Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878) are usually both among the books competing for the title of "greatest of all time". They often take turns at the top spot.

A Tolstoy fan though may resent a ranking that places either one of his two greatest books below the other. It's tough to choose.

So here's a solution:

Let's call War and Peace one of the greatest literary works of all time and Anna Karenina one of the greatest novels.

For Anna Karenina is more of a straightforward novel than the other. It is sometimes called the first modernist novel, bringing the romantic story into a new, more realistic era. Tolstoy himself called it his first attempt at a novel. It isn't burdened with all those digressive, essay-like chapters that are interspersed throughout War and Peace, delivering the author's views of history, philosophy, politics and the Russian spirit.

Anna Karenina too contains historical, philosophical, political and spiritual material, but it's melded more naturally into the thoughts and behaviours of the characters. As in a modern novel.

Two tortured characters

The most ruminative of the novel's main figures is the tortured and ever-searching Levin, alternatively known as Konstantin "Kostya" Dmitrievich in that confusing old Russian nomenclature. His intellectual and emotional journey, often taken to reflect the progress of Tolstoy's own mind, is the part of Anna Karenina that on its own would make for a novel of ideas. But Levin's awkward personality and personal life are also intimately portrayed (making him my own favourite character).

But the novel is titled after the main character in its other major narrative arc, following the tragic figure in the study of illicit love found and lost. And it's as a romance that Anna Karenina is beloved by readers.

Synopses of Anna Karenina tend to make her a sympathetic creature, a beautiful woman in love beyond her control, scorned by society, done wrong by both her dashing lover Vronsky and her straitlaced husband Kerenin, and bereft of her greatest love, her young son Sergei. While all the above may be accurate, it is often ignored that Anna is also a self-centred, increasingly fragile, contradictory creature. She becomes her own worst enemy, paranoically lashing out at everyone until she gets her greatest revenge by killing herself.

At about nine hundred words, Anna Karenina is large enough to encompass both the love story and the quest story, as well as several additional subplots. In fact the novel opens with neither Anna's nor Levin's tale, but with uproar in another household. A reader might think at first this novel is going to be about the dissolution of Prince Oblonsky's family due to his philandering. Anna, Levin, Vronsky and others are introduced only gradually as minor characters in the Oblonsky drama and then branch off to star in their own stories. All the stories remain interconnected however.

Human targets

Tolstoy is remarkable in providing full and engaging characterizations for each of a dozen or more characters. They may be targets in Tolstoy's satire of aristocratic intrigue, hypocrisy, bureaucracy, and family life during this transitional period in Russian society, but seldom are they treated meanly. The author seems to understand all his characters—even the most nasty—as striving, if failing, human beings.

His famous introductory quote about happy and unhappy families actually applies to people in general. Tolstoy recognizes the very different ways his characters are all unhappy. Figures who present as stereotypes—the ambitious politician, the defender of the status quo, the gambling addict, the wronged woman, the social climber, the gossip, the mystic—are ripe for nuanced exposure as being at some level conflicted.

Admittedly though, with so many characters getting involved in so many subplots, some sections of Anna Karenina do go on too long. To take the first example that comes to mind, a hunting party hosted by Levin carries on over several days and too many chapters, presumably to delve into Levin's jealousy over a guest who flirts with his wife, but at tiresome length, considering his jealousy issues have already been highlighted. This and other lengthy side trips are sensitively and dramatically narrated but I doubt much would be lost to the overall stories if they were at least trimmed.

The one percent

A greater failing of Anna Karenina (and it seems presumptuous, even to me, to talk of "failings" in such an overall magnificent work of art) has to do with something Tolstoy was himself concerned about. The aristocracy made up a tiny and shrinking percentage of the society at the time he was writing. Yet the novel dwells almost entirely on relations among this Russian nobility.

Peasants comprise the vast bulk of the populace but in Anna Karenina examples of that class are portrayed only sporadically, usually as good-natured folk in relation to Levin. Urban workers and the middle class make up a small but growing group at the time but are not represented at all in Anna Karenina. The aristocracy—the one percent of their time—monopolize the narrative.

Yes, Levin is sympathetic to the peasantry who work on his lands, as borne out by the schemes he devises to improve their lot and his efforts to work alongside them. At times he sounds practically socialist in some of his ideas about the value of labour and the sharing of profits.

But his proposals never really succeed and he loses interest. His haltingly progressive thinking is pulled backwards by his reverence for tradition, his professed individualism and his attachment to the nobility. Ultimately he finds a peace of sorts in religion of sorts. (He really is Tolstoy's alter ego.)

Yet, within his historical limits Levin is a refreshingly sincere figure. Each step of his life—marriage, birth of his children, residence in the countryside, the search for purpose—comes about with much inner tumult but the challenges are faced and worked out in a long process of self-discovery. His courtship and marriage to Kitty, for example, begin with personal humiliations on both sides but the couple share understanding to grow past their mutual difficulties and find something close to stability.

This, of course, is presented as a contrast to the course of Anna's relationships. Seemingly content in her placid marriage at first, she gives in to a great love outside marriage. Her long-suppressed passions erupt, sweeping aside rationality, family, friendships and her place in high society. Eventually her great love affair is itself destroyed—as is her very life.

If Anna's story shows the dire results of basing life on passion, Levin's experience exemplifies the happier result of seeking meaning in life through the simple values of duty, labour and connection to the land. It is fitting that Levin dominates the end of the novel, his spiritual struggles taking over the narrative for a couple hours' worth of reading after the demise of the titular character.

Not that Tolstoy presents the contrast as simplistically as this summary might imply. The outcome for Levin is not guaranteed but is presented as an ideal to strive towards, however erratically we humans can manage.

— Eric

Critique • Quotes • Translations • At the movies