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It is this stern veracity, unflinching and inexorable, which makes "Anna Karénina" one of the noblest works of art that the nineteenth century devised to the twentieth, just as it is the absence of this fidelity to the facts of life, the twisting of character to prove a thesis, which vitiates the "Kreutzer Sonata," and makes it unworthy of the great artist in fiction who wrote the earlier work.
It is conceivable that the great trilogy of "Anna Karenina," "War and Peace," and "Resurrection" may one day be forgotten, but Tolstoy's teaching stands on firmer foundations, and has stirred the hearts of thousands who are indifferent to the finest display of psychic analysis.
But with all that, there are in this novel passages that no man in Europe except Tolstoi could have written, things which put me into a frenzy of enthusiasm." Tolstoi's genius reached its climax in "Anna Karenina."
I only mention it because it seems to illustrate, like Anna Karenina, his instinctive evasion of the matter that could not be thrown into straightforward scenic form, the form in which his imagination was evidently happiest.
"Woman is a stumbling-block in a man's career," remarks a philosophical husband in "Anna Karenina." "It is difficult to love a woman and do any good work, and the only way to escape being reduced to inaction is to marry." Even in his correspondence with the Countess A. A. Tolstoy this slighting tone prevails. "A woman has but one moral weapon instead of the whole male arsenal.
The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone knows everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But this great set has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three different circles of this highest society.
But his mother was not a little disturbed when she discovered that his infatuation for Madame Karenina had impelled him to refuse an excellent promotion which would have necessitated his removal from the metropolis. She feared that instead of being a flirtation of which she might not disapprove, this passion might develop into a Werther-like tragedy and lead her son to commit some imprudence.
"Do call him, Alexey," said the old countess. Vronsky stepped out onto the platform and shouted: "Oblonsky! Here!" Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step.
In 1876, apropos of "Anna Karenina" this time, my father wrote: "You ask me whether you have understood my novel aright, and what I think of your opinion. Of course you understood it aright. Of course I am overjoyed at your understanding of it; but it does not follow that everybody will understand it as you do." But it was not only his critical work that drew my father to Strakhof.
My sister Anna." "Ah! that's Madame Karenina," said Vronsky. "You know her, no doubt?" "I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure," Vronsky answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and tedious evoked by the name Karenina. "But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely must know. All the world knows him."
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