Petersburg in a desperate attempt to earn Dolly’s forgiveness. Stepan, or Stiva, has summoned his sister from St. His wife, Darya Alexandrovna (Dolly), already a mother of five children, is beside herself and contemplating separation. Though Tolstoy was a defender of traditional marriage and Christianity, Anna’s dynamism as a character-and the flaws of the men in her life-result in a complex portrait of a world both familiar and alien to modern readers.Īnna Karenina opens with Part One in Moscow with the Oblonsky family in disarray as Stepan Arkadyich, the family patriarch, has recently been discovered as an adulterer having an affair with one of the family governesses. The novel is a portrait of happy and unhappy domesticity, gender politics, and the consequences of defying social norms. Levin tries to pursue the same, in an agricultural landscape where he must confront the challenges of Russia’s economy and changing social system. Anna tries to pursue freedom and emotional fulfillment, but is held back because of her gender and Russian social and legal codes. Konstantin Levin is addressed by the Russian diminutive form, “Kostya.”Īnna Karenina is Leo Tolstoy’s portrait of Russian society in flux, combining family drama with broader political currents. Oblonsky’s sister is Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, the feminine version of the family patronymic and her husband Karenin’s surname. In this guide, this character is referred to as either Stiva or Oblonsky.
Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky, called “Stiva,” is the son of a man named Arkady. In formal writing and address, Russians are known by their full first names and a patronymic: a gendered adjective based on their father’s first name.
This guide refers to the 2000 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, which received the PEN/Book-Of-The-Month Club Translation Prize.Ĭontent warnings for this work include descriptions of opioid use, suicidal thoughts and death by suicide, childbirth descriptions, postpartum illness, and mentions of child death. Anna Karenina has been frequently adapted for film. Later, his short fiction focused on religious issues he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. Tolstoy was born to an aristocratic family in 1828 and lived at his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, which he inherited.
0 kommentar(er)
