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ANNA_KARENINA
July 16, 2001
Rev: May 31, 2004
"Anna Karenina" (1878)
by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina is a vortex
of interesting material
swirling around a rather Anna Karenina herself seems like a
dull core: yeah, it's rather bright, interesting
adultery again. character, and her sudden passion
for the fairly useless Vronsky
However, the counter-point ("this Petersburg fop", as one
characters -- Levin and character puts it early on) seems
Kitty -- are really rather unconvincing.
engaging, which is pretty
amazing considering that Quite plausible perhaps, if you
their relationship is a step back and think about it:
quite simple and pretty woman married to a dull
straight-forward love older man, goes for a flattering
story. relationship with a younger man, a
dashing lieutenant type.
But Levin himself is a Not exactly far-fetched: but not
really engaging character: something that inspires a lot of
An intellectual farmer, out sympathy, either.
of place among both
intellectuals and farmers. A peculiarity:
An awkward fellow who can The dramatic flaw the book begins
never seem to say the right here is familiar: with an
thing in company. Someone the real "hero" of unconvincing
who always tries to play it the story is passionate
straight, and tangles unchanging and affair, and
himself up in knots with his untouchable, so closes with an
quest for intellectual the story focuses unconvincing
honesty. on the "bad guys" religious
whose real role is epiphany --
Some of my favorite material to make the hero switching to the
in the novel is where Levin look good by real main
invents the idea of what we contrast. character, Levin.
would call profit-sharing:
He realizes that the Compare to: THE_ABSTRACTION_GAME
"peasants" that work his "The Fountainhead",
land would be motivated to or to "Modesty Blaise"...
do a better job if rewarded
in proportion to the success BLAZING
of the farm.
Levin might
be held up as
It's a little one of the
frustrating few examples
that Tolstoy in literature There aren't a lot
doesn't follow of a benign, of positive
up on how this enlightened portrayals of
idea works employer business-types out
out... there:
Ayn Rand's "Atlas"
He's a little more Robert Heinlein,
interested in how "The Man Who Sold
hard it is for the Moon";
Levin to explain Poul Anderson "The
his ideas to anyone: Man Who Counts";
The movie "Sabrina"
'Yes, fine,' answered Levin, (the Humphrey
continuing to think of the Bogart character).
question they had been
discussing. It seemed to him
that he had expressed his
thoughts and feeling as
clearly as he could, yet both
the others -- sincere and not
stupid men -- had agreed that
he was comforting himself
with sophistry.
Page numbers are from the
-- part VI, ch XI, p534 Norton Critical Edition
Translation:
He [Levin] saw that Metrov, like the Louise and Aylmer Maude,
others, despite the article in which 1918, revised 1939.
he refused the teachings of the
economists, still regarded the originally
position of the Russian labourer written 1875 - 1877
merely from the standpoint of
capital, wages, and rent. Through he
had to admit that in the Eastern and
greater part of Russia rents were
still _nil_, that wages -- for
nine-tenths of the eighty millions of
the Russian population -- represented
only sustenance for themselves, and
that capital did not yet exist except
in the form of most primitive tools,
yet he regarded every labourer merely
from that one point of view [...]
-- Part VII, Ch III, p614
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