Life and Fate

I first read Anna Karenina when I was in my mid-teens.  I remember being deeply moved by the story of Anna and her doomed love but I missed a lot of Tolstoy’s subtlety.  I say this because I have now reread this magnificent book in the light of the recent film adaptation with Keira Knightley in the role of Anna.

In my review of the movie I described the novel as a War and Peace of the emotions.  But it’s actually much more than that.  Though it is more intimate in an emotional sense than War and Peace Tolstoy also manages to capture the sweep and grandeur of a particular period in Russian history.  It’s an effortless shifting of focus really, from interior feelings at one point to exterior settings at another, inside and outside captured with almost perfect comprehension.

The novel opens with arguably one of the most recognised lines in all of world literature;

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

On my first reading I thought this was a reference to Anna and her own relationships, first with her husband, Alexis Karenin, a man she clearly does not love, a man she never loved, and then with Count Alexis Vronsky, the great passion of her life, a man she loved too much.  But it’s not.  In the immediate sense it’s a reference to the marriage of her philandering brother, Stiva Oblonsky, and Dolly, his much suffering wife.  Beyond that it really touches on a variety of relationships.  It touches, in a deeper sense, on a larger family, that of the Russian aristocracy, on the threshold of a precipitous decline.

The title is deceptive.  Much of the novel does indeed focus on the tragedy of Anna but not in an exclusive sense.  It might just as well have been called Portraits of Marriage; for marriage and relationships is what it’s all about.  Not all unhappy, I should add.  For in counterpoint to the story of Anna, Karenin and Vronsky we have that of Kitty, Dolly’s sister, and Constantine Levin.  This, as it turns out, is the novel’s one happy family, resembling no other. 

The idealistic and occasionally tiresome Levin is an obvious self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.  I say tiresome because the author allows him to become a vehicle for his own economic, political and spiritual obsessions, which buzz at points as annoyingly as the bees Levin keeps on his country estate! 

For me the fascinating thing about Anna Karenina is just how well it captures a particular social milieu and a particular period in Russian history.  I offer another possible title – Decline and Fall.  There is pathology here, something symptomatic almost.  At one extreme we have the insouciant Oblonsky, thoughtless and shallow, a scion of an ancient family in terminal decline.  At the other we have Levin, a country gentleman who dreams of a communion with the peasantry, while always being apart from the peasantry.  In the middle we have Anna, passionate, transient and destructive, a force of nature.  On the outside we have the peasantry, looking on with incomprehension and bemused contempt. 

It’s often said that Anna Karenina is the greatest novel ever written.  Greatness, it seems to me, is such and elusive and uncertain measure.  There are serious flaws in the book which, at least to me, would seem to stop it somewhere short of ‘greatness’, at least understood as perfection.  But there is something greater than greatness; there is brilliance.  Anna Karenina is a brilliant book, one with breathtaking insight, a handling of character and theme that shows one to be in the presence of a true master of the art. 

Tolstoy’s understanding of human nature is as broad as it is deep.  Although the novel has a third person grand narrative style, the focus changes with the mood, moving from a God-like perspective to interior consciousness with equal ease.  Even Laska, Levin’s dog, is allowed a perspective at one point in the narrative!  Tolstoy’s descriptive power is as grand as it is in War and Peace, though the richness of his country scenes stands in sharp contrast to the anonymity of his urban settings. 

Anna Karenina is a novel of consequences.  In some ways it’s similar in handling to War and Peace, in that the author clearly believes that each individual destiny is shaped by forces that cannot be controlled.  Anna is the novel’s boldest character, one who defies convention, choosing love over propriety.  That is the beginning of her tragedy. 

I suppose it is possible to say that Vronsky also places love, the love of another man’s wife, before propriety, but for him the choice does not carry the same burden, a measure of social hypocrisy, perhaps, though the judgements here are our own, not Tolstoy’s.  His task is simply to show the limits of freedom and the penalties of choice. 

The penalties for Anna are high.  Unable to divorce, she grows increasingly uncertain of herself, increasingly insecure in her relationship with Vronsky, who can, after all, discard her in a moment and marry another, as his mother clearly wishes.  Anna’s passionate nature turns in on itself, driven to destruction by recrimination, doubt and paranoia.  Her story resembles no other in its unhappiness.  It ends in a station; it ends in suicide under a train. 

Is there any happiness to be found here?  Well, as I say, to contrast with the dark there is the light of Kitty and Levin.  If Oblonsky represents shallow and cosmopolitan urban values, Levin – Tolstoy himself – seeks roots in the land, roots in ‘the people’, something of an idealised and unreflective giant.  He finds contentment with Kitty and meaning in life, including spiritual meaning…at least up to a point. 

Tolstoy admired the work of Charles Dickens.  But the thing about Dickens’ novels is that they all have one conclusion – the end of history.  One feels that the action is done.  All that remains is an endless summer of happy families, big meals and blessed death.  Not so with Anna Karenina.  Levin is a doubter; his quest is not over, his happiness less than complete.  His is a story that is also destined to end in a station, the story of Tolstoy’s own future.  

Unhappy in its own way

I saw Anna Karenina on the Saturday just before going on vacation.  This is my overdue review! 

All the world is a stage.  Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina is all the world.  Director Joe Wright has reduced it to a stage in his new film adaptation!  If you are looking for the broad canvas and the big sweeps, Russian-style, it’s simply not here.  Instead there is a claustrophobic theatricality for the most part, a movie that seems to represent the triumph of directorial artfulness over emotional substance. 

Generally I don’t read reviews before going to see a film; I would far rather form my own judgements first and take in the views of others later.  But I have read the novel and have a clear idea of what I expect from a retelling of one of the greatest fictional epics, a War and Peace of the emotions.  At the heart is a particular tale of unhappiness, the tragedy of Anna and her imperfect love. 

No sooner had the curtain raised and the action start to unravel I began to feel uneasy.  This has all the style of a comedy rather than a tragedy, of a silly pastiche rather than grand epic.  The scenes in Oblonsky’s office were so risibly choreographed that it was difficult not to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all rather than the heavy-handed attempt at puppet-like humour.  The only thing missing was a song. 

I’m not going to like this, I thought to myself, and first impressions with me are almost never corrected.  But I was wrong; I began to thaw, once the theatre-workshop element receded a little into the background and the actors were allowed to inhabit their roles, as actors and not as marionettes.  Keira Knightley was splendid as Anna, just as I imagine her, passionate and self-destructive.  Anna is a woman capable of great love, and great love, certainly with her, is to madness near allied. 

Her madness comes in the shape of Count Vronsky, prettily played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the emphasis here being on pretty.  The best thing I can say about him is that he looked splendid in the white dress uniform of a cavalry officer.  Jude Law, whom I didn’t recognise at first, plays Alexi Karenin, Anna’s husband, more sinned against than sinning.  Actually the emotionally constipated and impeccably correct Karenin is incapable of something as lowly human as sin!  He is virtue incarnate, a counterpoint to Anna’s passion incarnate.  A more temperamentally unsuited couple is impossible to imagine; Juliet, if you can picture such a thing, married to Polonius. 

I also warmed, after some initial distaste, to Mathew Macfadyen as Oblonsky, Anna’s insouciant, philandering and bon viveur brother, married to the much imposed upon Dolly (Kelly Macdonald), perhaps a little more physically attractive than Tolstoy really envisaged. 

Aside from Knightley, the other acting highlight for me was Domhnall Gleeson as the idealistic Konstantin Levin, Tolstoy’s own partial self-portrait.  His on-off romance with Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya (Alicia Vikander), moving from unhappy beginnings to a happy conclusion, contrasts with the evolving tragedy of Anna and Vronsky.  Incidentally, the scene where Kitty finally accepts his proposal of marriage in a private word game was exactly how Tolstoy proposed to his own wife.

Levin is arguably the most authentic character in the whole film, less self-conscious and ensnared, altogether less histrionic.  To begin with, after Kitty’s initial rejection, he escapes from Wright’s theatrical setting into the country, which really is the country! 

There are some visually splendid scenes in Anna Karenina and the cinematography and costume design are luscious.  Tom Stoppard – my, how this man gets around – has done a reasonably proficient job in reducing a big book to a manageable script, losing none of the essentials. 

When the curtain finally fell I found myself admiring the director for his boldness, his idea of the theatre as the world, which is a notion that he apparently grew up with.  Even so I cannot avoid the conclusion that there were points where the medium simply overwhelmed the message. 

The imbalance between Knightley’s first rate performance and Taylor-Johnson’s, well, performance, also weakened the overall effect.  A good effort but it could have been so much better, which is the best thing I can say about Anna Karenina.  Still, if it’s an unhappy film at least it’s unhappy in its own way. 

The Man who would be King

I’ve long loved the plays of William Shakespeare. I’ve seen so many good performances, both in London and in Stratford. Good performances bring out all of the nuances of the drama. But I also enjoy reading them for the pleasure of reading, for the pleasure I take in Shakespeare's mastery of words. I love words; I love to play with words in the way that Shakespeare played with words.

I also love the writing of Lev Tolstoy…most of his writing. I read his essay on Shakespeare, published in 1903, not so much criticism as demolition. It irritated all hell out of me, not simply because he seemed to completely miss the point but because – I must confess- I thought it presumptuous for a Russian, a foreigner, to attack a poet who wrote in a language that was not his own.

I assume Tolstoy read English, though I have no information on the point. But no matter how good he was I doubt if he understood the subtleties of seventeenth century speech, or the way in which Shakespeare contributed to the evolution of English. Just imagine how Russians would feel if I, or any other English person, presumed to rubbish Pushkin!

The issue of language and comprehension was bad enough. But even more unsettling was the meanness and smallness of spirit shown by the author, qualities I don’t normally associate with Tolstoy. What I do associate him with, for all his genius, is selfishness and overwhelming egoism. The egoism, something that most writers suffer from, could have been disregarded, disregarded, that is, if he had not presumed to write in such terms about Shakespeare. Egoism here is the key, as George Orwell recognised in Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool, his brilliant rebuttal of the Russian master.

In his essay Tolstoy rails against King Lear with particular animus. Here Orwell spotted the psychological clue behind his ranting on the blasted heath: Tolstoy hates King Lear because he is King Lear; he reproduces Lear in life. Lear’s renunciation was Tolstoy’s renunciation: Lear fled; Tolstoy fled. His end also was curiously like Lear’s:

And though Tolstoy could not foresee it when he wrote his essay on Shakespeare, even the ending of his life--the sudden unplanned flight across country, accompanied only by a faithful daughter, the death in a cottage in a strange village--seems to have in it a sort of phantom reminiscence of LEAR.

The simple fact is that the play held a mirror up to Tolstoy, showing back a disturbing reflection. The theme is about renunciation, renunciation of power, renunciation of land, the renunciation of wealth, the very core of Tolstoy’s philosophy. Tolstoy renounced the world because he believed that in this, in serving the will of God, he would achieve happiness.

But his renunciation brought him no more happiness that Lear’s gratuitous act. Like Lear he gave up power…but also like Lear he still wanted to be king. Shakespeare, it might be said, had shown the weakness in Tolstoy’s own thought. Perhaps Tolstoy, too, should have been accompanied like Lear by the Fool, someone to tell him that he deserved to be beaten for being old before his time; that he should not have been old before he was wise.

Marital War and Peace

The Last Station, directed by Michael Hoffman, is a period drama telling of the final stages in the life of Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace. Starring Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Countess Sofya Andreyevna, his wife, and based on the biographical novel of the same name by Jay Parini, the movie itself is a kind of war and peace in the context of a marriage

There are some terrific performances. Plummer is utterly convincing as Tolstoy, loving and yet rigid in principle, but Dame Helen really steals the show as Countess Sofya. If anything her performance is at points a little overripe, and I’ve never before seen her hamming it up with such exuberance. But don’t let that put you off; there is a comic intensity to her Countess Sofya, but there is also an underlying vulnerability; a sadness over a loss of power and influence which she also brings to the fore.


I have to say that while I admire Tolstoy so much as a writer - second only to Dostoevsky in the pantheon of Russian literature in my estimation - I’m far less keen on Tolstoy the man, or the man he became in the final stages of his life. Ghandi before Ghandi, he was an advocate of pacifism, celibacy, neo-anarchism and vegetarianism, while at the same time full of self-will and egoism; a man who was prepared to put vacuous abstractions before living people; a man who was prepared to preach but not always practice. He is the original bleeding heart and limousine liberal, as one review I read rightly says

My sympathies in the movie- and in life- were all with Countess Sofya. She was Tolstoy’s amanuensis and muse. Only she could decipher his handwriting. She copied War and Peace no fewer than six times. More than that, she also made suggestions along the way on the book’s characters, on what was credible and what was not. So she had as much right to the book, it might be thought, as her husband.

Tolstoy thinks otherwise. He is proposing to give away the copyright to all mankind in the shape of the Tolstoy Foundation, headed by Vladimir Chertkov, played by Paul Giamatti, Sofya Andrevena’s principal opponent. The Countess, you see, is a material girl living in an idealist world!

It’s this mix, this tug of love and legacy, comes Valentin Bulgakov, a credible performance by James McAvoy, a naïve and doe-eyed idealist. Employed by Chertkov essentially as a secretary for the author and as a spy against the scheming Countess, he is able to watch the war of the Tolstoys at first hand.

Living in a nearby Tolstoyan commune, dedicated to bloodless ideals, he matures under the guidance, and the love, of Masha, played by Kerry Condon, a free-spirit in every sense. I could not quite work out what she was doing among the self-deniers, the celibates and the abstainers - oh, the looks of disapproval she incurred when doing something as innocent as killing a troublesome mosquito! Anyway, with her advent the movie then takes the shape of a double love story; of Tolstoy and the secretary; of first love and last love; of young lust and old empathy, one nicely played off against the other.

Ah, yes, the Countess does love the man; she just hates those like Chertkov, who would turn him into an icon, a prophet and an ideal. She did not marry Jesus; she married Lev Tolstoy. In the end Tolstoy, unable to live in the cross-fire, and surrendering real life for chimerical ideals, leaves home, going by train and ending in Astapovo, his last station, where he dies. I’m delighted to say that the Countess, and not Chertkov, got the copyright in the end, awarded to her by the Russian Senate in 1914, four years after her husband’s death.

I confess I thought the script a little thin at points, never really getting below the surface. But even so it bubbles along quite nicely. The cinematography is gorgeous, the rural settings beautiful, a touch of life in the old Russia, the Russia of counts and peasants, of authors and icons, destroyed for ever by the communists.

Comparing Norris and Tolstoy

Just as in War and Peace history has its own dynamism and logic, pushing people forward in a relentless fashion, so too in Frank Norris' The Octopus rancher and railroader alike must serve the impersonal forces of supply and demand. Remember Shelgrim's words to Presley? -"Men have little to do with the whole business. Can anyone stop the wheat? Well, then, no more can I stop the road." All Presley’s radical convictions are shattered by this encounter. The next time we see him is at a railroad executive's dinner party.

If one looks for a key to Norris' thought, to understand why the great conflict ends in resolution, fatalism and acceptance, then one needs to realise just how important the work of Joseph Leconte was on his thinking. In was Leconte's view, expressed in books like Religion and Science and Evolution, Its Nature, Its Evidences and Its Relations to Religious Thought, that Divine Will was operating in nature through evolution. Science offered one perspective, religion another, but both science and religion merely sought to comprehend the will of God in the natural universe. Evil can never be considered an isolated phenomenon. Nature might break some, but only in pursuit of the greater good. So it is that Norris, Leconte's former student, is able to write at the end of "The Octopus":

...the individual suffers, but the race goes on. Annixer dies, but in a far distant corner of the world a thousand lives are saved. The larger view always comes through all shams, all wicked-nesses, discovers the Truth that will, in the end, prevail, and all things, surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for that good.

So it is with Norris as it is with Tolstoy; people are carried forward by History, by Destiny, by God, by Fate by Nature or by what you will.