This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
In nineteenth-century Russia, the wife of an important government official loses her family and social status when she chooses the love of Count Vronsky over a passionless marriage.
luzestrella: when I got to the middle of the book I was shocked. It seens like the climax of all the main conclicts were already there. Why didn't the author cut the novel right there with that happy ending?
Unnusual for a ficcion novel indeep. But for that particular reason, for me it has it's charm.
The other half of the novel goes on describing what happened with the characters after they got what they wanted.… (more)
andejons: Similar premises: married, upper class women fall in love with men of less than perfect moral standing. The outcomes are very different though.
pingdjip: Like Tolstoy, Faber goes under his characters' skin, ponders their social manoeuvering, and follows the pitfalls and triumphs of their lives. Difference: Faber is funny and sometimes provocative and teasing in a "postmodern" way.
The people I am acquainted with continuously joke about how I force Anna Karenina into every conversation with an appeasable demeanor—only because I have an undying passion for everything that defines this book.
Tolstoy portrays Levin; who I believe to be despicable—regardless of the correlations between Levin and the author—who is the debated protagonist of the story. I despised whenever Levin appeared within the narrative, I just wanted the focus to be on Anna.
Despite the dull ending and unnecessary Levin narrative, this holds to be my favorite book; usurping Dickens’ Great Expectations and Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Anna is a highly relatable character and her devastation is what makes this book iconic to a modern reader. ( )
We are all told growing up how wonderful Tolstoy is, but if your haven't read Anna Karenina in the original Russian or in this English translation by the married couple Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, then you have no idea how fantastically wonderful Tolstoy is. Tolstoy himself said this is his first novel. The reason he gave is that it delivers what Tolstoy believed was necessary from a novel, which War and Peace did not, as great as it is.
This translation is tremendous because it is the only translation I'm aware of that unleashes Tolstoy's writerly genius for English readers to experience. Tolstoy has so much to say in this novel, and it is worth hearing! You know it will take time to finish this novel, right? Well, it is so good, that even though I had read earlier translations, it seemed like the first time I had read it. And then, when I finished it I immediately started from the beginning again. I took my time and read the entire novel a second time. And I relished it as much or more than the first reading. That is how much of a revelation I found this translation to be.
Just as a side note, I usually read fiction by people who are now deceased, because it takes a long time for the quality of a novel to shine. Most novels do not deserve the acclaim they receive. I realized in my twenties that if I read second-class novels I would be wasting my time. There are so many truly quality novels out there. One way to find them is to expand your range outside of American authors and outside of the late-20th- and early 21st centuries. ( )
I would consider War and Peace the greater novel, but gosh, isn't this a fantastic piece of work? What author so successfully places us inside the head of each of its characters, moving them forward with an unrelenting pace while also tying them so closely to the fortunes of their nation? Wondrous. ( )
Vengeance is mine; I will repay. ~ Deuteronomy 32:35
Dedication
First words
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (C. Garnett, 1946) and (J. Carmichael, 1960)
Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему. Всё смешалось в доме Облонских.
All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
All happy families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion. (N. H. Dole, 1886)
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Pevear, Volokhonsky, 2000)
Quotations
"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be." [Anna, p744 (2000)]
"He has long ceased loving me. And where love stops, hatred begins." [Anna, p763 (2000)]
Every minute of Alexei Alexandrovich's life was occupied and scheduled. And in order to have time to do what he had to do each day, he held to the strictest punctuality. 'Without haste and without rest' was his motto. [p109 (2000)]
Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others are surrounded by the same complexity as he is. [p302 (2000)]
Vronsky meanwhile, despite the full realization of what he had desired for so long, was not fully happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is the realization of desires. [...] He soon felt arise in his soul a desire for desires, an anguish. [p465 (2000)]
He [Levin] was happy, but, having entered upon family life, he saw at every step that it was not what he had imagined. [p479 (2000)]
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way. [p706 (2000)]
"If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it's true, as papa says, ---- that when we were brought up there was one extreme --- we were kept in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now its just the other way --- the parent are in the wash-house, while the children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children." [Natalia; p618)
“Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These principles laid down as invariable rules: that on must pay a card debt, but one need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may cheat a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one, and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.”
But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?
It's a vicious circle. Women are deprived of rights because of their lack of education, and their lack of education comes from having no rights. We mustn't forget that the subjection of women is so great and so old that we often refuse to comprehend the abyss that separates them from us.
Last words
I'll go on not understanding with my reason why I pray, and go on praying--but from now on my life, my whole life, no matter what happens to me, every second of it, is not only not meaningless as it was before, but it has the incontestable meaning of the goodness I have the power to put into it! (J. Carmichael, 1960)
I shall continue to pray without being able to explain to myself why, but my inward life has conquered its liberty. It will no longer be at the mercy of circumstances ; and my whole life, every moment of my life, will be, not meaningless as before, but full of deep meaning, which I shall have the power to impress on every action. (N. H. Dole, 1886)
This is the work for the complete Anna Karenina. Please do not combine with any of the works representing the individual volumes (see combination rules regarding part/whole issues for details), or with abridged versions. Thank you.
Please keep the Norton Critical Edition un-combined with the rest of them – it is significantly different with thorough explanatory annotations, essays by other authors, and reviews by other authors. Thank you.
In nineteenth-century Russia, the wife of an important government official loses her family and social status when she chooses the love of Count Vronsky over a passionless marriage.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, “Anna Karenina” is Tolstoy’s classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures a breathtaking tapestry of late-nineteenth-century Russian society. As Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on Tolstoy, “We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life.”
Haiku summary
The moral of this: Adultery drives one mad. And watch out for trains. (hillaryrose7)
Peasants have it grand. A day labouring with them. Then three-course dinner. (alsoCass)
)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Anna Karenina Group Read 2013
Wikipedia in English (5)
4