Anna Karenina, the crowning jewel of Leo Tolstoy's work, is without a doubt one of the great books of our time. Spanning well over 800 pages, it is great not only in size but in the scope of its moral and intellectual reaches. It has been described as a "flawless" work of art by Dostoevsky and by the notoriously dismissive Nabokov. Faulkner called it the "best ever written." In a 2007 Time magazine poll of leading contemporary authors, Anna Karenina was declared the greatest novel of all time.
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| Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina in the 2012 British adaptation. |
What is it about this book that has conquered continents and generations of readers? Hundreds of critics have been unable to pin it down. To me, it's precisely the elusiveness of that something that has made this book so great. And that elusiveness flows from Anna herself. She is the queen, the namesake of the novel; we feel her presence in every scene, regardless of whether she is there. "He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun. But he saw her, like the sun, even without looking."
By his own accounts, Tolstoy set out to write a moralistic novel about a ravishing woman who has everything she wants in life but who knowingly brings about her own downfall by renouncing the societal conventions of her time. As the novel developed, however, he found that his attitude toward the sinful heroine was changing; just as she was gradually winning over the other characters in the book, Anna was simultaneously putting a spell on Tolstoy. Eventually, as the translator Richard Pevear writes in his introduction, Tolstoy "lost sight of her...as he drew closer to her, and finally became one with her." The mystery and force of Anna's character, so bewitching to those who encounter her within the novel, also defies the preconceived notions of the reader and the moral convictions of the author himself. She was borne of Tolstoy, but escaped his grasp, fluttering out of life before he could understand her completely. The need to understand her--the mystery inside an enigma that is Anna--is what keeps readers returning to the novel time and time again.
Other adaptations:
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| Greta Garbo in a 1935 American adaptation. |
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| Vivien Leigh, 1948. |
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| Tatiana Samoilova in the 1967 Soviet adaption. |
Anna Karenina has been brought to life in more than 10 film adaptations, from the 1935 American version starring Greta Garbo, to the faithful 1967 Soviet version (my personal favorite, with the actress's dark coiffure and exotic eyes), to the 2012 rendition by a divine Keira Knightley. But despite these well-executed roles, it's the invisible Anna in the novel who remains the most memorable, the most alive.
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| French actress Sophie Marceau in the first American version filmed entirely in Russia, 1997. |
When it comes to this book, there is no substitute for reading, and re-reading, its luxurious words. A Russian acquaintance of mine who is well into her 60s recently told me she's read the book seven times. I myself am currently on my second reading, marveling at all the ways the novel--or is it me?--has changed since the time I first picked it up. It is a book that keeps developing with you. You don't just read it; you live with it for several weeks. This is what a great book should be.
As a preview, you can listen to an in-depth discussion of Anna Karenina on the Slate Audio Book Club podcast here.
