Anna Karenina - Finished!!

I finally finished the book about a month ago and have been wanting to blog about my success! Imagine the relief after three years of perseverance through my lightbulb feat. More unexpectedly, I find Anna Karenina deserving of its paramount literary status after all the ho-hum I've written previously in another blog entry, when I was obviously under the influence of a discouraging phase of my quest to finish the classic once and for all.

And I don't mean to take back my ho-hums, although now in hindsight I realized what my problem was. First of all, I am not Russian. Second, I have very little understanding of the Russian court and society. These two factors made the first half of the novel highly indigestible to someone like me with a non-existent slavic faculty. But with my dogged determination to plow through such muddied waters (I almost nicknamed myself Winston, though not with the intention to allude that Anna Karenina is in anyway like hell), it paid off after about 400 pages of reading. The story really takes off from then on, rewarding me with the most penetrating and insightful literature that speaks to the depths of my soul.

The mastery of Tolstoy lies in a few things: his extraodinary understanding of the human psyche, his skillfulness in weaving philosophy into each character representation, and his ability to tie these psychological, philosophical, and spiritual aspects into a grandiose scheme that makes the seamless and intriguing tapestry of the Anna Karenina story. Tolstoy excelled in his poignant observation of the thoughts and psychological conflicts that is very much true to the human soul, and this genuine humanness allows the reader to see life's situations from each character's perspective, and disallows the production of simplistic judgement on even the worst of sinners, because one is already so much engaged in each character's psyche that it's almost impossible not to be sympathetic. Indeed, how does one be sympathetic to an adulteress who abandons her son and a loyal husband? With Tolstoy's insight into the hearts and minds of Anna, Alexey (her husband), and Vronsky (her lover), of how their own worldviews and rationalizations lead to their chain of decisions, the reader is drawn into the web of circumstances and experiences to feel the characters' haplessness of making any decision other than the ones they felt cornered to. It's not so easy to be holier-than-thou after all.

However, Tolstoy's skillful plotting was not meant to convey a fatalistic mindset. Levin, a humble and very much flawed character and a rough sketch of the author himself, offers hope that the feeblest of all (among his contemporaries in the novel), was, against all odds, brave enough to rise above his own weaknesses, doubts, and grueling internal conflicts. One of my favorite parts of the story is Levin's conversion to Orthodox Christianity. Ironically, this section was an addendum added at a later date after all the other parts of the story was published (the original script was published in installments), and was blown off by Tolstoy's publsiher so that the author had to issue this part out of his own pocket in brochure format. Levin began as an irreligious moralist plagued by his own "wretchedness." Throughout the story, Tolstoy planted seeds in the most impossible places, and finished off with a thoroughly honest and moving stroke of how Levin made his cross-over. It was by no means glorious, and Levin resolved in peace of not knowing or ever understanding all that it takes to be a "Christian"(a typical Orthodox stance). But it is such genuineness along with his literary genius that Tolstoy managed to give universal comfort to all readers in a deep human way. And only a master can do so.