"Anna Karenina" in Our Time; Seeing More Wisely

by Gary Saul Morson

• ISBN13: 9780300100709
• ISBN10: 0300100701
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2007-12-05
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In this invigorating new assessment ofAnna Karenina, Gary Saul Morson overturns traditional interpretations of the classic novel and shows why readers have misunderstood Tolstoy's characters and intentions. Morson argues that Tolstoy's ideas are far more radical than has been thought: his masterpiece challenges deeply held conceptions of romantic love, the process of social reform, modernization, and the nature of good and evil. By investigating the ethical, philosophical, and social issues with which Tolstoy grappled, Morson finds inAnna Kareninapowerful connections with the concerns of today. He proposes that Tolstoy's effort to see the world more wisely can deeply inform our own search for wisdom in the present day. The book offers brilliant analyses of Anna, Karenin, Dolly, Levin, and other characters, with a particularly subtle portrait of Anna's extremism and self-deception. Morson probes Tolstoy's important insights (evil is often the result of negligence; goodness derives from small, everyday deeds) and completes the volume with an irresistible, original list of One Hundred and Sixty-Three Tolstoyan Conclusions.

Author Biography

Gary Saul Morson is Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities and professor of Slavic languages, Northwestern University. Morson teaches Anna Karenina in a course enrolling 500 students—the largest Slavic Language class offered in America. Among his previous books is the award-winning Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time, published by Yale University Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
List of References and Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Tolstoy and the Twenty-first Century	p. 7
Tolstoy today	p. 9
Theoretical and practical knowledge	p. 13
Astronomy and Utopia	p. 16
God substitutes	p. 20
Contingency and presentness	p. 23
Decisions in a world of uncertainty	p. 25
Complexity and impurity	p. 26
Tolstoy and the realist novel of ideas	p. 27
The prosaic novel	p. 28
Fallacies of perception and plot	p. 30
Prosaics	p. 31
Dolly and Stiva: Prosaic Good and Evil	p. 33
Happiness	p. 35
Two bad lives	p. 35
Overcoming the bias of the artifact	p. 36
Retraining perception	p. 37
The third story	p. 38
The prosaic hero	p. 38
Dolly's quandary	p. 40
Habits	p. 41
Arriving at a question (Part Six, chapter 16)	p. 42
Looking is an action	p. 44
Work	p. 45
Stiva and the Russian idea of evil	p. 48
Negligence and negative events	p. 49
The forgettory	p. 50
Honesty	p. 51
Fatalism and blame	p. 52
He had never clearly thought out the subject	p. 53
Anna	p. 55
Introduction to a Contrary Reading	p. 57
Anna and the Kinds of Love	p. 62
Murder an infant (a Tolstoyan meditation)	p. 62
Fatality	p. 63
Narcissism	p. 65
Marrying Romeo	p. 68
Love and work	p. 68
Why they quarrel	p. 69
Broderie anglaise	p. 70
Eroticism and dialogue	p. 71
The prosaic sublime	p. 72
Kitty's mistake	p. 74
Crises	p. 75
The word love	p. 76
The second proposal and how it works	p. 77
Tiny alterations	p. 77
Anna and the Drama of Looking	p. 79
Honesty, continued	p. 79
Fake simplicity	p. 79
What touches Dolly the most	p. 81
Relativity	p. 82
Ears	p. 84
Narrating from within	p. 85
Mimicry	p. 88
Some strategic absences	p. 88
Aleksey Aleksandrovich plans a conversation	p. 89
Lying without speaking	p. 92
Their past marriage	p. 93
The Pallisers at breakfast	p. 95
The shortest chapter	p. 97
Vronsky	p. 97
Vronsky's attempted suicide	p. 98
Vronsky's loathing	p. 101
Vronsky tries to talk	p. 102
Responsibility at a remove	p. 104
Races and circuses	p. 105
What Anna sees and what Tolstoy says	p. 106
Watching watching watching	p. 108
A false confession	p. 108
For the first time	p. 109
I tried to hate	p. 111
The only character who saves a life	p. 112
Divorce and the children	p. 113
Why Anna refuses a divorce	p. 115
Anna's Suicide and the Totalism of Meaning	p. 118
Nothing but love	p. 118
Dehumanizing Anna	p. 119
Impurity and inconsistency	p. 120
The temptation to allegory	p. 121
Frou-Frou's suicide?	p. 123
The dynamics of quarrels	p. 124
Why the epigraph is troubling	p. 127
Two interpretations of the epigraph, and an unexpected third one	p. 129
Totalism and isolation	p. 130
Contrary evidence?	p. 132
Anna the philosopher	p. 133
The madness of reason and the choice of fatalism	p. 134
Foreshadowing	p. 135
Annie	p. 136
The red bag	p. 137
The epigraph's fourth meaning	p. 138
Levin	p. 141
Why Reforms Succeed or Fail	p. 143
The significance of Russian history	p. 143
Toryism and Whiggism	p. 145
St. Petersburg	p. 145
Aristocracy	p. 146
Duty and culture	p. 147
A strange sort of duty	p. 148
Levin's book	p. 149
What Is Agriculture?	p. 150
The root cause	p. 151
Friction	p. 152
The elemental force	p. 154
Why the elemental force cannot be resisted	p. 155
Why minds wander	p. 156
Learning to mow	p. 157
Reform by template	p. 158
How reforms can take	p. 159
When asymmetry works	p. 160
Discounting history	p. 161
Untangling the labyrinth of possibilities	p. 163
Destructive conservatism	p. 164
Disciplines	p. 165
War and Peace vs. Anna Karenina	p. 166
Speed	p. 167
Levin's Idea, Its Corollaries and Analogues: Self-improvement, Christian Love, Counterfeit Art, and Authentic Thinking	p. 168
Extending Levin's idea	p. 168
Three ways not to answer	p. 169
Kitty and self-improvement	p. 171
The fake way to avoid being fake	p. 175
Karenin and Christian love	p. 176
The sound of listening	p. 177
The terror of pity	p. 178
The accompanying message	p. 179
The stages of comprehension	p. 180
Wishing her dead	p. 181
Eavesdropping on vindication	p. 183
He did not think	p. 185
Christian love and the elemental force	p. 186
No escape	p. 188
Christian love and prosaic goodness	p. 188
Counterfeit art. What is interesting?	p. 190
Counterfeit thinking and Sergey Ivanovich's beliefs	p. 192
How Stiva's opinions change	p. 193
Svyazhsky and magic words	p. 194
One's own thought	p. 196
Meaning and Ethics	p. 197
The Svyazhsky enigma	p. 197
An unbeliever's prayer	p. 198
Two problems	p. 199
Why there are many problems	p. 200
The Svyazhsky enigma in its sharpest form	p. 202
The sole solution to all the riddles of life and death is untrue	p. 203
Fleming	p. 203
What is "incontestably necessary"	p. 204
Levin's casuistry	p. 205
The moral wisdom of the realist novel	p. 208
The wisdom of behavior	p. 209
Wisdom does not come from the peasant	p. 209
Given without proof	p. 210
Miracle and narrative	p. 212
Why vision is not singular	p. 213
Dostoevsky answers Tolstoy	p. 214
The first Tolstoyan reply: Moral distance	p. 217
The second Tolstoyan reply and three maxims about social judgments	p. 217
The third Tolstoyan reply: Theoretical illustrations vs. novelistic cases	p. 218
The fourth Tolstoyan reply: Galileo and Dolly	p. 218
The fifth Tolstoyan reply: Presence	p. 219
A still more senseless prayer and a new mistaken question	p. 220
The meaning of meaningfulness	p. 221
One Hundred Sixty-Three Tolstoyan Conclusions	p. 223
Notes	p. 235
Index	p. 245
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