Professor David Peimer
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Professor David Peimer | Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina | 06.04.22
Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.
- Okay so once again, thanks so much, Judi, for all your amazing help over the last week and the last few days. And hi to everybody, hope you’re well, everywhere. And we’ve got to look today at, this is the second and last piece on Tolstoy before moving on to Mr. Dostoevsky and some of the other remarkable Russian writers going up to much more contemporary times, 20th century. So, looking today, I’m not going to look again at Tolstoy’s life and context because, you know, we spent quite a bit of time on Tuesday looking at that. And instead, let’s rather dive into this magnificent, remarkable, endlessly maddening, far too long, novel, Anna Karenina. And I’m going to show some clips of the more recent, very recent film version by Joe Wright, a very well-known and fantastic British filmmaker, “Darker Hour” and other projects, and with Keira Knightly, Jude Law, and so on. And what’s fascinating about this very contemporary production done about six, seven years ago. So we’re going to focus on that as an example with a couple of clips. I’m going to show just one clip from the Greta Garbo production, you know, obviously of decades ago, just to get a little hint of a contrast.
First of all, let’s just if I may, briefly remind ourselves, in essence of the story, of the novel. It’s in essence, Anna is a married social elite, and she has an affair with a very affluent high society, high player Count Vronsky. So there’s Anna and then on the left in this image, you can see there’s Vronsky. And on the right hand side is her husband Karenin. And Vronsky is a bachelor, eager to marry Anna, if she will agree to leave her husband, the guy on the right, Karenin. And Karenin is a senior government official. But, and you know, he’s the more stage, solid, reliable, lasting individual. Some may call him mature and responsible and reliable. Some may see him as boring and a bureaucrat. And on the left is the dashing young officer, Vronsky and Anna, of course, in the story, caught between the two primarily. She’s vulnerable, Anna, because of the rules of Russian aristocratic society of the time, we have to, it’s so important, this is a portrayal of romance, love, passion, lust, desire of the aristocrats in, of Tsarist Russia of the time. And she’s vulnerable because the pressures of the social norms of the aristocratic milieu, the strongly enforced moral laws of the Russian Orthodox Church and of course her own insecurities. And she’s shunned. She becomes more and more isolated and anxious. Vronsky pursues a social life, his working life, she’s still with Karenin and you get the triangle of course. And despite Vrondsky’s reassurance, that he really does love, they’ll be together, she grows increasingly obsessive, possessive, anxious about losing Vronsky because of what she imagines as infidelity and other things going on. And her own loss of control of herself.
There’s a parallel story, not in the image here, This is the image from Keira Knightly production, which is the story of Levin, Konstantin Levin, who’s a wealthy country landowner and the journey of his love relationship with Kitty. And he has been rejected twice by Kitty. And then finally she accepts and she’s regarded as the sort of young, naive, passionate but ultimately very loving, caring, reliable, responsible Kitty. And finally, she accepts his proposal. And the novel in a way ends with Levin accepting domestic life, working on the farm. He’s still part of aristocracy, of course, and the birth of their child, family, domestic life, working on the farm, et cetera. That gives meaning. So and of course it ends with Anna throwing herself under the wheels of an onrushing train, one of the famous scenes in all literature. So in essence, I’m giving you a very brief, you know, 40 second sense of the story just to remind all of us. Now, what’s crucially important is the historical context because it’s vital and we looked at this a lot on Tuesday, looking at to Tolstoy’s own life and “War and Peace” where he is so invested in history and history as fiction and fiction as history and the constant, let’s call it creative tensions between history and fiction, fictionalising history, historicizing fiction and so on. And this, Anna Karenina takes place against the backdrop of huge changes happening in Tsarist, Russia.
The liberal reforms initiated by Alexander II and the biggest of all the reforms was the emancipation in 1861 of all the peasants serfs that we would say today, to be emancipated and the possibly one of the biggest acts, not only of of of Alexander II’s reign but of Russian history of this entire era, prefiguring the 20th century to come. So serfs are emancipated in 1861, a fundamental date in Russian history and in Tolstoy’s life. This is followed by judicial reform. A jury system is initiated, there are reforms in the military. I mean, nothing like what we would sort of obviously know today, nowhere vaguely near, but it’s the beginning of a massive change of absolute despotism and absolute rule by the Tsar to giving, some may say a few crumbs and some may say some real rights to, let’s say ordinary people. There’s their introduction to the beginning of elected local government. The development of railroads, huge, not only for transportation, but information moving faster through the development of the rail and telegraph. So transportation of humans, of goods, services, everything with the rail, with the train. And then of course, the development of banks. Manufacturing industry is starting. So Russia is, they try to pull Russia out of a feudal society really, in a way, agrarian primarily and feudal, into a more, a bit of a more what we would know as a modern society with some of the developments of industrial revolution and other Western Europe, et cetera.
So what we see, and the rise of course of a new business elite, mercantile class, middle class, et cetera, all of these changes are happening around the 1860s and during Tolstoy’s life. And this is the backdrop for me, of the novel. And I think it’s so important to have that sense of history because, and you know, we see it in some of Chekhov’s plays, “The Cherry Orchard, "Three Sisters.” It’s the sense of something huge coming. Is it going to be as Louis XIV said, “After me, the deluge,” is it going to be a massive revolution and revolt? Like the French revolution? Of the middle class and the working class against aristocratic class? Is it going to be something else? You know, accompanied by all the changes in technology or not? It’s a decline of the old landed aristocracy. And it’s so important because what we, the aristocracy is linked to the land, whether it’s England or Europe or Russia. It’s always the land. And that goes back centuries and centuries. So the decline of that landed aristocracy is beginning. A freer press, beginning of a awakening of a public opinion going hand in hand, obviously with the printing press, with the Gutenberg press, with more and more people able to read and write, thus knowledge being able to be accessed by far more people. So this gives a brief historical context.
Back to the novel. Is it a novel, which is a love story, the triangle of love? And you know, where she’s caught between what she regards as her boring husband and the dashing exciting romantic Vronsky? Is she caught between the two? Is it a novel primarily of a love story? Is it a sexual fantasy story of its time? Is it more about class and history that I’ve mentioned? Or perhaps Tolstoy is trying to take on all of it? Is he overreaching? Is it overambitious? Well, yes, in my personal opinion, it’s over ambitious, but rather over ambitious than under ambitious or than the sort of a settle for. He’s pushing the envelope of what a novel can do, of what to try and take on all of this, as he does, of course with “War and Peace.” And I think that does make it endlessly fascinating, an extraordinary rich treasure of ideas and emotions and human nature and history, society going through massive change. And I think as Hemingway simply said, “Any aspiring writer must read Tolstoy.” And I don’t think Hemingway is being serious because he is looking at the craft of writing, the art of writing and every single aspect and nuance detail of human nature. And I think, and history of course, and I think Hemingway, you know, he does try to put to hit the nail on the head there. And by saying, every writer must read Tolstoy, he doesn’t say that about any other writer, Hemingway. It’s fascinating to me.
So, we have Vronsky’s, this handsome, wealthy, charming character. We have Anna who wants to abandon social standing. He wants to abandon social rules and conventions and the two of them in pursuit of love. Is it a story of romantic love? Is it a story of infatuation, lust of sexual love? Is it a story of comparing that with morals and values, comparing that with social conventions, which are as changeable and fashionable as the weather? What was a convention now might not have been 20, 30 years ago, might not be in 10, 20 years time. Conventions change as fast as fashion or clothes. Is it about the rubbing up and going against convention in the name of love? Is it a version of a Romeo and Juliet, you know, the lovers star crossed but prevented by the society? I think it’s far more than that. I think it is a profound investigation of what to do with all these things, which we all know from our own lives only too well, of romantic love, sexual love, infatuation and lust and desire, the role of desire and conventions and rules and structures and, you know, the reliable and the moral and the values. All of these things are thrown up in this novel. And I think because he tries to give it such historical context and because he tries to dig so deep into every tiny nuance of human nature, it’s an endless gold mine from the sheer writing point of view and from all these other qualities I’ve mentioned.
Samuel Beckett once said, he had this passionate romantic sexual affair with Peggy Guggenheim. And they were like, you know, you can imagine Paris and all the rest of the two of them together. And then he eventually, one day Beckett is walking through Paris and he got stabbed by a petty thief, you know, stole a few bucks, et cetera. Anyway, a passer by Suzanne, French woman, helped him get to hospital, get the medical treatment which saved his life. This is before the World War II, before Beckett is famous or anything, before he is written Godot or any of that. And then much later in his life, he was interviewed by the lady who wrote the brilliant biography, Deirdre Bair, you know, of the distinction between Suzanne and Peggy Guggenheim. And Beckett said, I decided I could no longer go with scenes, I needed to be with curtains. I gave you Beckett’s phrase because in some way, you know, who’s curtains and who’s scenes? Who is that long-lasting, reliable, strong sense of a different kind of love compared to the fireworks of romantic, passionate, sexual love. And I think curtains and scenes in Beckett’s immortal phrase, and of course he’s being witty in a way can be seen as part of this love triangle in Anna Karenina. So we have all of this going on. And there is one interesting thing about Vronsky, is that he does, he’s handsome and he’s wealthy, and he’s charming and you know, he’s a dashing officer and so on.
But he does commit to building hospitals and there’s a bold project of trying to help, which is part of the times, we could call it philanthropy today, whatever, but putting money into building hospitals, helping the peasants with educations, et cetera. What Tolstoy tried to do in his own life. I’ll give you a few phrases from the novel before we dive into some of the clips. The great, the famous opening line. “All happy families are alike. "Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s a convoluted way of writing but it actually is memorable. “Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If you dig in, there’s a lot there. You know, the sense of not every family is the same. We can’t just be, stir it up and tar everyone with a similar brush. “If you look for perfection, "you’ll never be content in life.” These are phrases which echo the kind of themes that I’m mentioning. “If it is true that there are many kinds, "that there are as many minds as there are heads, "then it is also true that there are "as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” Tolstoy is trying to individualise these huge words of love and mind and value, et cetera. This is a phrase which I’ve always loved, and it gives you an idea of the detail. “He stepped down trying not to look at long at her "as if she were the sun. "If he saw her like the sun, even without looking, "it didn’t matter whether he physically saw her or not.” “Respect was invented to cover the empty place "where love should be.” He’s constantly trying to provoke us with what do these words mean? What do these ideas mean? What is respect? What is love? Is respect doing a cover job for love? The emptiness, who knows? Is it really possible to really know what someone else feels? “I’ve always loved you. "And when you love someone, you love the whole person "just as they are and not as you would like them to be.”
In one sentence, he throws out, as we know so much of the language of idealisation, projection, et cetera, et cetera. “Be bad, be bad as you want "but at least please don’t be a deceiver, don’t lie.” And it goes back to me about betrayal and lie and deception, which Dante goes on about and Shakespeare in a lot of ways, so many others, betrayals and lies and deception compared to being bad. “But the law of love "cannot be discovered by reason "because it is unreasonable in itself.” You try to get a bit of humour even in Tolstoy. Okay, I want you to show one or two of the clips to start with. Now, this first clip that I’m going to show is from the production I mentioned. And what’s fascinating, is it’s part of the trailer, but they shot the entire movie or most of it anyway, inside a theatre. Now this is the most recent production of Anna Karenina, besides the period costume and the period images, which are stunning, et cetera and the lighting, most of it is filmed in a theatre itself. And the director and the actors would argue because it shows, this is all a performance, the nobility, the aristocracy, the lives they are living, the privilege, extraordinary privilege and level they’re living, it’s all about to change in the coming decades. Not only the Russian Revolution but so many things are changing. The rise of the middle class, everything I mentioned earlier, emancipation of the serfs, et cetera. All of it is changing. So it’s, so much of this is formed by performance.
They are performing being aristocrats, they are performing conventions, rules, social mores, values, morals. It’s a performance and Tolstoy, and what Joe, what the director and Keira Knightly, what all the others argue is that underneath is another whole world. Civilization is form. Perhaps in our times, in some countries it’s civilization is money or civilization is something else. But for here, civilization is form. It is a performance of moral, of love, of infatuation, of desire. So the real passions have to be channelled into a theatrical performing mode in a way. And they argued, this is why they set it in a theatre. ‘Cause of course it’s all about performance. And so much of the studied body language, the body language, the gesture, the look, the glance, the period, the costumes, the period pieces, all of it is about setting up civilization as form, for me, that’s my phrase for it. And when you have that, you start to get a sense of the split between substance in a society and form. And when we are all performing something, we know it. And when we start to lose belief in the value of the substance inside, that’s when it’ll start to decay and it’ll move towards it’s inevitable end. Okay, if we can show that first clip please, Judi.
[Clip plays]
The rules of a period film have been completely broken. Anna Karenina is a story that’s been done a lot. What is the point in doing a safe adaptation?
[Speaker] Their excellencies, Minister Karenin and Madam Karenin.
The Russian aristocracy at that time were constantly looking to France and trying to emulate that way of being. You did have these people that were pretending to be something that they weren’t all the time.
I will choose one lady and one gentleman.
They were living their lives as if they were on a stage. And this gave me the idea to set the majority of the film in a theatre.
We are in a world that that offers itself up as an unreal, in fact is almost magical and fantastical.
[Keira] So it’s always a space that totally changes.
[Jude] We are able to play these strange social games without feeling hindered by a sense of reality.
Occasionally the characters turn their backs on this artificial society and we see them living a more authentic life in the real world.
People love costume dramas, but it’s something else. They’re going to have a horse race within a theatre.
Anna Karenina is the story of love in all its many forms.
It’s a piece that looks at different angles of love and different angles of relationships. I’m sympathetic to all the characters in this story. You need to understand all sides.
[Anna] I was 18 when I got married, but it was not love.
Anna is the perfect dutiful wife. They have a certain place in society and it’s a bolt of lightning from the outside world.
Can I be of service to you?
[Anna] Have you known Count Vronsky long?
He’s a rich calvary officer.
[Jude] That opens her eyes to another way of living, another way of loving and another way of being.
[Anna] So this is love.
[Keira] Stories like Anna Karenina are studies on the human condition. This film is both modern and classic at exactly the same time. You can’t help but recognise yourself.
[Vronsky] I love you.
[Anna] Why?
[Vronsky] You can’t ask why, about love.
[Clip ends]
- Thanks Judi. So we get a sense here, especially through Keira Knightly, fantastic, you know, insight with with her fantastic intelligence and Joe Wright the director, why set it in a theatre performance and how to try and understand the story with that Socratic context. But what it means to be constantly performing something in daily life. And of course taken to the extreme, just before Tsarist Russia is about to be, is about to collapse and be destroyed completely or is destroying itself from within. And it is that dichotomy but for me, between when life becomes form and loses sight of what is the substance inside it and that split starts to open up other options. Crisis and opportunity. So what is it about this novel that ultimately does give it such a status, such an iconic status in our imaginations? How is it possible that a sensationalist, romantic tragedy of Tsarist high society with digressions about 19th century Russian agricultural policy, written in a seemingly plain, quite straightforward style, with 900 pages, How does it still provoke excitement? And respect and awe, annoyance and irritation? 'Cause it’s so long and endless. What is it? What’s going on about it?
Writers as diverse as J. M. Coetzee, celebrities, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Stoppard, who worked on the adaptation with Joe Wright, the director here. I mean, it’s their script. Why are they all coming in this film adaptations, with Greta Garbo’s going way back and many others. Theatre adaptations, studied and read. What is it? There isn’t really a sense of, in modern literature, you’d have a single character and most of it would be driven by the character and the obstacles that he or she faces. Will they overcome them or not? And the challenges and what happens to the character. And we get into the inner life of character. Thrown up a whole lot of obstacles, which are as much inner to the character as external life situations. This isn’t. Tolstoy slips in and out of the consciousness of dozens of characters, not only Anna. Major, minor, at one point he even tells us what a dog is thinking. So he’s constantly trying to shift perspective and that’s a very different approach to the modern approach. You know, or the more the more 20th century follow the one character. Tolstoy certainly doesn’t believe in the old writers’ dictum, show, don’t tell. Don’t lecture or preach your reader. Don’t tell all the time what’s happening, but just show us.
Describe the dramatic sequence of events and we’ll pick up the meaning. He likes to show and tell. We have a narrator who’s omniscient and all powerful. Tolstoy creates a space for the narrator’s independence, so the narrator’s free to pass judgement on the character’s actions going way back to the ancient Greeks. And the narrator also tells them things about themselves that they don’t know. They may not wish to know and sort of, is a third eye feeding us. So we experience the characters immediately and we experience the narrator’s omniscient eye. The characters spend so much time in Moscow, in St. Petersburg but he barely describes the cities. The urban buildings, the landscapes of the cities are almost invisible in the novel. But the countryside is described in endless, exquisite detail. The city for Tolstoy, I think, is almost static. It’s almost an artificial place for performance. And I don’t think he believes cities are permanent. Cities are representative of shifting change all the time in society. And he idealises and romanticises for me, the land and working on the land. I think he forgets a little bit about the blood and sweat and toil and just sheer hard work on the land. It’s caught in that dichotomy. The characters are always smiling, frowning, blushing, twitching, fidgeting, touching, kissing, sobbing, and then trying to deconstruct these signs in each other.
A glance, a look, a touch, et cetera. It’s all performance and they’re constantly trying to interpret what every little gesture and glance means. The characters move through time. And you know, one of the hardest things in writing in a novel or a player anything is how do you show time? Time marching fast or slow? Do you slow it down? Do you speed it up? What do you do? The chaotic reality of time, is constantly shifting he’s trying to find ways to capture that chaotic sense of time shifting. Something can seem like a split second or the same thing can seem like an eternity. You know, in another context. One person thinks or acts in a moment and it doesn’t have a connection to what they think five minutes later or the rest of their life even. He tries to capture memory and how our minds actually really work. He’s obsessed with that level of detail. The endless contradictions in human nature. We can love and hate in the same breath almost. We can desire and feel repelled, almost in the same moment. We can, there’s an amazing sequence of Tolstoy, where he’s trying to bring time and space and language together. And there’s the one scene, which always gets me, is Anna’s estranged husband, Karenin, who’s this dry sort of, stiff government minister that I mentioned and the love of Vronsky, the handsome cavalry officer. And they meet next to the bed, where Anna lies gravely ill after giving birth to Vronsky’s child.
So she’s given birth to Vronsky’s child from his love affair. But her husband’s there and Vronsky’s there and they meet. Grief stricken and ashamed, Vronsky the lover, he covers his face with his hands and Anna says to her husband, who’s also weeping, “Pull Vronsky’s hands away and expose the lover’s face.” And in that gesture, Anna reveals a reversal in the status of the two men. Vronsky, who despised Karenin ‘cause he wouldn’t fight a duel, the lover Vronsky is now humiliated. Karenin is flooded with forgiveness. He forgives his wife for the affair and the baby, he forgives Vronsky the lover. And he seems to win back Anna’s respect. And in that moment of that, of that brief scene with Anna apparently dying, she doesn’t, this transformation feels very real but time shifts and the old reality comes back, Anna gets better and she hates Karenin even more with contempt because he forgave Vronsky and forgave her. Vronsky restores his honour by shooting himself, he misses and the arc of Anna’s self-destruction resumes. In the novel, there are no turning points, there are points, but characters are travelling through time shifting all the time. So it is such a situation of extreme respect can come but then later it’s destroyed by contempt and hate. It’s constantly shifting. And Tolstoy is so alive to these nuances. I just wanted to show, just to describe, that one scene in this whole novel to capture that he’s so aware of how emotions, feelings, desires in this huge game of love are endlessly shifting. Okay, if we can show the next clip, please Judi.
[Clip plays]
[Anna] I was 18 when I got married. But it was not love.
Your husband is a saint and we must all cherish him for Russia’s sake.
[Speaker 2] Romantic love will be the last illusion of the old order.
[Anna] Have you known Count Vronsky long?
He’s a rich, good looking calvary officer.
Dance with me.
[Karenin] I must warn you about something.
[Anna] Warn me?
[Karenin] You may by indiscretion give the world occasion to talk about you.
This must stop. If you have any thought for me, you will give me back my peace.
There can be no peace for us, only misery, my greatest happiness.
[Anna] Oh so this is love.
We are bound together by God and this can only be broken by a crime against God.
Something’s happened.
[Anna] Not something, everything.
It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.
Essential desire indulged for its own sake is the misuse of something sacred.
[Speaker 3] The man who can’t govern his wife’s gone as far as he can go in government.
Anna isn’t a criminal?
[Speaker 4] But she broke the rules.
Leave him.
Leave my life?
She’ll be ruined.
Do you think I would let you have my son, you are depraved. A woman without honour, and this is what you want. Do know what you want?
[Clip ends]
- Hold it there Judi. Thanks so much. So some of these phrases are crucial to the novel. She broke the rules, she doesn’t break the law but she broke the rules. And that’s a crucial phrase from the novel and how she’s judged by the aristocratic society of the times. And then they shun her, of course, et cetera. It’s one thing to break the law, it’s another thing to break the rules of your own milieu, your own class and group. The other line you know of Tolstoy is romantic love puts in, of course it’s a character saying it, not Tolstoy necessarily. Romantic love is the last illusion of the old dying order. He is so aware Tsarist Russia and the aristocratic, that whole structure, coming out of feudalism is changing and fast. And massive things, he can’t predict what’s going to happen, of course revolution, whatever. But he is so aware of the old order is dying and something new will come. What is it? But is romantic love the last illusion of these aristocratic elite? Is romantic love propaganda? Is it not? Does it go way back to birth of human nature and human beings ourselves? Who knows. Tolstoy doesn’t try to answer, he just tries to endlessly probe, dig, hunt and try to understand. I think also what’s so important is it’s just endless with these questions and it can be maddening because in a way you want to almost get a tweet, okay? Okay, Tolstoy, what are you trying to say?
Give it to us in 140 characters or a few words, end of story, cut to the chase. You know, so it’s very different to a contemporary approach. But he is determined and on the one hand maddening, but also, you know, passionately wanting to push it to the end. So what’s fascinating also is that Anna has no childhood. We know nothing about her family, her parents, all we know is that she has a son she doesn’t care much about. She has in her mind a dull older husband, friends in high society. But we know nothing about her past. Tolstoy gives us nothing. Her parents, how they came to be married. I think it’s, and a lot of the characters, Vronsky is similar and I think it mirrors Tolstoy’s own life, where his mother and father were dead by the time he was nine years old. It’s not just Anna, Levin as well, we know nothing about the past. He was orphaned at an early age. Vronsky, Vronsky never knew family life. None of them know family life, as Tolstoy didn’t really. So what happens when parents die young or the parent generation disappears? Is Tolstoy pushing to invest, to look at the choice between a kind of paternal, maternal version of love? Where it’s, you know, I suppose today we’d call it the daddy, mommy figure or you know, looking for versions of it in each other. Paternal, maternal, compared to the romantic sexual love and how they crash up against each other in extraordinary creative tension.
And the novel’s about children in a much deeper way, because these characters are probably in the late 20s, early 30s. And would they have their parents alive, wouldn’t they? In our times, if a person is in their 40s, maybe even 50s, they still often expect their parents to be alive. So this notion of childhood has totally changed in the last 150 years and even maybe even less. You know, besides teenagerhood and other things but the very idea of, you know, childhood and extension and going on and on and having parents as one as reach middle age is fairly, pretty recent in human evolution. Is Tolstoy maybe unconsciously looking and saying, look, all of this is initialization but we can’t help it 'cause it’s the truth of the society we all live in. And how long do we stay infantilized? Is it wrong or bad to be infantilized or not? All questions thrown up by the novel. Anna and Vronsky, Levin, they’re all in their early 30s, maybe late 20s. They’re obliged to already be independent because they have no family to go back to. Nothing they can learn that their parents try and teach of what to do, what not to do in situations. We call it values today, whatever. So what does this mean? Either they’ve got to follow existing set of rules for their milieu or they’re going to go against it or they caught, not knowing which way of both. What happens if they break the rules?
Because all they can do is imbibe the rules of the social milieu, 'cause they don’t have it from their family. Are they inventing their own rules as Levin tries to do? Break the rules as Anna wants to do, and Vronsky? Stick to the rules as a husband Karenin wants to do? And I think this is a very contemporary way of living. He is sensing the extension of childhood into middle age, 30s and 40s people where their parents are still alive because then you get all the rules from the parent generation. What’s interesting, is the role of debt and the debt of the one generation to the next, financial but also emotional because the world is changing so fast. The idea of debt is psychological and practical, in money. The country’s falling apart or beginning to anyway, the old order, as Tolstoy calls it. The elites, exert a growing influence more and more as the book develops. Break the social rule, tough call. Is it about the unhappy family? Is it as Chekhov describes in his plays, the beginning of the end for the aristocracy of Russia? Trying to hold the line against the granting of freedom to millions of human, to the serfs? Is it, and merchant class? And not only the granting of freedom but where that is all going to lead to. Is it the tragic consequences of pursuing love for love’s sake? The romantic love.
In defiance of rules which are laid down by one’s peers and perhaps one’s family. And I strongly feel, it’s nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet. You know, star-crossed lovers, teenagers who are unjustly destroyed by their parents’ generations and their cruel rules of the two kind of mafia families in Romeo and Juliet. No, it’s much more about adults because they’ve had to make their own rule because they don’t have their own family to fall back on. It’s about adults who are vexed by boundaries in a rapidly changing society and not knowing which way to turn. It’s a portrayal of a clash between the old world of a more rigid, a more religious, more regulated set of codes where duals are had, fixed gender roles, strict class division. A new world is emerging of divorce, separation, going against the grain, custody battles, childhood, child battles, financial changes all the time, banking, uncertain moral centres, rules of social and moral and legal changing. Doesn’t that somehow echo a lot of what is going on today? Could he instinctively sense, you know, something of the 20th century perhaps now? I don’t think he ever works out what an earth love means or desire, or what he even feels about it, Tolstoy, I don’t think he has a clue, really. I think he’s just torn. He understands these what I’m calling creative tensions and is constantly torn amongst them all.
Between lust and self denial, between loving his wife and being bored by the wife. Between the wife, between loving his own wife and being bored by his own wife. I think, what you get in Anna and the others. The very scene where Anna who’s met the charming Vronsky and she returns home to husband and the first thought when she sees her husband after meeting Vronsky for the first time is how unattractive his ears are. She’s never seen that before. So a meeting with somebody, who charms her, changes the perception but through the ears of her husband. What an extraordinary set of characters and extraordinary richness of human texture that we get. Of course she’s gorgeous and adorable and sexual and radiates but she can’t cope with it all, she embodies for me all these forces which are historical as much as personal, psychological, and of course she’s going to be torn apart and self-destruct. Could we show the next clip please, Judi?
[Clip plays]
Should we visit or stay put?
Stay put.
Minister, congratulations. Come in for a moment. Princess Sorokina and her daughter, they’re from Moscow, neighbours of Count Vronsky’s mother, quite well off, no sons. She’s a widow. My dear, I’m a sales catalogue.
Alexi.
You’ll come up to see us, afterwards?
I’ll talk to Varya.
Will you call Anna?
Oh Alexi, I’m fond–
For God’s sake. Anna isn’t a criminal.
I’d call on her if she’d only broken the law but she broke the rules.
Who has made the decor? Haven’t we got a programme? Colonel, would you be so kind?
[Colonel] Of course.
Please, I will be honoured if you would take mine.
Thank you.
[Companion] It’s a disgrace.
[Speaker 4] Hush dear. A common courtesy.
Everyone’s looking.
Let them look. Fetch my cloak. What are we coming to? It’s an insult of decency, take me home.
Hush. I beg you my dear, it was only a word or two.
I’ll have a word or two for some people I didn’t expect to be rubbing shoulders with. She has a nerve flaunting herself like a slut in society.
Yes, why don’t you? Rescue her and put your seal on the fiasco.
[Clip ends]
- If we can hold it there please Judi? What’s crucial here is she broke the rules and this scene is called, you know, the insult to decency scene. It’s an insult to decency. I think that phrase of Tolstoy’s captures so much of what I’ve been talking about, the shifting, the conventions, the fashion of what is socially acceptable, what isn’t, and how the society’s constantly looking to judge, constantly looking to judge and sentence. You know, because of an affair or because of a flirtation and anything. Anything that rocks the boat of the rules of one’s own milieu. That’s the bottom line. And I think here it’s the idea of breaking rules but it’s the insult to decency. An extraordinary phrase of Tolstoy’s. And I think it echoes all the way down to our times. You know, in whatever community, religious or not, or secular, whatever community we are in anywhere, that phrase I think reverberates. Okay, if we could show the next one please, Judi. And this is from Greta Garbo. Oh sorry, we get the idea of course it’s set in the theatre, they’re filming it. So it’s all a studied performance. You get how they are performing their roles. This is Greta Garbo in the 1930s, the final scene where she throws herself, Anna, Anna Karenina throws herself under the train.
[Clip plays]
- We can hold it there. Thanks Judi. So I just wanted to show the clip. I think it’s extraordinary in a couple of seconds of film time, I think Garbo captures so many emotions and there’s a quite a strength, you know, she’s not just all vulnerable and freaked and you know, whatever the jargon might be today. But you see a profound sense of inner turmoil and a very conscious awareness of the train, the wheels, the choice to come, et cetera. It’s not an absence of intellect, it’s the intellect propelling her, emotion. I think of it extraordinary portrayal that Garbo gives in that moment, in that scene. Okay, if we could show the next one please. This is the theatrical one with Keira Knightly again, it’s filmed in a theatre, again. The character of Kitty who eventually marries Levin.
[Clip plays]
Kitty. May I have waltz?
You may Boris. I’ll save you the third, just because it’s your first ball.
You’re my first conquest.
Where do you want be taken?
[Kitty] There.
[Clip ends]
- Okay, we can hold that there Judi. Okay, thank you. I want to just so we can see, this is an example of through the character of Kitty, you know the the kind of ideal idealised joyousness. But it’s all performed, it’s filmed in a theatre purposely, as I mentioned, it’s all a performance but there is something nevertheless joyous and youthful and fun and exuberant about it. Contrasted to the next one, which is Anna and Vronsky in their waltz. If you could show the next one, please.
[Clip plays]
Dance with me.
I’m not used to being spoken to like that by a man I met once at a railway station.
I dare say but if I’m not to dance with you and then I’m getting out of this operetta going home.
Then for pity’s sake.
[Clip ends]
Okay if you can hold it there please Judi. Thank you. So we get a much sense of a more mature man and woman, opening line, dance with me. You know, I’m not used to just, you know, being told what to do by a man I just met at a railway sighting, railway side station. A completely different interaction. It’s immediately full of extraordinary sexual tension and chemistry and the vibe between the two is more mature. With the Kitty one, we obviously get the naivety, the youth, again the child, where’s the child that I’m talking about? The child archetype playing out its Kitty dancing. And here with Keira Knightly and Vronsky. A sexualized childhood, if you like, with these two being reawakened. And then the last one, if we can show this is a, from an interview, Keira Knightly, Joe Wright and some of the actors. And I think what’s fascinating, just want to look at what Keira Knightly says about her understanding of the character with on the left obviously, and Joe Wright on the right, he’s the director, there’s Jude Law et cetera. And how she describes Anna Karenina. Thanks Judi.
[Judi] David, my PowerPoint has just gone down so just give me a second to try and get this back.
Ah, okay, no problem.
[Judi] I’m just going to stop sharing for a moment David, I dunno if you want to just continue and I’ll bring it back up in a second.
Okay, well basically what Keira Knightly is saying, is that for her, Anna Karenina is a dark jewel. And I love that phrase. She’s a brilliant actress and I love that phrase, you know that Anna is a dark jewel and I think caught in all these tensions and I think Keira Knightly is certainly aware of the larger historical social picture I was describing, the aristocrats, all the changes et cetera, in the society they’re caught up in. But she’s a dark jewel and she’s trying to find where she can push her passion and desire in relation to the social morays and conventions of her time. And Joe Wright trying to describe why they chose the theatre to perform in and to never lose sight of the incredible complexity, just like human nature. As I’ve tried to show through some of these examples, how we can change from desire to being repelled, from attraction to disdain, from love to hate, from contempt to, you know, infatuation. We are constantly shifting in time, which I think is what Tolstoy is really trying to get at as well.
[Judi] Right David, I’m going to just try this again quickly.
Thank you.
[Judi] No, it doesn’t want to play game with me David, it seems like it’s crashing again.
[David] Okay.
[Judi] we might have to.
[David] Okay.
[Judi] Sorry, skip this.
Okay, I mean we can, you know, if anybody wants I can share this clip. I mean it’s fun to see just the actors and the director in their ordinary clothes out of period costume just sitting and talking as well. But the essence of what I was saying is that Keira Knightly, for me, really gets it completely or you know, the main ideas I’ve been talking about with Anna and I think that Tolstoy is trying to bring so much of his milieu and his era and the massive changes through the character of Anna and then of course the other characters that are set up in the triangle, and Kitty and Levin and and so on. And I think that by being over ambitious, it’s far more exhilarating than a writer who is under ambitious. And I’m not a great fan of too many words and endless exposition and endless sort of preachiness. But I still would rather go for that, vote for that any day, than a writer who’s way under ambitious on a personal level. So I leave us with all of that and thank everybody very much for coming on this little journey with Tolstoy and we’re going to dive into Mr. Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, many others of the great Russian writers, you know, as we go through the next few weeks.
[Judi] Thank you David. Do you have a few minutes to go over some of the questions or comments?
Yeah, sure. Thank you.
[Judi] Thank you.
Q&A and Comments
- So from from Harriet.
Q: How did the reforms concerning serfdom affect the Jews? A: Great question. I think I’ll leave that if I may, to Trudy and William, on the experts more historically, ‘cause I don’t want to do a generalisation. Okay, great question.
Heather, I read the book also the film version. Yeah, the Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richardson, although they did seem a bit wooden. Yeah, I agree Heather.
Q: Do you think that this version is overloaded with drama compared to the others? A: Yes, I mean I think the danger, that the Keira Knightly one and the Joe Wright, is that because it’s set in a theatre, the danger is that they’re trying to push, you know, this idea of of civilization as form and it’s all a performance and it’s all an acting out. It can become over theatrical, which I think it does at times and I think it pushes too much the sexual side of love as opposed to the historical context of aristocracy and Russia, all the other things I mentioned.
Thanks Heather. Robert, 1861, the first Aliyah to Holy Land before the then only religious Jews to the Holy Land. Oh, 1861, the same date. Thank you Robert, that’s fascinating. Dennis. Faulkner is quoted as saying, “The three greatest novels ever written "were Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina and Anna Karenina.” Dennis, thank you. Yeah, well it’s similar to what Hemingway said and Faulkner, exactly. David, I found the book disappointing after her death. Yeah, I think it’s a very good point and it’s been debated a lot. 'Cause after her death what happens is Vronsky basically is devastated and he goes off to fight some wars and rejoins on, you know, it does kind of almost the novel, sort of almost fizzles out. You can’t top her death. And I think Tolstoy made a mistake, you really can’t top, you’ve gone on this whole journey for 900 whatever pages and you know, I think it is a disappointing end, I agree.
Romain, Beckett also went into analysis to sort it out. He certainly did. Romain, the conflict in the book is so alive and powerful and didactic. Yeah, and that’s the dichotomy faced by writers. The show don’t tell. You know, show what’s happening, don’t lecture and tell us, be preachy. And it is didactic and it is also so alive. Which is a very different approach to modern writing. Emile, Shakespeare said it long ago, “All the world is a stage.” Yep, I think so, Shakespeare would certainly go along with that idea. Romain, thank you. Anna.
Q: Have you seen a sequel done by the Russians where the son becomes a doctor and and meets Vronsky? A: I don’t know this one, thank you. From the Vronsky perspective. Fascinating, thank you.
Jonathan. When the Wehrmacht was halted at the gates of Moscow in an act of pure savagery, they made time to stop at Tolstoy’s estate to destroy his library. Fascinating, I didn’t know that. So these Nazis in 1941, stop in the gates of Moscow to destroy Tolstoy’s library. And he wrote this in, he’s writing mainly 1860s, 1870s, 1880s. I mean, extraordinary, you know, impact of a writer. Stephen. The one thing I will say about the novel, because Tolstoy, he wrote it over two years, which was very popular at the time, as serialised. So in a way it’s also a bit of a pot boiler, you know, and you know, he’s got to keep the audience and his readers interested all the time as he is going along and that changes the writing completely. Like Dickens also. Steven, we learn of Anna’s brother and the unhappiness of his wife’s marriage. Yep, that’s true. That’s a little bit we do get from her backstory. Aimed, Tatiana has a dilemma between a sense of husband and on again when he turns up several years later, yes. All the other characters, which, you know, I can’t go into, I’m sorry I can’t go into all the others, I’m just focusing on the main ones. But I think these ideas are constantly played with by Tolstoy through many of the other characters minus semi major and more major.
Hiya, thank you. Think Tolstoy shows the hypocrisy of society as Anna wasn’t judged for having an affair, it was quite common practise, but for leaving her husband and living with Vronsky in sin. Yes, that’s the rule. She broke the rules, not necessarily the law. Exactly. 'Cause they’re all having affairs, you’re spot on. And that’s why she stood to lose the first child, yep.
Q: Marilyn, what would society’s reaction been if Anna’s husband had had an affair? A: Great question. And I’m sure he would’ve gotten away with it no problem. What I mean by that is, he wouldn’t have been seen as breaking the rules. He would’ve not been shunned and all the rest of it. Absolutely, I mean, patriarchal society, I think this is Sandra.
Q: Was not Tolstoy aware that Levin is a Jewish name? A: I think so. But it’s also, perhaps Leo, Lev, it’s been argued that it was his first name as well that he’s trying to throw in. So we are not sure of the Jewish connection or linked to his own first name. Estelle.
Q: Any significance in the fact that Anna wears a black ball gown and Kitty is white? A: Yes, definitely in this production because she, well obviously the black and the white, you know, the innocence and the experience if you like. And you know, in Keira Knightley’s phrase, the dark jewel, compared to the innocent, idealistic, naive young, almost teenager Kitty, white. In Vronsky’s uniform also happens, this happens to be, yes. What’s fascinating is also how the light and shadow is used 'cause they, if you look at the production of Joe Wright and this later one, they use light and shadow as it gets more and more complex. You know, you play with shadow much more in the lighting, as the Greta Garbo, little clip shows as well. You know, constantly light and shadow, which is using light as the foreboding and ominous hint of what’s to come. Esther.
Q: What would be considered today an insult to decency when society’s morals are so deteriorated? A: Many of our leaders attend a national gun association, et cetera, our children are buried, yeah. How’s that for an insult to decency? I think that Esther, thank you, that phrase of Tolstoy’s echoes through the centuries, you know, and what really is an insult and what really is decency?
Susan, thank you. Debbie, Nancy. Sandy, yeah Hemingway, it is that he, and as you mentioned earlier, Faulkner, you know, put Tolstoy at the top of the tree.
Q: Judi, are there parallels to Madame Bovary? A: I think there are some in the art and craft of such detail and nuance. But I think where differs is Flaubert I think is primarily focused on the one character and trying to follow all, he’s almost more psychological in depth and I think he’s less obsessed with the historical era. Of course he is obsessed with it and he knows it, but I think he brings it in less than Tolstoy. Lynn and Rodney. I read the book a long time ago.
Q: Could you comment on the difference on how it was acceptable for men to have affairs, but not women? A: Well, let’s remember. This is all before the suffragette movement. This is before women get to vote in any of the so-called, you know, later democracies. So women have not got the vote, women don’t have rights, they don’t have rights in marriage, in legal terms, and don’t have rights with the vote, obviously political and of course in terms of employment and work. So the role of women is totally under the patriarchal boot. So it would be acceptable for the men to have affairs then, but not the woman, absolutely.
Myrna. Okay, thank you Sharon. Thank you Daniella. I saw when I was a child in Czechoslovakia, the Russian Anna Karenina with Tatiana, yes, fantastic production, which I’ve read about. I haven’t seen Mavis. Leo Tolstoy’s first name. Well, that’s it, it’s Lev, it’s shortened versions in the Analogized adaptation of his first name. The argument is more that it’s linked to the Lev in Levin than the Jewish. Barbara, thank you. Esther, I was 14 when I read the book. To me it seemed like a Cinderella story, yep. For some people it can be a Cinderella, it can be a Romeo and Juliet, so many. And I think that’s part of the extraordinary depth and treasure of ideas that Tolstoy is trying to mine. And I don’t think he ever knows the answer himself. Let’s go back, what is love? What is romance? What is lust? What is desire? What is history? What is even fiction? I think he’s obsessed with the questions and I think his obsession makes it a fascinatingly obsessed novel.
Okay, thank you very much everybody. And Judi, thank you.