The novel's subtitle "роман" (roman) is a euphemism for an affair, so connected were the concepts of the European novel and adultery — and of adultery and a finite piece of entertainment. The novel's title and subtitle therefore hang above it rather as Pilate's judgment hangs above Christ on his cross, stating the crime of the man he has condemned to death (having a roman) in a manner indeterminately ironic, honouring, and accusatory. Within the novel Tolstoy, Pilate-like, both condemns Anna's society for condemning her, and imposes the death penalty (which that society did not possess) for the sake of a higher cause than that society can comprehend.
Today, only a few non-Western polities impose the death penalty for adultery, and our own society imposes so few penalties of any kind for it that the term, like "fornication", is beginning to sound old-fashioned. Today, Anna's friends would remain such. She could occupy a box at the Royal Opera House without incurring scandal or insult. Karenin would be obliged both to divorce her, and to give her custody of or access to their son. His career and social standing would be largely unaffected. In the novel Oblonsky, in his easy attitude towards his sister's adultery, represents the liberal future in which women are ever less likely to commit suicide if they behave as she does. D.H. Lawrence and his professor's wife, Frieda Weekley, read Anna Karenina during their elopement in a "how to be happy though levanted" spirit. Fewer than four decades after the novel's writing, they became happy. A similar couple today would need neither to elope, nor to turn to the novel to work out how to avoid its kind of tragedy.
But the novel contains another story. Levin was introduced in the novel's third draft, and his story was expanded over the remaining two drafts until it occupied slightly more than half the novel. A Boston Literary World review of 1886 noted that the novel oscillates from side to side "like an express train" on a winding route — and so it does. We are moved from Anna's Petersburg to Levin's estate, and back, with occasional mediation via Moscow and its consummate social mediator, Oblonsky. But the novel does not oscillate to its end. In its serialised version, the words describing Anna's death were followed by a note indicating that the novel was to be continued. Clearly, it was not Anna's life that was to be continued.
There ensued an impasse. Tolstoy's editor did not want to publish his eighth and final part. He not only disapproved of its hostility to Slavophilism (Vronsky's volunteering in Serbia has recently been echoed by Russian volunteers in the Eastern Ukraine), but thought that its concern with Levin to the exclusion of Anna was extraneous to the novel as a whole. Tolstoy therefore published the section privately, 15 months later. The long pause had permitted resonance to Anna's tragedy. Or alternatively, as in life, and as in Levin's life, other concerns had superseded it. Levin represents that which goes on — at least, for a further 19 chapters.
Yet most interpretations of the novel have overlooked Levin. Certain early translations, such as the French one consulted by Dole in 1886, reduced Levin's story. The film adaptations of 1935, 1948 and 1967 all end with Anna's suicide, as though returning the novel to its early state, in which Levin did not exist. Joe Wright's 2012 version is exceptional in giving Levin's story weight.
Today, only a few non-Western polities impose the death penalty for adultery, and our own society imposes so few penalties of any kind for it that the term, like "fornication", is beginning to sound old-fashioned. Today, Anna's friends would remain such. She could occupy a box at the Royal Opera House without incurring scandal or insult. Karenin would be obliged both to divorce her, and to give her custody of or access to their son. His career and social standing would be largely unaffected. In the novel Oblonsky, in his easy attitude towards his sister's adultery, represents the liberal future in which women are ever less likely to commit suicide if they behave as she does. D.H. Lawrence and his professor's wife, Frieda Weekley, read Anna Karenina during their elopement in a "how to be happy though levanted" spirit. Fewer than four decades after the novel's writing, they became happy. A similar couple today would need neither to elope, nor to turn to the novel to work out how to avoid its kind of tragedy.
But the novel contains another story. Levin was introduced in the novel's third draft, and his story was expanded over the remaining two drafts until it occupied slightly more than half the novel. A Boston Literary World review of 1886 noted that the novel oscillates from side to side "like an express train" on a winding route — and so it does. We are moved from Anna's Petersburg to Levin's estate, and back, with occasional mediation via Moscow and its consummate social mediator, Oblonsky. But the novel does not oscillate to its end. In its serialised version, the words describing Anna's death were followed by a note indicating that the novel was to be continued. Clearly, it was not Anna's life that was to be continued.
There ensued an impasse. Tolstoy's editor did not want to publish his eighth and final part. He not only disapproved of its hostility to Slavophilism (Vronsky's volunteering in Serbia has recently been echoed by Russian volunteers in the Eastern Ukraine), but thought that its concern with Levin to the exclusion of Anna was extraneous to the novel as a whole. Tolstoy therefore published the section privately, 15 months later. The long pause had permitted resonance to Anna's tragedy. Or alternatively, as in life, and as in Levin's life, other concerns had superseded it. Levin represents that which goes on — at least, for a further 19 chapters.
Yet most interpretations of the novel have overlooked Levin. Certain early translations, such as the French one consulted by Dole in 1886, reduced Levin's story. The film adaptations of 1935, 1948 and 1967 all end with Anna's suicide, as though returning the novel to its early state, in which Levin did not exist. Joe Wright's 2012 version is exceptional in giving Levin's story weight.
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