The fine qualities of this book, which, though long, is dramatically unified and vitally coherent, have been so fully recognised that I need not attempt to describe them. Mr. George Meredith has described Anna as “the most perfectly depicted female character in all fiction,” which, from the author of “Diana, is praise indeed.”
|
A PHOTOGRAPH OF COUNT TOLSTOY TAKEN AT YASNAYA POLYANA (Reproduced from “Anna Karènina” by kind permission of Messrs Walter Scott Ltd.) |
Parallel with the main subject of the illicit love of Anna and Vronsky there is a minor subject in the fortunes of Levin and Kitty, wherein the reader will discover many of Tolstoy’s own experiences. Matthew Arnold complained that the book contained too many characters and a burdensome multiplicity of actions, but praised its author’s extraordinarily fine perception and no less extraordinary truthfulness, and frankly revelled in Anna’s
RUSSIAN JAILER AND WOMAN WARDER
“The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the cell.”
(From an illustration by Pasternak in the English Edition of “Resurrection,” reproduced by kind permission of Mr. F. R. Henderson)
“large, fresh, rich, generous, delightful nature.” “When I had ended my work ‘Anna Karènina,’” said Tolstoy in “My Confession” (1879-82), “my despair reached such a height that I could do nothing but think of the horrible condition in which I found myself.... I saw only one thing—Death. Everything else was a lie.” Of that spiritual crisis nothing need be said here except that it only intensified, and did not really, as it seemed to do, vitally change, principles and instincts which had possessed Tolstoy from the beginning. His subsequent ethical and religious development may be traced in a long series of books and pamphlets, of which the most important are “The Gospels Translated, Compared, and Harmonised” (1880-2), “What I Believe” [“My Religion”], produced abroad in 1884, “What is to be Done?” (1884-5), “Life” (1887), “Work” (1888), “The Kingdom of God is Within You” (1893), “Non-Action” (1894), “Patriotism and Christianity” (1896)—a