Anna Karenina and the General Law

Hope I didn't disgust everyone with my Anna Karenina whining. You'd think I could just read a novel, heh?

I'm glad I read it. I recommend it.

Interesting that the passages I mentioned at the end of Part 7 where Anna finally is the first character to start showing some real understanding are considered the first extended use of interior monologue. So add Joyce and Woolf and all the other moderns to the list of 20th century novelists influenced by Tolstoy.

And to see what I mean by Anna being the first character of the novel to start showing some understanding I mean real understanding and self-awareness. She is, too, the character that goes through 'separation from the General Law' in a radical way.

Interesting too that once out of the normal pattern of life she has to create a new life (if you read the novel it's the part about adopting the English girl, etc.) and how it's called 'unnatural' and how she doesn't have anything else to do and so on. That is all 'separation from the General Law' experience.

I think mandatory reading of the Russians includes War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Brothers Karamazov (which I havn't read yet, but know enough about to know it sums up in one all his other great novels).

If you havn't read any then one can warm up to each by reading selected shorter works by them, but inevitably just plow through those three big ones. - C.

ps- I think because I am pretty much raw essence at this point, not a strong shell of personality, I am careful of what influences I engage or let in. For instance, I don't watch dumb Hollywood movies, or television shows. I just don't. In real life I am not normally around crude or shallow or empty or violent phenomena and people. I don't necessarily say "I'm too precious to be around that!" it is more just a natural navigational system. If I find myself stuck in something like that I can cope, but it's not my level. So when I make an effort to read a big novel (influence) and it has a lot of shallow romance and self-centered characters I kind of freak out because I have to continue with it because it's *Tolstoy* yet it's unrelenting shallowness, so... my reaction. Having persevered through it I am glad I did.

A little further note on Anna's being separated from the General Law is the not so small detail of how she even separates from her own children. It's like they weren't even hers anymore. Not a self-centered separation, but a real experience of no longer 'being that', i.e. their mother. Of course a big part of the novel is how hard this is regarding her first child, yet still she chooses the path she is on nevertheless knowing it has separated her from her first child.

Just a note. There is material for seeing separation from the General Law in Anna's character. Real separation. Especially after the connection with Vronsky cools. Then the separation manifests in full bloom.

I said it before: some people will commit suicide when they experience this. Maybe in real life since Anna had developed some real understanding she would have not done that...

- C.