Talk:Anna Karenina

Plot Synopsis Part 8

The last sentence has an unclear antecedent. Who's grave is in East Serbia? I'm pretty sure it's not Levin's. Noclock (talk) 01:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Contemporary Parallel Characters

As having only read Anna Karenina and not the Lemoney Snicket' series, I admit I am bit confused on why Violet Baudelaire is listed as a contemporary parallel character. ScottM 02:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

THEN READ IT!!

okay it's is talked about a lot in the 9th book and because a marjor plot pointJoeyjojo 05:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

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Am I right in thinking that the inspiration for Anna Karenina came from a brief newspaper article -- or am I confusing it with a passage in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, wherre Proust comments on how simply things can be summarized? -- Tarquin 18:31 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

This is correct. The article that Tolstoy read was a description of a railway suicide. This motif appears twice in the novel: firstly the suicide of an unnamed women on the occasion of Anna and Vronsky's first meeting, secondly Anna's suicide at the end of the penultimate part. This should go in the article. Similarly, the article on War and Peace could benefit from a description of its genesis in Tolstoy's original interest in writing a novel of the Decembrist Uprising (which article is also wanted). -- Alan Peakall 09:56 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's the story about Anna Karenina, but I'll bet Tolstoy had also read Madame Bovary for inspiration. Ortolan88

Ortolan88, I don't get it. How is Molly Bloom's Soliloquy related to Anna Karenina? -- Mpt 07:14, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Hmmm. Wikipedia isn't exactly a place to promote an interpretation or thesis, so I'm not sure the new rewrites should stand. Surely this reader got the idea after the last Oprah instalment on TV? Mandel 06:38, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I don't watch Oprah!

Well, I'm not really trying to "promote" my own interpretation, but a synopsis doesn't really tell you much, and there's no one unassailable interpretation, so that's why I felt mine would be as good as any. I don't pretend that my reading is the any more valid than anyone else's, so if others care to expand the interpretation section, no one's stopping them.

But I liked Anna Karenina before Oprah made it cool -- I was a Russian language and lit major in college, and have read this book several times, one of those times in Russian, which is a great way to fill up time normally spent having a life. :-)

--dablaze 02:15, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

The idea is interesting of course, but it defies one of wikipedia's rules. See Wikipedia:No_original_research and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a soapbox #4. Mandel 20:31, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Well, perhaps I shouldn't have been so flowery in places, but this isn't my original research. It's actually a pretty common interpretation of the book; I'd be surprised if something similar weren't in the Cliffs Notes. I think any Russian lit scholar -- especially a Tolstoy scholar -- would agree, even if they took issue with one or two minor points. Maybe Google some interpretations, or check out a Cliffs Notes? –dablaze 02:48, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe you should prune and change the wording in places to make it sound less an interpretation than some commonly held points on the novel? Mandel 18:13, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

OK, followed your suggestion. How's it look to you now? –dablaze 14:28, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Much better. Thank you. Mandel 17:33, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a summary at the top of the article that does not go into so much detail as to spoil the novel for naive readers. To find out what the novel was about, I had to read the rather long-winded eight-part summary, complete with fractured grammar. Too long, and poorly written.

Russian diminutives in synopsis; note on transliteration

Someone recently changed the names Kitty and Dolly to "Katya" and "Dasha." While these are both correct in general, they are not correct in the context of AK. English was a fashionable language among the upper classes (though not as much as French), and these English names (along with Betsy and Annie) appear phonetically spelled out in the original Russian text as Кити, Долли, Бетси, and Ани.

I never quite knew why these characters had such diminutives, but I'm guessing it was one of Tolstoy's jabs at aristocratic affectations. In any case, if anyone would like to check out the original, here's a link to the original Russian text.

Also, I strongly feel that the Russian letter Щ should be transliterated as "shch", and not as "shtch", as a previous contributor had done. (Actually, I feel it should just be transliterated as "sh," since it's easier for us, and it's pretty much how most Russians pronounce it anyway, but I guess that's not linguistically accurate...)

Wikipedia also recommends the "shch" transliteration (see Transliteration of Russian into English), as it's the standard in the U.N., RF, blah blah blah. And frankly, I've never seen "shtch" before. I'm not a native speaker, but I've been studying and speaking Russian for over 15 years (including time spent living in the FSU), and this is a new one to me. "Shch" is jarring enough in English, and even though I understand the logic behind it, "shtch" is just too much!

--dablaze 16:59, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Aha, now I see why Dasha and Katya were abbreviated to Dolly and Kitty. I thought it was just someone being lazy and using anglicised versions.

Olga

References

I'd like to nominate this article at WP:V0.5N, since it is a major literary work, but unfortunately it lacks sources ("further reading" is assumed not to be source material for the article). Would some of the major contributors to this article be able to put in their sources as a references and/or notes section, preferably with inline refs? Please nominate when you think it's OK, and also consider WP:GAN. I'd also like to see War and Peace in, but that seems to need a lot of work. Thanks, Walkerma 05:05, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Detail

I noticed something in the plot synopsis that didn't align with what I've read. Specifically:

"They plan to return to the country, but in a jealous rage Anna leaves early,"

This isn't quite true. She doesn't leave early for the country as this implies. She goes looking for Vronsky to "tell him all" (get in the last word before she goes off on her own somewhere else... anywhere else... the first city out on the rail line).

They do plan to return to the country, but Vronsky has left to visit his mother before their departure. After receiving a cold reply to her telegram requesting him to return immediately, Anna sets out to find Vronsky herself.

So Anna goes to find him and winds up in Obiralovka, which is where she gets off the train, asks around about Vronsky and runs into her messenger, Mikhail, whom she'd sent out to the Countess Vronsky's earlier (prior to sending the telegram). Mikhail hands her the note which contains the same message as the telegram. I wasn't entirely sure where she was until the Countess Vronsky herself explains to Sergyei Ivanovitch in a later chapter,

"My son was with me at my country place. A note was brought him. He answered immediately. We did not know she was at the station."

It is at this point that she then kills herself.

So she's not leaving early for their country estate. She's leaving him altogether.

Anna VS Katia

I heard from the latest translation of the Anna Karerina (Puffin Classics) that the character Anna Karerina is depicted as Tolstoy in his later life (especially his marriage)- the railway station where Anna kills herself predicts that Tolstoy would die similarly. Is is true? I don't understand, but I think it does make sense as Anna's relationship with Vronsky fails and weakens after a while.... likewise with Tolstoy with his wife Sofia.

Also, do people think that Ekaterina (Katia, Kitty) is an opposite figure of Anna, because not only because of her happy ending with Kostya Levin, but her personality is different to Anna. For example, when Anna comes to say goodbye to Katia and Dasha for the last time in Part Seven, Katia says "The same as always and just as attractive. Such a handsome woman! But there's something pathetic about her!".

Katia loves and despises Anna, whilst Anna tries to humble herself in front of Katia. Also, Katia, although having suffered rejection from Vronsky, she recovered very well, but Anna does not recover and kills herself.

Perhaps Katia has a more hardened soul, or perhaps Anna did not have a very supportive environment as she was despised by the whole society itself??

Heyjo0205 18:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)Heyjo tlt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.48.160 (talk) 05:14, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Relationship diagram?

I think this article would benefit from a charater relationship diagram, similar to that of the Pride and Prejudice article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.168.43.142 (talk) 22:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

Amusing trivia

In my 1995 Wordsworth Classics edition the opening sentence reads: "All families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Nice going! What's next? "Call Ishmael?"

Kind regards Roger Duprat

P.S. Sorry for my lack of HTML-skill, hope I won't mess up this page too bad.

You know that the book was written in Russian, right? There are different ways to translate sentences from one language to another. --JayHenry 20:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Russian!?! What are you talking about!? Seriously though, one of the most famous literary openings is rendered meaningless, that's hardly a matter of finicky linguistics. /R.D.

I'd say the Wordsworth edition is missing one word. The opening sentence in Russian is: "Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему", which literally translates as: "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". I've highlighted the missing words. Errabee 12:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

My point exactly. They missed a critical word in the very first sentence. Without 'happy' the sentence is oxymoronic. Ah, forget about it! If you can't see that this is amusing, explanations probably won't help. /Roger Duprat

Fair use rationale for Image:LeoTolstoy AnnaKarenina.jpg

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I've provided a fair use rationale for this image. Errabee 12:12, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Stream of consciousness?

I would like someone to cite the claim that Anna's Part VII monologue is "stream of consciousness." I don't have the book on me at the moment, but there's a long jump between simply recording a character's interior thoughts (which was done by most omniscient narrators previous, including Tolstoy himself in War and Peace), and a real, textured stream-of-consciousness that attempts to recreate the entirety of a person's inner self without the sense of narratorial smoothening, as in the work of Joyce, Woolf, or even late James. Tolstoy's work is much closer to the traditional mind-reading of narrators in the style of Turgenev, Dickens, or Eliot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.203.153.24 (talk) 17:32, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I suggest the Oxford World's classic hardback introduction. Actually if you ignore the quotation marks, you'll see more clearly how close that section is to stream of consciousness technique used by, say, Joyce and Woolf. 220.255.7.196 (talk) 12:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Tchaikovsky's Anna Karenina!!

Quote: Anna Karenina a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Comment: Tchaikovsky never wrote any such work. Maybe others took music by Tchaikovsky and used it for an Anna Karenina ballet. That should be made clear. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've tracked it down and written an article. Anna Karenina (2005 ballet) was created in 2005, and drew on various excerpts from Tchaikovsky's works. It could not have been the same work as appeared in The Turning Point, which was made in the 1970s. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:43, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Translation Error

"une femme comme il faut" in French does not at all mean "a married woman". It's far more complex than that, but unfortunately, I can think of no way of rendering the exact meaning in English. The locution "comme il faut", used in French as an invariable adjective, is very common. It has a sarcastic tone to it. Too bad there really seems to be no equivalent in English, at least none that I know. But definitely, "married" is not at all correct. You could go to a restaurant "bien comme il faut", dressed "comme il faut", speak "comme il faut", be a man "comme il faut", and own a house "comme il faut". In the context used by Tolstoy, the "femme comme il faut" need not be married. But she's an aristocrat, distinguished, proper. She is most likely rich, eloquent, and educated. She's almost surely a devout. However, "comme il faut" reveals a deep hidden darker side. Something uncanny, inappropriate, "unconfessable". Maybe a peculiar taste for lust, dirty pleasures, alcohol, drugs, etc... Maybe some awful secret. In any case, when someone says "c'est une femme (bien) comme il faut", you immediately know that below the shiny surface lies a much darker side. There's a clear sense of hypocrisy, duplicity, and falseness. This is why "comme il faut" is always used sarcastically. I definitely wouldn't want people to refer to me as "un homme bien comme il faut". For example, that US church minister Ted Haggard was a man "comme il faut" : devout, polite, well-dressed, eloquent, etc... during the day, yet sexually depraved, having sex with male prostitutes and using drugs at night. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.180.152 (talk) 09:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)