For this session, we read Tolstoy's monumental masterpiece, Anna Karenina. (For general information about our online book club and how you can participate, please refer to the first entry, dated July 25, 2013.)
Since Tolstoy's novel is one of the best ever written and so much has been written about it, I, the reviewer, (Thomas Dorsett), will only focus on a few aspects of the novel. (If you need to refresh your memory, please refer to the many plot summaries and criticisms available online.)
I will focus on three aspects only: the translation, the spirituality of one of the main characters, Levin, and the sexuality of Anna's husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.
THE TRANSLATION
Most of us read the newer translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, (Penguin Classics, 2000,) which won the Pen/Book of the month Club Translation Prize. The other translation I am familiar with is by Constance Garnett (Barnes & Noble 2003--Garnett translated the work in 1901); the newer translation is indeed better. I give an example: An old man was saying what some thought to be nonsense. He was admonished by being called "Soldier!" by Garnett and "Old Trooper!" by Pevear. I assume that "soldier" is a literal translation and might have some negative connotations in Russian when applied to an old man. "Old Trooper," though probably not a literal translation, fits the context perfectly. There are many such examples when the two translations are compared
There are some glaring errors in both editions. I will present one that really irked me. The Russian aristocracy in Tolstoy's time was multilingual; there are many English, German and, especially, French quotes throughout the text. Towards the beginning of the novel, Stepan Arkadyich, a ladies' man, quotes the following to the much less flirtatious Levin. (It is an excerpt from the libretto of Strauss's die Fledermaus.)
Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen
meine irdisch Begier;
Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen,
Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!
This is translated as a footnote in the Pevear translation as follows:
Heavenly it would be to conquer/My earthly lusts;/But though I've not succeeded,/I still have lots of pleasure.
What a terrible--and terribly dull--translation! The Garnett version is no better:
Heavenly it would be/If I could victorious be/o'er my lowly cravings;/ Yet though this/I've not achieved/ I have the greatest pleasure.
The humor is miserably lost in both translations. This is my translation, which not only sounds better but conveys much more precisely the meaning of the text:
Whenever I overcome earthly desire,
It is divine;
However, whenever I failed,
I still managed to have a good time!
Translating from the Russian into idiomatic English was, of course, of greater importance; the Pevear edition succeeds in this to a greater degree than the Garnett edition. Although there were obscurities in both, one is still able to enjoy the novel by reading either version. (All quotes from the text in this essay are from the Pevear edition.)
THE SEXUALITY OF ANNA'S HUSBAND
Tolstoy has been very deservedly praised for his objectivity. He lets events, greatly influenced by the social conventions of his time, speak for themselves; he doesn't comment upon them or judge. As in life, the characters of the novel are a mixture of faults and virtues; there are no villains, there are no heroes--with the possible exception of Levin, a very good man and Tolstoy's alter ego.
Anna is locked in a room, as it were, right from the beginning; the walls are society's conventions, which slowly close in on her until she is destroyed. The room is spacious enough at the beginning to keep her unaware of what is happening, until, at the end, she believes her only exit is death.
Her husband, locked in a room of his own, was unresponsive to her from the very beginning. The marriage became hell for them both. We will now examine Karenin's sexuality, a principal reason for the marriage's failure. Tolstoy, following the conventions of his time, does not deal with matters of sex overtly, but, being a profound psychologist, he knew their importance and revealed that importance in subtle ways. He never labels Karenin a closeted homosexual, but many hints are there.
There is no report of Karenin being interested in women before his marriage to Anna. His sexuality has apparently been sublimated and has been transformed into desire for success. He is very intelligent and becomes extremely successful in government service. His professional reputation is most important to him.
He is about twenty years older than Anna. He was staying as a guest at a relation of Anna's while Anna was present. This relation saw Karenin as a good catch and was determined to get them together. Nothing happened; there was no chemistry between them. So the relative resorted to spreading rumors that Karenin had taken advantage of Anna. To save his reputation, he marries her.
We must recall that Anna at this time was a very beautiful and sensuous woman. Karenin apparently felt no attraction to her. Anna soon meets Vronsky, as handsome and virile as she is beautiful and feminine. Anna, undoubtedly a virgin when she married, having had little contact with the opposite sex, realizes now for the first time in her life what she had been missing. Soon she becomes Vronsky's mistress.
Before this happens, she tries to make sense of her confusion. She realizes that Karenin is a good man and tries to transfer her newly aroused desires to him to keep the marriage intact. On one occasion, husband and wife are home together; he leaves her alone for hours, busy with work. Then Tolstoy, without any emphasis, relates the following:
Exactly at midnight, when Anna was still sitting at her desk finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the measured steps of slippered feet, and Alexei Alexandrovich, washed and combed, a book under his arm, came up to her. "It' time, it's time," he said with a special smile and went into the bedroom...She undressed and went up to the bedroom...the fire seemed extinguished in her or hidden somewhere far away. (Page 112.)
Exactly at midnight! The witching hour! Alexei had obviously scheduled sex for midnight, and arrived with the instrument of his principal concern still in his hand, a book. He arrives with measured steps; there is no passion, no spontaneity. No words of love. One gets the impression that he simply wants to have sex and Anna is merely the instrument that helps him satisfy his need.
Perhaps you think Karenin is just being shy? Tolstoy does not allow this interpretation. When the adultery is revealed, Karenin exhibits absolutely no sexual jealousy; he is no Leontes. He is concerned with his reputation only, and works out with Anna a plan: she can keep her lover as long as she never brings him home.
Perhaps you think that Karenin is simply asexual? Tolstoy reveals that there is much more to it than that. After Anna has left, he is increasingly in the company of the motherly, non-threatening, pseudo-pious Lydia Ivanovna. One evening while they are together, Tolstoy writes the following:
Of his female friends, and of the foremost of them, Countess Lydia Ivanovna, Alexei Alexandrovich did not think. All women, simply as women, were frightening and repulsive to him. (page 508).
He is obviously not attracted to women. Not only that, they are repulsive to him. Is he attracted to men? Later on, when Karenin plans to accept Anna's love-child as his own, he is suddenly filled with shame and remorse--but not jealousy. On page 520, Tolstoy writes the following words:
And he now experienced exactly the same sense of shame and remorse going over all the past with her and remembering the awkward words with which, after long hesitation, he had proposed to her.
"But in what am I to blame?" he said to himself. And the question always called up another question in him--whether they feel differently, love differently, marry differently, these other people, these Vronskys and Oblonskys...these gentlemen of the bed-chamber with their fat calves. And he pictured a whole line of these juicy, strong, undoubting people, who, against his will, had always and everywhere attracted his curious attention...
Thereupon, as is his wont, he quickly sublimates such thoughts with thoughts of "tranquility and loftiness."
He finds women as women repugnant. He is not sexually attracted to his beautiful wife, nor is he jealous when she deceives him. "Against his will," "always and everywhere" virile men have attracted his attention. Tolstoy, with a few sentences buried in a long book, hints at Karenin's sexual orientation, a clearer indication of which, in Tolstoy's day, was tabu.
Convention was the matchmaker which consigned Anna and Karenin to the fires of domestic hell. What would have happened if convention had allowed Anna to meet and fall in love with Vronsky before she was forced to marry Karenin? A happy ending, no doubt. The women's movement would have prevented Anna's misery; there is a good chance that the gay liberation movement would have prevented Karenin's. The objective Tolstoy doesn't blame society outright for Anna's and Karenin's fate, but the perceptive reader cannot do otherwise.
LEVIN'S SPIRITUAL QUEST
Tolstoy was a deeply spiritual man; his religious quest eventually became paramount, causing his literary career to suffer greatly. Levin, one of the main characters of the book, was also on a spiritual quest which, I think, mirrors Tolstoy's at the time he wrote the novel. It is significant that Anna's suicide occurs at the end of the seventh section of the book; a long eighth section follows, devoted to Levin's inner journey. This might strike readers as an anti-climax, but Tolstoy obviously viewed things differently. In the eighth section Tolstoy discusses the very essence of life; it is the most personal, autobiographical part of the novel. Without the spiritual resolution of the final section, Tolstoy would have viewed the novel as being very much unfinished.
Tolstoy (and Levin) lived at a time when, for intellectuals at least, religion was under siege. The militant atheist of our time, Richard Dawkins, had an equivalent in the late nineteenth century in the scientist, Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel once mocked traditional belief by stating God must be a gaseous vertebrate: gaseous because He is omnipresent, and a vertebrate because man is in His image. Just as in our times, literal belief is mocked while the underlying symbolism is ignored. Before Haeckel, such dismissals of religion were not widespread.
Levin could not accept a literal belief in Orthodox Christian dogma. Nor could Tolstoy. In a significant and wonderful episode Anna, Vronsky and another visit a talented, but obscure painter. He is criticized for depicting Jesus more like a man than a God. The artist responds to the accusation of unbelief as follows:
'Why so? It seems to me,' said Mikhailov, 'that for educated people the question (of literal belief) can no longer exist.' (Page 475.)
Levin, as well as Tolstoy, would have agreed. Before Levin marries Kitty, the church demands that he go to confession, something which Levin hasn't done in years. He confesses his unbelief to the priest, a decent man, who questions how he can deny God while witnessing every day the glories of His creation. Levin is convinced that there is an underlying truth to religion, behind all the falsities of dogma. He eventually finds out what this truth is.
He has an existential crisis that brings him close to suicide. He reads, like Tolstoy did, Schelling, Schopehauer and a host of other philosophers. He can find no resolution. The death of his brother and the birth of his child, both beautifully related in the novel, have torn him away from complacency. At the end--vintage Tolstoy--it is a peasant, one close to the earth, who enlightens him. During Levin's conversation with the peasant, the latter contrasts a man who is simply after money with one who does good for the sake of doing good, Levin at last has found the answer: living for the Good, for God, transcending the needs of the belly while not denying them, is the secret of life.
Levin asks, "It was that if the main proof of the Deity is His revelation of what is good, then why was this revelation limited to the Christian Church alone?" (Page 814.) He accepts all faiths and goes on to say, that although the belief in the higher good is shared by all religions, this good "is revealed to me by Christianity and can always be verified in my soul. And I don't have the right or possibility of resolving the question of other beliefs and their attitudes to the Deity.' Intellectual exercises in comparative religion are not for him; he has found his way back to the Church as a tolerant religious man.
I would like to present two twenty-first century criticisms of the intellectual framework of this view. (That Levin and Tolstoy found something that gave them inspiration and solace is indeed something I fully admire. I also believe that these attitudes can be obtained today, but by different means, if we are not to sacrifice our intellect in the process.) First, is is not necessary today to believe in a supernatural source of the good. Altruism exists in nature, especially in human nature. We evolved in groups in which cooperation and altruism were essential. Thus, atheists can be as moral as anyone else. Science and belief in an external deity have become much more incompatible than they were a century ago. Such a concept of God is no longer intellectually nor morally necessary. Dostoyevsky's view that without God everything is permissible is not borne out by facts. We long to overcome our isolation, and are able to do so, at least for a while, by acts of wisdom and love, which keep our vanities in check. The result is a feeling of ecstasy. No source outside the human brain is necessary for this process.
The second criticism is related to the first. "God" is found inside ourselves, not outside ourselves. The outside world, for all we know, is a world of chaotic, impersonal quanta. The supposed alternative to evolution, creative design, is found in inner space, not in the cold, impersonal, yawning stretches of outer space. In this view, God can still very much be seen as something greater than ourselves, the true pearl within covered by the mud of illusion. Our vanities are the mud; remove them and you see, as it were, God Himself. He is the outer reality, too, of course--there aren't two realities, only one, but we are blinded to this truth by the fact that we are wearing lenses that make us see "through the glass darkly."
Without knowing this fully, Tolstoy acknowledges this view. The last sentence of the book, even more important than the famous first sentence, is the following;
Yet I will pray--but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put in it." (Page 817.)
Which is in my power to put in it--I take this to be a realization that it is the inner God that counts, not a mythological external one. Tolstoy is being wiser here than he was consciously aware. It is no accident that his book on spirituality is entitled, "The Kingdom of God is Within You."
It is fitting that this great, realistic novel about fascinating characters tossed about, sometimes wrecked, by convention, ends with that which transcends convention. The eighth section is not a tail, but the heart of the book. Tolstoy who fascinates us with his vivid characters, also fascinates us with wisdom He has much to teach us, still.
THE BALTIMORE ONLINE BOOK CLUB
We are interested in any comments you might have; please include them in the comment section below. We will respond to all (sensible) comments. And start reading! The book to be discussed next is Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Our group will meet tentatively on December 11, 2013. As usual, the meeting will be followed by a review of the book. It is our fervent hope that your comment will then come next.
Since Tolstoy's novel is one of the best ever written and so much has been written about it, I, the reviewer, (Thomas Dorsett), will only focus on a few aspects of the novel. (If you need to refresh your memory, please refer to the many plot summaries and criticisms available online.)
I will focus on three aspects only: the translation, the spirituality of one of the main characters, Levin, and the sexuality of Anna's husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.
THE TRANSLATION
Most of us read the newer translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, (Penguin Classics, 2000,) which won the Pen/Book of the month Club Translation Prize. The other translation I am familiar with is by Constance Garnett (Barnes & Noble 2003--Garnett translated the work in 1901); the newer translation is indeed better. I give an example: An old man was saying what some thought to be nonsense. He was admonished by being called "Soldier!" by Garnett and "Old Trooper!" by Pevear. I assume that "soldier" is a literal translation and might have some negative connotations in Russian when applied to an old man. "Old Trooper," though probably not a literal translation, fits the context perfectly. There are many such examples when the two translations are compared
There are some glaring errors in both editions. I will present one that really irked me. The Russian aristocracy in Tolstoy's time was multilingual; there are many English, German and, especially, French quotes throughout the text. Towards the beginning of the novel, Stepan Arkadyich, a ladies' man, quotes the following to the much less flirtatious Levin. (It is an excerpt from the libretto of Strauss's die Fledermaus.)
Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen
meine irdisch Begier;
Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen,
Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!
This is translated as a footnote in the Pevear translation as follows:
Heavenly it would be to conquer/My earthly lusts;/But though I've not succeeded,/I still have lots of pleasure.
What a terrible--and terribly dull--translation! The Garnett version is no better:
Heavenly it would be/If I could victorious be/o'er my lowly cravings;/ Yet though this/I've not achieved/ I have the greatest pleasure.
The humor is miserably lost in both translations. This is my translation, which not only sounds better but conveys much more precisely the meaning of the text:
Whenever I overcome earthly desire,
It is divine;
However, whenever I failed,
I still managed to have a good time!
Translating from the Russian into idiomatic English was, of course, of greater importance; the Pevear edition succeeds in this to a greater degree than the Garnett edition. Although there were obscurities in both, one is still able to enjoy the novel by reading either version. (All quotes from the text in this essay are from the Pevear edition.)
THE SEXUALITY OF ANNA'S HUSBAND
Tolstoy has been very deservedly praised for his objectivity. He lets events, greatly influenced by the social conventions of his time, speak for themselves; he doesn't comment upon them or judge. As in life, the characters of the novel are a mixture of faults and virtues; there are no villains, there are no heroes--with the possible exception of Levin, a very good man and Tolstoy's alter ego.
Anna is locked in a room, as it were, right from the beginning; the walls are society's conventions, which slowly close in on her until she is destroyed. The room is spacious enough at the beginning to keep her unaware of what is happening, until, at the end, she believes her only exit is death.
Her husband, locked in a room of his own, was unresponsive to her from the very beginning. The marriage became hell for them both. We will now examine Karenin's sexuality, a principal reason for the marriage's failure. Tolstoy, following the conventions of his time, does not deal with matters of sex overtly, but, being a profound psychologist, he knew their importance and revealed that importance in subtle ways. He never labels Karenin a closeted homosexual, but many hints are there.
There is no report of Karenin being interested in women before his marriage to Anna. His sexuality has apparently been sublimated and has been transformed into desire for success. He is very intelligent and becomes extremely successful in government service. His professional reputation is most important to him.
He is about twenty years older than Anna. He was staying as a guest at a relation of Anna's while Anna was present. This relation saw Karenin as a good catch and was determined to get them together. Nothing happened; there was no chemistry between them. So the relative resorted to spreading rumors that Karenin had taken advantage of Anna. To save his reputation, he marries her.
We must recall that Anna at this time was a very beautiful and sensuous woman. Karenin apparently felt no attraction to her. Anna soon meets Vronsky, as handsome and virile as she is beautiful and feminine. Anna, undoubtedly a virgin when she married, having had little contact with the opposite sex, realizes now for the first time in her life what she had been missing. Soon she becomes Vronsky's mistress.
Before this happens, she tries to make sense of her confusion. She realizes that Karenin is a good man and tries to transfer her newly aroused desires to him to keep the marriage intact. On one occasion, husband and wife are home together; he leaves her alone for hours, busy with work. Then Tolstoy, without any emphasis, relates the following:
Exactly at midnight, when Anna was still sitting at her desk finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the measured steps of slippered feet, and Alexei Alexandrovich, washed and combed, a book under his arm, came up to her. "It' time, it's time," he said with a special smile and went into the bedroom...She undressed and went up to the bedroom...the fire seemed extinguished in her or hidden somewhere far away. (Page 112.)
Exactly at midnight! The witching hour! Alexei had obviously scheduled sex for midnight, and arrived with the instrument of his principal concern still in his hand, a book. He arrives with measured steps; there is no passion, no spontaneity. No words of love. One gets the impression that he simply wants to have sex and Anna is merely the instrument that helps him satisfy his need.
Perhaps you think Karenin is just being shy? Tolstoy does not allow this interpretation. When the adultery is revealed, Karenin exhibits absolutely no sexual jealousy; he is no Leontes. He is concerned with his reputation only, and works out with Anna a plan: she can keep her lover as long as she never brings him home.
Perhaps you think that Karenin is simply asexual? Tolstoy reveals that there is much more to it than that. After Anna has left, he is increasingly in the company of the motherly, non-threatening, pseudo-pious Lydia Ivanovna. One evening while they are together, Tolstoy writes the following:
Of his female friends, and of the foremost of them, Countess Lydia Ivanovna, Alexei Alexandrovich did not think. All women, simply as women, were frightening and repulsive to him. (page 508).
He is obviously not attracted to women. Not only that, they are repulsive to him. Is he attracted to men? Later on, when Karenin plans to accept Anna's love-child as his own, he is suddenly filled with shame and remorse--but not jealousy. On page 520, Tolstoy writes the following words:
And he now experienced exactly the same sense of shame and remorse going over all the past with her and remembering the awkward words with which, after long hesitation, he had proposed to her.
"But in what am I to blame?" he said to himself. And the question always called up another question in him--whether they feel differently, love differently, marry differently, these other people, these Vronskys and Oblonskys...these gentlemen of the bed-chamber with their fat calves. And he pictured a whole line of these juicy, strong, undoubting people, who, against his will, had always and everywhere attracted his curious attention...
Thereupon, as is his wont, he quickly sublimates such thoughts with thoughts of "tranquility and loftiness."
He finds women as women repugnant. He is not sexually attracted to his beautiful wife, nor is he jealous when she deceives him. "Against his will," "always and everywhere" virile men have attracted his attention. Tolstoy, with a few sentences buried in a long book, hints at Karenin's sexual orientation, a clearer indication of which, in Tolstoy's day, was tabu.
Convention was the matchmaker which consigned Anna and Karenin to the fires of domestic hell. What would have happened if convention had allowed Anna to meet and fall in love with Vronsky before she was forced to marry Karenin? A happy ending, no doubt. The women's movement would have prevented Anna's misery; there is a good chance that the gay liberation movement would have prevented Karenin's. The objective Tolstoy doesn't blame society outright for Anna's and Karenin's fate, but the perceptive reader cannot do otherwise.
LEVIN'S SPIRITUAL QUEST
Tolstoy was a deeply spiritual man; his religious quest eventually became paramount, causing his literary career to suffer greatly. Levin, one of the main characters of the book, was also on a spiritual quest which, I think, mirrors Tolstoy's at the time he wrote the novel. It is significant that Anna's suicide occurs at the end of the seventh section of the book; a long eighth section follows, devoted to Levin's inner journey. This might strike readers as an anti-climax, but Tolstoy obviously viewed things differently. In the eighth section Tolstoy discusses the very essence of life; it is the most personal, autobiographical part of the novel. Without the spiritual resolution of the final section, Tolstoy would have viewed the novel as being very much unfinished.
Tolstoy (and Levin) lived at a time when, for intellectuals at least, religion was under siege. The militant atheist of our time, Richard Dawkins, had an equivalent in the late nineteenth century in the scientist, Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel once mocked traditional belief by stating God must be a gaseous vertebrate: gaseous because He is omnipresent, and a vertebrate because man is in His image. Just as in our times, literal belief is mocked while the underlying symbolism is ignored. Before Haeckel, such dismissals of religion were not widespread.
Levin could not accept a literal belief in Orthodox Christian dogma. Nor could Tolstoy. In a significant and wonderful episode Anna, Vronsky and another visit a talented, but obscure painter. He is criticized for depicting Jesus more like a man than a God. The artist responds to the accusation of unbelief as follows:
'Why so? It seems to me,' said Mikhailov, 'that for educated people the question (of literal belief) can no longer exist.' (Page 475.)
Levin, as well as Tolstoy, would have agreed. Before Levin marries Kitty, the church demands that he go to confession, something which Levin hasn't done in years. He confesses his unbelief to the priest, a decent man, who questions how he can deny God while witnessing every day the glories of His creation. Levin is convinced that there is an underlying truth to religion, behind all the falsities of dogma. He eventually finds out what this truth is.
He has an existential crisis that brings him close to suicide. He reads, like Tolstoy did, Schelling, Schopehauer and a host of other philosophers. He can find no resolution. The death of his brother and the birth of his child, both beautifully related in the novel, have torn him away from complacency. At the end--vintage Tolstoy--it is a peasant, one close to the earth, who enlightens him. During Levin's conversation with the peasant, the latter contrasts a man who is simply after money with one who does good for the sake of doing good, Levin at last has found the answer: living for the Good, for God, transcending the needs of the belly while not denying them, is the secret of life.
Levin asks, "It was that if the main proof of the Deity is His revelation of what is good, then why was this revelation limited to the Christian Church alone?" (Page 814.) He accepts all faiths and goes on to say, that although the belief in the higher good is shared by all religions, this good "is revealed to me by Christianity and can always be verified in my soul. And I don't have the right or possibility of resolving the question of other beliefs and their attitudes to the Deity.' Intellectual exercises in comparative religion are not for him; he has found his way back to the Church as a tolerant religious man.
I would like to present two twenty-first century criticisms of the intellectual framework of this view. (That Levin and Tolstoy found something that gave them inspiration and solace is indeed something I fully admire. I also believe that these attitudes can be obtained today, but by different means, if we are not to sacrifice our intellect in the process.) First, is is not necessary today to believe in a supernatural source of the good. Altruism exists in nature, especially in human nature. We evolved in groups in which cooperation and altruism were essential. Thus, atheists can be as moral as anyone else. Science and belief in an external deity have become much more incompatible than they were a century ago. Such a concept of God is no longer intellectually nor morally necessary. Dostoyevsky's view that without God everything is permissible is not borne out by facts. We long to overcome our isolation, and are able to do so, at least for a while, by acts of wisdom and love, which keep our vanities in check. The result is a feeling of ecstasy. No source outside the human brain is necessary for this process.
The second criticism is related to the first. "God" is found inside ourselves, not outside ourselves. The outside world, for all we know, is a world of chaotic, impersonal quanta. The supposed alternative to evolution, creative design, is found in inner space, not in the cold, impersonal, yawning stretches of outer space. In this view, God can still very much be seen as something greater than ourselves, the true pearl within covered by the mud of illusion. Our vanities are the mud; remove them and you see, as it were, God Himself. He is the outer reality, too, of course--there aren't two realities, only one, but we are blinded to this truth by the fact that we are wearing lenses that make us see "through the glass darkly."
Without knowing this fully, Tolstoy acknowledges this view. The last sentence of the book, even more important than the famous first sentence, is the following;
Yet I will pray--but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put in it." (Page 817.)
Which is in my power to put in it--I take this to be a realization that it is the inner God that counts, not a mythological external one. Tolstoy is being wiser here than he was consciously aware. It is no accident that his book on spirituality is entitled, "The Kingdom of God is Within You."
It is fitting that this great, realistic novel about fascinating characters tossed about, sometimes wrecked, by convention, ends with that which transcends convention. The eighth section is not a tail, but the heart of the book. Tolstoy who fascinates us with his vivid characters, also fascinates us with wisdom He has much to teach us, still.
THE BALTIMORE ONLINE BOOK CLUB
We are interested in any comments you might have; please include them in the comment section below. We will respond to all (sensible) comments. And start reading! The book to be discussed next is Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Our group will meet tentatively on December 11, 2013. As usual, the meeting will be followed by a review of the book. It is our fervent hope that your comment will then come next.
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