Anna Karenina." The meaning of the epigraph

The novel "Anna Karenina" (1873-1877), in contrast to the epic novel "War and Peace", dedicated to depicting the "heroic" era in the life of Russia, in the problems of "Anna Karenina" the "family thought" was in the foreground. The novel became a real “family epic”: Tolstoy believed that it was in the family that one should look for the core of modern social and moral problems. The family in his portrayal is a sensitive barometer, reflecting changes in public morality caused by changes in the entire post-reform way of life. Love and marriage, according to Tolstoy, cannot be considered only as a source of sensual pleasure. The most important thing is moral responsibilities to family and loved ones. The love of Anna Karenina and Vronsky is based only on the need for pleasure, and therefore leads to the spiritual separation of the heroes, making them unhappy. But if Anna did not understand the requirements of the moral law, she would not have had a feeling of guilt. There would be no tragedy. The tragedy of Anna's fate is predetermined not only by the callousness of the man whom she did not marry for love, by the cruelty and hypocrisy of the world, by Vronsky's frivolity, but also by the very nature of her feelings. Tolstoy's Anna is an extraordinary nature, spiritually rich, endowed with a living moral sense. Love for Vronsky encourages her to understand herself more clearly than before as a person, sharpens her critical sense in relation to the world around her and to herself. And the main reason for her death is not so much the hypocrisy of the secular environment or the obstacle to obtaining a divorce, but the destructive effect of passion on her own soul, the impossibility of reconciling her feelings for Vronsky and affection for her son, and more broadly, the impossibility of finding herself in a world where “everything is not true.” , all lies, all deception, all evil.” The conflict between pleasure, obtained at the cost of family destruction, and duty to his son turned out to be insoluble. We are faced with a situation of moral choice.

Critic Babaev E.G. . - Anna is close to Levin precisely because of this sense of guilt, which indicates her deep moral nature. She was looking for moral support and did not find it. “Everything is lies, everything is deception, everything is evil.” It was not only her passions that destroyed her. Hostility, disunity, the brute and overbearing force of public opinion, the inability to realize the desire for independence and independence lead Anna to disaster. Anna belongs to a certain time, a certain circle, namely the high-society aristocratic circle. And her tragedy in the novel is depicted in full accordance with the laws, customs and mores of this environment and era. Anna ironically and sensibly judges her own surroundings: “... it was a circle of old, ugly, virtuous and pious women and smart, learned, ambitious men.” However, about the piety of Lydia Ivanovna, fascinated by spiritualistic phenomena and “communication with spirits,” she had the same skeptical opinion as about the learning of Karenin, who was reading in the latest issue of the newspaper an article about ancient “euhybeic inscriptions”, which, strictly speaking, he had no interest in there was no business. Betsy Tverskoy gets away with everything and remains a high society lady because she perfectly masters the art of pretense and hypocrisy, which was completely alien to Anna Karenina. It was not Anna who judged, but she was judged and condemned, not forgiving her precisely for her sincerity and spiritual purity. On the side of her persecutors were such powerful forces as law, religion, and public opinion. Anna’s “rebellion” met with decisive rebuff from Karenin, Lydia Ivanovna and the “force of evil” - public opinion. The hatred that Anna feels for Karenin, calling him an “evil ministerial machine,” was only a manifestation of her powerlessness and loneliness in front of the powerful traditions of her environment and time. The “indissolubility of marriage,” sanctified by law and the church, put Anna in unbearably difficult conditions, when her heart was divided between love for Vronsky and love for her son. She found herself “pilloried” just at a time when the painful work of self-consciousness was taking place in her soul. Tolstoy's socio-historical view of Anna's tragedy was insightful and acute. He saw that his heroine would not be able to withstand the fight against her environment, with all the avalanche of disasters that had befallen her. That's why he wanted to make her "pathetic, but not guilty." What was exceptional about Anna’s fate was not only the violation of the law “in the name of the struggle for truly human existence,” but also the awareness of her guilt before the people close to her, before herself, before life. Thanks to this consciousness, Anna becomes the heroine of Tolstoy's artistic world with its high ideal of moral self-awareness.

The meaning of the tragedy is expressed by the epigraph “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” F. M. Dostoevsky explained the epigraph this way: we are talking about Anna’s lack of jurisdiction in human courts. The highest judge for Anna Karenina is not “the empty world,” but her son Seryozha: “he understood, he loved, he judged her.”

The writer’s intention to show a woman who has lost herself, but is not guilty, is emphasized by the epigraph to the novel: “Vengeance is mine and I will repay it.” The meaning of the epigraph is that God can judge a person, his life and actions, but not people.

in the epigraph “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay”10 to Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina” was written by everyone who wrote about the novel (and it was mainly only about the fate of Anna Karenina), since without understanding the meaning of the epigraph it is impossible to adequately perceive the main ideas of this works of Tolstoy.

When the seventh part of Anna Karenina appeared in print, readers and critics remembered the epigraph to the novel. Many thought that Tolstoy condemned and punished his heroine, following this biblical saying. Subsequently, critics were inclined not only to this accusatory point of view, but also adhered to another, exculpatory position that Tolstoy takes regarding his heroine. Thus, criticism saw in the epigraph a reflection of Tolstoy’s position in relation to Anna Karenina and decided the question: who is the author for her - a brilliant prosecutor or a brilliant lawyer?

The character world of Anna Karenina

ANNA KARENINA - the heroine of the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina" (1873-1877); one of the most popular female images of Russian classical literature. Tolstoy wanted to write a novel about a woman from high society who “lost herself,” around whom many male types easily grouped, awakening the writer’s creative imagination. At A.K. There were also prototypes, including the sister of Tolstoy’s close friend M.A. Dyakova-Sukhotina, who survived the divorce process and had a second family. Contemporaries also found many other prototypes, the individual circumstances of whose life and death were correlated with the storyline of the heroine of the novel; in particular, the history of the relationship between the actress M.G. Savina and N.F. Sazonov was mentioned.

In the first part of the novel, the heroine appears as an exemplary mother and wife, a respected society lady and even a reconciliator of troubles in the Oblonsky family. Anna Arkadyevna's life was most filled with love for her son, although she somewhat exaggeratedly emphasized her role as a loving mother. Only Dolly Oblonskaya sensitively detected something false in the entire tenor of the Karenins’ family life, although the attitude of A.K. towards her husband was based on unconditional respect.

After meeting with Vronsky, not yet giving free rein to the nascent feeling, A.K. she realizes in herself not only an awakened thirst for life and love, a desire to please, but also a certain force beyond her control, which, regardless of her will, controls her actions, pushing her closer to Vronsky and creating a feeling of protection by the “impenetrable armor of lies.” Kitty Shcherbatskaya, infatuated with Vronsky, sees a “devilish sparkle” in A.K.’s eyes during her fateful ball. and feels in her “something alien, demonic and charming.” It should be noted that, unlike Karenin, Dolly, Kitty, A.K. not at all religious. Truthful, sincere A.K., who hates all falsehood and lies, who has a reputation in the world as a fair and morally impeccable woman, herself becomes entangled in deceitful and false relationships with her husband and the world.

Under the influence of the meeting with Vronsky, A.K.’s relationship changes dramatically. with everyone around her: she cannot tolerate the falseness of secular relationships, the falseness of relationships in her family, but the spirit of deception and lies that exists against her will carries her further and further towards her fall. Having become close to Vronsky, A.K. recognizes himself as a criminal. After her husband’s repeated generosity towards her, especially after the forgiveness he received during her postpartum illness, A.K. she begins to hate him more and more, painfully feeling her guilt and realizing her husband’s moral superiority.

Neither her little daughter, nor her trip to Italy with Vronsky, nor life on his estate gives her the desired peace, but only brings her awareness of the depth of her misfortune (as during a secret meeting with her son) and humiliation (a scandalous and humiliating episode in the theater). Most of all the torment of A.K. feels the impossibility of uniting his son and Vronsky together. The deepening mental discord and the ambiguity of social status cannot be compensated by the environment artificially created by Vronsky, nor luxury, nor reading, nor intellectual interests, nor the habit of sedatives with morphine. A.K. She constantly feels completely dependent on Vronsky’s will and love, which irritates her, makes her suspicious, and sometimes encourages her to engage in coquetry that is unusual for her. Gradually A.K. comes to complete despair, thoughts of death, with which she wants to punish Vronsky, leaving everyone not guilty, but pitiful. Life story of A.K. reveals the inviolability of the “family thought” in the work: the impossibility of achieving one’s own happiness at the expense of the misfortune of others and forgetting one’s duty and moral law.

OBLONSKY is the central character of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina” (1873-1877). The prototype of this image was a descendant of a well-born noble family, an official and landowner Vasily Stepanovich Perfilyev, an old friend of Tolstoy. The writer was involved in his fate, had a clear idea of his personality, mental makeup, his “virtues and sins” and “easy hobbies.” Tolstoy also used letters from Perfilyev’s wife, Praskovya Fedorovna, and the manuscript of her story “A Strange Case” about the “catastrophe” that happened in her family - her husband’s betrayal with a “sweet, fallen creature.” Like Perfilyev, O. does not feel any guilt, finding no reason to “repent that he, a thirty-four-year-old, handsome, amorous man, was not in love with his wife.” His rule: “Keep sacred things at home. And don’t tie your hands.” O. served in one presence and was “completely indifferent to the work he was doing”; “neither science, nor art, nor politics interested him; he firmly adhered to those views on all these subjects that the majority held.” O.'s image in the novel does not have a specific sign: both positive and negative principles are an organic property of his nature. O. is impeccably honest, he never deceives anyone except his wife, and does not lie to anyone. “He treated all people absolutely equally and equally, no matter what their status and rank.” At the same time, O. is good-natured and benevolent, full of love of life, a joyful perception of existence. O. is an epicurean, a gourmet, striving for pleasure and “light entertainment.” Tolstoy emphasizes that O. always has “shining eyes” - even at Vronsky’s farewell two months after the funeral of his bitterly mourned sister Anna.

LEVIN is a provincial landowner, belonging to a good noble family, living on his estate, not working, and seriously interested in farming. Behind the outwardly measured life and everyday worries lies the intense work of the hero’s thoughts, deep intellectual inquiries and moral quests. L. is distinguished by his sincerity, balance, serious and friendly attitude towards people, fidelity to duty, and directness. From the very beginning of the novel, he appears as a hero with a fully developed character, but an evolving inner world. Readers meet L. during a difficult period of his life, when he, having arrived in Moscow to propose to Kitty Shcherbatskaya, is refused and goes home, trying to regain peace of mind. The choice of Kitty was determined for L. not only by his feelings for her, but also by his attitude towards the Shcherbatsky family; in the curtain he saw an example of the old, educated and honest nobility, which was very important for the hero, since his ideas about true aristocracy were based on the recognition of rights honor, dignity and independence, in contrast to the modern worship of wealth and success. L. is painfully concerned about the fate of the Russian nobility and the obvious process of its impoverishment, about which he talks a lot and with interest with Oblonsky and his landowner neighbors. L. does not see any real benefit from those forms of management that they are trying to introduce from the West; has a negative attitude towards the activities of zemstvo institutions, does not see the point in the comedy of noble elections, as, indeed, in many achievements of civilization, considering them evil. Constant life in the village, observations of the work and life of the people, the desire to get closer to the peasants and serious studies in the economy develop in L. a number of original views on the changes taking place around him; it is not for nothing that he gives a capacious and accurate definition of the post-reform state of society and the features of its economic life , saying that “everything has turned upside down” and “it’s just settling down.” However, L is eager to have some input into how “everything will work out.” Management methods and reflection on the peculiarities of the national way of life lead him to an independent and original conviction of the need to take into account in farming not only agronomic innovations and technical achievements, but also the traditional national mindset of the worker as the main participant in the entire process. L. seriously thinks that with the correct formulation of the matter, based on his conclusions, it will be possible to transform life first on the estate, then in the district, province and, finally, in all of Russia. In addition to economic and intellectual interests, the hero is constantly faced with problems of a different kind. In connection with his marriage to Kitty and the need to confess before the wedding, L. thinks about his attitude towards God, not finding sincere faith in his soul. The most important events turn to the circle of moral and religious questions and reflections on the meaning of life, on the mystery of L.’s birth and death: the death of his brother, and then his wife’s pregnancy and the birth of his son. Not finding faith in himself, L. simultaneously notices that in the most serious moments of his life he prays to God for the salvation and well-being of loved ones, as was the case during Kitty’s birth and during the thunderstorm that found her with her little son in the forest. At the same time, L. cannot satisfy the recognition of finitude, and therefore of some kind of meaninglessness of human existence, if it is based only on biological laws. The persistence of these thoughts, the desire to find the enduring purpose of life sometimes drives L., a happy husband, father, successful landowner, to desperate moral torment and even thoughts of suicide. L. seeks answers to the questions that concern him in the works of scientists and philosophers, in observations of the lives of other people. Serious moral support, an impulse for searches in a new, religious and moral direction, comes from the remark he heard about the peasant Fokanych, who “lives for God”, “remembers the soul.” The search for moral laws and the foundations of human life makes L. similar to Anna Karenina, whose fate depends on her attitude to the moral foundations of life. The hero's search does not end at the end of the novel, leaving the image as if open.

Levin is trying to live by his conscience. He is open to people, to the world. He is saved by Fokanych, who advises him to live in truth, to live in a divine way; God's judgment, not the mind. But Levin is not the ideal of family life. The recipe for family happiness is just emerging

VRONSKY is self-confident (“He looked at people as if they were things”) and deep down he is ambitious, does not feel the need for family life, does not love or respect his mother, is busy only with the affairs of the regiment, the company of cheerful rake friends and available women , military career, thoroughbred horses; according to the rules of his single high-society circle and guards environment, free to the point of immorality, it is quite possible to captivate a girl from a good family and not marry her. His cheerful officer cynicism makes naive Kitty unhappy, she follows the foolish advice of her vain mother and the deceptive voice of girlish pride (Vronsky is one of the best suitors in Russia) and makes a mistake, which life then takes a long time and difficult to correct. The scene of the ball is remarkable, beginning with the happiness and triumph of “pink” (meaning the color of her tulle dress) Kitty and ending with the complete “demonic” triumph of Anna, who put on a magnificent black dress: “There was something terrible and cruel in her charm.” But not only Vronsky’s sudden betrayal strikes Kitty, she is “crushed” (Tolstoy’s exact expression) with despair and repentance, with one thought: “Yesterday she refused a man whom she, perhaps, loved, and refused because she believed in another.” She is taken away to be treated for a non-existent disease in European waters that she does not need (compare this with the illness and treatment of Natasha Rostova). Sister Dolly helps her cope with mental anguish, “morally rolling up her sleeves” (a wonderful expression of the moralist Tolstoy).

Vronsky lives according to secular patterns. He fell in love with Anna not for the sake of love, but for the sake of satisfying his vanity. Anna figured out Vronsky. He is not ready to bear responsibility for Anna. Vronsky's silent betrayal destroys her. He died spiritually when Anna died. Vronsky realized that it was he who destroyed her. The moment of Karenin’s forgiveness of Anna became another revelation of Vronsky.

In the original editions of the novel (in one of the earliest it was ironically titled “Well done, Baba”) the heroine was drawn both physically, externally, and mentally, internally, as unattractive. Her husband looked much nicer. Researchers debate whether this text is the first autograph for the novel. When preparing the text of the novel for publication in the new Complete Works of L.N. Tolstoy in 100 volumes, it turned out that this is the first autograph of the novel (see: Gromova-Opulskaya L.D. A.S. Pushkin at the origins of “Anna Karenina”: Textology and poetics // Slavic literature. Culture and folklore of the Slavic peoples. XII international congress of Slavists (Krakow, 1998). Reports of the Russian delegation. M., 1998. P. 163; on the history of the creation of the novel, see: Zhdanov V.A. The creative history of Anna Karenina. M., 1957; Zhdanov V.A. ., Zaidenshnur E.E. The history of the creation of the novel “Anna Karenina” // Tolstoy L.N. Anna Karenina: A Novel in 8 Parts. M., 1970. (Series “Literary Monuments”), pp. 803-833; Babaev E. .G. “Anna Karenina” by L.N. Tolstoy. M., 1978.).
The idea of the novel’s plot is connected with the plot of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”: “It is obvious that “Anna Karenina” begins with how “Eugene Onegin” ends. Tolstoy believed that in general the story should begin with the fact that the hero got married or the heroine got married<…>. In the harmonious world of Pushkin, the balance of marriage is preserved. In the troubled world of Tolstoy's novel, it collapses. Yet in Anna Karenina, epic triumphs over tragedy. The search for the meaning of life, which haunts Levin, lies, however, not only beyond love, but even family, although Leo Tolstoy was inspired in this novel by the “thought of family”" (Gromova-Opulskaya L.D. A.S. Pushkin the origins of "Anna Karenina": Textology and Poetics. P. 170-171; earlier the same idea was expressed by E. G. Babaev: E. G. Babaev, Roman and Time. Tula, 1975. P. 228).
The novel rests on “clutches,” just like War and Peace. The action continues after the death of the main character. Explaining the constructive principle of the work, the author wrote to N. N. Strakhov, who participated in the preparation of a separate edition: “If I wanted to say in words everything that I had in mind to express in a novel, then I would have to write the same novel that I wrote , at first. And if short-sighted critics think that I wanted to describe only what I like, how Oblonsky dines and what kind of shoulders Karenina has, then they are mistaken. In everything, almost everything that I wrote, I was guided by the need for a collection of thoughts, linked together, to express myself, but each thought, expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is terribly lowered when one is taken from the connection in which it located. The connection itself is not composed of thought (I think), but of something else, and it is impossible to express the basis of this connection in words; but you can only do it mediocrely - using words to describe images, actions, situations” (April 23, 1876).
The author of Anna Karenina explained approximately the same thing to another correspondent, S.A. Rachinsky: “Your judgment about A. Karenina seems wrong to me. On the contrary, I am proud of the architecture - the vaults are built in such a way that you cannot even notice where the castle is. And this is what I tried most of all. The connection of the building is made not on the plot and not on the relationships (acquaintances) of persons, but on the internal connection<…>That's right, you're looking for it in the wrong place, or we understand the connection differently; but what I mean by connection is the very thing that made this matter significant for me - this connection is there - look - you will find it.”
The author called his work “a broad, free novel.”
The main character, Anna Karenina, is a subtle and conscientious nature, she is connected with her lover Count Vronsky by a real, strong feeling. Anna’s husband, a high-ranking official Karenin, seems to be soulless and callous, although at certain moments he is capable of high, truly Christian, kind feelings. “Karenon” in Greek (in Homer) means “head”; from December 1870 Tolstoy studied Greek. According to Tolstoy’s confession to his son Sergei, the surname “Karenin” is derived from this word. “Isn’t it because he gave such a surname to Anna’s husband because Karenin is a head person, because in him reason prevails over the heart, that is, feeling?” (Tolstoy S.L. On the reflection of life in “Anna Karenina” // Literary Heritage. M., 1939. T. 37/38. P. 569).
Tolstoy creates circumstances that seem to justify Anna. The writer talks in the novel about the connections of another society lady, Betsy Tverskoy. She does not advertise these connections, does not flaunt them, and enjoys a high reputation and respect in society. Anna is open and honest, she does not hide her relationship with Vronsky and strives to get a divorce from her husband. And yet, Tolstoy judges Anna on behalf of God himself. The price for betraying her husband is the heroine's suicide. Her death is a manifestation of divine judgment: as the epigraph to the novel, Tolstoy chose the words of God from the biblical book of Deuteronomy in the Church Slavonic translation: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” Anna commits suicide, but this is not divine retribution - the meaning of Anna's divine punishment is not revealed by Tolstoy. (In addition, according to Tolstoy, not only Anna deserves the highest judgment, but also other characters who have committed sins - first of all, Vronsky.) Anna's guilt for Tolstoy is in evading the destiny of a wife and mother. The connection with Vronsky is not only a violation of marital duty. It leads to the destruction of the Karenin family: their son Seryozha is now growing up without a mother, and Anna and her husband are fighting each other for their son. Anna's love for Vronsky is not a high feeling in which the spiritual principle prevails over physical attraction, but a blind and destructive passion. Its symbol is a furious snowstorm, during which Anna and Vronsky’s explanation takes place. According to B. M. Eikhenbaum, “the interpretation of passion as an elemental force, as a “fatal duel”, and the image of a woman dying in this duel are the main motives of “Anna Karenina” prepared by Tyutchev’s lyrics” (Eikhenbaum B. Leo Tolstoy: The Seventies years. L., 1960. 181).
Anna deliberately goes against the divine law that protects the family. For the author, this is her fault.
Later, Tolstoy wrote about the biblical saying - the epigraph to Anna Karenina: “People do a lot of bad things to themselves and to each other only because weak, sinful people have taken upon themselves the right to punish other people. “Vengeance is Mine, and I will repay.” Only God punishes, and then only through man himself.” According to A. A. Fet, “Tolstoy points to “I will repay” not as the rod of a grumpy mentor, but as the punitive power of things<…>"("What happened after the death of Anna Karenina in the Russian Messenger" // Literary Heritage. T. 37-38. P. 234). Tolstoy rejects strict moralism and the desire to judge his neighbor - only callous and sanctimoniously pious natures like Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who turned Karenin against Anna, are capable of this. “The epigraph of the novel, so categorical in its direct, original meaning, reveals to the reader another possible meaning: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” Only God has the right to punish, and people do not have the right to judge. This is not only a different meaning, but also the opposite of the original one. In the novel, the pathos of unresolvedness is increasingly revealed. Depth, truth - and therefore unresolvedness.
<…>In “Anna Karenina” there is not one exclusive and unconditional truth - in it many truths coexist and simultaneously collide with each other,” this is how E. A. Maimin interprets the epigraph (Maimin E. A. Lev Tolstoy. M., 1978. P. 122 ).
But another interpretation is possible. According to Christ, “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48). Anna is given more than those who are not faithful to Betsy Tverskaya or Steve Oblonsky. She is mentally richer and more subtle than them. And she was punished more severely. This interpretation corresponds to the meaning of the epigraph to the text of the first completed edition of the novel: “The same thing—marriage is fun for some, but for others the wisest thing in the world” (Tolstoy L.N. Anna Karenina: A Novel in 8 Parts. M., 1970. ( Series “Literary Monuments”), p. 687). For Anna, marriage is not fun, and the more serious is her sin.
Tolstoy's novel combines three storylines - the stories of three families. These three stories are both similar and different. Anna chooses love, destroying her family. Dolly, the wife of her brother Stiva Oblonsky, for the sake of the happiness and well-being of the children, reconciles with her husband who cheated on her. Konstantin Levin, having married Dolly’s young and charming sister, Kitty Shcherbatskaya, strives to create a truly spiritual and pure marriage, in which husband and wife become one, similarly feeling and thinking being. On this path he faces temptations and difficulties. Levin loses his understanding of his wife: Kitty is alien to his desire for simplification and rapprochement with the people.
G.Ya. Galagan correlates the fates of the novel’s heroes, their life choices with the interpretation of the Eastern parable about the traveler and the dragon, contained in Tolstoy’s autobiographical treatise “Confession”. In Confession, Tolstoy writes about four ways in which people in his circle try to hide from the fear of life: this is the way out of ignorance, this is the way out of Epicureanism, this is the way out of strength and energy (the ability to commit suicide) and this is the way out of weakness (living in the illusory hope of finding meaning). and salvation). “Each of these paths (and not just the path of “insight”), which initially contained within itself the germs of self-destruction, even before its philosophical and symbolic interpretation in the treatise, received a figurative embodiment in the artistic fabric of “Anna Karenina.” The path of “ignorance” (Karenin and Vronsky), the path of “Epicureanism” (Steve Oblonsky), the “path of strength and energy” (Anna) and the path “from weakness to insight” (Levin), symbolizing the possible destinies of the Russian “educated class” and closely internally correlated with each other, determine the socio-philosophical orientation of the novel<…>"(Galagan G.Ya. L.N. Tolstoy // History of Russian literature: In 4 vols. L., 1982. T. 3. P. 832-833).
Some details are debatable. Anna's suicide - it is very important that this is the suicide of a woman who seems to have lost interest in her lover, and not a “philosophical” decision to commit suicide - can hardly be called an “exit of strength and energy.” But still, in the main, the comparison of the novel and the treatise is justified.
The story of Levin's marriage to Kitty, their marriage and Levin's spiritual quest is autobiographical. (The surname should be pronounced “Levin”; Tolstoy was called “Lev Nikolaevich” in his home circle, in accordance with the Russian, and not Church Slavonic, norm of pronunciation. See: Babaev E. G. Comments // Tolstoy L. N. Complete Works: In 22 vol. M., 1982. T. 9. P. 440.) She largely reproduces episodes of the marriage and family life of Lev Nikolaevich and Sofia Andreevna. Thus, Levin’s explanation with Kitty through the first letters of words written in chalk corresponds exactly to Tolstoy’s explanation with Sofia Andreevna, described in the diary of the writer’s wife (Tolstaya S.A. Diaries: In 2 vols. T. 1. P. 481). Other characters in the novel also have easily recognizable prototypes; for example, the prototype of Levin's brother is the writer's brother Dmitry Nikolaevich. (The article by S.L. Tolstoy “On the reflection of life in Anna Karenina” is devoted to the prototypical plan of the novel. See also: Babaev E.G. Comments. P. 438-444.)
A distinctive artistic feature of the novel is repetitions of situations and images that serve as predictions and harbingers. Anna and Vronsky meet at the railway station. At the moment of the first meeting, when Anna accepted the first sign of attention from her new acquaintance, the train coupler was crushed by the train. The explanation between Vronsky and Anna takes place at the railway station. Vronsky's cooling towards Anna leads her to suicide: Anna throws herself under a train. The image of the railway is correlated in the novel with the motives of passion, mortal threat, with cold and soulless metal. Anna's death and Vronsky's wine are foreshadowed in the horse racing scene, when Vronsky, due to his awkwardness, breaks the back of the beautiful mare Frou-Frou. The death of the horse seems to foreshadow Anna's fate. Anna’s dreams are symbolic, in which she sees a man working with iron. His image echoes the images of railway employees and is shrouded in threat and death. Metal and the railroad are endowed with a frightening meaning in the novel. (The poetics, including symbolism, of “Anna Karenina” are brilliantly analyzed by Vladimir Nabokov: Nabokov V. Lectures on Russian Literature. Translated from English. M., 1996. pp. 221-306. See also: Lönnqvist B. Symbolism of Iron in the novel “Anna Karenina” // Celebrating Creativity: Essays in Honor of Jostein Börtnes / Ed. K. Andreas. Bergen, 1997. P. 97-107.)
A subtle and deep description of the composition, the poetics of coincidences in Tolstoy’s novel belongs to the Czech writer Milan Kundera: “In the beginning<…>novel<…>Anna meets Vronsky under strange circumstances. She's on the platform where someone has just been hit by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition, in which the same motif appears at the beginning and end of the novel, may seem too “novelistic” to you. Yes, I can agree, however, on the condition that you understand the word “novel” not as “fictional,” “artificial,” or “unlike life.” For this is exactly how human lives are put together.
They are arranged in the same way as a musical composition. A person, driven by a sense of beauty, transforms a random event (<…>death at the station) into a motif that will forever remain in the composition of his life. He returns to it, repeats it, changes it, develops it, like a composer - the theme of his sonata. After all, Anna could have committed suicide in some other way! But the motif of the station and death, this unforgettable motif associated with the birth of love, attracted her with its gloomy beauty even in moments of despair. Without knowing it, a person creates his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of deepest hopelessness.
Therefore, one cannot blame the novel for being fascinated by secret meetings of chance (similar to the meeting of Vronsky, the station and death<…>), but one can rightly reproach a person for being blind to such accidents in his daily life. His life thereby loses its dimension of beauty” (Kundera M. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel / Translated from the Czech N. Shulgina. St. Petersburg, 2002. pp. 65-66).
The blizzard and whirlwind during which Vronsky and Anna meet on the platform are symbolic. This is a sign of the elements, fatal and unbridled passion. The dream in which Anna hears a voice predicting death in childbirth is also full of deep meaning: Anna dies in childbirth, but not when she gives birth to a daughter, but when, in love for Vronsky, she herself is born to a new life: the birth does not take place, she does not love her daughter she could, her lover ceases to understand her.
In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy uses the technique of an internal monologue, a description of chaotic, randomly changing observations, impressions of the world around him and the thoughts of the heroine (Anna, traveling to the station after a quarrel with Vronsky).
“Anna Karenina” is a work not only full of philosophical meaning, but also topical. The novel takes place from 1873 to 1876 (Babaev E. G. Comments. P. 444), and the author responds to all pressing topics: he writes about peasant reform, and about the introduction of an independent court, and about military reform, and about the volunteer movement in support of the rebel Serbs. Tolstoy’s assessments of the reforms are very harsh: thoughtless adoption of Western institutions is harmful, the landowner economy is undermined. Levin is a hero-ideologist who boldly challenges accepted liberal opinions.
“Based on Tolstoy’s novel, one can study the deep processes of the post-reform era - an internally explosive era, full of sharp contradictions, changeable at its core. In this era, truly “everything has turned upside down and is only just settling down.”<…>This was a very accurate description of the era and exact words” (Maimin E.A. Lev Tolstoy. P. 131).
“Anna Karenina” was even less fortunate in criticism than “War and Peace.” Left criticism perceived the novel as an apology and apotheosis of high society (P. Nikitin [pseudonym of P. N. Tkachev] - Salon art // Business. 1878. No. 2, 4 and other responses); the largest critic of that time, N.K. Mikhailovsky, in the article “The Hand and Shuyts of Leo Tolstoy” (see: Library of Russian Criticism. Criticism of the 70s of the 19th century. M., 2002. pp. 207-333) practically ignored the novel, preferring analysis of the pedagogical views of L. N. Tolstoy and in passing making it clear that “Anna Karenina” is a high society novel. The critic wrote about the author of the novel: “True, he receives satisfaction here as a person of a certain layer of society, to which everything human may not be alien, but the interests, feelings and thoughts of this particular layer are especially close. This is true, but this is precisely the deviation from the path recognized by Count Tolstoy as correct, and this is where his foolishness begins<…>. In fact, what does it mean to emboss the subtlest and most detailed analysis of the various vicissitudes of the mutual love of Anna Karenina and the aide-de-camp of Count Vronsky or the story of Natasha Bezukhova, née (née - A.R.) Countess Rostova, etc.? In the words of the gr himself<афа>Tolstoy, the publication in many thousands of copies of the analysis, for example, of Count Vronsky’s feelings at the sight of the broken back of his beloved horse does not in itself constitute a “reprehensible” act. He is “pleased to receive money and fame for this,” but we, “society,” not all of us, of course, mainly secular people and cavalrymen, are very curious to look in an excellent artistic mirror” (Ibid. P. 263, quotes from Tolstoy’s article "Progress and Definition of Education").
In conservative criticism, the novel, just as in left-radical criticism, was interpreted as a work from high society life, which this time the author was given credit for (A<всеенко В. Г.>. About the new novel<афа>Tolstoy // Russian Bulletin. 1875. No. 5). But the publisher of the magazine text of the novel, ultra-conservative journalist and critic M.N. Katkov, in an unsigned article, considered the idea of the novel to be undeveloped (Russky Vestnik. 1877. No. 7).
And the novel was not truly appreciated by non-ideologized criticism. So, A.V. Stankevich, on the pages of Vestnik Evropy, reproached the writer for violating the laws of composition and genre, assuring that instead of one novel, Tolstoy produced two.
Of the writers, only F.M. highly appreciated the novel. Dostoevsky. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, like radical critics, classified it as a salon novel with a harmful tendency (see about these reviews: Babaev E. G. Comments. P. 434, 445-449), and Nekrasov responded with a derogatory epigram:
Tolstoy, you proved with patience and talent,
That a woman should not “walk”
Neither with the chamber cadet, nor with the aide-de-camp,
When she is a wife and mother.
In judgments - both disapproving and sympathetic - about the aristocratic position of L.N. Tolstoy, the author of Anna Karenina, and there is both truth and untruth about his work as a high-society novel. Tolstoy, a nobleman from an old family, on his maternal side Rurikovich, a descendant of the holy martyr Prince Mikhail of Chernigov, before the “renunciation” of his former life and its values, which occurred at the turn of the 1870-1880s, he valued his origin very much. For him, the ancient nobility was the bearer of high principles of honor and personal independence, education and good manners, without which a strong moral position is impossible. Another draft of “War and Peace” contained the statement: “I am an aristocrat because I cannot believe in the high mind, subtle taste and great honesty of a person who picks his nose with his finger and whose soul talks with God” (Tolstoy L. N. Complete works: In 90 volumes. M.; L., 1934. P. 239).
In Anna Karenina, Levin expresses the author’s understanding of aristocracy in a conversation with Stiva Oblonsky: “<…>You say: aristocracy. And let me ask you, what is the aristocracy of Vronsky or anyone else - such aristocracy that you can neglect me? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don’t. A man whose father got out of nothing by being a swindler, whose mother, God knows who, had no connection with... No, excuse me, but I consider myself and people like me to be an aristocrat, who in the past can point to three or four honest generations of families, those who were at the highest level of education (talent and intelligence are another matter), and who never behaved inappropriately to anyone, never needed anyone, as my father and my grandfather lived. And I know a lot of them.<…>I<…>I value my family and labor... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist on handouts from the powers that be and who can be bought for two kopecks.”
For Tolstoy, an aristocrat is not just a nobleman, even a titled one like Count Vronsky, but a nobleman from a good, old family, a bearer of family traditions, who values family memory, a landowner working on inherited land. Pushkin, who valued his six hundred years of nobility, understood aristocracy in a similar way. The difference between him and Tolstoy is that the author of “Eugene Onegin” and “The Captain’s Daughter” was not a landowner, and therefore for him the work of a landowner was not one of the main advantages of a well-born nobleman. However, in the unfinished prose work, published under the editorial title “Novel in Letters,” his hero Vladimir, expressing thoughts sympathetic to the writer, turns out to be in tune with the creator of “Anna Karenina”: “I will retire, get married and go to my Saratov village. The title of landowner is the same service. Managing three thousand souls, whose entire well-being depends entirely on us, is more important than commanding a platoon or copying diplomatic dispatches...<…>The neglect in which we leave our peasants is unforgivable.<…>We live on our future income in debt, we go bankrupt, old age finds us in need and in troubles.
This is the reason for the rapid decline of our nobility: the grandfather was rich, the son is in need, the grandson is walking around the world. Ancient surnames come into insignificance; new ones rise up and disappear again in the third generation. States merge, and not a single family knows its ancestors. What does such political materialism lead to? I don’t know, but it’s time to put barriers in place for him.
Without regret I could never see the destruction of our historical families; No one here values them, starting with those that belong to them.”
Tolstoy, with a similar view of the Russian nobility, values the aristocracy, but not the light - deceitful, vicious, empty. “Anna Karenina” is a novel, if you like, “aristocratic”, but not “high society”, not “salon”.
Westerner Turgenev in a letter to A.S. Suvorin dated March 14, 1875, when only the first chapters of Anna Karenina were published, sarcastically remarks “about the influence of Moscow, the Slavophile nobility, and old Orthodox maidens.” In fact, Tolstoy’s real social position in these years only coincided with the Slavophile in some particulars. Sharing the Slavophile idea of the people as the guardian of the national spirit and skeptical of the adoption of Western forms of state and social life, characteristic, in his opinion, of the reforms of the 1860s, Tolstoy was indifferent to pan-Slavist pathos and alien to faith in the special mystical calling of Russia. The sarcastic portrayal in Anna Karenina of the volunteer movement in defense of Serbia from the Turks on the eve of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878 is indicative. Slavophiles, for example I.S. Aksakov, on the contrary, were ardent enthusiasts and inspirers of this movement. Initially, the pages dedicated to volunteers did not constitute an eighth part of the novel, but its epilogue. In the magazine M.N. Katkov's "Russian Messenger", where the novel was originally published, the epilogue was not published. Let us give the floor to researchers of the creative history of the novel: “Because of the content of the epilogue, the author had a conflict with the publisher. M.N. Katkov was dissatisfied with the negative coverage of the volunteer movement in Russia in favor of the rebel Serbs and refused to print the last part of the novel in this form. In the fifth issue of “Russian Messenger” an anonymous note appeared - “What happened after the death of Anna Karenina” - which stated: “In the previous book, under the novel “Anna Karenina”, “The ending follows.” But with the death of the heroine, the romance itself ended. According to the author’s plan, there would have been a short two-page epilogue, from which readers could learn that Vronsky, in confusion and grief after Anna’s death, goes as a volunteer to Serbia and that everyone else is alive and well, while Levin remains in his village and is angry at the Slavs. committees and volunteers. The author, perhaps, will develop these chapters for a special edition of his novel.”
Tolstoy took the manuscript, and the eighth part of “Anna Karenina” was published as a separate book” (Zhdanov V.A., Zaidenshnur E.E. The history of the creation of the novel “Anna Karenina” // Tolstoy L.N. Anna Karenina: A Novel in 8 Parts. M ., 1970. (Series “Literary monuments”). P. 812).
About the Slavophiles in one of N.N.’s letters. To Strakhov, Tolstoy spoke very clearly and sharply: “One of two things: Slavophilism or the Gospel.”
The difference between the writer’s position and the Slavophile position was accurately noted by N.K. Mikhailovsky (Mikhailovsky N.K. Hand and Shuytsa of Leo Tolstoy. P. 237-247). However, the Slavophiles were indeed closer to Tolstoy than the Westerners. July 19, 1905 “L. N. started talking about Slavophiles.
-They had autocracy in the foreground; on the second - Orthodoxy; on the third - nationality. Respect for the Russian people. Autocracy - they imagined that the tsar was an impartial arbitrator.<…>Westernism is repulsive,” said L.N. - What they say in the West is repeated here because<одному>, what it says. And then the people were wonderful<…>"(In Tolstoy: 1904-1910. Yasnaya Polyana notes of D.P. Makovitsky // Literary Heritage. M., 1979. T. 90. Book 1. P. 348-349).
“Anna Karenina” is Tolstoy’s last great work, written before his departure from the Church and its teachings. In it, Tolstoy still remains committed to Orthodoxy, although he understands the Orthodox faith not so much as Truth, but as a tradition dear to the heart and understandable to the soul. Written shortly before the spiritual turning point, the novel turned out to be, despite the tragic outcome of Anna’s storyline, one of the writer’s brightest works.

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12. Epigraph to “Anna Karenina”

“Anna Karenina” has an epigraph that surprises everyone: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it.” There was a lot of debate about this epigraph, and it was interpreted many times; Tolstoy did not give his final interpretation.

An epigraph is often born in order not only to color the reader’s emotions with his own emotions, but also to leave him in the land of the energy of delusion.

Tolstoy did not know what he would write.

The novel began to be published before it was finished.

The novel lived and changed. Anna Karenina changed; the author's attitude towards what he creates changed.

This woman is small at first. She is beautiful, but beautiful in an ordinary way. There is a landowner looking for a way in life, but there is no breadth of the future novel. Work was started for relaxation. Tolstoy wanted to write about the ordinary and say it in ordinary words. This is what he failed to do. He came to the work after the successes of War and Peace; but “War and Peace” began with failure, with the story “The Decembrists.”

We know it worked out well.

The novel became great. But this is a different work, with a different name, with different characters.

There is a Central Asian legend about how a great poet, who lived very poorly, finished his epic (I forgot the name); When he died, a funeral procession left one gate, and a magnificent procession from the Shah with congratulations and gifts passed through the other gate.

It's like a story about glory, about late-coming glory.

Beautiful, but wrong; or, let’s say, it’s true, but there is something else, something else is also true: the poet leaves the gates already outside of glory. He goes away to find refuge from what is called fame, and fame is printed on a sheet of, say, a newspaper; but in Homer's time there were no newspapers, and there was no fame.

The name “Anna Karenina” appears and a note appears that this novel was made on separate sheets of paper, it is like an appendix. It appears in four variants.

The title “Anna Karenina” and the epigraph appear: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it.”

This is an incorrect quote. Such a quote cannot be found in the Bible.

But there seems to be a similar thought: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (“Epistle to the Romans,” 12.19).

In the novel, when Anna Karenina dies, there, on the railway platform, next to which the rails run, this is how the emphasized death is indicated.

The old woman Vronskaya, about whom it is written in the novel that she was very depraved, a woman who knew no barriers in quiet debauchery, the countess says about Anna: “... and then she did not yet feel sorry for him, but deliberately killed him completely... a disgusting death women without religion."

Anna Karenina ruined her son's career and even quarreled with his mother and somehow died on purpose.

Tolstoy's novel, step by step, frees the woman whom he considered the first to blame in the Shcherbatsky family. Tolstoy seemed to love - he didn’t love anyone - this Tolstoy chose Liza in the Bersov family, it was well-intentioned, then Sonya, it was flattering - he considered himself an old man.

In the family novel, Tolstoy loves Anna Karenina.

So, from a previously abandoned religion, a person independently finds a red corner that is no longer associated with religion.

Fatigue frees him.

In his novel, he creates Anna Karenina with difficulty; At first it seemed to him that there was something of Stiva Oblonsky in her, that she was too “com-il-faux”, that she was in vain able to “forget.”

In his novel, the writer wanted to fall in love with Kitty, the youngest daughter of Senator Shcherbatsky. In choosing between Anna Karenina and Kitty, Tolstoy chose Kitty, in life, not in a dream, and in this he seemed to agree with Vronsky.

Although Vronsky was just having fun. He played at love, and she swallowed him up.

Tolstoy chose Kitty, but loves Anna Karenina.

He justifies the woman.

He expanded her world.

Although, perhaps, he wanted to block the world from himself with a woman.

And we must repeat: Alexey Maksimovich Gorky said: it’s strange, she dies beautiful, she walked around Rome, but she didn’t see Rome. He doesn’t have a line about Rome, as if she didn’t see him.

Kitty is a good mother; she will have a lot of children; she is glad that she is building a nest for the future life; and she makes jam in Levin’s house, but in her own way, in her mother’s way.

So as not to upset her husband with such first news, Kitty did not think at the wedding, her husband thought for her; but she smiled.

Sofya Andreevna was glad about the appearance of the novel and its success; The heroes of “The Kreutzer Sonata” and, perhaps, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” were upset for him, because the curtains that Ivan Ilyich hung in his apartment are exactly the same and hung exactly the same way, with a tie, as L. N. himself hung them. Tolstoy in the house he built; like the staircase he made; did everything for Kitty, a good home. Moderately rich, but Tolstoy could have built better.

And in this modest house he found a low, albeit wide room, in which he wrote a book of disappointments on a very small table, fenced with bars to prevent sheets from falling.

Mikhoels said that Tolstoy rejected Shakespeare, but repeated the story of King Lear.

There was a large family, and the boys wanted to live separately, in their own way, and the girls wanted to get married; and, the people who shared the fruits of great labor, they were even embarrassed, they even pitied their father; but everything was so ordinary.

Sofya Andreevna, an intelligent woman, led her six sons into the narrow corridor of ordinary life. She is sure that there is no other way to live; but she is kind.

She was giving Alexei Maksimovich coffee when he wandered towards her, a half-vagrant who had not yet written anything.

She is the inertia of life.

She is a vengeance that belongs to the old world. He takes revenge because you wanted to defeat him alone.

Having put on his armor, having taken his horse, a man thirsts for his enemy to punish him, as he punished many.

* * *

He managed to resurrect Katyusha Maslova. He examined at least ten books of noble genealogies, looking for the names of those who had left home and were lost.

Alexey, a man of God, left the house of his relatives and then came to them so that they would not recognize him.

And he lived under the stairs.

He lived as a beggar in his family home, and in his dream he dreamed of the crying of his mother, who thought that he was gone.

No one could have done more than he did.

But all this was not enough for him.

And he showed the world, a new light that is not given in retelling; he was an avid hunter, a hard worker, he gave birth to people, and we call them “types,” and sent them into the world so that they, in their plurality, would see the world and tell him what it is.

He himself never changed the world. He recognized the world as unsettled, and, as it seems, this was his task; he populated it with his children, created by him and not born, and there is no contradiction here with the line you just read.

We will say that he was unhappy, although any happy poet, I think every winner would have exchanged with him and taken his grief for his vision.

He taught me to see the world in a new way. He moved people away from the ordinary: from religion, from war, from greed, from the city; he didn't make them happy, but he made them sighted.

“I will repay.”

This was his revenge for their resistance.

But, turning the world around, he could not get out of its rut.