Anna Karenina

In the last several weeks I've launched an assault on Leo Tolstoy's novel, Anna Karenina. So far, I'm only 200 or so pages in.  I last read the book almost thirty years ago, and consequently remember almost nothing of my experience with the book.  To support my reading, I viewed the Tom Stoppard movie adaption of the book.  Starring Keira Knightly, the movie is competent but seems to suggest that Tolstoy's books don't really belong on the screen.  With apologies to Greto Garbo, who starred in an early version of the book, no screen version can do justice to the internal debates that constitute so much of the novel's style and substance. 

Stoppard's main innovation in this version of Anna Karenina is that he avoids any pretense of realism by relying on an overtly theatrical mise en scene. While there's nothing wrong with converting the book into a play, it often seems as if this technique is primarily employed to avoid the cost of staging large-scale scenes.  As for the character of Anna Karenina, the new movie version seems to suggest that a lot of her power resides in her physical beauty.  Certainly her lines don't suggest any undue curiosity about the complexity of her life journey.  On the other hand, Jude Law is brilliant as Karnenin. He's dignified, reserved, proud, wounded, and cold--everything Tolstoy seemed to have meant him to be. 

The book itself is going well.  On the negative side, I sometimes wonder what makes the book so beloved.  Unlike the grandeur of the Napoleonic context of War and Peace, Anna Karenina sometimes revolves around an almost intentionally ordinary adultery scandal. On the other hand, Tolstoy does demonstrate an uncanny ability to appreciate both the strengths and the weakness of all of his characters.  As I move further through the novel, the villains seem less and less villainous, and the heroes seem less and less heroic.  That is to say, while Vronsky is somewhat spoiled and immature, he's also capable of behaving with courage and gallantry.  Conversely, while Count Karenin is awkward and off-putting, he exhibits many excellent qualities, including self-control.  But even Kitty's scorned lover, Levin, turns out to be something less than the hero one expects him to be. He's hard-working, loyal, and romantic, but he also lacks many of the wonderful traits of his fun-loving and tactful friend, Prince "Stiva."

To be sure, I'll post again on Anna Karenina as I get deeper into the novel.  But Gary Saul Morson's work of criticism, Anna Karenina in Our Time:  Seeing More Wisely, suggests that my early impressions of the book are not entirely original.  Morson argues that Tolstoy's genius lies in the fact that he often intentionally veers into long descriptions of mundane topics in order to make a philosophical point:  that life isn't made up of a series of meaningful plot points.  Reading 200 pages of Anna Karenina involves one in several narrative dead ends.  For instance, there's no really compelling need for the reader to spend so much time on the details of a hunt, race, or ball. Morson maintains that Tolstoy's decision to spend time on these ostensible plot detours is intentional.  He wants to depict life as it is, as a canvas filled out by as many blank or empty spaces as colorful ones. Of course, Tolstoy has the power to hold our attention even when he's depicting the quotidian details of life.  This is why many people enjoy the society scenes in War and Peace as much as they do the description of the battle of Borodino.   But Morson argues that we become really enthralled with Tolstoy's great works when the blank spots on the canvas convince us that we are finally seeing life "as it really is," with all its highs and lows, and all its detours and dead ends.

Packing

A few weeks ago I accepted a new position at another college. One of the consequences of my decision is that I'll no longer actually be going to Russia anytime soon. That's sad, in a way, but I suspect that my obsession with Russia would be diminished by any contact with the Thing Itself. (And in reality, I've since discovered that the whole Russian exchange program in which I was supposed to participated has been put on hold for the moment).

At any rate, moving means packing up the Russian books in my office. As I do this, I'm logging them into this blog's pages for easy reference, but I'm also thinking about the impact each book has had, or hasn't had, on me. I think that I can honestly say that the vast majority of the books mentioned in this blog, whether works of fiction, poetry, politics, or biography, have been spectacular. However, some of them--good or bad--haven't left a dent on my memory. Take for instance Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow to the End of the Line. I have to read the cover again just to tell you what this short novel is all about. (As it turns out, Erofeev is a "thaw" author and the work is descried as "darkly hilarious, crude, and brilliant" which sounds intriguing enough. And the plot description brings back a vague recollection of alcoholism.)

Better yet, there is Ruben Gallego's White on Black, a story of dignity and disability in the midst of Soviet state institutions for orphans and the like. I take no pride in forgetting how Gallego struggled to find an identity despite the general inhumanity of his family and the Soviet system of care.

The list goes on, but I'll close with Tom Stoppard's trilogy, The Coast of Utopia. I know the book dealt smartly with the intellectual climate of Russian intellectuals, anarchists, socialists, and Utopians near the turn of the 19th century. But what Stoppard said, specifically, is lost to me. I've never been one to re-read anything, unless I happen to be teaching the book. Yet putting away so many books makes me think that it's time to start re-reading all of them, even the least memorable.

To contract the forgotten with the remembered, I'll close with a book that I remember somewhat better, Solzhenitsyn's The Oak and the Calf. I don't remember very much of course. Who can remember the details of something read two years ago? But I remember discovering a bookstore across from my hotel in Boulder, Colorado. The bookstore, itself a nice find, soon led to the discover of what is reputed to be one of Solzhenitsyn's best books. It turned out to be just that, although the silly, dated cover photo of the author was a bit embarrassing to carry around town. The book revealed the depth of Solzhenitsyn's courage and moral fortitude in the face of Soviet immorality. It also made me respect the author's capacity for incorporating hundreds of folksy Russian proverbs into his most sophisticated interactions with the Russian intelligentsia. To this day, I wish I had jotted them down as I read. Would it be worth while to read the whole book again merely to find these gems once more and make a list? Is there a book of Russian proverbs out there that would save me the trouble?

That's not a lot to remember about a five hundred page book, I suppose. But holding the book, getting ready to put it into its new home, a plastic crate, reminds me how I moved from this particular bookstore to another, a Left Wing bookstore filled with new editions of Trotsky's books. I know: I was in Boulder and out to have been out cycling...

Siberian Utopia

When I tell people I have started a blog on modern Russian history, they inevitably ask: “Are you Russian? “ When I say no, they ask: “Well, have you been to Russia?” The answer to both questions is no. I have no natural or biological connection to Russia or any of the countries that made up the Soviet Union. I don’t even speak a word of the language. It’s an arbitrary fixation which, to my mind, is the best kind of obsession. In fact, I am not always sure I actually desire to go to Russia. How could the actual location live up to the “Coast of Utopia,” to borrow a phrase from Tom Stoppard? And of course I’d be better off not going if the cost of a ticket alone is $2000 or so. When it comes to travel, Mexico fits my budget.



This is how I used to think before Russia came to me. That’s right, this author filled out a simple three-page form a couple of months ago (and did so last year as well) and I’ve just now been informed that I will likely be heading to Russia in May 2011. I’m stunned. More shockingly, a Russian visitor may be staying with my family as early as October 2010. This is not a drill: if all goes well, I may be schlepping a Russian faculty member or administrator around Chicago in the fairly near future.




And how strange to find myself on the way to Russia only a few months after electing to create a blog to track my deepening interest in Russian history? But odder than the fact that I may be headed for Russia (the program still has to find a match in this specific country before I can be more definite), is that I’m not headed to Moscow or St. Petersburg but rather to the heart of Russia and indeed the entire Eurasian landmass apparently, Yekaterinburg.

In the next several days I hope to post something about Yekaterinburg. When I applied, I knew nothing other than the fact that Yekaterinburg was in Siberia and that the czar and his family had been murdered there during the Revolution. It’s not a pleasant association. Since then, I’ve just briefly Googled the place, and it seems that Yekaterinburg is a large city, the third largest in Russia in fact. It’s odd to think that I selected this Siberian city over similar opportunities in Switzerland, Holland, Finland, and England, where the population at large will be much more likely to speak English. After all, who willingly puts himself on a place for 24 hours? And what is there to visit in Yekaterinburg outside of the city itself?



But when else would I ever in my life have the opportunity to visit the heart of Russia? I’m struck dumb with gratitude to my college for sponsoring the journey and looking forward to tracking everything in this blog. But never fear dear reader, if it turns out that they can’t find a match in Russia, I’ll seek out Russian history in one of the other sponsoring countries. In Switzerland, I’ll look for the homes and hotels of Lenin, Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov, and other Russian exiles. I read Conrad’s Under Western Eyes. If in Finland, I’ll journey across the gulf to visit St. Petersburg itself. In London, I’ll spend time in the London Museum, exactly where Marx used to sit, or seek out the place where the Russian social-democrats made mischief. In Holland, I’ll have to settle for looking back a couple of centuries to Peter the Great’s famous visit to learn about the shipbuilding trade.