 8 months to complete this installment! I though Levin would become nature boy and really connect with the land and its people, but honestly our upbringing and lived experiences make it difficult to embody a true understanding of others’ point view. Tolstoy does a nice job here of presenting both sides.
Lovely observations Donna - thank you!
I agree, Tolstoy seemed to have gathered his thoughts in a more systematic manner to address the problem of making the land pay here. I am glad I read War & Peace first. It shows how Tolstoy progressed as an author between the two big books.
Hi, I want to ask , don’t you think it is strange that during all the thought process of Anna and Vronsky and during their conversation, Anna’s pregnancy is not mentioned ? Such an important event! I don’t know if I’m missing something but for me it was very strange.
Such a good point! Very little time has actually passed in the Anna-Vronsky storyline, of course – we're still only a few days after the day of the race, when she first discovered she was pregnant and told Vronsky – but still, you might imagine it would have entered her thoughts more than it has!
To me, the only character who’s showing much growth or change in this section is Anna’s fetus! Everyone seems to be in some sort of holding pattern, and no one makes any real, lasting decisions. That makes the inevitability of the child seem even stranger.
I keep wondering about how much she is showing by now.
Exactly !
Bren said the characters all need a good talking to and that is where I am with the book. I'm annoyed with all of them and want to shake them ala "Moonstruck." "Snap out of it!
I feel bad because I loved every moment of War and Peace and do not feel the same here. But also my Kindle book is lagging very slowly probably because I have over-highlighted the chapters so far and now I can't anymore. Ugh. At least hearing and reading the discussion is making me feel better about the book. I picked up the audio book so maybe that will help as well.
I have such a desire to lecture the characters on the Anna side of the story: "Well, here come the consequences of your actions, what a surprise!"
I actually love Levin and Kitty and their slowly circling story. Even with all their very human errors, it seems more practical and grounded. However, a novel all about practical and grounded people making mistakes while they build toward a stable life wouldn't be all that exciting.
Good point Susan - I agree, I like the slow circling – but perhaps that's why the novel needs the Anna-Vronsky story to balance the grounded realism with spicy melodrama!
I am also loving the chapters about Levin and his vision for Russian agriculture. Like DG, this is no surprise for me, either, as I’ve been involved in farming (practice and policy) most of my life and am currently writing a book about the ownership of seeds and intellectual property. It’s so much fun to be inside Levin’s head as he wrestles with these complex ideas, and Henry’s commentary continues to be extremely interesting!
Fabulous! It will be so valuable getting your and DG's thoughts on Levin's farming as it progresses!
Well, apart from the fact that almost nobody mentioned again the life changing event of Anna being pregnant (I realized that Vronsky did think about that) , I wanted to add some more comments. Even though we already knew Karénin was cold, ambitious and just pragmatic, it was shocking reading his thoughts processing to finally conclude that he just needed to “shake off the mud she has spattered on him”, and he justified his revenge appetite in Religion. But again, no one is totally free and pure as we could see how even Anna was in part enjoying some gossips and social life. Of course, anyway we can always see who is suffering more in all this turmoil: Anna, of course.
The section dedicated to farming and Levin, I must confess, was harder for me to read. But your insights and analysis, thanks again @henryeliot, as well as comments from the group, had helped me to realized the relevance of the philosophical discussions at that time in history.
Im starting today the next section, and I am looking forward to the next installment discussion!
The woman always pays the price. I, too, was aghast at Vronksy's thoughts; Anna cannot just "shake it off".
Thanks so much Claudia! I'm so glad you're enjoying the discussion – me too!
I’m waiting for Kitty to arrive 🥰Thanks, Henry, insightful as always.
Me too. At this point, I’m a lot more interested in Levin and Kitty than in Anna and Vronsky.
Indeed 😊
I really agree that the stuff on the economics of farming was surprisingly interesting! In fact, this whole section felt terribly contemporary to me. Karenin and his war of the "special commissions": "Three new commissions were appointed..." Yay! Not... And the problems Levin ponders -- how best to organize labour and cultivate land, when all sides have a different set of interests and a bad history to get over; how to balance authority and co-responsibility; how to get people on board with new ideas; how to figure out whether ideas that have been developed elsewhere are applicable in your situation -- all these questions feel like things we still haven't really learnt to do. "Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and unity of interests" -- it's what most people would want, but how hard it is to get there...
Great observations Linda - so true . . .
Okay, some things that struck me. In chapter 14, Karenin writes, "Our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, you, and OUR son," but goes on to threaten, "In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and YOUR son." Ouch.
But my favorite is Anna's reply two chapters later: "I have received your letter. -A"
I found the whole section on farming very interesting, about land and who should own it and farm it, about peasants and education.
I live in Mexico where the issue of land is what sparked the Mexican Revolution, the landowners and their treatment of the Mexican peasant. There was also the issue of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship but basically the revolution was about land. I live in the state of Morelos where Zapata was from and the number of wrecked haciendas (sugar cane) scattered around are a constant reminder of the battles fought to control, own and work the land. The laws resulting from the revolution and relating to land are still in place today.
Levin exploited the peasants like everyone else. But he read and studied too, but without too much success, there were no easy answers to the age-old problem, what "… he, Levin, and all Russian peasants and landowners should do with their millions of hands and acres to make them as productive as possible for the general prosperity of all".
Yes, it's a novel but it's also a place where Tolstoy could let rip with his ideas. All so interesting.
Henry, thank you for another great discussion. Especially the excerpt from Lenin’s article!