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Conscience
and Compassion:
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
by
Marilyn Green Faulkner
“Happy
families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own
way.” With this famous line Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina,
a novel that encompasses all of the triumphs, struggles and crises
that occur in families.
Recently I had
a letter from a thoughtful reader who questioned some of the selections
for the Best Books Club. Though he agreed that such works as Anna
Karenina and A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn were undoubtedly “classics,” he
wondered whether we ought to be reading books that had wicked behavior
and sinful people in them. This is a fair question, one that every
moral person must address. In order to gain understanding, how much
of the negative should we take into our minds? What constitutes
a “moral” book, one that adheres to our shared desire
to seek after that which is “virtuous, lovely, of good report
and praiseworthy?” I don’t profess to hold an easy answer
to this question, but I would like to talk a little about morality
in literature. April’s selection for the Best Books Club is
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. Called by some the
greatest novel ever written in any language, it is a tragic tale
of marital infidelity. Like the stories in the Bible, this tale
provides an invaluable service: it presents an opportunity to examine
the ramifications of wrongdoing without actually having to experience
its devastating effects. This is accomplished by the ability of
the artist to both engage our emotions and imaginations in order
to elevate our level of understanding.
“Happy
families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy it its own
way.” With this famous line Leo Tolstoy begins a story of
that encompasses all of the triumphs, struggles and crises that
occur in families: fidelity and infidelity, faith and disbelief,
childbirth and death, toil and leisure, sibling rivalry and devotion.
For Tolstoy the story of Anna Karenina, a wealthy member
of the Russian gentry who falls into an affair that ends in her
death by suicide, provided a way to examine the family dynamic from
every angle, and into its pages he poured all of his philosophical
searching about the meaning of life, religion, social justice and
familial love. After finishing it he renounced all of his earlier
works and remarked, “I wrote everything into Anna Karenina,
and nothing was left over.” At its publication most critics
praised Tolstoy for his careful handling of a difficult subject,
though some, like my correspondent, questioned his motives. In order
to decide whether Tolstoy succeeds in writing a moral book about
the subject of immorality, we should look for a moment at what happens
when we read a book of this caliber.
You
are there.
The effort required
to conquer a great book, like that expended to scale a mountain,
is rewarded at the peak when a new vista opens up, one that is only
available to those who have been willing to make the climb. There
is nothing remarkable about the plot of Anna Karenina; countless
novels have been written about infidelity in marriage. What makes
this a great book? Tolstoy has an incredible gift for description,
writes beautiful prose (even in translation) and creates finely
detailed, multi-dimensional characters. But there is something more.
The genius of a great novel is its ability to literally immerse
you in the lives of its characters. After several hundred pages
of confusing Russian names, long digressions into philosophy, and
more details about Russian daily life than you may have wanted,
you find that you have become more than an observer. Through the
creative and active involvement of your brain, your imagination,
and your emotions, you have become a participant in this drama.
This transformation has occurred because the novel is simultaneously
stimulating your mind, your emotions, your imagination, your memory
and your understanding. As Walter Cronkite used to say, you are
there.
In the closing
scenes, Anna Karenina moves toward the train station. On
one level, we can easily trace the events in the plot that have
led up to this moment: her affair with Vronsky, her separation from
her child, the slow mental collapse brought about by her tormented
conscience. Yet at the same time we are asked to do more: we remember
an earlier moment in the novel, hundreds of pages back, when another
person fell beneath the wheels of a train, and reflect on the cyclical
nature of the story, and of life. We juxtapose Anna’s downward
spiral of misery with the upward spiral of happiness growing in
Levin and Kitty’s life, and are jolted into a realization
of the countless small decisions that have led to the dramatic conclusion
of the narrative. We experience, through Anna’s tormented
mind, the despairing twists of logic that drive a fine, bright person
to suicide, and finally are forced onto the tracks ourselves. “What
will she do?” is replaced by “What would I do?”
Tolstoy draws us further into the dilemma as he has Levin, the hero
of the tale and father of a happy family, entertain thoughts of
suicide as well. We realize that it is not just the tragedies of
life that make us desperate, but also the fleeting, fragile nature
of its joys.
At the age
of nineteen I read Anna Karenina for the first time and felt
(as Tolstoy intended me to feel) that I had lived Anna’s life
with her, every step of the way. I could no longer think of myself
as a person who would never step onto those tracks, for I had been
there with her. I could see, and feel, what she should have done,
and yet empathize with her inability to do it. Tolstoy was teaching
me conscience and compassion at the same time. For a moment, at
nineteen, I was lifted beyond my years and my limited understanding
into another life. That new depth of insight was then available
to me as my own life unfolded. Now, thirty years later, I have recently
reread Anna Karenina, and find that I can combine its insights
and beauties with experiences and thoughts from three decades of
living since my last encounter with the novel, adding new levels
of enrichment to the experience. In this way a great book is interactive;
we bring our best to it and it offers its best to us. When an author
combines brilliant artistry with the desire to uplift and edify,
as Tolstoy does, we will reach the end of the book with a deepened
sense of what it is to be human and what it means to reach for the
divine.
Re-imagine
your world
The careful
and compassionate observation of the human soul is the great gift
that a great novel brings us. We cannot live everywhere. We cannot
be everyone. But we can read, and when we read we can send out a
thread of connection to another kind of human, and then another,
and then another, until we are reinvented by our interconnectedness
with our race. This is what great novelists do for thoughtful readers.
Great books teach us about the shared experience of living, the
complexities of the human psyche and the simplicity of the human
heart. It is difficult to read great literature and be narrow and
prejudiced, and it is easier to understand our own experiences when
they can be examined and illuminated through fictional lives. Tolstoy
said, “Art is a human activity having for its purpose the
transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which
men have risen.” In order to accomplish this, the best fiction
may also show us, in heartbreaking detail, how human beings fail.
Tolstoy’s
life was full of contradiction and struggle: he envisioned an ideal
and could never quite reconcile his life to meet it. In later life
he considered himself more of a sage, and attempted to teach his
idea of Christianity to his followers. Basically he believed in
five leading ideas: first, that human beings must control their
emotions, especially anger; second, that absolute celibacy outside
of marriage was required; third, that men should not swear oaths;
fourth, that men must not resist evil (an idea that inspired Gandhi)
and finally, that men must learn to love their enemies. He believed
that the secret to changing the world lay in education, and had
a life-long interest in educational theory and practice. His fiction
grew out of his own diaries, in which he strove to understand his
feelings and actions. Thus, his fiction is characterized by a curious
realism that pays attention to the smallest details of life, while
at the same time reaching deep into the most complex emotions and
ideas. The composer, Peter Tchaikovsky, described Tolstoy’s
gift in this way:
“The
main feature, or rather the main note which resounds through every
page of Tolstoi, even the seemingly unimportant ones, is love,
compassion for Man in general, pity of some sort for his weakness,
his insignificance, for the shortness of his life, the vanity
of his desires…Yes, Tolstoi is for me the dearest, the deepest,
the greatest of all artists.”
There are a
few books that, when completed, will never be forgotten. For me,
Anna Karenina was such a book, as it has been for millions
of thoughtful readers. Though each of us must decide for ourselves
what books fit the description of “virtuous, lovely, of good
report and praiseworthy,” I believe we must remember that
virtue is innocence tried in the fire of tribulation and transformed
into righteousness. This process involves some interaction with
the difficult realities of this world. Through the best fiction
we can grow in wisdom and virtue without the devastating effects
of disobedience, while at the same time growing in compassion for
and understanding both of others and ourselves.
Anna Karenina,
by Leo Tolstoy, is the April selection for the Best Books Club,
a group of like-minded individuals who read the classics together
and discuss them via the Internet. Log on to our website at www.thebestbooksclub.com.
Here is our reading schedule for January – Jun, 2003:
January/February:
The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
March: A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
April: Anna
Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
May: Cry, the
Beloved Country, Alan Paton
June: Oliver
Twist, Charles Dickens
July: Watership
Down, Richard Adams
Readers’
Comments on A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
I'll never
forget the day in read that special book. I will be forever grateful
to my Grandmother who shared the wonder she was experiencing in
reading it herself. I was intrigued and went home to North Carolina
and found a copy for myself to read.
What a magical
place that book created in my heart. It was not until years later
that I understood why the book was so magical to me. I can say,
though, that it gave me a window into the world I had previously
only seen glimpses of on the nightly news and in the US News and
World Report Magazine. I became aware of the reality of a very different
world than the one my parents had created for me to dwell so safely
in. Lynette
It's one of my
favorite books - lived for a time in Brooklyn when I was a teenager.
It fascinated me. I especially loved where she tells how she felt
when she learned to read, and the words made sense to her. In times
of relative prosperity for many I think it's important for children
to relate to other times and places so they can have more empathy
and compassion, and thankfulness for their own lives. Of course we
adults need reminders often, too! Beth
I really enjoyed
the book, mostly because I was living in Brooklyn at the time I read
it. It is interesting to see how many things are still the same there.
For example they still have the different shops to get food at, the
baker, butcher, etc. There are bigger groceries (still not as big
as in the suburbs) but it's cheaper to go to the specialty shops.
And the apartment she describes herself living in was the exact description
of our apartment. Railway style they call it, because each room is
in a row. The struggle for making a living is also still very strong
there. Most everyone in the family has to work or do something in
order to pay all the bills. Brooklyn still has its little areas of
nationalities: Jewish, Russian, Polish, Italian, Puerto Rican, African
American, Arab, etc. Williamsburg these days is a big Jewish area,
Polish and Puerto Rican. It is also the new up-and-coming area for
artists. There are a lot of brownstones there but also warehouses
that are being turned into lofts. Williamsburg is right across the
river from the Empire State Building. The other part of the book I
found interesting was to see what being poor is really all about.
I thought Mike and I were poor, living there for graduate school but
we were so blessed. The food that we had would have been a feast for
them. We had heat in the winter, food on the table, and were able
to go and enjoy the city. There are so many fun free things to do
there. But the point is whenever I think about the people in this
book I look more positively on my own situation and it reminds me
to be grateful for all of the wonderful things Heavenly Father has
given me. Great Book. Stephanie
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website: www.thebestbooksclub.com
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