Anna Karenin - the greatest novel?
Having just read 'Anna Karenin' and Tolstoy for the first time, I found the ending a big let down, a fizzer, after 'The Idiot' and a few other Dostoevsky novels.
The entire ending, from Anna Karenin's suicide onward, teeters on the moralistic: Tolstoy is subtly preaching at me. The narration and Levin's reflections at the end seem almost arrogant. And I was hoping for the thunderbolt ending of a Dostoevsky novel! (I have also been reading the Australian author Patrick White, with endings as subtle and stunning as Dostoevsky's.)
I had expected Tolstoy’s focus would return to old Karenin, Vronsky, or at least to the unpredictable Kitty, but this was not to be.
I concede that Tolstoy paints Russian society and the predicament of characters in 'Anna Karenin' most elegantly and sympathetically. But am I wrong in seeing a psychological void behind that sumptuous veneer?
Anna Karenina was a thunderbolt for me!!
I finished Anna Karenina over six months ago, and I still can't stop thinking about the ending, and how much clarity it gave me for my life.
Consider where I was in my life while I was reading it: I had been working at my career for 8 years and was starting to think it was pointless, I was coming up to my marriage, and I was looking to move to a new town. In so many ways, the progress I made in my life over the months it took me to read the novel paralleled Levin's own journey.
At the end, Levin realizes the meaning in his life. And consequently he made me realize the meaning in my own. When Levin comes to terms with the truth he actually lies out in a field for 24 hours with the shock of it - and it was the same lightening bolt experience for me as a reader!
I believe that Anna Karenina is actually a story about Levin (who some say is an autobiographical version of Tolstoy), and that Anna's story is merely a method to get us to keep turning the pages.
I recommend coming back to Anna Karenina when you're going through a mid-life crisis!