(*257) All classical works Over time, they acquire the significance of historical books. They are addressed not only to our heart, but also to our memory.
Pushkin wrote "Eugene Onegin" as the most modern novel. But Belinsky already called Pushkin’s book a historical work.
Books like Eugene Onegin never get old. When Belinsky spoke about the historicity of Pushkin's novel, he only pointed to this new dignity that arose in time.
Something similar happened with Anna Karenina. Tolstoy conceived this book as a "novel from modern life"But Dostoevsky already noted in this book the prominent features of Russian history, which received an enduring artistic embodiment under the pen of Tolstoy.
If the historian, in the words of Pushkin, strives to “resurrect the past century in all its truth,” then the modern writer, if we talk about Tolstoy, reflects his century “in all its truth.” That is why “Eugene Onegin”, (*258) and “Anna Karenina”, having become historical novels, have not lost their modern meaning. And the “action time” of these books has expanded endlessly.
After Tolstoy published the last chapters of War and Peace in 1869, it was as if he had no intention of writing anything new.
In the winter of 1870, Tolstoy wrote in a letter to his brother: “Everything is the same with us. I don’t write anything, but I still skate.”
Cooling down from his completed work, he rested, innocently and childishly enjoying freedom.
I skated, rode a troika from Yasnaya Polyana to Tula, read books.
“I read a lot of Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, Gogol, Moliere,” he says in a letter to Fet.
And again he skated around on the ice of the frozen Yasnaya Polyana pond.
And Sofya Andreevna watched in surprise as he “strives to be able to do all the things on one and two legs, backwards, circles and so on...”.
“It amuses him like a boy,” she wrote in her diary.
Meanwhile, Tolstoy, with the eyes and memory of a novelist, saw Sofya Andreevna, and himself, and pure skating ice under the winter sun.
In essence, this was already the beginning of Anna Karenina, although there was no talk about her at that time.
But when he began writing this novel, one of the first scenes in it was the skating rink scene. Now Levin repeated all these “things,” and Kitty looked at him with a smile.
“Oh, this is a new thing!” said Levin and immediately ran upstairs to make this new thing...
Levin began to charge, ran as far as he could from above and launched himself down, holding his balance with his hands in an unusual movement. On the last step he got caught, but, barely touching the ice with his hand, he made a strong movement, managed and, laughing, rolled on.
"Nice fellow!" - thought Kitty.
The novel Anna Karenina began in Yasnaya Polyana, began even before Tolstoy himself thought about it or said the first word about it.
(*259) ...When did Tolstoy begin work on the novel "Anna Karenina"?
According to everyone who had the opportunity to see his work closely, this happened in the spring of 1873.
“And it’s strange that he attacked this,” writes Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya. “Seryozha kept pestering me to give him something to read... I gave him Pushkin’s “Belkin’s Tales...” 1 .
It was this book that Tolstoy accidentally picked up, and it was revealed in one of the “Excerpts” published after Belkin’s Tales.
The passage began with the words: “The guests were arriving at the dacha.” Tolstoy admired this beginning, the first phrase, which immediately introduces the essence of the action, neglecting all expositions and introductions.
“This is how you should start,” said Tolstoy. “Pushkin is our teacher. This immediately introduces the reader to the interest of the action itself. Another would begin to describe the guests, the rooms, but Pushkin gets right down to business” 2.
Then one of the family who heard these words jokingly suggested that Tolstoy take advantage of this beginning and write a novel.
All day Tolstoy was impressed by Pushkin's prose. And in the evening I read individual pages from Pushkin’s volume to my family. “And under the influence of Pushkin he began to write,” notes Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya.
A letter from Sofia Andreevna to her sister, written on March 18, 1873, has been preserved. This letter says: “Yesterday, Lyovochka suddenly and unexpectedly began to write a novel from modern life. The plot of the novel is an unfaithful wife and all the drama that arose from this” 3.
And Tolstoy himself attributed the beginning of work on the novel to 1873. On March 25, 1873, Tolstoy wrote to N.N. Strakhov: “Once after work I picked up... a volume of Pushkin and, as always (for the 7th time, it seems), re-read everything... Not only by Pushkin before, but I don’t think I’ve ever admired anything so much. “The Shot,” “Egyptian Nights,” “ Captain's daughter"!!! And there is an excerpt "The guests were going to the dacha."
(*260) Involuntarily, accidentally, without knowing why or what would happen, I conceived of people and events, began to continue, then, of course, I changed it, and suddenly it began so beautifully and coolly that a novel came out..." 4
And this novel was Anna Karenina. Everything seems to fit together: both the testimony of Sofia Andreevna and the testimony of Tolstoy himself. But here’s what’s surprising: in Sofia Andreevna’s diary there is an entry: “Yesterday evening he (Lev Nikolaevich) told me that he imagined a type of woman, married, from high society, but who had lost herself. He said that his task was to make this woman only pitiful and not guilty... “Now everything is clear to me,” he said.” 5
.This entry, which quite clearly and accurately defines both the plot and even the general outlook on life, which relate entirely to Anna Karenina, is dated not 1873, but 1870! This means that the idea of “Anna Karenina” preceded the start of work on this novel. But all these three years (1870-1873) Tolstoy remained silent. By the time he started talking about a new novel, even Sofya Andreevna forgot that he had already been talked about earlier, and it seemed to her that he “attacked it strangely.”
When did Anna Karenina begin - in 1873 or 1870?
It is impossible to answer this question. Both dates refer to the beginning of Tolstoy’s invisible and visible work on his book.
He needed some kind of “push” so that the entire “system” of already understood “persons and events” would come into motion.
Reading Pushkin was such an impetus. “I cannot convey to you the beneficial influence that this reading had on me,” 6 admitted Tolstoy.
When Tolstoy said: “I don’t write anything and only skate,” he was telling the truth.
He really didn’t write anything then and was skating. But the work proceeded gradually, unnoticed by others. He studied and collected materials from the history of Peter the Great. In the winter of 1872, he wrote to A. A. Tolstoy: “Recently, having finished my ABC, I began to write that (*261) big story (I don’t like to call it a novel) that I have been dreaming about for a long time.” This was a story from the era of Peter I.
And suddenly “a novel,” “a novel from modern life,” “the first in my life,” 7 as Tolstoy said about “Anna Karenina.” There is almost nothing in “Anna Karenina” from the 18th century, except perhaps the clock with the image of Peter I in Karenin’s house... Only a “sign of the times,” but an extremely important sign! Karenin with all his being belongs to that state “machine”, which was once established and launched “according to the clock of the great sovereign.”
“You say: Peter’s time is not interesting, it is cruel,” wrote Tolstoy. “Whatever it was, it was the beginning of everything...” 8 This statement illuminates the deep theme of noble statehood in Tolstoy’s novel.
And when the “old landowner”, visiting Sviyazhsky, talks about progress, power and the people, saying: “The point, if you please, is that all progress is achieved only by power... Take the reforms of Peter...”, he seems to opens the cover of Tolstoy's huge historical manuscript, which was put aside in order to "make room" for a modern novel.
“Anna Karenina” did not arise by chance or out of nowhere. That is why it turned out to be not only a modern, but also a historical novel, in the full meaning of the word. F. M. Dostoevsky in his “Diary of a Writer” noted that in Tolstoy’s modern novel, “an artist to the highest degree, a writer par excellence,” he found the real “topic of the day” - “everything that is most important in our Russian current issues ", "and as if collected into one point."
The creative history of "Anna Karenina" is full of secrets, as, indeed, is any creative history of a great work. Tolstoy was not one of those writers who immediately wrote a draft body of his work and then improved and supplemented it. Under his pen, everything changed from version to version so that the emergence of the whole turned out to be the result of an “invisible effort” or inspiration.
(*262) Strange as it may seem at first glance, the spirituality of Tolstoy’s heroes appears at some later stage of the work. And at first he drew sharp sketches, sometimes similar to caricatures. This is a very strange feature of it. It is sometimes impossible to recognize in the initial sketches the characters we know from the novel.
Here, for example, is the first sketch of the appearance of Anna and her husband. “Indeed, they were a couple: he is sleek, white, plump and all wrinkled; she is ugly, with a low forehead, a short, almost upturned nose and too fat. So fat that a little more and she would have become ugly. If only not the huge black eyelashes that adorned her gray eyes, the huge black hair that beautifully decorated her forehead, and not the slender figure, and graceful movements, like her brother, and tiny arms and legs, she would have been ugly.”
There is something repulsive about this portrait. And how different is Anna from the drafts (her name was not Anna, but Nana Anastasia) from the Anna we know from the novel “She was lovely in her simple black dress, lovely were her full arms with bracelets, lovely was her firm neck with a thread pearls, charming curly hair of an upset hairstyle, charming the graceful light movements of small legs and arms, charming this beautiful face in its animation." And only in the last phrase something flashed from the original sketch: "... but there was something terrible and cruel in her charm."
Levin's first meeting with Vronsky is described in the novel in such a way that Vronsky involuntarily arouses Levin's sympathy. “It was not difficult for him to find the good and attractive in Vronsky. It immediately caught his eye. Vronsky was short, tightly built, dark-haired, with a good-naturedly handsome, extremely calm and firm face. In his face and figure, from his short-cropped black hair and fresh - a shaved chin to a wide, brand new uniform, everything was simple and at the same time elegant"
And in Balashov, Vronsky’s predecessor from the drafts of the novel, it seems there is not a single attractive feature. “According to a strange family legend, all the Balashovs wore a silver coachman’s earring in their left ear and were all bald. And Ivan Balashov, despite his 25 years, was already bald, but black hair curled at the back of his head, and his beard, although freshly shaved, turned blue cheeks and chin." It is impossible to imagine Vronsky in the novel, not only in such a form, but also in such psychological light.
Tolstoy sketched some kind of conventional, schematic drawing, which at a certain stage of the work was supposed to give way to a more complex pictorial elaboration of details and details so that the whole would completely change.
N. N. Gusev correctly noted that in the novel “Anna Karenina” Tolstoy, as the author, “tried to be completely invisible” 9 . But this cannot be said about his drafts, where he does not hide his attitude towards the characters and draws them either sarcastically or sympathetically, where everything is taken to the extreme.
Karenin in the first stages of his work, when he was still called Gagin, was illuminated by Tolstoy’s sympathetic attitude, although he also portrays him somewhat mockingly. “Alexey Alexandrovich did not take advantage of the convenience common to all people of being taken seriously by their neighbors. Alexey Alexandrovich, in addition, in addition to what is common to all people occupied with thought, had the misfortune for the world to wear on his face too clearly the sign of heartfelt kindness and innocence. He often smiled a smile, wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and therefore looked even more like a learned eccentric or a fool, depending on the degree of intelligence of those who judged him.”
In the final text, Tolstoy removed this “too clear sign,” and Karenin’s character changed somewhat. Features of a different kind appeared in him. “In St. Petersburg, the train had just stopped and she got off, the first face that attracted her attention was the face of her husband. “Oh, my God!” Why did his ears become such?" she thought, looking at his cold and impressive figure and especially at the cartilage of his ears, which now amazed her, propping up the brim of his round hat." Karenin changed not only in the eyes of Anna, he also changed in the eyes of Tolstoy.
If you read in a row all the surviving drafts of the famous horse racing scene, it may seem that Tolstoy, each time starting over, lost something... And then, (*264) immediately overcoming some barrier, by inspiration, prepared by the enormous spiritual tension of preliminary work, wrote the final text of this scene.
But already in the early drafts an important historical metaphor for the “end of Rome” was outlined. Tolstoy called the horse race, during which several officers fell to their death, a “cruel spectacle,” “gladiatorism.” The races took place in the presence of the Tsar and all the high society of St. Petersburg. "This is gladiatorialism. What's missing is the circus with the lions."
In Tolstoy’s novel, the same historical and at the same time sharp modern thought unfolds - “the idea of comparing our time,” as one of the journalists of the 70s of the 19th century wrote, “with the time of the decline of Rome.” It was this metaphor that Tolstoy made the basis not only of the horse racing scene, but of all St. Petersburg life.
And Vronsky himself is depicted as one of the last gladiators of modern Rome. By the way, Makhotin’s horse, to which Vronsky loses the race, is called Gladiator. The secular crowd filling Krasnoe Selo is hungry for spectacle. One of the spectators said significant words: “If I were a Roman, I would not miss a single circus.”
The horse racing scene in the novel is filled with enormous plot and historical content. It was a spectacle in the spirit of the times - colorful, poignant and tragic. The cruel spectacle, reminiscent of the lists and circuses, was arranged specifically for the entertainment of the court. “A large barrier,” writes Tolstoy, “stood in front of the royal gazebo. The Emperor, and the entire courtyard, and the crowds of people - everyone looked at them.”
Equestrian competitions in the presence of the king and the royal family were a major event in court life. “On the day of the races,” Tolstoy noted in drafts of the novel, “the whole courtyard was in Krasnoe.” S. L. Tolstoy in his “Essays on the Past” writes: “The horse racing in “Anna Karenina” is described from the words of Prince D. D. Obolensky. It actually happened to one officer, Prince Dmitry Borisovich Golitsyn, that his horse broke an obstacle while taking an obstacle back. It’s remarkable that my father has never been to the races himself." 10
In the drafts of the novel, both Golitsyn and Milyu(*265)tin, the son of the Minister of War, who won the race in Krasnoe Selo (in the novel he is called Makhotin), are mentioned.
Announcements about the time and place of the races were published in newspapers. Thus, in the newspaper “Golos” in 1873 the news was published (which now seems to be a “quote” from “Anna Karenina”): “From the office of His Imperial Highness the Inspector General of Cavalry, it is announced to the troops that the Krasnoselsk officers’ four-mile steeplechase, prizes of the imperial family will be held at the end of next July, and therefore those officers who will be assigned to depart for this race must arrive in Krasnoye Selo on July 5. To house the horses, stables have been set up near the hippodrome, and tents will be pitched for the officers.”
While working on Anna Karenina, Tolstoy, as if by chance, came across exactly those newspapers and magazines that he needed. Meetings took place with exactly the people he needed... It was as if some “creativity magnet” was attracting and selecting everything necessary for his novel.
Tolstoy said that the very idea of a novel from modern life “came” “thanks to the divine Pushkin.” And suddenly, precisely at the time when he was thinking about Pushkin and his new novel, his unexpected meeting took place with the daughter of the great poet.
Maria Alexandrovna was Pushkin's eldest daughter. In 1860, she married Leonid Nikolaevich Hartung, who, after graduating from the Corps of Pages, served in the Horse Guards regiment. For some time the Hartungs lived in Tula, visiting the same houses where Tolstoy visited when he came from Yasnaya Polyana.
S.P. Vorontsova-Velyaminova, Pushkin’s great-granddaughter, says: “I heard many times... that Tolstoy portrayed Pushkin’s daughter, M.A. Hartung, in Anna Karenina. I remember Aunt Masha well in her declining years: until her old age she retained an unusually light gait and her manner of holding herself upright. I remember her small hands, lively, sparkling eyes, ringing young voice" 11...
(*266) Tolstoy saw Pushkin’s daughter and talked to her at a party with General Tulubiev.
Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya, the sister of Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy, talks about this meeting in her memoirs. “We were sitting at an elegantly decorated tea table. The social hive was already buzzing... when the door from the hall opened and an unfamiliar lady in a black lace dress entered. Her light gait easily carried her rather plump, but straight and graceful figure.”
“I was introduced to her. Lev Nikolaevich was still sitting at the table. I saw how he looked at her intently. “Who is this?” he asked, approaching me. “Mme Hartung, daughter of the poet Pushkin.” “Yes.” “Oh,” he drawled, “now I understand... Look at the Arabic curls on the back of her head.” Amazingly thoroughbred."
T. A. Kuzminskaya introduced Tolstoy to M. A. Hartung. “I don’t know their conversation,” continues T. A. Kuzminskaya, “but I know that she served him as the type of Anna Karenina, not in character, not in life, but in appearance” 12.
In the life of Pushkin's daughter there was nothing similar to the story of Anna Karenina. But the very type of society lady in this novel turned out to be connected with Tolstoy’s first impression of Maria Alexandrovna Hartung. Everything was like in Pushkin’s passage: “the guests were gathering”... and suddenly she entered, “in a black lace dress, easily carrying her straight and graceful figure.” Already in the first chapters of the novel, a memory of her slips by: “She walked out with a fast gait, carrying her rather plump body so strangely easily.”
Why was Tolstoy so interested in Pushkin’s passage, which begins with the words: “The guests were arriving at the dacha”?
Firstly, because this passage represents something completely finished in artistic terms and at the same time, as it were, opens up a “distance” free romance".
The heroine of Pushkin's passage is called Volskaya. She enters the hall quickly: “At that very moment, the doors to the hall opened, and Volskaya entered. She was in the first flower of youth. Regular features, large black eyes, liveliness of movements, the very strangeness of the outfit, everything involuntarily attracted attention.”
For Tolstoy, time seems to slow down.
(*267) "Anna entered the living room. As always, holding herself extremely straight, with her quick, firm and easy step, which distinguished her from the gait of other secular women, and without changing the direction of her gaze, she took those few steps that separated her from the hostess..."
Not only the Pushkin scene itself, but also its inner meaning was very close to Tolstoy. “She behaves unforgivably,” they say about Volskaya in a social salon. “The world does not yet deserve such disdain from her...” - a condemning voice is heard. But at the same time, it attracts everyone's attention and evokes sympathy.
“I confess, I take part in the fate of this young woman. There is a lot of good in her and much less bad than they think. But her passions will destroy her...” This is Volskaya from Pushkin. But isn’t Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina like that? This was the same “type of woman, married, from high society, but who has lost herself.” Pushkin's thought fell on ready ground.
We can say that in the “excerpt” “The guests arrived at the dacha” the plot of “Anna Karenina” is outlined. But it's only planned...
All of Tolstoy's talent was needed so that the mysterious Volskaya, flashed in the interior, would turn into Anna Karenina, and from a "passage", from a small epic "granule", a "broad, free novel" would arise.
But it would be wrong to reduce Pushkin’s theme of “Anna Karenina” only to this passage. After all, Tolstoy said that he then “read all of Pushkin with delight.”
His attention should have been drawn to both Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” and the interpretation of this novel that was given in Belinsky’s article.
“If he could still be interested in the poetry of passion,” Belinsky writes about Eugene Onegin, “then the poetry of marriage not only did not interest him, but was disgusting to him.” Tolstoy in his novel gave full scope to the “poetry of passion” and “the poetry of marriage.” Both of these lyrical themes equally dear to Pushkin and Tolstoy.
Tolstoy was irresistibly impressed by Tatyana's moral victory over Onegin. Back in 1857, from Karamzin’s daughter, E.N. Meshcherskaya, Tolstoy heard a story that he remembered about Pushkin, who once said with surprise and admiration: “And you know, after all (*268) Tatyana refused Onegin and abandoned him: this I didn’t expect anything from her.”
Tolstoy really liked the fact that Pushkin spoke about his heroine as a living person with free will, and exactly how Tatyana acted. He himself, like Pushkin, treated the characters in his novel. “In general, my heroes and heroines sometimes do things that I would not want,” said Tolstoy, “they do what they should do in real life and as happens in real life, and not what I want.”
This is a very important author's recognition of Tolstoy. In "Eugene Onegin" it was depicted "as it happens in real life." And “Anna Karenina” depicts “how it happens in real life.” But the ways the plot develops are different.
Tolstoy thought with alarm about what would have happened to Pushkin's Tatyana if she had violated her duty. To answer this question, he had to write the novel Anna Karenina. And Tolstoy wrote his “Pushkin novel”.
He was admired by Tatyana's sincerity when she said: “And happiness was so possible, so close...” And he regretted the fate of Anna, who was nevertheless “ruined by passions.” He was on Tatiana's side when he depicted Anna Karenina's misadventures with horror and compassion. Tolstoy makes his Anna vaguely remember the words of Tatyana: “She thought about how life could still be happy, and how painfully she loves and hates him, and how terribly her heart beats.”
How did Tolstoy feel about Anna Karenina?
Some critics called him the “prosecutor” of the unfortunate woman, believing that he built his novel as a system of accusations against her, seeing in her the cause of all the suffering experienced by her loved ones and herself.
Others called him Anna Karenina’s “lawyer,” believing that the novel was a justification for her life, an apology for her feelings and actions, which in essence seemed to be quite reasonable, but for some reason led to disaster.
In both cases, the role of the author turns out to be strange; It remains unclear why he did not stick to his role to the end, that is, he did not provide sufficient grounds (*269) to “condemn” Anna Karenina, and did not offer anything clear enough to “justify” her.
“Lawyer” or “prosecutor” are judicial concepts. And Tolstoy says about himself: “I will not judge people...”
Who “justifies” Anna Karenina? Princess Myagkaya, who says: “Karenina is a wonderful woman. I don’t love her husband, but I love her very much.”
But could Princess Myagkaya have imagined or imagined what would happen to the one whom, in her words, she “loved very much” after she left both her husband and son?
Who condemns Anna Karenina? Princess Lydia Ivanovna, who wants to instill a “spirit of condemnation” in Seryozha’s heart and is ready to “throw a stone” if Karenin is unable to do this.
But could Lydia Ivanovna have imagined or imagined what would happen to the one whom she really did not love and whom she so wanted to “punish”?
And could Vronsky have imagined that Karenin would take Anna’s daughter into custody?
And could Anna herself imagine that Vronsky would let her die and give his daughter to Karenina?
Tolstoy did not recognize the right of Karenin and Lydia Ivanovna to “punish” Anna Karenina. The naive words of Princess Myagkaya were funny to him. What did they know about the future? Nothing...
None of them saw the secret that was hidden in Anna's life, the power of introspection and self-condemnation that grew in her soul.
In her immediate feeling of love, compassion and repentance, she was immeasurably higher than those who condemned or justified her.
When Vronsky’s mother said about her with hatred: “Yes, she ended the way such a woman should have ended,” Koznyshev, Levin’s brother, replied: “It’s not for us to judge, Countess.”
Tolstoy expressed this general thought: “It is not for us to judge” at the very beginning of his book, in the epigraph: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.”
Tolstoy warns against hasty condemnation and frivolous justification, points out the mystery of the human soul, in which there is an endless need for good and its own “highest court” of conscience.
(*270) This view of life fully corresponded to Tolstoy’s general ethical views. His novel teaches "respect for life."
In "War and Peace" and in "Anna Karenina" Tolstoy takes on the role of a strictly truthful chronicler who monitors how "fate works", how events take place, gradually revealing the internal "connection of things."
In "War and Peace" he spoke about the mysterious depth of people's life. In "Anna Karenina" he writes about the mystery of "the history of the human soul." In both cases, Tolstoy remains himself. His artistic world has its own original laws, which can be argued with, but which need to be known.
In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy “did not judge,” but grieved over the fate of his heroine, pitied and loved her. His feelings can rather be called fatherly. He was angry and annoyed with her, how can one be angry and annoyed with loved one. In one of his letters, he spoke about Anna Karenina: “I treat her like a pupil who turned out to be of bad character. But don’t tell me bad things about her, or, if you want, with m`enagement, she is still adopted.” 13.
V.K. Istomin, a journalist and close friend of the Bersovs, once asked Tolstoy how the idea for “Anna Karenina” came about. And Tolstoy replied: “It was the same as now, after dinner, I was lying alone on this sofa and smoking. Whether I was deep in thought or struggling with drowsiness, I don’t know, but suddenly the naked female elbow of an elegant aristocratic hand flashed in front of me. .."
It is impossible to understand whether Tolstoy is seriously telling this or is mystifying his interlocutor. In any case, there were no such “visions” in creative history his other works. “I involuntarily began to peer into the vision,” Tolstoy continues. “A shoulder, a neck, and, finally, a whole image of a beautiful woman in a ball gown appeared, as if pleadingly peering at me with sad eyes...”
All this was very reminiscent of something known, but what exactly, V.K. Istomin seemed unable to remember. “The vision (*271) disappeared,” he records Tolstoy’s words, “but I could no longer free myself from its impression, it haunted me day and night, and in order to get rid of it, I had to look for its embodiment. This is the beginning.” Anna Karenina..."
All this was a sly retelling of the famous poem by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy “Among the Noisy Ball...”. There are lines there: “I love to lie down when I’m tired, // And I see sad eyes, // And I hear a cheerful speech.” Everything is as Tolstoy said: “And sadly I fall asleep // And in unknown dreams I sleep... // Do I love you - I don’t know, // But it seems to me that I love you...”
The poem "Among the Noisy Ball..." was written in 1851. It is addressed to S. A. Miller: “In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance, // In the worries of worldly vanity, // I saw you, and the mystery // Your veiled features...”
S.A. Miller was the wife of a Horse Guards colonel. This story caused a lot of noise in the world. S. A. Miller could not get a divorce for a long time. A.K. Tolstoy’s mother did not approve of her son’s “Werther passion.”
But A.K. Tolstoy boldly “disregarded public opinion.” And S.A. Miller was breaking up with her former family. Tolstoy knew about all this, as did many others. In addition, Alexey Konstantinovich was his distant relative.
“Into my soul full of insignificant vanity, // Like a stormy whirlwind, passion burst unexpectedly, // With a raid, it crushed the elegant flowers in it, // And scattered the garden, tidied up with vanity...” - so wrote A. K. Tolstoy in 1852 year in another poem addressed to S.A. Miller.
Love changed his life. He was an aide-de-camp, but retired in 1861. In 1863, S. A. Miller finally received a divorce on terms that allowed her to marry A. K. Tolstoy...
Vronsky's name was Alexei Kirillovich, he was also an aide-de-camp, and also retired, and, together with Anna, he also sought and waited for a favorable decision from fate... And he had to face the law and the condemnation of the world.
In the novel, Vronsky is depicted as an amateur artist. During a trip abroad with Anna Karenina, he takes painting lessons in Rome...
And in the drafts of the novel “Anna Karenina” Vronsky (*272) is called a poet: “You will see him today. Firstly, he is good, secondly, he is a gentleman in the highest sense of the word, then he is smart, a poet and nice, nice fellow."
And here it is important to note that the lyrics of A.K. Tolstoy, despite the skeptical attitude towards it on the part of the author of “Anna Karenina,” resonated in his novel with sincere and pure sounds: “The conditions of small rubbish in a spinning column // The life-giving force carried away from thoughts / / And a stream of warm tears, like a blessed rain, // Watered my devastated soul.”
There are pages in Anna Karenina that were inspired by Tolstoy's memories of his youth and marriage. Levin draws the initial letters of words on the green cloth of the card table, the meaning of which Kitty must guess. “Here,” he said and wrote the initial letters: k, v, m, o: e, n, m, b, z, l, e, n, i, t? Writes in compliance with punctuation marks, which also indicate the meaning of words.
“These letters meant: “When you answered me: this cannot be, did that mean never, or then?” Levin is absolutely sure that Kitty cannot fail to understand his heart cryptogram: “There was no possibility that she could understand this complex phrase; but he looked at her with such an expression that his life depended on whether she understood these words.”
He expected a miracle, and the miracle happened. “I understand,” said Kitty. “What word is this?” he said, pointing to n, which meant the word never. “This word means never,” she said...
This, or almost this, is how Tolstoy’s explanation happened with Sofia Andreevna Bers on the Ivitsa estate, near Yasnaya Polyana. “I followed his big, red hand and felt that all my mental strength and abilities, all my attention were energetically focused on this crayon, on the hand that held it,” recalls Sofya Andreevna.
Tolstoy wrote; "V.m. and p.s.s.f.i.m.m.s. and n.s." These letters meant: “Your youth and need for happiness remind me too vividly of my old age and the impossibility of happiness.” Tolstoy was then 34 years old, and Sofya Andreevna was 18. In her memoirs, Sofya Andreevna writes (*273) that she then “read quickly and without hesitation from the initial letters.”
But Tolstoy’s letter has survived, in which he explained to Sofya Andreevna the meaning of the letters written in Ivitsy. In addition, in Tolstoy’s diary of those days there is an entry: “I wrote in vain in letters to Sonya.”
But in the novel everything happens exactly as Tolstoy wanted and as Sofya Andreevna dreamed: Levin and Kitty completely understand each other, almost without words.
When Tolstoy wrote his novel, he was already well over forty years old. He had a big family, sons, daughters... And he remembered early days love when he settled with Sofia Andreevna in Yasnaya Polyana. In his diary of 1862 there is an entry: “Incredible happiness... It cannot be that this ends only in life” 14. Many details of the day when he proposed to Sofya Andreevna Bers, having come to Moscow for this, were vividly preserved in his memory.
The family of Bers, a doctor in the Moscow palace office, lived in the Kremlin. And Tolstoy walked towards the Kremlin along Gazetny Lane. “And what he saw then, he never saw again. Especially the children going to school, the blue pigeons that flew from the roof onto the sidewalk, and the cods sprinkled with flour, which were put out by an invisible hand, touched him. These cods, pigeons and the two boys were unearthly creatures. All this happened at the same time: the boy ran up to the dove and, smiling, looked at Levin; the dove fluttered its wings and flew away, shining in the sun between the specks of snow trembling in the air, and from the window there was the smell of baked bread and the smell of baked bread. the cods showed up. All this together was so extraordinarily good that Levin laughed and cried with joy. Having made a long circle along Gazetny Lane and along Kislovka, he returned again to the hotel ... "
The landscape of Moscow, covered with a strong lyrical feeling, was written by the pen of the great poet. In Kitty's character there are undoubted traits of Sofia Andreevna. It is not without reason that some pages of her diary read like a commentary on the novel Anna Karenina.
But there are also traits of Sofia Andreevna in Dolly, in her eternal worries about the children, about the household, in her selfless devotion to the home. Not everything, of course, in Dolly’s fate is similar to the fate (*274) of Sofia Andreevna. But S. L. Tolstoy had every reason to say: “The traits of my mother can be found in Kitty (the first time of her marriage) and in Dolly, when she was caring for her many children” 15.
Those who knew Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana life closely recognized many familiar details in the novel. During the years of work on this book, Tolstoy did not keep diaries. “I wrote everything in Anna Karenina,” he said, “and nothing remains” 16.
In letters to friends, he referred to his novel as a diary: “I tried to express a lot of what I thought in the last chapter,” 17 he wrote to Fet in 1876.
Tolstoy brought into the novel much of what he himself experienced and experienced. One can consider Anna Karenina as Tolstoy's lyrical diary of the 70s. Pokrovskoye, where Levin lives, is very reminiscent of Yasnaya Polyana. Philosophy studies, household chores, snipe hunting and the way Levin went to mow the Kalinovy meadow with the men - all this was autobiographical for Tolstoy, like his diary.
The surname Levin itself is formed from the name of Tolstoy - Lev Nikolaevich - Lev-in, or Lev-in, because in his home circle he was called Leva or Lev Nikolaevich. The surname Levin was perceived by many contemporaries in this transcription.
However, Tolstoy never insisted on this particular reading of the main character’s surname.
“Father obviously copied Konstantin Levin from himself,” notes S. L. Tolstoy, “but he took only part of his self...” 18 But there was a lot of sincerity in what he “took.” It is not for nothing that both Yasnaya Polyana and the office in which “Anna Karenina” was created were included in the novel.
“The office slowly lit up with a candle brought in. Familiar details appeared: deer antlers, shelves with books, a mirror, stoves with an air vent that should have been repaired long ago, my father’s sofa, a large table, an open book on the table, a broken ashtray, a notebook with his handwriting..."
But no matter how great the similarities between Levin and Tolstoy are, their differences are just as obvious. “Levin is Lev Nikolaevich (not a poet),” 19 noted Fet, as if he had deduced the historical and psychological formula of this artistic character. In fact, Levin, if he had been a poet, would probably have written “Anna Karenina,” that is, he would have become Tolstoy.
“Lyovochka, you are Levin, but plus talent,” Sofya Andreevna said jokingly. “Levin is an intolerable person” 20. Levin in the novel seemed at times unbearable to Sofya Andreevna, because in this too he very much reminded her of Tolstoy. Fet did not agree with Sofya Andreevna’s opinion and said that for him the whole interest of the novel was concentrated precisely in Levin’s character. “For me,” Fet writes, “the main meaning in Karenina is Levin’s morally free heights” 21.
Levin is associated with Tolstoy’s thoughts about time and the philosophy of economy, about fidelity to duty and constancy (it’s not for nothing that his hero is called Konstantin), about the continuity of the hereditary way of life. He seems to be a very balanced and calm person.
But Levin was also affected by many of the doubts and anxieties that overwhelmed Tolstoy. After all, Tolstoy himself then wanted to live “in harmony with himself, with his family,” but he already had new philosophical and life impulses that came into conflict with the established way of life of the master’s estate.
In Pokrovsky they make jam, drink tea on the terrace, enjoy the shade and silence. And Levin, on the way from the estate to the village, thinks: “Everything is a holiday for them there, but here things are not festive, which are not expected and without which one cannot live.” “It’s been a long time since economic affairs seemed as important to him as they do now.”
It was in the 70s, when Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina, that he gradually moved to the position of the patriarchal peasantry, retreating further and further from the usual (*276) way of thinking of a person brought up in the traditions of noble culture, although deep sympathy for the peasantry was one of the noblest traditions of Russian nobles since the times of the Decembrists.
The two main characters of the novel - Anna Karenina and Levin - are similar to each other precisely in that they both go through a sharp change in their beliefs and experience dissatisfaction with their lives, nourishing in their souls “a vague hope of finding amendments.” To each of them Tolstoy gave a piece of his soul.
Both Anna and Levin know equally well what life is “under the threat of despair.” Both of them experienced the bitterness of “falling away” and the devastating “revaluation of values.” And in this sense, they, just like the author of the novel, belonged to their troubled time.
But the “falling away” of Anna and Levin is accomplished in different ways and for different purposes. In Tolstoy's novel there is a deep internal consistency and connection of plot ideas. Despite all the differences in their destinies, they are the main characters of a single novel.
Anna's love compresses the whole world into one sparkling point of her own self, which drives her crazy, drives her to despair and death. “My love is becoming more and more passionate and selfish,” says Anna. Tolstoy pointed out the paradoxical dialectic of the soul, in which love suddenly turns into hatred when it focuses on itself, not seeing anything around that is worthy of another, even greater love.
Levin's fall away was of a different kind. His world expands extraordinarily, grows endlessly from the moment when he suddenly realized his kinship with the great world of the people. Levin was looking for “the common life of humanity,” and Tolstoy admitted: “The only thing that saved me was that I managed to break out of my exclusivity...”
This was Tolstoy’s thought, which formed the basis of the artistic concept of his novel, where selfishness and philanthropy outline the “close” and “spacious” circle of existence with different radii.
In 1873, having written the first pages of a new work, Tolstoy told one of his correspondents that this novel “will be ready, God willing, in (*277) 2 weeks” 22. He was healthy, the work was going well, but not only was the novel not ready after two weeks, but two years later he was still writing Anna Karenina.
Only in 1875 did the first chapters of Anna Karenina appear in the first issues of the Russian Messenger magazine. The success was huge. Each new chapter “raised the whole society on its hind legs,” writes A. A. Tolstaya, “and there was no end to the rumors, delights, gossip, and disputes...” 23.
Finally, in 1878, the novel was published as a separate edition in three volumes. The next separate edition appeared only in 1912, in the next century... Until 1917, Tolstoy’s novel was published only as part of full meeting artistic works Tolstoy.
The original concept of the novel seemed “private” to Tolstoy. “The idea is so private,” he said, “and there cannot and should not be great success.” But, having set foot on the “romantic road,” Tolstoy obeyed the internal logic of the plot, which unfolded as if against his will. “I often sit down to write one thing,” Tolstoy admitted, “and suddenly I move onto broader roads: the essay grows.”
So “Anna Karenina” became a real encyclopedia of Russian life in the 70s of the 19th century. And the novel is filled with many “realities” - details of the social and spiritual life of modern Russia. On almost every page of newspapers and magazines of those years one can find “explanations”, “additions”, “comments”, and sometimes, it seems, sources of certain scenes of the novel.
In 1872, famous actresses Stella Colas and Delaporte toured the French theater in St. Petersburg. They performed with great success in the play "Frou-Frou" by Henri Meillac and Ludovic Halévy. “After the departure of Mrs. Stella-Kolas, it was no longer possible to resume this play,” the newspaper “Voice” said, “and it was already removed from the repertoire this spring season.”
The play was published in Russian translation in 1871 and then reprinted several times. It was a very fashionable thing. And the memory of Delaporte, who played the main (*278) heroine Gilberte, remained for a long time in the hearts of her fans. Vronsky was one of the fans of the play "Frou-Frou".
A. Meliac and L. Halévy are also known as the compilers of the libretto of the famous operettas by Jacques Offenbach “The Beautiful Helen”, “Bluebeard”, “Orpheus in Hell”. All these operettas were performed with great success in Paris, and in 1870 the Bouffe Theater opened in St. Petersburg. In Anna Karenina, “Beautiful Elena” is mentioned several times, full of ridicule for her “deceived husband”...
Vronsky is a big fan of operetta and “sits to the end in Buffy.” And that's where he borrowed the name for his horse - Frou-Frou. Such was Vronsky’s taste. And it must be said that he was a man in the taste of his time.
The novel says that Levin “saw articles on the origins of man in magazines.” This was perhaps the most “burning problem” of the 70s. In 1870, Charles Darwin's book "The Descent of Man" was published in two volumes, translated by I. M. Sechenov.
The Russian language and public consciousness included such concepts as “natural selection”, “struggle for existence”... Heated debate arose around Darwin’s theory. These disputes went far beyond the boundaries of scientific problems themselves.
In 1875, the journal "Bulletin of Europe" published an article by I. Mechnikov "Anthropology and Darwinism." The magazine "Russian Messenger" published "Philosophical-critical studies" by A.P. Lebedev - "Darwin's Doctrine on the Origin of the Organic World and Man." Zarya published an article about Darwin, “A Revolution in Science,” written by N. N. Strakhov.
Tolstoy was wary of attempts to transfer to human society the “animal laws” of the struggle for existence, the destruction of the “weak” by the “strong,” which were then made by some of Darwin’s followers, who created the so-called “social Darwinism.”
Tolstoy passed by the actual scientific significance of Darwin's thoughts on the evolution of the organic world indifferently, because he was more interested in ethical issues of philosophy and the theory of knowledge.
“Levin came across the articles in magazines that were discussed and read them, being interested in them as the development of the fundamentals of natural knowledge familiar to him as a natural scientist at the university, but he never brought these scientific conclusions about the origin of man as an animal closer together , about reflexes, about biology and sociology with those questions about the meaning of life and death for oneself, which recently came to his mind more and more often."
The fact that Levin was a natural scientist at the university indicates that he belonged to the generation of the 60s. But in the 70s, in the spirit of the new time, he was already moving away from natural science to history and philosophy, which was also a sign of the new time.
It would seem, what is the connection between Darwin, Frou-Frou and operetta? Meanwhile, there are such strange combinations of names that belong to their time and characterize it.
The 70s are both a “fun time”, about which Nekrasov mockingly said: “Going to Buff is a joy,” and a “serious time” of new “answers” of science to old “questions of life”, as A.K wrote about Tolstoy in his “message on Darwinism”: “The emergence of science is not in our power, // We only sow their seeds...”
When N.K. Mikhailovsky, an observant publicist of the 70s, needed to point out the most colorful names of this time, he named Darwin and Offenbach. It was the time of Anna Karenina...
There is another “detail of time” that has both real and symbolic meaning in the novel - the railroad. How many wonderful pages have been written about the meaning of the scary man who appears to Anna Karenina in a dream and whispers something “under her cap”...
Meanwhile, it was not only a “myth”, fiction or symbol, but real person real world. In the 70s, “cast iron” gradually entered everyday life. She both frightened and attracted the imagination of her contemporaries.
Disasters and accidents on the railway made a stunning impression. “No matter the road, it’s a gas chamber,” said the “Internal Review” of Otechestvennye Zapiski. “Railroads are a gas chamber,” Nekrasov wrote in his poem “Contemporaries.” The “Domestic Notes” said: “Those mutilated on the railways, their families, as well as the families of those killed, are left without any means of food...”
When Oblonsky found out that the train on which Anna Karenina arrived had crushed the coupler, he ran to the scene of the incident in confusion, and then, suffering, wincing, ready to cry, he kept repeating: “Oh, Anna, if only you had seen Oh, what a horror!
This coupler was a simple man, perhaps from the ruined estate of Oblonsky, who set out to seek his fortune on the same paths as his master. After all, Oblonsky is also looking for a place in the “Society for Mutual Balance of Southern Railways”... “Oh, what a horror!” says Oblonsky. “He alone fed a huge family...”
"Is there anything we can do for her?" - asks Anna Karenina. And Vronsky silently leaves the carriage where this conversation is taking place in order to give the assistant station manager 200 rubles for the unfortunate family...
In Tolstoy's modern novel, everything was modern: both the general concept and the details. And everything that came into his field of vision acquired a generalized meaning. For example, a railway. In those years it was a great technical innovation that overturned all the usual ideas about time, space and movement. So the very idea of life modern man was already inseparable from the impressions gleaned at the stations, in the station crowd, on the railways of the era.
In the artistic concept of Tolstoy's novel, the social contours of phenomena are very sharply drawn. No matter how much we talk about the psychological depth of Anna Karenina’s spiritual drama, about the “passions that destroyed her,” we will necessarily have to return to the “pharisaical cruelties” of her time.
Anna Oblonskaya, at the age of sixteen, was married off by her aunts to the “young governor” and found herself at the mercy of the law on the indissolubility of marriage. Karenin takes Vronsky's letters from Anna. And by law, as the head of the family, he had the right to view the correspondence of all his household. The law is entirely on his side. Anna is afraid that he will “take away her son,” and according to the law he had such a right.
Anna has no rights, and she feels this very painfully. In essence, her situation was hopeless. In seeking a divorce, she sought the absurd. If Karenin had given her a divorce, pointing out her guilt, that is, proving the obvious, namely that she left the family and went to Italy with Vronsky (*281), she would have lost the right to enter into a new marriage. She had to go through church repentance and renounce Vronsky forever.
“Whoever accepts guilt,” said the review of the Golos newspaper, “in addition to repenting (repentance by court decision is a characteristic feature of our legislation), is also deprived of the right to enter into a new marriage.” This newspaper article reads like a side note to Tolstoy's novel.
In order for Anna to marry Vronsky, Karenin must take the blame upon himself during the divorce. But Karenin believed that this would be “deception before the law of God and man,” as stated in the drafts of the novel. Therefore, he hesitates, knowing that legal proceedings (he has already visited a lawyer) will ruin Anna...
Anna Karenina nowhere “states a decisive protest” against the laws and customs of her environment, as the “new women” did. But in many ways she also belongs to the new generation. Tolstoy believed that it was naive to explain the new demands of life simply by the influence of “nihilistic” theories... These demands are already clearly felt everywhere.
So a high society lady is looking for some kind of independent activity. Anna Karenina writes a "novel for children." And the publisher Vorkuev, who appears in her salon, calls her book wonderful. Many of the English novels that Anna received from bookstores were written by women.
In the famous book “The Subordination of Woman” by J. St. Mill said that a woman’s desire for independent scientific and literary work testifies to the need for equal freedom and recognition of women’s rights that has developed in society. “Women reading, and even more so writing,” notes Mill, “are an incongruity and an element of eternal unrest in the existing order of things.”
Tolstoy does not give special significance literary works of Anna Karenina, says that this was only a means to get rid of the oppressive feeling of melancholy; but still he considered it necessary to point out her desire for independent work and knowledge. The novel caught all the living "trends of the times."
(*282) ...In Anna Karenina there are precisely dated episodes - seeing off volunteers for the war in Serbia (summer 1876).
If we go from this date to the beginning of the novel, then the entire chronological order of events will become clearer.
Tolstoy noted weeks, months, years with such consistency and accuracy that he could repeat the words of Pushkin: “We dare to assure that in our novel time is calculated according to the calendar.”
Anna Karenina arrived in Moscow at the end of winter 1873. The tragedy at Obiralovka station occurred in the spring of 1876. In the summer of the same year, Vronsky left for Serbia.
The chronology of the novel was based not only on the calendar sequence of events, but also on a certain selection of details from modern life.
Tolstoy, as if unnoticed by himself, stepped from the romantic road of fiction onto the real path of history. And the point here is not at all in the quantity and sharpness of the “signs of the times,” but in the feeling of social movement, in the feeling of great historical changes in the family and social life of the post-reform era.
In the third part of the novel there are scenes in which we see Levin in the circle of his landowner neighbors. Among them there are remarkably characterful and intelligent people. Levin listens carefully to their conversations.
Levin knew that “patriarchal methods” of management were outdated, and did not believe in the “rational principles” of bourgeois political economy. For him, the essence of the matter lies “in labor - the main element of the economy.” He seems to accidentally derive the historical formula of his era: “Now that all this has been turned upside down and is just settling down, the question of how these conditions will fit in is only one important question in Russia.”
This formula attracted the attention of V.I. Lenin. In his article “Leo Tolstoy and his era,” he pointed to Levin’s words as the key and solution to the entire post-reform era.
“Now all this has been turned upside down and is just settling down,” it is difficult to imagine a more apt description of the period 1861-1905,” writes V. I. Lenin. This alone is enough to call Tolstoy not only a great artist, but also a great historian .
(*283)...Re-reading Tolstoy, you always notice with constant surprise that in “Anna Karenina” what attracts us most is not even Anna Karenina, but precisely “Anna Karenina”, a historical, modern, philosophical, social, lyrical novel, in a word , the book itself as an artistic whole.
And here I would like to quote the words of Alexander Green, the author of “Scarlet Sails”, from his article “Modest about the Great”: “Reading “Anna Karenina”, with amazement and depression, you are convinced that it mainly depicts the entire Russian life of that time, the whole Russian soul in its entirety, and only then, in this huge pattern, in this continuous crowd of faces, sufferings, destinies, you pay the necessary attention to the intrigue of the actual romance.”
The originality of the content of Tolstoy's novel also corresponded to its form. And in this respect, “Anna Karenina” resembles Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”. Determining the genre of your book. Tolstoy used Pushkin's term "free novel". “Anna Karenina,” writes Tolstoy, is “a broad, free novel,” which “without tension” included everything “that seems to me to be understood by me from a new, unusual and useful side to people.”
So Tolstoy “brought tribute to” Pushkin, the one who once “resolved his doubts” by pointing out to him the “distance of a free novel.” He saw his task as an artist not in “undeniably resolving the question,” but in teaching him to love life “in all its manifestations.” “If they told me that what I write would be read by today’s children in 20 years,” writes Tolstoy, “and they would cry and laugh at it” and learn to love life, “I would devote my whole life and all my strength."
Not twenty, but many more years have passed since Tolstoy said these words. A whole century has passed... But his words have not lost their lively intonation. They seem to be said today and addressed to us, to those who are re-reading now or opening his immortal books for the first time.
1 S. A. Tolstaya. Diaries in 2 volumes, vol. 1, 1862-1900. M., "Fiction", 1978, p. 500.
2 P. I. Biryukov. Biography of L. N. Tolstoy in 4 volumes, vol. 2. M., Gosizdat, 1923, p. 96.
3 N. N. Gusev. Chronicle of the life and work of L. N. Tolstoy, 1828-1890. M., Goslitizdat, 1958, p. 403.
4 L. N. Tolstoy. Full collection Op. in 90 volumes, t. 62. M., Goslitizdat, 1928-1963, p. 16.
5 S. A. Tolstaya. Diaries in 2 volumes, vol. 1, p. 497.
6 L.N. Tolstoy. Full collection Op. in 90 volumes, vol. 61 from 332:
7 Ibid., t. 62, p. 25.
8 Ibid., vol. 61, p. 291.
9 N. N. Gusev. Tolstoy at the peak of his artistic genius. 1862-1877. M., 1928, p. 223.
10 S. L. Tolstoy. Essays on the past. Tula, 1965, p. 54.264
11 T. A. Kuzminskaya. My life at home and in Yasnaya Polyana. Tula, 1964, p. 501.
12 T. A. Kuzminskaya. My life at home and in Yasnaya Polyana. Tula, 1964, p. 464-465.
13 M`enagement - carefully, sparingly (French)
14 L. N. Tolstoy. Full collection Op. in 90 volumes, vol. 48, p. 46.
15 S. L. Tolstoy. Essays on the past. Tula, 1965, p. 54.
16 L N. Tolstoy. Full collection Op. in 90 volumes, vol. 62, p. 240.
17 Ibid., p. 272.
18 S. L. Tolstoy. Essays on the past, p. 54.
19 L. N. Tolstoy. Correspondence with Russian writers in 2 volumes, vol. 1. M., "Fiction", 1978, p. 434.
20 T.A.Kuzminskaya. My life at home and in Yasnaya Polyana, 1964, Priokskoe book. publishing house, p. 269.
21 L. N. Tolstoy. Correspondence with Russian writers, in 2 volumes, vol. I, p. 450.
22 L. N. Tolstoy. Full collection Op. in 90 volumes, vol. 62, p. 16.
23 Correspondence between L.N. Tolstoy and A.A. Tolstoy. St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 273
Content
Introduction
GChapter 1. Critics about Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”
Heads
2.2. Style features of the novel
Zconclusion
Literature
Introduction
The largest social novel in the history of classical Russian and world literature - “Anna Karenina” - has, in its most essential aspects, namely the ideological enrichment of the original concept, a creative history typical of great works of a great writer.
The novel was begun under the direct influence of Pushkin, and in particular his unfinished literary passage “Guests Arrived at the Dacha,” placed in Volume V of Pushkin’s works in the edition of P. Annenkov. “Once after work,” Tolstoy wrote in an unsent letter to N. Strakhov, “I took this volume of Pushkin and, as always (for the 7th time, it seems), I read it all, unable to put it down, and as if again read. But not only that, he seemed to resolve all my doubts. Not only Pushkin before, but I think I have never admired anything so much. Shot, Egyptian Nights, Captain's Daughter. And there is an excerpt “The guests were going to the dacha.” Involuntarily, accidentally, without knowing why or what would happen, I thought of people and events, began to continue, then, of course, changed it, and suddenly it began so beautifully and coolly that a novel came out, which I have now finished in draft, a novel very alive, hot and complete, which I am very pleased with and which will be ready, God willing, in 2 weeks and which has nothing to do with everything that I have been struggling with for a whole year. If I finish it, I will publish it as a separate book.”
Excitedly enthusiastic interest in Pushkin and his genius creatures in prose the writer retained it in the future. He told S.A. Tolstoy: “I learn a lot from Pushkin, he is my father, and I need to learn from him.” With “Belkin’s Tale” in mind, Tolstoy wrote in an unsent letter to P.D. Golokhvastov: “The writer must never stop studying this treasure.” And later, in a letter to the same addressee, he talked about the “beneficial influence” of Pushkin, the reading of which “if it excites you to work, then it is unmistakable.” Thus, Tolstoy’s numerous confessions clearly indicate that Pushkin for him was the strongest stimulator for creative work.
What exactly attracted Tolstoy’s attention in Pushkin’s passage “The guests were arriving at the dacha” can be judged by his words: “This is how you should write,” said Tolstoy. “Pushkin gets straight to the point. Another would begin to describe the guests, the rooms, but he puts it into action right away.” So, it was not the interior, not the portraits of the guests, and not those traditional descriptions in which the setting of the action was depicted, but the action itself, the direct development of the plot - all this attracted the author of Anna Karenina.
The creation of those chapters of the novel, which describe the gathering of guests at Betsy Tverskaya’s place after the theater, is connected with Pushkin’s passage “Guests gathered at the dacha.” This is how the novel was supposed to begin according to the original plan. The plot and compositional similarity of these chapters and Pushkin’s passage, as well as the similarity of the situations in which Pushkin’s Zinaida Volskaya and Tolstoy’s Anna find themselves, are obvious. But the beginning of the novel in latest edition devoid of any “introducing” descriptions; if you do not have a moralistic maxim in mind, it immediately, in Pushkin’s style, immerses the reader in the thick of events in the Oblonskys’ house. “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonsky house” - what was mixed up, the reader does not know, he will find out later - but this well-known phrase abruptly ties the knot of events that will unfold later. Thus, the beginning of Anna Karenina was written in the artistic manner of Pushkin, and the entire novel was created in an atmosphere of deep interest in Pushkin and Pushkin’s prose. And it is hardly by chance that the writer chose the poet’s daughter Maria Alexandrovna Hartung as the prototype of his heroine, capturing the expressive features of her appearance in the appearance of Anna.
The purpose of this study is to identify the combination of Pushkin’s traditions and the author’s innovation in the novel.
To achieve the goal of the work it is necessary to solve the following problems:
Explore critical literature based on the novel;
Consider the artistic originality of the novel Anna Karenina
Identify Pushkin's traditions in the novel.
The research examined the works and articles of famous writers studying the life and work of Leo Tolstoy: N.N. Naumov, E.G. Babaev, K.N. Lomunov, V. Gornoy and others.
Thus, in V. Gornaya’s article “Observations on the novel “Anna Karenina””, in connection with the analysis of the work, an attempt is made to show the adherence to Pushkin’s traditions in the novel.
In the works of Babaev E.G. the originality of the novel, its plot and compositional line are analyzed.
Bychkov S.P. writes about the controversy in the literary environment of that time, caused by the publication of L. N. Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina.
The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, and literature.
Chapter 1. Critics about the novel by L.N. Tolstoy"Anna Karenina"
The novel “Anna Karenina” began to be published in the magazine “Russian Messenger” in January 1875 and immediately caused a storm of controversy, opposing opinions and reviews in society and Russian criticism, ranging from reverent admiration to disappointment, dissatisfaction and even indignation.
“Every chapter of Anna Karenina raised the whole society on its hind legs, and there was no end to the talk, delight and gossip, as if it was about an issue that was personally close to everyone,” wrote Leo Tolstoy’s cousin-aunt, maid of honor Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya.
“Your novel captivates everyone and is an incredible read. The success is truly incredible, crazy. This is how they read Pushkin and Gogol, attacking every page of them and neglecting everything that was written by others,” his friend and editor N. N. Strakhov reported to Tolstoy after the publication of the 6th part of “Anna Karenina.”
Books of the “Russian Messenger” with the next chapters of “Anna Karenina” were obtained from libraries almost through battle.
Even famous writers and it was not easy for critics to get books and magazines.
“From Sunday until today, I enjoyed reading Anna Karenina,” writes Tolstoy, a friend of his youth, the famous hero of the Sevastopol campaign, S. S. Urusov.
“And “Anna Karenina” is bliss. I’m crying - I usually never cry, but I can’t stand it here!” - these words belong to the famous translator and publisher N.V. Gerbel.
Not only Tolstoy’s friends and admirers, but also those writers of the democratic camp who did not accept and sharply criticized the novel speak about the enormous success of the novel among a wide circle of readers.
“Anna Karenina” was a great success with the public. Everyone read it and became engrossed in it, wrote the irreconcilable enemy of the new novel, the democratic critic M. A. Antonovich.
“Russian society read with passionate greed what is called the novel Anna Karenina,” historian and public figure A. S. Prugavin summed up his impressions.
The most important distinguishing feature of true art, Leo Tolstoy liked to repeat, is its ability to “infect other people with feelings,” to make them “laugh and cry, to love life. If “Anna Karenina” did not have this magical power, if the author had not been able to shake the souls of ordinary readers, to make him empathize with his hero, there would have been no path for the novel in the coming centuries, there would have been no ever-living interest in it among readers and critics from all over the world. That is why these first naive reviews are so expensive.
Gradually the reviews become more detailed. They contain more thoughts and observations.
From the very beginning, the assessments of the novel by the poet and friend of the writer A. A. Fet were distinguished by their depth and subtlety. Already in March 1876, more than a year before the completion of Anna Karenina, he wrote to the author: “And I suppose they all sense that this novel is a strict, incorruptible judgment on our entire way of life. From the man to the beef prince!”
A. A. Fet correctly felt the innovation of Tolstoy the realist. “But what artistic audacity there is in the descriptions of childbirth,” he remarked to the author in April 1877, “after all, no one since the creation of the world has done or will do this.
“The psychologist Troitsky said that psychological laws are being tested using your novel. Even advanced teachers find that the image of Seryozha contains important instructions for the theory of education and training,” N. N. Strakhov reported to the author.
The novel had not yet been published in full when its characters stepped from the book into life. Contemporaries kept remembering Anna and Kitty, Stiva and Levin, as their old acquaintances, and turned to Tolstoy’s heroes in order to more clearly depict real people, explain and convey their own experiences.
For many readers, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina has become the embodiment of feminine beauty and charm. It is not surprising that, wanting to emphasize the attractiveness of a particular woman, she was compared to Tolstoy’s heroine.
Many ladies, not embarrassed by the fate of the heroine, passionately wanted to be like her.
The first chapters of the novel delighted A. A. Fet, N. N. Strakhov, N. S. Leskov - and disappointed I. S. Turgenev, F. M. Dostoevsky, V. V. Stasov, and caused the condemnation of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
The view of “Anna Karenina” as an empty and meaningless novel was shared by some young, progressive-minded readers. When in March 1876, its editor A. S. Suvorin published a positive review of the novel in the newspaper “Novoe Vremya,” he received an angry letter from eighth-graders, outraged by the liberal journalist’s condescension towards Tolstoy’s “empty, meaningless” novel.
An explosion of indignation caused a new novel from the writer and censor of Nikolaev times A. V. Nikitenko. In his opinion, major vice“Anna Karenina” - “predominant image negative aspects life." In a letter to P. A. Vyazemsky, the old censor accused Tolstoy of what reactionary criticism has always accused great Russian writers of: indiscriminate denigration, lack of ideals, “savoring the dirty and the past.”
Readers of the novel were immediately divided into two “parties” - Anna’s “defenders” and “judges”. Supporters of women's emancipation did not doubt for a minute that Anna was right and were not happy with the tragic end of the novel. “Tolstoy treated Anna very cruelly, forcing her to die under the carriage; she couldn’t sit with that sour Alexei Alexandrovich all her life,” said some female students.
Zealous advocates of “freedom of feeling” considered Anna’s departure from her husband and son to be so simple and easy that they were downright perplexed: why was Anna suffering, what was oppressing her? Readers are close to the camp of populist revolutionaries. Anna was reproached not for the fact that she left her hated husband, destroying the “web of lies and deception” (in this she was certainly right), but for the fact that she was completely absorbed in the struggle for personal happiness while the best Russian women (Vera Figner , Sofya Perovskaya, Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya and hundreds of others) completely renounced the personal in the name of the struggle for the happiness of the people!
One of the theorists of populism, P. N. Tkachev, who spoke out on the pages of “Delo” against Skabichevsky’s “nonsense,” in turn saw in “Anna Karenina” an example of “salon art,” “the latest epic of lordly cupids.” In his opinion, the novel was distinguished by its “scandalous emptiness of content.”
Tolstoy had these and similar critics in mind when, not without irony, he wrote in one of his letters: “If short-sighted critics think that I only wanted to describe what I like, how Oblonsky dines and what kind of shoulders Karenina has,” then they are wrong."
M. Antonovich regarded “Anna Karenina” as an example of “lack of tendentiousness and quietism.” N. A. Nekrasov, not accepting the accusatory pathos of the novel, directed against high society, ridiculed “Anna Karenina” in an epigram:
Tolstoy, you proved with patience and talent, That a woman should not “walk” Neither with the chamber cadet, nor with the aide-de-camp, When she is a wife and mother.
The reason for such a cold reception of the novel by democrats was revealed by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, who in a letter to Annenkov indicated that “ conservative party triumphs" and makes a "political banner" out of Tolstoy's novel. Shchedrin's fears were completely confirmed. The reaction really tried to use Tolstoy’s novel as its “political banner.”
An example of a reactionary-nationalist interpretation of “Anna Karenina” was the articles of F. Dostoevsky in the “Diary of a Writer” for 1877. Dostoevsky viewed Tolstoy’s novel in the spirit of reactionary “soil-based” ideology. He brought to light his fanatical “theories” about the eternal innateness of sin, about the “mysterious and fatal inevitability of evil,” from which it is supposedly impossible to save a person. Under no social structure can evil be avoided; abnormality and sin are supposedly inherent in human nature itself, which no “socialist healer” is capable of transforming. It is absolutely clear that these reactionary ideas imposed on him by Dostoevsky were alien to Tolstoy. Tolstoy's talent was bright and life-affirming; all his works, in particular this novel, are imbued with love for man. This is how Tolstoy opposed Dostoevsky, who constantly slandered him. That is why Dostoevsky’s articles about Anna Karenina represent a gross distortion of the ideological essence of the great work.
M. Gromeka also went in the same direction, in whose sketch about “Anna Karenina” there is absolutely no indication of the social and historical conditionality of the ideological problematics of the novel. Gromeka is a complete idealist. He essentially repeated Dostoevsky’s malicious attacks against man, wrote about “the depth of evil in human nature”, that “millennia” have not eradicated the “beast” in man. The critic did not reveal the social reasons for Anna's tragedy, but spoke only about its biological stimuli. He believed that all three - Anna, Karenin and Vronsky - had put themselves “in a false position in life,” so the curse followed them everywhere. This means that the participants in this fatal “triangle” are themselves to blame for their misfortunes, and their living conditions had nothing to do with it. The critic did not believe in the power of the human mind, arguing that the “mysteries of life” will never be known and explained. He advocated an immediate feeling that led directly to a religious worldview and Christianity. Gromeka looked at Anna Karenina and critical issues Tolstoy's worldview in religious and mystical terms.
"Anna Karenina" did not receive a decent assessment in the criticism of the 70s; the ideological and figurative system of the novel remained undiscovered, as well as its amazing artistic power.
“Anna Karenina” is not only an amazing monument of Russian literature and culture in its artistic grandeur, but also a living phenomenon of our time. Tolstoy's novel is still perceived as a sharp, topical work.
Tolstoy acts as a stern exposer of all the vileness of bourgeois society, all the immorality and corruption of its ideology and “culture”, for what he branded in his novel was characteristic not only of old Russia, but also of any private property society in general, and of modern America in peculiarities.
It is no coincidence that American reaction blasphemously mocks greatest creation Tolstoy and publishes Anna Karenina in a roughly abridged form, like an ordinary adulterous novel (ed. Herbert M. Alexander, 1948). Catering to the tastes of businessmen, American publishers deprived Tolstoy’s novel of its “soul”, removed from it entire chapters devoted to social problems, and from “Anna Karenina” they concocted a certain work with a typically bourgeois theme of “threesome love”, monstrously distorting the whole ideological meaning novel. This characterizes the state of culture in modern America and at the same time testifies to the fear of Tolstoy’s accusatory pathos.
Tolstoy's novel made many women think about their own fate. In the early 80s, “Anna Karenina” crossed the borders of Russia. First of all, in 1881, the novel was translated into Czech; in 1885, it was published in translation into German and French. In 1886-1887 - into English, Italian, Spanish, Danish and Dutch.
During these years, interest in Russia sharply increased in European countries - a rapidly developing country, with a rapidly growing revolutionary movement, large and still little known in literature. In an effort to satisfy this interest, publishing houses in different countries quickly, as if competing with each other, began to publish works by major Russian writers: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Goncharov and others.
“Anna Karenina” was one of the main books that conquered Europe. Translated to European languages in the mid-80s, the novel was published again and again, appearing in both previous and new translations. The first translation of the novel into French alone was reprinted 12 times between 1885 and 1911. At the same time, in these same years, 5 more new translations of “Anna Karenina” appeared.
Chapter Conclusions
Already during the years of publishing “Anna Karenina” on the pages of the magazine, Russian scientists of various specialties noted the scientific value of many of the writer’s observations.
The success of “Anna Karenina” among wide circles of readers was enormous. But at the same time, many progressive writers, critics and readers were disappointed with the first parts of the novel.
Tolstoy's novel, however, did not meet with understanding in democratic circles.
Headsa 2. The artistic originality of the novel “Anna Karenina”
2.1. The plot and composition of the novel
Tolstoy called Anna Karenina a “broad and free novel,” using Pushkin’s term “free novel.” This is a clear indication of the genre origins of the work.
Tolstoy's "broad and free novel" is different from Pushkin's "free novel". In Anna Karenina, for example, there are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic authorial digressions. But there is an undoubted continuity between Pushkin’s novel and Tolstoy’s novel, which manifests itself in the genre, plot, and composition.
In Tolstoy’s novel, as well as in Pushkin’s novel, paramount importance belongs not to the plot completeness of the provisions, but to the “creative concept,” which determines the selection of material and, in the spacious frame of the modern novel, represents freedom for the development of plot lines. “I simply cannot and do not know how to put certain boundaries on the persons I have imagined - such as marriage or death, after which the interest of the story would be destroyed. I couldn’t help but imagine that the death of one person only aroused interest in other people, and marriage seemed mostly like the beginning, not the end of interest,” Tolstoy wrote.
“A broad and free novel” obeys the logic of life; one of his internal artistic goals is to overcome literary conventions. In 1877, in the article “On the significance of the modern novel,” F. Buslaev wrote that modernity cannot be satisfied with “unrealistic fairy tales, which until recently were passed off as novels with mysterious plots and adventures of incredible heroes in a fantastic, unprecedented setting.” -new". Tolstoy sympathetically noted this article as interesting experience understanding the ways of development of realistic literature of the 19th century. .
“Now the novel is interested in the reality around us, the current life in the family and society, as it is, in its active fermentation of unsettled elements of old and new, dying and emerging, elements excited by the great revolutions and reforms of our century” , wrote F. Buslaev.
Anna's storyline unfolds “in the law” (in the family) and “outside the law” (outside the family). Levin's storyline moves from being “in law” (in the family) to the awareness of the illegality of all social development (“we are outside the law”). Anna dreamed of getting rid of what was “painfully bothering” her. She chose the path of a voluntary sacrifice. And Levin dreamed of “stopping his dependence on evil,” and he was tormented by the thought of suicide. But what seemed to Anna to be “truth” was for Levin “a painful untruth.” He could not dwell on the fact that evil controls society. He needed to find the “highest truth,” that “undoubted meaning of good,” which should change life and give it new moral laws: “instead of poverty, common wealth, contentment, instead of enmity, harmony and connection of interests.” . The circles of events in both cases have a common center.
Despite the isolation of their content, these plots represent concentric circles with a common center. Tolstoy's novel is a core work with artistic unity. “In the field of knowledge there is a center, and from it there are countless radii,” said Tolstoy. “The whole task is to determine the length of these radii and their distance from each other.” This statement, if applied to the plot of Anna Karenina, explains the principle of concentric arrangement of large and small circles of events in the novel.
Tolstoy made Levin’s “circle” much wider than Anna’s “circle”. Levin's story begins much earlier than Anna's story and ends after the death of the heroine after whom the novel is named. The book ends not with the death of Anna (part seven), but with Levin’s moral quest and his attempts to create a positive program for the renewal of private and public life (part eight).
The concentricity of plot circles is generally characteristic of the novel Anna Karenina. The parody romance between Baroness Shilton and Petritsky “shines through” the circle of relations between Anna and Vronsky. The story of Ivan Parmenov and his wife becomes for Levin the embodiment of patriarchal peace and happiness.
But Vronsky’s life did not follow the rules. His mother was the first to notice this, dissatisfied with the fact that some kind of “Wertherian passion” had taken possession of her son. Vronsky himself feels that many living conditions were not provided for by the rules”: “Only very recently, regarding his relationship with Anna, Vronsky began to feel that the set of his rules did not fully define all the conditions, and in the future it seemed difficult -ties and doubts, in which Vronsky no longer found a guiding thread.”
The more serious Vronsky’s feelings become, the further he moves away from the “undoubted rules” to which the world is subject. Illicit love made him an outlaw. By the will of circumstances, Vronsky had to renounce his circle. But he is unable to overcome the “secular man” in his soul. With all his might he strives to return “to his bosom.” Vronsky reaches out to the law of light, but this, according to Tolstoy, is a cruel and false law that cannot bring happiness. At the end of the novel, Vronsky volunteers to join the active army. He admits that he is only good for “cutting into a square, crushing or lying down” (19, 361). The spiritual crisis ended in catastrophe. If Levin denies the very thought expressed in “revenge and murder,” then Vronsky is entirely in the grip of harsh and cruel feelings: “I, as a person,” said Vronsky, “are good because life is nothing for me.” what is not worth"; “Yes, as a tool I may be good for something, but as a person I am a wreck.”
One of the main lines of the novel is connected with Karenin. This is a "statesman"
Tolstoy points out the possibility of enlightenment of Karenin’s soul at critical moments in his life, as was the case during the days of Anna’s illness, when he suddenly got rid of the “confusion of concepts” and comprehended the “law of good.” But this enlightenment did not last long. Karenin can find a foothold in nothing but. “My situation is so terrible that I can’t find anywhere, I can’t find a point of support in myself.”
Oblonsky's character presented a difficult task for Tolstoy. Many fundamental features of Russian life of the second found expression in it. half of the 19th century V. Oblonsky positioned himself in the novel with lordly latitude. One of his lunches lasted for two chapters. Oblonsky's hedonism, his indifference to everything except what can bring him pleasure, is a characteristic feature of the psychology of an entire class tending to decline. “You have to do one of two things: either admit that the current structure of society is fair, and then defend your rights; or admit that you are enjoying unfair advantages, as I do, and enjoy them with pleasure” (19, 163). Oblonsky is smart enough to see social contradictions of his time; he even believes that the structure of society is unfair.
Oblonsky’s life takes place within the boundaries of the “law,” and he is quite satisfied with his life, although he has long admitted to himself that he enjoys “unfair advantages.” His “common sense” represents the prejudice of an entire class and is the touchstone on which Levin’s thought is honed.
The uniqueness of the “broad and free novel” lies in the fact that the plot here loses its organizing influence on the material. The scene at the railway station completes the tragic story of Anna's life (chapter XXXI, part seven).
In Tolstoy's novel they looked for the plot and did not find it. Some claimed that the novel was already over, others insisted that it could be continued indefinitely. In An-not-Karenina, the plot and plot do not coincide. The plot provisions, even when exhausted, do not interfere with the further development of the plot, which has its own artistic completeness and moves from the emergence to the resolution of the conflict.
Only at the beginning of the seventh part did Tolstoy “introduce” the two main characters of the novel - Anna and Levin. But this acquaintance, extremely important in terms of plot, did not change the plot's course of events. The writer tried to discard the concept of plot altogether: “The connection of the building is made not on the plot and not on the relationships (acquaintance) of persons, but on an internal connection.”
Tolstoy wrote not just a novel, but a “novel of life.” The genre of the “broad and free novel” removes the restrictions of the closed development of the plot within the framework of a complete plot. Life doesn't fit into a pattern. The plot circles in the novel are arranged in such a way that attention is focused on the moral and social core of the work.
The plot of “Anna Karenina” is “the story of the human soul,” which enters into a fatal battle with the prejudices and laws of its era; some cannot withstand this struggle and die (Anna), others “under the threat of despair” come to the consciousness of “people's truth” and ways to renew society (Levin).
The principle of the concentric arrangement of plot circles is a characteristic form for Tolstoy of identifying the internal unity of a “broad and free novel.” The invisible “castle”—the author’s general view of life, naturally and freely transforming into the thoughts and feelings of the characters—“closes the vaults” with impeccable precision.
The originality of a “broad and free novel” is manifested not only in how the plot is constructed, but also in what kind of architecture and what composition the writer chooses.
The unusual composition of the novel Anna Karenina seemed especially strange to many. The absence of a logically completed plot made the composition of the novel unusual. In 1878 prof. S. A. Rachinsky wrote to Tolstoy: “The last part made a chilling impression not because it was weaker than the others (on the contrary, it is full of depth and subtlety), but because of a fundamental flaw in the construction of the entire novel. It has no architecture. It develops side by side, and develops magnificently, two themes that are not connected in any way. How delighted I was when Levin met Anna Karenina. - Agree that this is one of the best episodes of the novel. Here was an opportunity to tie up all the threads of the story and provide them with a coherent ending. But you didn’t want to - God bless you. “Anna Karenina” still remains the best of modern novels, and you are the first of modern writers.”
Tolstoy's response letter to Prof. S. A. Rachinsky is extremely interesting, as it contains a definition of the characteristic features of the artistic form of the novel “Anna Karenina”. Tolstoy insisted that a novel can be judged only on the basis of its “internal content.” He believed that the critic’s opinion about the novel was “wrong”: “On the contrary, I am proud of the architecture,” wrote Tolstoy. “The vaults are built in such a way that it is impossible to notice where the castle is. And this is what I tried most of all” (62, 377).
In the strict sense of the word, there is no exposition in Anna Karenina. Regarding Pushkin’s passage “The guests gathered at the dacha,” Tolstoy said: “This is how to begin. Pushkin is our teacher. This immediately introduces the reader to the interest of the action itself. Another would begin to describe the guests, the rooms, but Pushkin gets right down to business.”
In the novel “Anna Karenina”, from the very beginning, attention is directed to events in which the characters’ characters are clarified.
Aphorism - “everything happy families similar to each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” - this is a philosophical introduction to the novel. The second (event) introduction is contained in one single phrase: “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house.” And finally, the next phrase sets up the action and defines the conflict. The accident that revealed Oblonsky's infidelity entails a chain of necessary consequences that make up the plot line of the family drama.
The chapters of the novel are arranged in cycles, between which there is a close connection both thematically and in plot terms. Each part of the novel has its own “idea node”. The main points of the composition are the plot and thematic centers, successively replacing each other.
In the first part of the novel, cycles are formed in connection with conflicts in the lives of the Oblonskys (chap. I--V), Levin (chap. VI--IX), and the Shcherbatskys (chap. XII--XVI). The development of the action is determined by the events caused by Anna Karenina's arrival in Moscow (chap. XVII--XXIII), Levin's decision to leave for the village (chap. XXIV--XXVII) and Anna's return to St. Petersburg, where Vronsky followed her ( Ch. XXUSH-XXX1U).
These cycles, following one after another, gradually expand the scope of the novel, revealing patterns in the development of conflicts. Tolstoy maintains the proportionality of cycles in volume. In the first part, each cycle occupies five to six chapters, which have their own “content boundaries.” This creates a rhythmic change of episodes and scenes.
The first part is one of the most remarkable examples of a “cool romantic plot.” The logic of events, which never violates the truth of life, leads to drastic and inevitable changes in the destinies of the heroes. If before Anna Karenina’s arrival Dolly was unhappy and Kitty was happy, then after Anna’s appearance in Moscow “everything became confused”: the reconciliation of the Oblonskys became possible - Dolly’s happiness, and Vronsky’s breakup with Kitty inevitably approached - the misfortune of Princess Shcherbatskaya. The plot of the novel is built on the basis of major changes in the lives of the characters and captures the very meaning of their existence.
The plot and thematic center of the first part of the novel is the depiction of the “confusion” of family and social relations, turning the life of a thinking person into torment and evoking the desire to “get away from all the abomination, confusion, both one’s own and that of others.” This is the basis for the “concatenation of ideas” in the first part, where the knot of further events is tied.
The second part has its own plot and thematic center. This is the “abyss of life”, before which the heroes stop in confusion, trying to free themselves from the “confusion”. The action of the second part takes on a dramatic character from the very beginning. The range of events here is wider than in the first part. The episodes change at a faster pace. Each cycle includes three to four chapters. The action moves from Moscow to St. Petersburg, from Pokrovskoye to Krasnoe Selo and Peterhof, from Russia to Germany.
Kitty, having experienced the collapse of her hopes after breaking up with Vronsky, leaves for “German waters” (chap. I-III). The relationship between Anna and Vronsky becomes more and more open, quietly pushing the heroes towards the abyss (chapters IV-VII). Karenin was the first to see the “abyss,” but his attempts to “warn” Anna were in vain (chap. VSH-X)
From the social salons of St. Petersburg, the action of the third cycle is transferred to Levin's estate - Pokrovskoye. With the onset of spring, he especially clearly felt the influence on life of the “spontaneous force” of nature and folk life (chap. XII-XVII). Levin's economic concerns are opposed to social life Vronsky. He achieves success in love and is defeated at the races in Krasnoe Selo (chap. ХVIII-XXV).
A crisis begins in the relationship between Anna and Karenin. The uncertainty dissipates, and the severance of family ties becomes inevitable (chap. XXVI--XXIX). The ending of the second part returns attention to the beginning - to the fate of Kitty. She suffered “the whole burden of this world of grief,” but gained new strength for life (chap. XXX-XXXV).
The peace in the Oblonsky family was once again disrupted. “The bond made by Anna turned out to be fragile, and family harmony broke again in the same place.” The “Abyss” consumes not only the family, but also all of Oblonsky’s property. Counting the trees before making a deed of sale with Ryabinin is as difficult for him as “measuring a deep ocean, counting the sands, the rays of the planets.” Ryabinin buys the forest for next to nothing. The ground is disappearing from under Oblonsky's feet. Life “displaces the idle man.”
Levin sees “the impoverishment of the nobility occurring on all sides.” He is also inclined to attribute this phenomenon to the lack of management, the “innocence” of such owners as Oblonsky. But the very ubiquity of this process seems mysterious to him. Levin's attempts to get closer to the people, to understand the laws and meaning of patriarchal life have not yet been crowned with success. He stops in bewilderment before the “spontaneous force” that “constantly resisted him.” Levin is determined to fight against this “natural force.” But, according to Tolstoy, the forces are not equal. Levin will have to replace the spirit of struggle with the spirit of humility.
Anna's love filled Vronsky with a feeling of “vain-glorious success.” He was "proud and self-sufficient." His wish came true, the “charming dream of happiness” came true. Chapter XI, with its “vivid realism,” is built on a striking combination of opposing feelings of joy and grief, happiness and disgust. “It’s all over,” says Anna; The word “horror” is repeated several times, and the whole mood of the characters is sustained in the spirit of irrevocable immersion into the abyss: “She felt that at that moment she could not express in words that feeling of shame, joy and horror before this entry into new life».
The unexpected turn of events confused Karenin with its illogicality and unforeseenness. His life was always subject to unchanging and precise concepts. Now Karenin “stood face to face with something illogical and stupid and did not know what to do.” Karenin had to reflect only on the “reflections of life.” There the weight was clear. “Now he experienced a feeling similar to what a person would experience if he calmly walked across a bridge over an abyss and suddenly saw that the bridge had been dismantled and that there was an abyss there. This abyss was life itself, the bridge was that artificial life that Alexey Alexandrovich lived”[18, 151].
“Bridge” and “abyss”, “artificial life” and “life itself” - these categories reveal an internal conflict. The symbolism of generalizing images that give prophetic indication of the future is much clearer than in the first part. This is not only spring in Pokrovskoye and horse racing in Krasnoye Selo.
The characters have changed in many ways and entered a new life. In the second part of the novel, the image of a ship on the high seas naturally appears as a symbol of the life of modern man. Vronsky and Anna “experienced a feeling similar to that of a navigator who sees from a compass that the direction in which he is moving quickly diverges far from the proper one, but that it is not in his power to stop the movement, that every minute removes him all more and more from the proper direction and that admitting to oneself a retreat is the same as admitting destruction.”
The second part of the novel has internal unity, despite all the differences and contrasting changes in plot episodes. What was an “abyss” for Karenin became the “law of love” for Anna and Vronsky, and for Levin the consciousness of his helplessness before the “spontaneous force.” No matter how far the events of the novel diverge, they are grouped around a single plot and thematic center.
The third part of the novel depicts the heroes after they have experienced a crisis and on the eve of decisive events. The chapters are combined into cycles, which can be divided into periods. The first cycle consists of two periods: Levin and Koznyshev in Pokrovskoye (I-VI) and Levin’s trip to Ergushevo (chap. VII-XII). The second cycle is devoted to the relationship between Anna and Karenin (chap. XIII-- XVI), Anna and Vronsky (chap. XVII-- XXIII). The third cycle again returns attention to Levin and is divided into two periods: Levin’s trip to Sviyazhsky (chap. XXV-- XXVIII) and Levin’s attempt to create a new “science of economics” (chap. XXIX-XXXP).
The fourth part of the novel consists of three main cycles: the life of the Karenins in St. Petersburg (chap. I--V), the meeting of Levin and Kitty in Moscow in the Oblonsky house (chap. VII--XVI); the last cycle, dedicated to the relationship between Anna, Vronsky and Karenin, has two periods: the happiness of forgiveness” (chap. XVII--XIX) and the break (chap. XX-- XXIII).
In the fifth part of the novel, the focus is on the fate of Anna and Levin. The heroes of the novel achieve happiness and choose their own path (Anna and Vronsky’s departure to Italy, Levin’s marriage to Kitty). Life changed, although each of them remained himself. “There was a complete break with all previous life, and a completely different, new, completely unknown life began, but in reality the old one continued.”
The plot-thematic center represents the general concept of a given plot state. In each part of the novel there are repeated words - images and concepts - that represent the key to the ideological meaning of the work. “The Abyss” appears in the second part of the novel as a metaphor for life, and then goes through many conceptual and figurative transformations. The word “confusion” was the key word for the first part of the novel, “web of lies” for the third, “mysterious communication” for the fourth, “choosing a path” for the fifth. These repeated words indicate the direction of the author’s thought and can serve as “Ariadne’s thread” in the complex transitions of a “broad and free novel.”
The architecture of the novel “Anna Karenina” is distinguished by the natural arrangement of all interconnected structural parts. There is an undeniable sense in the fact that the composition of the novel Anna Karenina was compared to an architectural structure. I. E. Zabelin, characterizing the features of originality in Russian architecture, wrote that for a long time in Rus', houses, palaces and temples “were not built according to the plan that was invented in advance and drawn on paper, and after the construction of the building it was rare fully met all the real needs of the owner.
They were built most of all according to the plan of life itself and the free outline of the very everyday life of the builders, although every individual structure was always executed according to the drawing.
This characteristic, related to architecture, points to one of the deep traditions that nourished Russian art. From Pushkin to Tolstoy, a 19th century novel. arose and developed as an “encyclopedia of Russian life.” The free movement of the plot outside the constraining framework of a conventional plot determined the originality of the composition: “the lines of the placement of buildings were capriciously controlled by life itself.”
A. Fet compared Tolstoy with a master who achieves “artistic integrity” and “in simple carpentry work.” Tolstoy built circles of plot movement and a labyrinth of composition, “merging the vaults” of the novel with the art of the great architect.
Headsa 2. The artistic originality of the novel “Anna Karenina”
2.1. The plot and composition of the novel
The dramatically intense style of Pushkin's stories with their inherent swiftness of plot, rapid development of the plot, and characterization of the heroes directly in action especially attracted Tolstoy in the days when he began work on a “lively, hot” novel about modernity.
And yet, the unique style of the beginning of the novel cannot be explained by external Pushkin influence alone. The rapid plot of Anna Karenina, its intense plot development - all these are artistic means inextricably linked with the content of the work. These means helped the writer convey the drama of the heroes’ fate.
Not only the very beginning of the novel, but its entire style is associated with a living and energetic creative principle, clearly formulated by Tolstoy - “putting into action immediately.”
Without exception, Tolstoy introduces all the heroes of his wide, multi-faceted work without preliminary descriptions and characteristics, in the context of acute life situations. Anna - at the moment of her meeting with Vronsky, Steve Oblonsky and Dolly in a situation where it seems to both that their family is collapsing, Konstantin Levin - on the day when he tries to propose to Kitty.
In Anna Karenina, a novel whose action is especially intense, the writer, introducing one of the characters into the narrative (Anna, Levin, Karenin, Oblonsky), concentrates his attention on him, devotes several chapters in a row, many pages mainly no characteristic of this hero. Thus, chapters I--IV are dedicated to Oblonsky, chapters V--VII to Levin, chapters XVIII--XXIII to Anna, chapters XXXI--XXXIII of the first part of the novel to Karenin. Moreover, each page of these chapters is distinguished by the amazing capacity of characterization of the heroes.
As soon as Konstantin Levin had time to cross the threshold of the Moscow Presence, the writer already showed him in the perception of the gatekeeper, the official of the Presence, Oblonsky, having spent only a few sentences on all this. In just the first few pages of the novel, Tolstoy was able to show Stiva Oblonsky’s relationship with his wife, children, servants, petitioner, and watchmaker. Already on these first pages, Stiva’s character is vividly and multifacetedly revealed in many typical and at the same time uniquely individual traits.
Following Pushkin's traditions in the novel, Tolstoy remarkably developed and enriched these traditions. The great artist-psychologist found many new original means and techniques that allow him to combine a detailed analysis of the hero’s experiences with Pushkin’s purposeful development of the narrative.
As is known, “internal monologues” and “psychological commentary” are specifically Tolstoy’s artistic techniques, through which the writer revealed the inner world of the characters with particular depth. These subtle psychological techniques are saturated in Anna Karenina with such intense dramatic content that they usually not only do not slow down the pace of the narrative, but enhance its development. An example of this connection between the subtlest analysis of the characters’ feelings and the acutely dramatic development of the plot is all the “internal monologues” of Anna Karenina.
Seized by sudden passion, Anna tries to escape from her love. Unexpectedly, ahead of schedule, she leaves Moscow to go home to St. Petersburg.
“Well then? Is there and can there be any other relationship between me and this officer-boy than that which happens with every acquaintance? She grinned contemptuously and took up the book again, but she absolutely could not understand what she was reading. She ran a cutting knife along the glass, then put its smooth and cold surface to her cheek and almost laughed out loud from the joy that suddenly took possession of her for no reason. She felt that her nerves, like strings, were being pulled tighter and tighter on some screwed pegs. She felt that her eyes were opening more and more, that her fingers and toes were moving nervously, that something was pressing inside her to breathe, and that all the images and sounds in this wavering twilight were striking her with extraordinary brightness.”
Anna’s sudden feeling develops rapidly, before our eyes, and the reader, with ever-increasing excitement, waits to see how the struggle in her soul will be resolved.
Anna’s internal monologue on the train psychologically prepared her meeting with her husband, during which Karenin’s “ear cartilage” first caught her eye.
Let's give another example. Alexey Alexandrovich, who has become convinced of his wife’s infidelity, is painfully thinking about what to do, how to find a way out of this situation. And here, detailed psychological analysis and the skill of lively plot development are inextricably linked. The reader closely follows the flow of Karenin's thoughts not only because Tolstoy subtly analyzes the psychology of the bureaucrat, but also because Anna's future fate depends on the decision he comes to.
In the same way, by introducing “psychological commentary” into the dialogues between the characters of the novel, revealing the secret meaning of the words, fleeting glances and gestures of the characters, the writer, as a rule, not only did not slow down the narration, but imparted special tension to the development of the conflict.
In Chapter XXV of the seventh part of the novel, a difficult conversation about divorce begins again between Anna and Vronsky. It was thanks to the psychological commentary introduced by Tolstoy into the dialogue between Anna and Vronsky that it became especially clear how quickly, with every minute, a gap was brewing between the heroes. In the final version of this scene (19, 327), the psychological commentary is even more expressive and dramatic.
In Anna Karenina, due to the greater dramatic tension of the entire work, this connection became especially close and immediate.
Striving for greater laconicism in the narrative, Tolstoy often moves from conveying the thoughts and feelings of the characters in their immediate flow to the author’s more condensed and concise depiction of them. Here, for example, is how Tolstoy depicts Kitty’s state at the moment of her explanation with Levin.
“She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She felt delighted. Her soul was filled with happiness. She never expected that his expressed love would make such a strong impression on her. But this lasted only for an instant. She remembered Vronsky. She raised her bright, truthful eyes to Levin and, seeing his desperate face, hastily replied:
This can’t be... forgive me."
Thus, throughout the novel “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoy constantly combines psychological analysis and a comprehensive study of the dialectics of the soul with the liveliness of plot development. Using the terminology of the writer himself, we can say that in Anna Karenina a keen “interest in the details of feelings” is constantly combined with an exciting “interest in the development of events.” At the same time, it cannot be noted that the storyline associated with Levin’s life and quest develops less rapidly: dramatically intense chapters are often replaced by calm ones, with a leisurely, slow development of the narrative (mowing scenes, hunting episodes happy family life Levina in the village).
A. S. Pushkin, drawing the multifaceted characters of his heroes, sometimes used the technique of “cross characteristics” (for example, in “Eugene Onegin”).
In the works of L. Tolstoy, this Pushkin tradition was widely developed. It is known that by showing his heroes in the assessment and perception of various characters, Tolstoy achieved a special truth, depth and versatility of the image. In Anna Karenina, the technique of “cross characteristics” constantly helped the artist, in addition, to create situations full of acute drama. At first, Tolstoy described, for example, the behavior of Anna and Vronsky at the Moscow ball, mainly on his own behalf. In the final version, we saw the heroes through the prism of the perception of the lover Vronsky, Kitty, who was cold from horror.
The depiction of the tense atmosphere of horse racing is also associated with Tolstoy's use of this technique. The artist depicts Vronsky’s dangerous leap not only from his own perspective, but also through the prism of perception of the agitated Anna, “compromising” herself.
Anna’s behavior at the races, in turn, is closely monitored by the outwardly calm Karenin. “He again peered into this face, trying not to read what was written so clearly on it, and against his will, with horror, he read on it what he did not want to know.”
Anna's attention is focused on Vronsky, however, she involuntarily lingers on every word and gesture of her husband. Exhausted by Karenin's hypocrisy, Anna detects traits of lackeyness and careerism in his behavior. By joining author's description Karenin's assessment of him by Anna, Tolstoy intensified both the drama and the accusatory sound of the episode.
Thus, in “Anna Karenina” the peculiarly Tolstoyan, subtly psychological methods of penetrating into characters (internal monologue, the method of mutual assessments) at the same time serve as a means of intense “lively and passionate” development of the action.
The moving “fluid” portraits of Tolstoy’s heroes are in many ways the opposite of Pushkin’s. However, behind this contrast, some common features are revealed here too. At one time, Pushkin, honing his realistically authentic, lively style of narration, sneered at the lengthy and static descriptions of contemporary fiction writers.
Pushkin, as a rule, painted portraits of his heroes in action, in connection with the development of the conflict, revealing the feelings of the heroes through the depiction of their poses, gestures, and facial expressions.
All the given characteristics of the behavior and appearance of the characters are devoid of staticity, descriptiveness, do not slow down the action, but contribute to the development of the conflict and are directly related to it. Such lively, dynamic portraits occupy a much larger place in Pushkin’s prose and play a greater role than several generalized descriptive characteristics.
Tolstoy was a brilliant innovator in the creation of portrait characteristics. The portraits in his works, in contrast to Pushkin’s spare and laconic ones, are fluid, reflecting the most complex “dialectic” of the characters’ feelings. At the same time, it was in Tolstoy’s work that Pushkin’s principles received the highest development - drama and dynamism in depicting the appearance of characters, Pushkin’s tradition - to draw heroes in living scenes, without the help of direct characteristics and static descriptions. Tolstoy, just like Pushkin in his time, sharply condemned “the now impossible manner of descriptions, logically arranged: first descriptions characters, even their biographies, then a description of the area and environment, and then the action begins. And the strange thing is that all these descriptions, sometimes on dozens of pages, introduce the reader less to the faces than a carelessly thrown artistic trait during an action that has already begun between completely undescribed persons.”
The art of a fluid, dynamic portrait allowed Tolstoy to especially closely connect the characteristics of the heroes with the action, with the dramatic development of the conflict. In Anna Karenina this connection is especially organic.
And in this respect, Pushkin is closer to Tolstoy the portrait painter than such artists as Turgenev, Goncharov, Herzen, in whose works the direct characteristics of the characters are not always merged with the action.
The connections between Tolstoy’s style and Pushkin’s style are deep and varied.
The history of the creation of “Anna Karenina” testifies to the fact that not only in the years of his literary youth, but also during the period of his highest creative flourishing, Tolstoy fruitfully drew from the source of national literary traditions, developed and enriched these traditions. We tried to show how in the 70s, during the turning point of Tolstoy’s work, Pushkin’s experience contributed to the evolution of the writer’s artistic method. Tolstoy relied on the traditions of Pushkin the prose writer, following the path of creating his own new style, which is characterized, in particular, by a combination of deep psychologism with dramatic and purposeful development of action.
It is significant that in 1897, speaking about the folk literature of the future, Tolstoy asserted “the same three Pushkin principles: “clarity, simplicity and brevity” as the most important principles on which this literature should be based.
2.3. Originality of the genre
The uniqueness of the Anna Karenina genre lies in the fact that this novel combines features characteristic of several types of novel creativity. It contains, first of all, the features that characterize family romance. The history of several families, family relationships and conflicts are highlighted here. It is no coincidence that Tolstoy emphasized that when creating “Anna Karenina” he was dominated by family thought, while while working on “War and Peace” he wanted to embody the thought of the people. But at the same time, “Anna Karenina” is not only a family novel, but also a social, psychological novel, a work in which the history of family relationships is closely combined with the depiction of complex social processes, and the depiction of the destinies of the heroes is inseparable from deep disclosure inner world. Showing the movement of time, characterizing the formation of a new social order, the lifestyle and psychology of various layers of society, Tolstoy gave his novel the features of an epic.
The embodiment of family thought, the socio-psychological narrative, the features of the epic - these are not separate “layers” in the novel, but those principles that appear in their organic synthesis. And just as the social constantly penetrates into the depiction of personal and family relationships, the depiction of the individual aspirations of the heroes and their psychology largely determines the epic features of the novel. The strength of the characters created in it is determined by the brightness of their embodiment of their own, personal, and at the same time the expressiveness of the disclosure of those social connections and relationships in which they exist.
Tolstoy's brilliant mastery of Anna Karenina evoked enthusiastic praise from the writer's outstanding contemporaries. “Count Leo Tolstoy,” wrote V. Stasov, “rose to such a high note that Russian literature has never hit before. Even Pushkin and Gogol themselves did not express love and passion with such depth and astonishing truth as they do now in Tolstoy.” V. Stasov noted that the writer knows how to “with a wonderful sculptor’s hand sculpt such types and scenes that no one had known before in our entire literature... “Anna Karenina” will remain a bright, huge star forever and ever!” Dostoevsky, who viewed the novel from his own ideological and creative positions, rated Karenina no less highly. He wrote: “Anna Karenina” is perfection as a work of art... and one with which nothing similar in European literature in the present era can compare.”
The novel was created as if at the turn of two eras in Tolstoy’s life and work. Even before the completion of Anna Karenina, the writer is carried away by new social and religious quests. They are well-known reflected in the moral philosophy of Konstantin Levin. However, all the complexity of the problems that occupied the writer in new era, all the complexity of his ideological and life path is widely reflected in the journalistic and artistic works of the writer of the eighties and nineties.
Conclusion
Tolstoy called Anna Karenina a “broad, free novel.” This definition is based on Pushkin’s term “free novel.” There are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic digressions in Anna Karenina. But there is an undeniable connection between Pushkin’s novel and Tolstoy’s novel, which is manifested in the genre, plot and composition. It is not the plot completeness of the provisions, but the “creative concept” that determines the choice of material in Anna Karenina and opens up space for the development of plot lines.
The genre of the free novel arose and developed on the basis of overcoming literary patterns and conventions. The plot in a traditional family novel, for example, by Dickens, was built on the completeness of the plot. It was this tradition that Tolstoy abandoned, although he loved Dickens very much as a writer. “I couldn’t help but imagine,” writes Tolstoy, “that the death of one person only aroused interest in other people, and marriage seemed mostly like the beginning, not the end of interest.”
Tolstoy's innovation was perceived as a deviation from the norm. It was essentially that way, but it served not to destroy the genre, but to expand its laws. Balzac in his “Letters on Literature” very precisely defined characteristic features of the traditional novel: “However great may be the number of accessories and the multitude of images, the modern novelist must, like Walter Scott, the Homer of this genre, group them according to their meaning, subordinate them to the sun of his system - intrigue or hero - and lead them like a sparkling constellation in a certain order."27 But in Anna Karenina, as well as in War and Peace, Tolstoy could not set “known boundaries” for his heroes. And his affair continued after Levin’s marriage and even after Anna’s death. The sun of Tolstoy’s novelistic system is, therefore, not the hero or intrigue, but “folk thought” or “family thought,” which leads many of his images, “like a sparkling constellation, in a certain order.”
In 1878, the article “Karenina and Levin” was published in M. M. Stasyulevich’s journal “Bulletin of Europe”. The author of this article was A.V. Stankevich, brother famous philosopher and poet N.V. Stankevich. He argued that Tolstoy wrote two novels instead of one. As a “man of the forties,” Stankevich openly adhered to the old Testament concepts of the “correct” genre. He ironically called “Anna Karenina” a novel “a novel of wide breathing,” comparing it with medieval multi-volume narratives that once found “numerous and grateful readers.” Since then, philosophical and literary taste has been “purified” so much that “indisputable norms” have been created, the violation of which is not in vain for the writer.
Russian literature has been highly valued since ancient times. The writers' masterpieces have conquered more than one country in the world and become real bestsellers. Excellent films have been made based on many works - the premieres occupy leading positions in the ranking of the best. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is no exception - a unique Russian writer who created many amazing novels. Among them, “Anna Karenina”, “War and Peace”, “Resurrection” and others stand out.
Nowadays, schools study the works of Leo Tolstoy. This is due to the fact that they carry a deep meaning that can teach the younger generation the truth of life and feel all the emotions with which the talented man wrote. Very often the question arises regarding the work “Anna Karenina”: “Who wrote the divine novel?” Over wonderful book Tolstoy worked for four years. In 1878, the first publication of the heart-warming novel took place.
The birth of a bestseller
One February morning, Leo Tolstoy decided to write a novel about the relationships of nobles and private life, but he realized his dream three years later. A little later, having finished the book, he tried to publish it in Russky Vestnik, and the idea was a success - the first volume went into print. Gradually, Tolstoy’s novel became very popular, readers liked the manner with which Lev Nikolaevich described his characters and their share, the sensitivity and depth of the work.
Naturally, everyone was looking forward to the continuation of the novel Anna Karenina, since it was known that the work consisted of three volumes. By 1878, Leo Tolstoy published his brainchild in its entirety. Readers did not like the last part so much, since it described the Serbian-Montenegrin-Turkish war, to which officer Vronsky, Anna’s lover, was sent.
Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina combines the most contradictory feelings and morals of people. The writer himself noted several times that with the help of the work he wants to show how today’s and future world is split into two parts: good and evil, which fight against each other every day and try in vain to destroy the enemy.
The uniqueness of the novel
The work “Anna Karenina” appeals to many people. After all, it's about tragic love married woman and a brilliant officer. At the same time, one cannot help but experience a deep feeling directly for the family life of the nobles. The story takes place in the second half of the nineteenth century in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But the writer displays all the emotions, principles and morals of his novel as clearly as possible.
Many adored Anna Karenina, namely because most people saw themselves in this woman; they were close to the writer’s story, which penetrated to the very depths of their souls. That's why Tolstoy wrote modern literature, a book that, in his opinion, could always be popular - for all times and peoples.
Oddly enough, Lev Nikolaevich foresaw that changes were coming, namely for the nobles. He knew and felt that the current society and customs were beginning to collapse, and people should prepare for this.
The idea of the novel
All the people surrounding Leo Tolstoy became the idea for the birth of a completely different novel. The writer’s society could be recognized by Anna Oblonskaya-Karenina’s entourage. Observing the thoughts of his acquaintances, their feelings and concepts, Tolstoy created his first characters, who would become so beloved by readers in the future.
Many who are not familiar with the work “Anna Karenina,” the author of which tried to create a real masterpiece for different age categories of people, have repeatedly heard about the unique novel. But for some reason, most people get the impression that this is a book about a woman who committed suicide because of bright and ardent feelings for her lover, with whom her honor and conscience did not allow her to be.
In fact, this is not at all what is described in the novel Anna Karenina. The contents of the book consists of dozens of interesting chapters, descriptions of past noble life, the struggle between good and evil, the character and morality of people who lived in the nineteenth century.
Meet the Characters
Wonderful work "Anna Karenina". Almost every resident of the CIS countries knows who wrote it, but not everyone has read it. Although many have heard about the unusual novel and know the main characters of the book.
Let's start with the fact that the main character, Anna, comes to Moscow to reconcile her brother Stiva, who was allegedly caught in treason, with his wife. As soon as Karenina gets off her train, she learns that a watchman is dying on the railway tracks. This is considered a terrible omen. After some time, the main character will understand what this sign meant - she will be considered a “criminal woman”, and she will not be able to live peacefully with this. Nevertheless, the charming, kind and gentle Anna Karenina (the author initially portrays her as an immaculate, honest and ideal woman) goes to visit her brother and tries to reconcile him with his wife Dolly.
Meanwhile, the young and charming Count Alexei Vronsky comes to visit Stiva. Konstantin Levin, who with all his heart wants to marry a sweet girl, does not forget to visit his beloved princess Kitty Shcherbitskaya. But, in his opinion, this is impossible, since he is a simple landowner, and his main rival is the brilliant St. Petersburg representative Vronsky. In fact, Count Alexei did not even intend to propose to Kitty, since all his thoughts were occupied with the guest who had just arrived from St. Petersburg.
The work written by Leo Tolstoy - “Anna Karenina” - clearly and deeply describes the feelings and emotions that the main character experiences. She is unusually in love with Count Vronsky, but offers him only friendship, since they are waiting for her at home loving husband and a child. Anna’s main dream, which cannot come true, was to be with the two most beloved people on earth - Alexei and her son Seryozha.
Lyubov Karenina
As already noted, Anna Karenina arrived from St. Petersburg with an already gloomy mood. On the train she met a sweet woman who kept telling her about her beloved son, Alexei. At that moment, Karenina did not attach the slightest importance to this, but a little later it became clear to her that the adored child of her fellow traveler was her inaccessible Count Vronsky.
After meeting her lover, she firmly decided to go back to St. Petersburg, because she knew that trouble awaited her in Vronsky’s charming and deep eyes, which could absorb a woman’s soul entirely. But young Alexei follows right behind her: he longs for a meeting, not paying attention to the disdainful glances of others, the presence of a husband and child with his beloved. Noticing the Count hanging around Karenina, society begins to suspect their connection. Anna, whose heart was breaking inside, could not restrain herself and nevertheless indulged in love with her sweet, gentle and sensual Alexei. Everyone in the area soon learned about this, including the legal husband of the main character.
A little later it became known that Karenina was expecting a child from Vronsky. Having learned the news, Alexey asked her to leave her husband and leave with him. At the same time, Vronsky’s until recently friendly and kind mother is no longer so kind to Anna. On the contrary, she is outraged by what is happening and does not wish such a fate for her son. Karenina, an exhausted woman, would be glad to give up everything and go with the count, but she loves Alexei as much as she loves her son Seryozha. Anna falls into despair, she is tormented by the most contradictory feelings. Karenina doesn't know what to do...
During childbirth, the main character became very ill and miraculously remained alive. Seeing her condition, the legal husband shows compassion and pity for his wife, after which he allows her to live in his house. Karenin forgives Anna and her act and even agrees to leave everything a secret so as not to disgrace the honest name of their family. Karenina cannot stand her husband’s generosity and runs away with Vronsky to Europe. Soon two people who once loved each other realize that they are perfect and have nothing in common. It is at this moment that Anna realizes what a mistake she has made and how much she has betrayed and dishonored her husband. Nothing good awaits her in St. Petersburg; she is now an outcast there. Plucking up courage, Karenina finally returns.
The problems with Vronsky are becoming more and more serious, and it is simply impossible to continue living like this. If the count got away with everything, then everyone in society despises Anna. She sleeps poorly, suffers for her son, realizing that she will never see him again.
The fate of Anna Karenina
After the kiss with Vronsky, Karenina’s condition changed: she became happy, rejuvenated, inspired, but this could not continue! Attempts to keep her son and divorce her oppressive and strict husband were not successful. Poor Anna, not knowing herself from grief, became completely lifeless. She rushes between two fires: an angry husband who hates her for cheating and a young, gentle and charming Alexei, who promises to give her the whole world. But the mother would never leave her son, so Karenina believed that she would not be able to give herself up to carefree love and go with Vronsky far from her husband.
But fate turned in such a way that, on the one hand, Anna received what she wanted - love, Vronsky, happiness, and on the other hand, she lost the most important thing - her son Seryozha. An oppressive atmosphere, an unsuccessful relationship, and society’s hatred of her person push a woman to a desperate act - suicide.
Often people do not want to read the entire novel Anna Karenina. The description is a few pages from a huge work, which concisely and superficially tell about the characters and the events taking place. But in order to feel all the emotions with which Tolstoy wrote, change your worldview and become a little better, it is recommended to read the novel from cover to cover. This is not difficult to do, since it absorbs completely, and time flies by.
Evaluation of the novel "Anna Karenina"
Many critics did not like Anna Karenina and her fate. Some considered her a symbol of dishonor and shame, others did not like the image of Vronsky. There were also those who considered the novel scandalous, empty and representing nothing. Of course, the job of critics is to find inaccuracies, be dissatisfied, and write reviews of works. But, fortunately, there were those who believed that the novel that Leo Tolstoy brought to life, Anna Karenina, was the best hope of Russian literature. Critics supported the writer and ridiculed the main character. Then they said that such feelings that were in Anna’s soul should overcome every woman who dared to cheat on her husband, having a child and a family respected in society.
Among the critics who admired Tolstoy's work was Nikolai Nekrasov. He saw real talent in the writer, a man with an inexplicable gift who could change the lives of other people with his works. Nekrasov predicted everything correctly, since today few people wonder who Anna Karenina is or who wrote the novel. This is because most of the population has read a book or watched brilliant plays or films that influenced people's worldviews and perhaps even changed their lives. Leo Tolstoy's novels have always had an extraordinary effect on their fans. You will not find such works written by a talented thinker anywhere else.
Theatrical productions and film adaptations of the novel
The work of L. Tolstoy was noticed already in 1910. A few years later, people could attend the first performances of Anna Karenina. As time passed, various directors improved the plays, changed actors and experimented with productions. Original performances and dramatic musicals were created by such professionals as R. Viktyuk, O. Shikshin, M. Roshchin and others.
Many readers and viewers liked Anna Karenina, whose quotes were even written down and spoken at parties and meetings. As for the film adaptation of the popular novel, the first film about tragic love was made in Germany in 1910. Then representatives of countries such as Russia, Hungary, Italy, the USA, Great Britain, India and others tried to depict the picture. In total, over three dozen films about Karenina were made. The last of them was presented by British directors. IN leading role there was Keira Knightley, who played Anna with unusual subtlety and sensitivity. Also today you can find TV series about Karenina.
It is impossible not to say that there are productions of the ballet “Anna Karenina”. In 2010, the premiere took place on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. Nevertheless, the best production is considered to be the work that received the award “Best Performance in Ballet” in 2005.
In our time, novels by L.N. Tolstoy's works are extremely popular, and various musicals, plays, and films are made based on them. But Anna Karenina broke all sorts of records and became a real masterpiece in Russian literature and art in general.
It is believed that Pushkin's daughter (Maria Aleksandrovna Hartung) is the main character of the novel - Anna Karenina. L.N. Tolstoy was inspired by the girl’s appearance and decided to transfer her image to paper.
It is also interesting to know that in 1916 they tried to film a continuation of the heartbreaking story about tragic love entitled "Anna Karenina's Daughter". In addition, science often uses the principle of the novel, which is based on the aphorism that opens the work: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house.”
In 2013, a continuation of the novel entitled “Anna Karenina-2” was published. The author was Alexander Zolotko, who told readers the story of the main character’s daughter, whose name was the same as her own mother. For some critics, this caused a lot of emotions and indignation, because it is completely unknown what happened to the girl who was born from a relationship with Count Vronsky. And Leo Tolstoy did not mention the name of the newborn. However, these are just some of the opinions of critics; the author himself has the right to change the details of the plot. There are those who believe that the novel Anna Karenina 2 is worth reading.
Nevertheless, the second part of the book is simply incomparable with the first, since it is a completely different story and a different heroine, although with the same name - Anna Karenina. Few people know who wrote it, since Alexander Zolotko’s publication is quite small, and he himself did not try to create a masterpiece that could outshine the work of Leo Tolstoy.
The role of Tolstoy's novel in the life of each of us
L.N. Tolstoy's novel was written in the genre of realism. He clearly conveyed the character traits and intentions of the people of the second half of the nineteenth century. He saw himself in the character Levin, which he mentioned several times. The hero himself was endowed with the best character traits, which made him an example to follow. This is what the writer wanted to tell his fans - that no matter what place a person occupies in society, he must always remain a person: worthy, honest, fair and kind.
"Anna Karenina" is a novel of all times that has won thousands, millions of hearts around the world. For the first time, a writer so accurately conveyed the relationships between people that are familiar to almost every person. 137 years have passed since the publication of the work, but not for a single day has it been forgotten by readers. I want to read and re-read it, watch it on screen and on stage, admire the heroine’s courage and sincerely sympathize with her. The simple language, inimitable writing style and depth of characters are truly masterpieces. It is not for nothing that the novel is considered a classic of world literature.
Characters
The structure of Anna Karenina differs in many ways from the structure of War and Peace, where Tolstoy expressed his main thoughts in the form of lengthy journalistic or historical “digressions.” In the new novel, he strived for strict objectivity of the narrative. “I cannot use either pathos or reasoning,” he said about the strict self-restraint he assumed in this work.
M. N. Katkov, editor of the magazine “Russian Bulletin”, where “Anna Karenina” was published chapter by chapter, was embarrassed by the “bright realism” of the scene of the rapprochement between Anna and Vronsky. And he asked Tolstoy to “soften” this scene. “Bright realism, as you say,” Tolstoy responded to the editor’s request, “is the only weapon” (62, 139).
Tolstoy’s “only weapon” was the objective form of narration, a changing panorama of events, meetings, and dialogues in which the characters of his heroes are revealed while the author “tries to be completely invisible.” If it is true that style is a person, then Tolstoy's style is determined not only by his own rather complex character, but also by the characters of his heroes. In the epic narrative, each of them received the optimal opportunity for action, choice and “personal” decisions, which in one way or another changed or determined the entire system of the novel.
They say that you treated Anna Karenina very cruelly, forcing her to die under a carriage,” his good friend, Doctor G. A. Rusanov, told Tolstoy.
Tolstoy smiled and replied:
This opinion reminds me of the incident with Pushkin. One day he said to one of his friends: “Imagine what kind of thing my Tatyana ran away with me! She got married! I never expected this from her.” I can say the same about Anna Karenina. In general, my heroes and heroines sometimes do things that I wouldn’t want; they do what they should do in real life and as happens in real life, and not what I want.
This half-serious, half-joking conversation was directly related to Tolstoy’s poetics, which took shape under the strong influence of Pushkin’s “poetry of reality.”
Tolstoy remade the scene of Levin's confession several times before the wedding. “Everything seemed to me,” he admitted, “that it was noticeable whose side I was on.” And he wanted the scene to be completely objective.
“I noticed,” said Tolstoy, “that every thing, every story makes an impression only when it is impossible to make out who the author sympathizes with. And so it was necessary to write everything so that it would not be noticeable.”
Tolstoy solved a problem of this kind for the first time. In War and Peace, he not only did not hide, but, on the contrary, clearly, in numerous authorial digressions, he emphasized what aroused his sympathy and what did not arouse such sympathy. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy had a different artistic task.
Achieving the objectivity of the narrative, Tolstoy gave his novel some mystery. But the heat of his passions was felt in all scenes, and the forces of attraction and repulsion of ideas created a natural movement and development of the plot.
Therefore, psychological analysis in the novel “Anna Karenina” takes on a unique, objective form. Tolstoy, as it were, gives his heroes a free opportunity to act independently, and reserves for himself the role of a conscientious chronicler, penetrating into the innermost thoughts and motivations of everyone involved in this tragic story.
Tolstoy has no unmotivated actions. Each plot twist is prepared by the strict logic of the development of the action, which, once receiving an impulse of movement, then follows from the immediate cause to the distant effect. The characters in the novel are developed psychologically, so that each of them is an isolated and unique phenomenon. But even this individual thing is part of the general “history of the human soul.”
At the same time, Tolstoy is not interested in abstract types of psychology, not in exceptional natures, but in the most ordinary characters that were created by history and create the history of modernity. That is why Karenin, Levin, Vronsky, and Oblonsky are so closely connected and even to some extent limited by their environment. But the social concreteness of artistic types does not obscure in Tolstoy’s eyes the enormous universal meaning of the moral conflicts on which the novel as a whole is built.
Tolstoy's heroes are in a system of relationships with each other. And only in this system do they receive their real meaning and their, so to speak, scale.
In 1908, a young critic wrote an article “Tolstoy as an Artistic Genius.” In this article he argued that the characters created by Tolstoy are not types. It is possible, for example, to define, the critic argued, what “Khlestakovism” is, but it is impossible to determine what “Kareninism” is.
The characters in Tolstoy’s works are “too lively, too complex, too indefinable, too dynamic - and, in addition, each of them is too full of its own unique, indescribable, but clearly audible spiritual melody.”
This young critic was K.I. Chukovsky. V. G. Korolenko really liked his article. But Korolenko did not agree with his main idea. “Of course, I don’t agree with this, firstly, because there are types.” But they, according to Korolenko, are very different from Gogol’s types, which indicates the diversity of forms of realistic art.
“I think,” said Korolenko, “that Gogol’s characters are taken in a static state, as they have already developed, fully defined... And your characters develop throughout the novel. You have dynamics... And this, in my opinion, is the greatest difficulty of an artist.”
Tolstoy greatly valued his understanding of the artistic type. “The artist does not reason,” he answered, “but guesses the types with direct feeling.” But the typical in his novels was transformed. Korolenko was absolutely right in pointing out dynamics as the most characteristic thing in Tolstoy’s artistic style.
As for development in the proper sense of the word, we can only talk about it in relation to Anna Karenina in a conditional sense. The action of the novel covers a relatively short period of time - 1873–1876. It is hardly possible to identify real development in such established and defined characters as Karenin, Oblonsky, Levin appear in the first pages of the novel. And in such a short period of time.
Of course, not only three years, but even one minute is enough for real character development in the big artistic world. But, in our opinion, in Anna Karenina Tolstoy attached greater importance not to the development, but to the revelation of the characters of his heroes. The dynamics of psychological action in the novel is that the character is not revealed in full and not immediately.
Moreover, these characters are revealed from different sides thanks to dynamically changing circumstances, so that one and the same person can be completely different from himself. This is precisely how Tolstoy understood the phenomenology of human characters when he said: “People are like rivers...” The same Karenin appears before us, now as a dry and callous official, now as a suffering father of a family, now, for a moment, as a kind and simple man. Even this seemingly uncomplicated character cannot be exhausted with one word or definition.
This is the deep difference between Tolstoy’s types and the types created by Gogol. In fact, Gogol, according to V. G. Belinsky, took “from the life of his heroes such a moment in which the entire integrity of their life, its meaning, essence, idea, beginning and end were concentrated.” In Tolstoy, both life and the characters of the heroes are presented in endless change, so that not a single position can be called “final.”
Tolstoy strictly adhered to the logic of the characters, determining the possible options for resolving conflicts for a particular hero. And the possibility of unexpected and sharp plot twists arises at every step. They, like temptation, haunt his heroes. The slightest deviation to the side could affect the dynamics of the plot itself and the structure of the composition of the entire book.
When Anna's betrayal was discovered, the first thing Vronsky thought of was a duel. Anna was offended by the cold and impenetrable expression of his face, but she “could not know that the expression on his face related to the first thought that came to Vronsky about the inevitability of a duel. The thought of a duel never occurred to her.”
Karenin is also thinking about the duel. “The duel in his youth especially attracted the thoughts of Alexei Alexandrovich precisely because he was a physically timid person and knew this well. Without horror, Alexey Alexandrovich could not think about the pistol being pointed at him, and he had never used any weapon in his life.”
The theme of the duel runs through the novel as one of the important psychological details of the story about an unfaithful wife. And the meaning of Tolstoy’s psychological analysis is to choose the only possible solution, in accordance with a given character and state, from a variety of free options. The only possible path turns out to be the most characteristic.
“Character is what shows the direction of a person’s will,” said Aristotle. It is in the decisions of the heroes that their character or the choices they make are revealed. For Tolstoy, it was more important that Vronsky suddenly shoots himself, trying to commit suicide, than if Karenin shoots him.
And Daria Alexandrovna wanted to radically change her character. But it turned out that this was impossible. She even decided to leave her husband's house. This intention suited her mood perfectly. But not her character... In the end, she preferred a bad peace to a good quarrel. She not only stayed home, but also forgave Steve. Dolly calls him a "disgusting, pathetic, sweet husband."
Sometimes she thinks that everything could have been different. She secretly sympathizes and even envies Anna. “I then had to leave my husband,” Dolly argues bravely, “and start living all over again. I could love and be loved for real. Is it better now?” Tolstoy admires Dolly’s sincerity and does not downplay the severity of her feat of self-denial.
But Anna's romance - leaving her husband, loving and being truly loved - is not for Dolly. She is tempted by the thought of breaking up at the very time when Anna is tempted by the thought of reconciliation. “It wasn’t me, it was someone else,” she says in delirium. But Anna’s reconciliation with Karenin is just as impossible as Dolly’s breakup with Stiva is impossible. They could not have acted differently without first changing their characters.
In the novel, Tolstoy is convinced not only by the decision that is made, but also by the decision that was rejected. One might even say that it is the rejected options that best characterize his heroes. This gives the action itself in the novel a certain inevitability, psychological freedom and consistency.
Tolstoy's characters are indeed different from Gogol's. There is a lot of dynamics, contradictions, and variability in them. They cannot and do not need to be defined by any one static concept. But the characters in Tolstoy's novels are too lively not to be types.
La Rochefoucauld said that every person has not one, but three characters: apparent, real And desired. “It can be said that human characters, like some buildings, have several facades, and not all of them are pleasant to look at.” This is perhaps the most correct definition of the characters created by Tolstoy. It is not for nothing that he valued La Rochefoucauld’s aphorisms so highly, which he liked for their “depth, simplicity and spontaneity” (40, 217).
In this regard, the character of Anna Karenina is of significant interest. In the drafts of the novel there is a scene of her trip with Grabbe, Vronsky's friend, to a flower exhibition. Grabbe notices with fear and surprise that Anna is flirting with him, that “she wants to challenge him.” And he sadly thinks to himself: “They took Burka on a steep rollercoaster ride.”
And Anna suddenly “felt ashamed of herself” (20, 523). Some shadow of vice flashed across these pages. But such a shadow should not have touched Anna. Her destiny is different, and it takes place in the sphere of truthful, sincere and real feelings, where there are no fakes and lies, no lies. And Tolstoy rejected the option of going to a flower exhibition. Anna is not a "camellia". To portray her in such a light meant to compromise not only her, but also an entire area of life, full meaning and meaning.
In the novel, Anna Karenina appears as a St. Petersburg socialite. When Vronsky was asked at the station if he knew her, he was presented with some kind of general secular image. “I think I know,” said Vronsky. - Or not. Really, I don’t remember.” “Something prim and boring,” he thought to himself.
This was it apparent character of Anna Karenina. Kitty, earlier than others, realized that Anna “didn’t look like a society lady...”. And there was nothing prim about her either. Besides Kitty, it seems that only Levin guesses her true character: “Levin admired her all the time - her beauty, her intelligence, her education, and at the same time her simplicity and sincerity.”
Levin thinks about her inner life, trying to guess her feelings. And Anna Karenina's inner life was full of enormous tension. She had her own hidden dreams and desires about independence and the reasonable use of her strength. Reading English novel in the train carriage, she catches herself thinking that it was unpleasant for her to follow the reflection of other people's lives. “Did she read how the heroine of the novel cared for a sick person, she wanted to walk with silent steps around the sick person’s room; whether she read about an MP giving a speech, she wanted to give that speech.”
Desired Anna's character was completely in the spirit of the times. Back in 1869, D.-S.’s book was published. Mill “The Subordination of Woman,” which, by the way, said that women’s desire for independent scientific or literary work testifies to the need for equal freedom and recognition of women’s rights that has developed in society. And Anna Karenina, in the spirit of the times, becomes a writer, a champion of women's education.
In Vozdvizhensky she writes a children's novel, which the publisher Vorkuev greatly approves of. And her quarrel with Vronsky began because of their differences in views on social issues. “It all started when he laughed at girls’ grammar schools, considering them unnecessary, and she stood up for them.”
The reason, therefore, was the most modern one. The quarrel occurred over women's gymnasiums! Tolstoy does not question the sincerity of Anna Karenina, and does not at all deny that she was truly passionate about the new ideas of women's education. He just thinks that she desired her character did not quite coincide with her real inner life.
Therefore, her desire to “make a speech in parliament” should have seemed funny to Vronsky. She herself calls her writings “miracles of patience.”
However, the unnaturalness of her position and activities leads to the fact that she begins to seek not knowledge, but oblivion, resorting to the help of morphine, she seeks to “stupefy” herself in order to forget her real situation, from which there was no way out.
“I can’t do anything, start anything, change anything, I restrain myself, I wait, I invent fun things for myself - an Englishman’s family, writing, reading, but it’s all just deception, it’s still the same morphine.” Desired Anna's character thus also becomes a self-deception. And admitting this was tantamount to admitting defeat.
Dynamics apparent, real And desired is revealed in Tolstoy's novel as a dramatic story of the human soul. This, too, was a form of psychological analysis that has not been sufficiently appreciated by critics to this day.
Good Dolly cannot understand why Anna loves Seryozha, Karenin’s son, and does not love Vronsky’s daughter Anya. “I thought the opposite,” said Daria Alexandrovna timidly.”
How could it happen that Anna Karenina loves her son from her unloved husband and is almost indifferent to her daughter from her beloved Vronsky?
Perhaps, because Anna did not love Karenin, she transferred to her son all the need for love that was in her soul? In a conversation with Dolly, she admits that she did not invest even half of the mental strength that Seryozha cost her to raise her daughter.
“You understand that I love, it seems, equally, but both more than myself, two creatures- Seryozha and Alexey" (emphasis mine. - E.B.), says Anna. But Dolly cannot understand this, although she sees that it is true. And Tolstoy is clearly on Dolly’s side. But he also understands the undoubted depth and at the same time paradoxical nature of Anna Karenina’s feelings. The truth was that at the beginning of the conversation with Dolly, Anna said: “I am unforgivably happy,” and at the end of it she admitted: “I am precisely unhappy.”
Dolly has features of Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy. Her observations sometimes gave Tolstoy new ideas to work with. “Not forgetting the monstrous insight of a genius,” writes M. Gorky, “I still think that some features in the images of women in his grandiose novel are familiar only to a woman and were suggested to the novelist by her.” Gorky here had in mind precisely S. A. Tolstoy and what she could “tell” the artist real Anna's character.
“You know, I saw him, Seryozha,” said Anna, squinting as if peering into something far away.” Dolly immediately noticed this new feature in Anna: for some time she began to squint “so as not to see everything,” or wanted to see one point.
Dolly did not ignore Anna’s other phrase, that she now could not sleep without the morphine she had become accustomed to during her illness. But that illness, a physical one, had already passed, and another, a mental illness, gradually took possession of her consciousness. As her connections with the outside world were destroyed, she became isolated in herself.
Anna's only “support” is her passionate feeling of love for Vronsky. But a strange thing is that this feeling of love for another turns into a painful and irritable feeling of love for oneself. “My love,” Anna admits, “everything is becoming more passionate and selfish, but his love is extinguishing and extinguishing, and that’s why we separate. And this cannot be helped.”
The dialectic of the transition of the feeling of selfless love for another into selfish and egoistic passion, compressing the whole world into one sparkling point that leads to madness - this is the phenomenology of Anna Karenina’s soul, revealed by Tolstoy with Shakespearean depth and strength.
How did Tolstoy feel about Anna Karenina? In his novel, he did not want to use “pathos and explanatory reasoning.” He wrote a harsh story of her sufferings and downfalls. Tolstoy did not seem to interfere in her life. Anna acts as if she were completely independent of the author's will. There is a fiery logic of passion in her reasoning. And it turns out that even she was given reason only to “get rid of”...
“And I will punish him and get rid of everyone and myself,” says Anna. So her love comes to its self-denial, turns into bitterness, leads her to discord with everyone, with the world, with life. It was a cruel dialectic, and Tolstoy endured it to the end. And yet, how did Tolstoy feel about Anna Karenina?
Some critics, as V.V. Ermilov correctly noted, called Tolstoy the “prosecutor” of the unfortunate woman, while others considered him her “lawyer.” In other words, the novel was seen either as a condemnation of Anna Karenina or as her “justification.” In both cases, the author’s attitude towards the heroine turned out to be “judicial”.
But how inconsistent these definitions are with the “family thought” of the novel, with its main idea, and its objective style! Annushka, Anna Karenina’s maid, tells Dolly: “I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna, they are dearest to me. Well, it’s not for us to judge. And so, it seems, he loves”... These simple-minded words of understanding and non-judgment were very dear to Tolstoy.
Tolstoy's own attitude towards Anna Karenina can rather be called paternal than judicial. He grieved over the fate of his heroine, loved and pitied her. Sometimes he was angry with her, as one would be angry with a loved one. “But don’t tell me anything bad about her,” Tolstoy once said about Anna Karenina. “...She was adopted after all” (62, 257).
The character of Vronsky is as heterogeneous as the other characters of Tolstoy's heroes.
To everyone who does not know him or knows him very little, he seems aloof, cold and arrogant. Vronsky drove his random neighbor in the train carriage to despair precisely by not noticing him at all.
Vronsky “seemed proud and self-sufficient.” He looked at people as things. The nervous young man in the district court who sat opposite him hated him for this appearance. The young man lit a cigarette with him, and spoke to him, and even pushed him to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a person, but Vronsky “still looked at him the same as at a lantern.”
But this is only an external, although very natural, form of behavior for Vronsky. Love for Anna changed his life, made it simpler, better, freer. He seemed to soften mentally, and he had a dream of some other life. From an officer and a socialite, he turns into a “free artist.” “He felt all the charm of freedom in general, which he had not known before, and the freedom of love, and was pleased,” writes Tolstoy.
This is how it is created desired, or imaginary, the character of Vronsky, which he would like to “assimilate” completely. But this is where he comes into conflict with himself. He, having gained freedom from his former life, falls into slavery to Anna, who needed “complete possession of him.” Moreover, she certainly wanted to “return to the world, which was now closed to her.”
Anna unconsciously treats Vronsky only as a lover. And he almost never leaves this role. Therefore, they are both constantly aware of the consequences of a “crime” once committed, which “interferes with happiness.” Vronsky had to destroy the Karenin family, separate Seryozha from his mother, and tear Anna out of her “law.”
Consciously, of course, Vronsky did not set such goals for himself. He was not a “villain”; everything happened as if by itself. And then he many times suggested that Anna give up everything, leave and, most importantly, forget everything. But it was impossible to forget anything. The human soul seeks memory. And that’s why happiness turned out to be impossible, although it seemed to be “so close”….
Vronsky's only justification was his “Wertherian passion.” And passion, according to Tolstoy, is a “demonic”, destructive principle. The “evil spirit” of discord penetrated into the relationship between Anna and Vronsky. And he began to destroy their freedom and happiness.
“They felt,” writes Tolstoy, “that next to their love, which bound them, an evil spirit of some kind of struggle was established between them, which she could not expel either from hers, or, even less, from his heart.” Therefore, the question makes no sense: did Vronsky love Anna in last days her life? The more he loved her, the higher the “evil spirit of some kind of struggle” rose above them, “as if the conditions of the struggle did not allow her to submit.”
Tolstoy does not wax poetic about his hero. He even outwardly endows him with, at first glance, strange features that do not seem to fit in with the appearance of a “brilliant lover.” One of the regimental friends said to Vronsky: “You should cut your hair, otherwise it’s heavy, especially on your bald head.” “Vronsky, indeed,” Tolstoy notes dispassionately, “began to go bald prematurely. He laughed cheerfully, showing his solid teeth, and, putting his cap on his bald head, went out and sat in the carriage.”
Vronsky had his own rules. One of these rules allowed him to “surrender to any passion without blushing, and everyone else should laugh...”. His friend Yashvin, “a man without rules at all,” would not refuse such a rule. However, it operates only in a certain circle of unreal relationships, in the circle that was natural for the “player” Yashvin.
But when Vronsky felt the real price of his love for Anna, he had to doubt his rules or abandon them altogether. In any case, he did not find the strength to laugh, for example, at Karenin’s suffering. His rules were very convenient, and love, as he himself said, is not only not a game, but also not a “toy.” She has her own rules of retribution.
Vronsky forgets about his “rules”, which allowed him, no matter what, to “hold his head high.” But Tolstoy does not forget... He treats Vronsky more harshly than anyone else in his novel.
In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy debunked “the strongest and most stable tradition of world romance - the poeticization of the feeling of love.” It would be more correct to say - not a love feeling, but a poeticization of passion. In Anna Karenina there are whole worlds of love, full of poetry. But Vronsky’s fate was different. “What kind of desperate passions!” - exclaims Countess Vronskaya, losing her son.
Vronsky had to endure a tragedy even more bitter than the one that Karenin experienced. It is not only the circumstances of his life that triumph over Vronsky’s fate; Tolstoy's stern, condemning gaze triumphs over him. His downfall began with failure at the races, when he destroyed this beautiful creature - the lively, loyal and brave horse Frou-Frou. In the symbolic structure of the novel, the death of Frou-Frou was as bad an omen as the death of the coupler... “Anna felt that she had failed,” writes Tolstoy. Vronsky must have experienced the same feeling.
Tolstoy was reproached for “treating Anna Karenina cruelly.” He treated Vronsky even more cruelly. But such was the inexorable logic of his internal idea of debunking and condemning “passions” in a novel dedicated to the “tragic play of passions.”
Going beyond the boundaries of the romantic story itself, it must be said that the failure of Vronsky, the most arrogant representative of the arrogant world, was also in the spirit of the times. In an upside-down world, he loses balance, stability, and firmness. And leaves the stage...
As for Tolstoy’s own thought, in relation to Vronsky his break with the morals and customs of the secular environment was more pronounced than anywhere else. Just as “Anna Karenina” opens the way to “Confession,” so “Anna Karenina” opens the way to “The Kreutzer Sonata” and to the famous “Afterword” with its ascetic ideals of abstinence and celibacy. And that is why his novel turned out to be the only one of its kind in all world literature in its refusal to “poeticize the feeling of love.”
Apparent Levin's character lies in his “savagery.” At first glance, he was some kind of eccentric who simply “doesn’t know how to live.” From Oblonsky's point of view, for example, Levin was a clear loser. Everything he undertakes fails in the most ridiculous way. The more seriously he takes his plans, the funnier they seem to others. “I really love making a fool of him in front of Kitty,” thinks Countess Nordston.
And it costs her nothing to make Levin look like a “fool.” Everyone could see at first glance his “attachment to everything coarse and worldly.” Farming in the village, caring for the breeding herd, thoughts about the cow Pava - all this seemed to be deliberately selected in him to confirm the general opinion about his savagery. “He knew very well what he must have seemed like to others” - “a landowner engaged in breeding cows, shooting great snipes and building buildings, that is, a mediocre fellow from whom nothing came of it, and doing, according to the concepts of society, the same thing that they do nowhere unfit people."
That's how it was apparent Levin. He is highly critical of himself. He doubted many things, was always “not on his side” - a sure sign of moral anxiety and a source of internal dynamics. “Yes, there is something disgusting and repulsive about me,” thought Levin. “And I’m not fit for other people.”
Real Levin's character is revealed gradually. For all his attachment to everything rough and everyday, he was an idealist, romantic and dreamer. His favorite time of year is spring. “Spring is a time of plans and assumptions... Levin, like a tree in the spring, not yet knowing where and how these young shoots and branches contained in the budding buds will grow, he himself did not know well what enterprises in his beloved farm he would now undertake, but felt that he was full of the best plans and assumptions.”
He was a dreamer and romantic of Tolstoy’s type, “in big boots,” walking “through streams,” stepping “on ice, now in sticky mud,” which in no way disturbs the ideal mood of his soul. “If Levin had fun in the barnyards and farmyards, then he became even more fun in the field.” Full of his dreams, he “carefully turned the horse between the boundaries so as not to trample his greens...”. If Levin were a “poet,” then he would be a poet as original as Tolstoy himself.
From Levin's dreams his desired character. He wants to find such an attitude towards the world that in all life, not only his own, but also in the lives of those around him, everything is measured and determined by the law of good. “With my brother now there will be no that alienation,” reflects Levin, “that has always been between us, “there will be no disputes, with Kitty there will never be quarrels; with the guest, no matter who he is, I will be affectionate and kind; with people, with Ivan - everything will be different..."
Trying this desired character was not slow to appear immediately, while he had not yet finished his internal monologue. Levin was returning home in a droshky. And, full of the most wonderful hopes for the future, he took the reins into his own hands. “Restraining the good horse, snorting with impatience and begging to move, on tight reins, Levin looked around at Ivan, who was sitting next to him, who did not know what to do with his idle hands, and was constantly pressing his shirt, and was looking for an excuse to start a conversation with him.”
Levin wanted to say that it was in vain that Ivan pulled his neck up high, “but it looked like a reproach, and he wanted a loving conversation. Nothing else came to his mind.” And suddenly Ivan said: “If you please, take the right, otherwise there’s a stump.” And Levin exploded: “Please don’t touch or teach me!” And with sadness he felt “how wrong was his assumption that the mood of the soul could immediately change it in contact with reality.”
Tolstoy wanted to believe that desired Levin's character will completely merge with his hereby character. But as an artist, he saw how difficult the path of self-improvement is in contact with reality. In this sense, some humorous features are remarkable in the characterization of Levin, who, having decided with himself that he will always be affectionate and kind, explodes from the most insignificant reason, when Ivan fairly and reasonably told him: “If you please, take the right, otherwise you’ll end up on a stump.” .
Ironic and at the same time lyrical history of Levin's spiritual development can be an important commentary on Tolstoy's later philosophical works.
N. N. Gusev correctly noted that in the novel “Anna Karenina” Tolstoy strived for the highest epic objectivity, “tried to be completely invisible.” But this cannot be said about his drafts, where he did not at all hide his attitude towards the heroes and painted them either sympathetically or sarcastically.
Thus, Karenin was initially inspired by Tolstoy’s obvious sympathy. “Alexey Alexandrovich did not take advantage of the convenience common to all people of being taken seriously by their neighbors. Alexey Alexandrovich, in addition, in addition to what is common to all people occupied with thought, had the misfortune for the world to wear on his face too clear a sign of heartfelt kindness and innocence. He often smiled with a smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and therefore looked even more like a learned eccentric or a fool, depending on the degree of intelligence of those who judged him” (20, 20).
In the final text of the novel, Tolstoy removed this “too clear sign,” and Karenin’s character changed greatly. Hard, dry features appeared in him, hiding his former smile. “Oh, my God! Why did his ears become like that? - she thought, looking at his cold and representative figure and especially at the cartilage of his ears, which now amazed her, propping up the brim of his round hat.” Karenin changed not only in Anna's eyes. He also changed in Tolstoy’s eyes. And the author’s attitude towards him became different.
Outwardly, Karenin made an impression that was fully consistent with his position in society. He had a “St. Petersburg-fresh face” and a “strictly self-confident figure” “with a slightly prominent back.” All his words and gestures are filled with such “cold self-confidence” that even Vronsky became somewhat timid in front of him.
Apparent, Karenin’s external character is further complicated by the fact that he always plays some kind of role, takes on a tone of condescending concern for his neighbors. He talks to Anna in a kind of “slow, thin voice and in the tone that he almost always used with her, a tone of mockery of anyone who would actually talk to her like that.” It is in this voice and tone that he pronounces his most affectionate words addressed to Anna.
Exactly the same tone is maintained in relations with his son. It was some kind of “teasing attitude”, just like towards my wife. "A! young man!" - he addressed him. Karenin’s own soul is, as it were, fenced off from the world by a strong “barrier.” And he strengthens this barrier with all his might, especially after the failures that befell him. He even knew how to force himself “not to think about his wife’s behavior and feelings, and he really didn’t think anything about it.”
Karenin creates his own imaginary the character of pride, impenetrability of the consciousness of one’s dignity and rightness. “Something proud and stern” appears in his facial expression. He turns alienation into his fortress. But this was already alienation not only from Anna or his son, but also from life itself.
Game of imaginary Karenin succeeds in character better than other heroes of the novel. Because he is better suited to this game than others. He, as an official and a rational person, always lived “according to rank.” As soon as he changed his ranking, he immediately adapted to it. Another life was for him like another paragraph, as immutable as the previous one.
And there was life around him - “an abyss into which it was scary to look.” And he didn’t look into it. She was incomprehensible to him in the same way that, for example, art, which he loved to “sort out into shelves,” was incomprehensible to him. “To be transferred by thought and feeling to another being was a mental action alien to Alexei Alexandrovich. He considered this mental action harmful and dangerous.”
Karenin’s stopped inner spiritual life becomes the cause of many dramatic consequences.
But Tolstoy believed so deeply in the inexhaustible possibilities of the human soul that he did not even consider Karenin with his formalized psyche to be hopeless. His real human character breaks through from time to time in his speeches and actions, and both Anna and Vronsky clearly feel this.
Karenin had to experience a catastrophe in his family relationships and the collapse of his career in order for a sense of his own spiritual existence to awaken in him. Artificial “bridges” and “barriers”, erected with such difficulty, are falling. “I’m killed, I’m broken, I’m not a man anymore!” - Karenin exclaims.
That's what he thinks. But Tolstoy argues differently. He believes that only now Karenin is becoming himself. Once, speaking at a meeting, Karenin stubbornly looked at “the first person sitting in front of him - a small, meek old man who had no opinion in the commission.” Now he himself was turning into such a “quiet little old man.”
And this, according to Tolstoy, is the best fate for Karenin, because he seems to return to himself, to his simple human soul, which he turned into a soulless machine, but which was still alive. “He took her daughter,” says Countess Vronskaya. And again she remembers Anna: “She ruined herself and two wonderful people - her husband and my unfortunate son.”
Karenin in Tolstoy's novel is an ambiguous character. Tolstoy generally believed that there are no unambiguous characters. The only exception in the novel is, perhaps, Oblonsky. He has apparent, desired And valid characters make up something whole.
Tolstoy deeply studied the dynamics of characters. He not only saw the “fluidity” of human properties, but believed in the possibility of improvement, that is, changing a person for the better. The desire to describe what each individual self is led him to "violate the constancy of types."
Tolstoy focuses not only on the external conflicts of the heroes - with each other, with the environment, with time - but also with internal conflicts between apparent, desirable And valid characters. “For a type to be defined,” said Tolstoy, “the author’s relationship to it must be clear.”
The definiteness of the author's attitude towards each of the characters is revealed both in the logic of the plot, and in the logic of the development of his character, in the very dynamics of rapprochement and repulsion of the heroes in the general flow of their lives. There are remarkable details in Tolstoy's novel that indicate the integrity of his romantic thinking.
In this regard, it is very characteristic that Kitty and Levin are constantly approaching each other, although their paths seem to diverge from the very beginning. Meanwhile, Anna and Vronsky are becoming more and more distant, although they put all their strength into being together. Tolstoy also introduces some features of “predetermination” into his novel, which in no way contradicts his romantic thinking.
Oblonsky tells Levin about his wife Dolly: “She is on your side... Not only does she love you, she says that Kitty will certainly be your wife.” Kitty herself is full of confusion: “Well, what will I tell him? Am I really going to tell him that I don't love him? It won't be true. What will I tell him? And when Levin arrived, Kitty told him: “This cannot be... forgive me.” And Levin decided to himself: “It couldn’t be otherwise.”
But time passed, and everything changed, or rather, everything came to the beginning. “And yes, it seems that what Daria Alexandrovna said is true,” Levin recalls how Dolly prophesied happiness for him. In the church, during the wedding, Countess Nordston asks Dolly: “It seems you were waiting for this?” And Dolly replies: “She always loved him.” According to Tolstoy, only what should have happened happens...
Something similar, but opposite in meaning, happens in the life of Anna Karenina. Leaving Moscow, she reassured herself: “Well, it’s all over, thank God!” But everything was just beginning. In Betsy Tverskaya's salon, she forbade Vronsky to talk to her about love. With this prohibition, she seemed to recognize some kind of right to Vronsky. Recognition of rights brings people closer together. But the strange thing is that the closer they become to each other, the further their paths diverge.
Once Tolstoy graphically depicted the “usual pattern of discord”: “Two lines of life, converging at an angle, merged into one and meant agreement; the other two only intersected at one point and, having merged for a moment, diverged again, and the further they went, the more they moved away from each other... But this point of instant contact turned out to be fatal, here both lives were connected forever.”
This is exactly how the story of Anna and Vronsky develops, in a double movement. “He wants to leave me more and more,” says Anna. “We were meeting halfway until the connection, and then we uncontrollably diverge in different directions.” And this cannot be changed... And where love ends, hatred begins.”
And Anna suddenly saw herself through Vronsky’s hostile eyes. It was a kind of psychological prediction of hatred made by a desperate effort of love. “She lifted the cup, holding out her little finger, and brought it to her mouth. After taking a few sips, she looked at him and from the expression of his face clearly understood that he was disgusted by the hand, and the gesture, and the sound that she made with her lips ... "
Tolstoy as a creator art world a broad and free novel boldly surveys the entire space of its causes and consequences. Therefore, he sees not only the direct, but also the reverse and intersecting flows of events. The lines of divergence between Anna and Vronsky are drawn sharply and definitely. This does not mean that Kitty and Levin do not have such lines. And their lives “merged together”, but the first exits of “crossed lines” have already emerged, which can separate them far from each other...
In Tolstoy's novel, each character represents a complex, changeable, but internally complete and integral world. And each of them is revealed in complex and changing relationships with other characters, not only the main ones, but also the secondary ones.
The novel in Tolstoy’s view was, first of all, a system, a peculiar process of movement of large and inferior luminaries in size and significance. Their relationships, attraction and repulsion, attraction to each other due to similarity or difference are full of deep meaning.
Minor characters play a special role in the romance system; they group around the main characters, forming their unique motley retinue. The sharpness of comparative characteristics lies in the fact that heroes are sometimes, as in a mirror, reflected precisely in those images that seem to have no resemblance to them.
The similarity of the dissimilar and the dissimilarity of the similar enriches the psychological nature of Tolstoy’s novel. It turns out that a typical phenomenon can be multiple and varied; This phenomenon does not always and not necessarily receive a single artistic embodiment.
Anna Karenina's appearance on the tragic stage is preceded by Baroness Shilton. She has an affair with Vronsky's friend Lieutenant Petritsky. And she wants to “break up with her husband.” “He still doesn’t want to give me a divorce,” complains Baroness Shilton. Vronsky finds her in his empty apartment in the company of Petritsky and Kamerovsky. “Do you understand this stupidity, that I’m allegedly unfaithful to him!” - says the baroness about her husband.
Vronsky advises her to act decisively: “knife to the throat” - “and so that your hand is closer to his lips. He will kiss your hand, and everything will end well...” With a character like Shilton’s, Anna’s tragedy is simply impossible; it turns out to be a farce... But on the same topic.
Kitty expected Anna to appear at the ball in a purple dress. But Anna was in black. Baroness Shilton was dressed in purple. She filled the room like a canary with Parisian patois, rustled purple satin and disappeared. The interlude was over. And the tragedy has already begun, although Vronsky does not seem to see this yet and does not know that, while giving mocking advice to the Baroness, he inadvertently touched upon Anna’s fate...
However, Vronsky still understood that to many of his family and friends his love for Anna might seem like a story in the spirit of Petritsky and Shilton. “If it had been an ordinary vulgar social affair, they would have left me alone.” And this is the difference between Anna and the vulgar baroness. Petritsky complained to Vronsky that he was tired of this “mistress”. And Vronsky thought about Anna: “They feel that this is something else, that this is not a toy, this woman is more precious to me than life.”
Anna’s tragic guilt was that she found herself in the grip of “passions” that, “like the devil,” she could not control. What if she had suppressed within herself love and the desire for happiness, the first spiritual movement of freedom that once arose in her heart? After all, “passions,” as something dark and unreasonable, came later, after the first, poetic and happy period of their love was “killed.”
Then Anna Karenina could become a “pietist”, humble herself in spirit, bless her misfortunes, recognize them as punishment for her sins, turn not into Baroness Shilton, but into her direct opposite - into Madame Stahl, whom she never meets in the novel, but which exists somewhere next to it.
Kitty meets Madame Stahl in German waters. Madame Stahl was ill, or was thought to be ill, because she appeared only on rare occasions. good days in a stroller. They said different things about her. Some claimed that she tortured her husband; others were convinced that he had tortured her. One way or another, Madame Stahl “gave herself the social position of a virtuous, highly religious woman.”
No one, however, knew exactly what religion she adhered to - Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, since she was on friendly terms with all the highest officials of all churches. Old Prince Shcherbatsky calls her a “pietist.” Kitty asks him what this word means. And Prince Shcherbatsky answers: “I don’t know very well myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, for every misfortune, and she thanks God for the fact that her husband died. Well, it turns out funny because they lived badly.”
But not only did Anna Karenina, in order to become a pietist, have to suppress her desire to “live and love”; it would be necessary, if not to hide, then to “forget” one’s beauty. In this respect, Madame Stahl had it easier. She carefully hides not her beauty, but her physical defect.
“They say she hasn’t gotten up for ten years,” noted an acquaintance of Shcherbatsky, a certain “Moscow colonel,” who was inclined to see Madame Stahl’s situation as the result of some hidden illness. “He doesn’t get up because he’s short-legged,” Shcherbatsky answered him. “Dad, it can’t be!” - Kitty screamed. And it turns out that Madame Stahl’s pietism is just a beautiful name for ordinary hypocrisy.
Anna Karenina does not see that the “matress” Shilton appears to her left, and the “pietist” Madame Stahl appears to her right. But Tolstoy sees this clearly, giving Anna Karenina a vast area of life contained between these two “poles.” It is no coincidence that Shilton and Stahl have similar “strange surnames.”
Once the American writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature William Faulkner was asked to name the three best novels in world literature, to which he answered without hesitation: “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and again Anna Karenina”...
Leo Tolstoy began writing one of the most famous novels in the history of Russian literature in 1873. All of reading Russia was burning with impatience in anticipation of new chapters of Anna Karenina, which were published in Russky Vestnik, but work on the book was difficult - the author put an end to it only on April 17, 1877.
"Unbearably disgusting"
At the end of 1874, Tolstoy decided to submit the first chapters of the novel (which was still very far from completion) to Russky Vestnik, and now he “involuntarily” had to work on the book in order to keep up with the monthly magazine.
Sometimes he sat down to work with pleasure, and sometimes he exclaimed: “ Unbearably disgusting», « My God, if only someone would finish “Anna Karenina” for me"" or " My Anna bores me like a bitter radish».
The first part of the novel alone had ten editions, but the total amount of work on the manuscript amounted to 2560 sheets.
"Unsuccessful" epilogue
By the spring of 1877, Tolstoy was already dreaming of finishing “Anna Karenina” as quickly as possible, so that “ make room for a new job" However, the editor of the magazine, Mikhail Katkov, was dissatisfied with the content of the epilogue, since it portrayed the volunteer movement in Russia in favor of the rebel Serbs in a negative light.
Therefore, in the next issue of Russky Vestnik, instead of an epilogue, an anonymous note “What happened after the death of Anna Karenina” appeared, which reported:
« In the previous book, under the novel “Anna Karenina”, it was written “The ending follows.””. But with the death of the heroine, the novel actually ended. According to the author’s plan, there would have been a short two-page epilogue, from which readers could learn that Vronsky, in confusion and grief after Anna’s death, goes as a volunteer to Serbia and that everyone else is alive and well, while Levin remains in his village and is angry at the Slavs. committees and volunteers. The author, perhaps, will develop these chapters for a special edition of his novel».
Oh yes Pushkin!
Tolstoy sat down to work on Anna Karenina under the impression of Pushkin’s prose. This is evidenced by both the testimony of Sofia Tolstoy and the author’s own notes.
In a letter to the literary critic Nikolai Strakhov, Tolstoy wrote:
“...One day after work I picked up this volume of Pushkin and, as always (for the seventh time, it seems), I re-read everything, was unable to put it down and seemed to be reading it again. But not only that, he seemed to resolve all my doubts.
Not only Pushkin before, but I think I have never admired anything so much: “The Shot”, “Egyptian Nights”, “The Captain’s Daughter”!!! And there is an excerpt “The guests were going to the dacha.” Involuntarily, accidentally, without knowing why or what would happen, I thought of people and events, began to continue, then, of course, I changed it, and suddenly it began so beautifully and coolly that a novel came out, which I have now finished in draft, a very lively, hot novel and finished, with which I am very pleased and which will be ready, God willing, in two weeks.”
But after two weeks the novel was not ready - Tolstoy continued to work on Anna Karenina for another three years.
At the station
Tolstoy was repeatedly reproached for treating Anna too cruelly, “forcing her to die under a carriage.” To which the writer replied:
“One day Pushkin said to his friend: “Imagine what kind of thing my Tatyana did. She got married. I didn’t expect this from her.” I can say the same about Anna. My heroes do what they should do in real life, and not what I want.”
Obiralovka station
Tolstoy chose the Moscow region as the setting for Karenina’s suicide. railway station Obiralovka, and he did it not by chance: at that time the Nizhny Novgorod road was one of the main industrial highways, and heavily loaded freight trains often traveled along it.
During the years the novel was written, the station was used by an average of 25 people a day, and in 1939 it was renamed Zheleznodorozhnaya.
Heiress of the poet
Tolstoy largely copied Anna Karenina’s appearance from Alexander Pushkin’s daughter Maria Hartung. Karenina got her hairstyle and her favorite necklace from her:
“Her hairstyle was invisible. Only noticeable, decorating her, were these willful short rings of curly hair, always sticking out at the back of her head and temples. There was a string of pearls on the chiseled strong neck.”
Tolstoy met the heiress of the great poet in Tula 5 years before writing the novel. As you know, her charm and wit set Maria apart from other women of that time, and the writer immediately liked her.
Ustinov E. Portrait of M.A. Hartung.
However, Pushkin’s daughter, of course, did not throw herself under any train and even outlived Tolstoy by almost a decade. She died in Moscow on March 7, 1919 at the age of 86.
"Rare" women
Another prototype for Karenina was a certain Anna Pirogova, who in 1872, in the vicinity of Yasnaya Polyana, threw herself under a train because of unhappy love. According to the memoirs of the writer’s wife Sofia Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich even went to the railway barracks to see the unfortunate woman.
In addition, there were two women in the Tolstoy family who left their husbands for lovers (which was a very rare occurrence in those days). Literary scholars are confident that their fates had no less influence on the image and character of Karenina.
Instead of a diary
Konstantin Levin is one of the most complex and at the same time autobiographical characters in the writer’s work. While writing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy even stopped writing his diaries, as his thoughts and feelings were reflected in his work on the image of this provincial landowner.
Today, Levin’s surname is most often pronounced with the letter “e,” but Tolstoy himself pronounced it with “e,” which once again indicates his connection with the hero (contemporaries called Tolstoy not Lev, but Lev).
Levin, like the author himself, was interested in questions that were ignored by most of society: do peasants need education, and what will happen if it is given? Even the internal crisis that Levin experienced is correlated by researchers with the author’s life crisis.
Hero Lover
Literary criticism traditionally calls Colonel Nikolai Raevsky (1839-1886), a representative of the famous dynasty of illustrious military men of the Russian Empire, one of the prototypes of Count Vronsky from Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Raevsky is the eldest grandson of the famous general N.N. Raevsky.
Nikolai Raevsky III was the grandson of the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, General Nikolai Raevsky, whose feat Tolstoy described on the pages of the novel War and Peace, and the son of Nikolai Raevsky II, the founder of the city of Novorossiysk.
Also, the image of one of the main characters of the novel was close to the poet Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, for whose sake Sofya Andreevna Bakhmeteva left her husband - this story made a lot of noise in the world.
"Well done woman"
In the mid-1930s, while working on the anniversary edition of Tolstoy’s works, literary scholars examined the manuscript collection of Anna Karenina and determined that the novel initially began not with the famous words “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonsky house,” but with a scene in the salon of the future princess Tverskoy.
This draft manuscript was called “Well done Baba,” and the main character was first called Tatyana, then Nana (Anastasia), and only later did she become Anna.
"The Anna Karenina Principle"
The novel opens with the phrase: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” on the basis of which scientists have developed the so-called “Anna Karenina principle.”
This principle describes situations where the success of a business is possible only in the simultaneous presence of a number of factors and is used in various areas - from adaptation crises to change climatic conditions before the change of recessions and ascents in financial markets.
Critics were outraged by Tolstoy's novel. Anna Karenina was called immoral and amoral - that is, “in reality” readers treated her in exactly the same way as the secular characters in the book.
“Tolstoy, you proved with patience and talent,
That a woman should not "walk"
Neither with the chamber cadet, nor with the aide-de-camp,
When she is a wife and mother."