Anna Karenina Readalong, 2023

I’m behind again, trying to catch up! I like the idea in ch. 26 of ‘the reception rooms’ of people’s minds, and how Sviyazsky is resistant to anyone trying to get any further.

10/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 29

•	Carrying out his plan is hard, but Levin keeps trying. He explains to everyone that he plans to give them leases for his land with new conditions that allow them a share of the profits of their specific work. So, a farmer who works the orchard would get a share of apple profits, or Ivan the Cowherd would get part of milk sales. This portion of the profits would presumably be enough incentive for them all to work more efficiently, and to adopt Levin's improvements to increase yields.

•	The chief difficulty is that the peasants are already so busy with their current season—and so worried about getting cheated out of profits—that they don't listen to what Levin has to say.

•	Levin is so focused on his project that it takes up practically his entire summer.

•	He reads a lot: theory, socialism, politics, and so on. The more he tries to grapple with John Stuart Mill, the less he feels convinced that European rules apply to specifically Russian social conditions.

•	Levin tries to understand how to make his land more profitable. He believes that Russia has great land and great laborers, and he wants to understand how to be more productive.

•	To this aim, he reads widely and plans to go abroad to explore the question in greater depth.

•	Levin believes that the chief problem is the ingrained habits and stubbornness of the laboring class. He seeks to prove this theoretically in his book and practically on his farm.

09/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 28

•	The conversation of the last chapter worries Levin. He realizes that the dissatisfaction he's been feeling with farming isn't just about him—it's something Russian farmers all over the country are feeling.
•	Levin has a long conversation with Sviyazhsky, in which he gets confused by what seems to be a series of contradictions.
•	Sviyazhsky tells Levin he doesn't know why Levin's so surprised at the peasants' resistance to new techniques and methods. After all, they are at such a low level of financial and moral development that anything foreign to them must seem scary.
•	
•	Levin wants to know how they can educate the peasantry.
&bull;	Schools, says Sviyazhsky. Schools may not make things better, they may in fact make the lives of the peasants worse. But at least schools will give the peasants <span class="italic">different</span> needs from the ones they have now.
&bull;	Levin doesn't understand this point. How does it make any sense that new needs would be better than what they have now? Trying to educate the peasantry won't make them less irrational and superstitious, because the real cause of that irrationality is <span class="italic">poverty</span>. That's the root thing that must be eradicated first before people's lives can be made better.
&bull;	Sviyazhsky replies pretty lamely that schools are compulsory all over Europe, so, implicitly, education should be done in Russia as well. He's afraid of Levin's arguments, and so he distracts him by changing the topic, laughing at an anecdote Levin has told to illustrate his point.
&bull;	Levin realizes that Sviyazhsky has no interest in putting into practice any of the rationalist ideas he's thought up. All Sviyazhsky cares about is the process of reasoning, and he hates getting into conversational dead ends such as when Levin cornered him on education.
&bull;	Sviyazhsky's thoughts on peasants and the way he treats them don't match up at all. After all, Sviyazhsky is great pals with a guy who believes that freeing the serfs is the worst thing that's ever happened to Russia.
&bull;	Levin spends the night at Sviyazhsky's but can't sleep. He continues thinking about all the conversations he has had that day, starting with the rich peasant. He decides that farming works with these improvements <span class="italic">only when the worker acts according to his habits</span>. You've got to give the workers themselves an interest in what comes out of the farm. Levin's proposing an incentive system for agriculture.
&bull;	
&bull;	At the end of much deliberation, Levin decides to return home early the next morning and propose a new scheme to the peasants.
&bull;	He wants to revolutionize his entire system of farming.

I thought this was an interesting debate. I'm inclined to think that Levin isn't the best manager either. He's too lenient. That fellow Sviyazhsky seems like a slippery character. All talk but no follow through.

08/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 27

•	This chapter is largely taken up with the conversation between Sviyazhsky, Levin, the older landowner, and Mikhail Petrovich, the second landowner.

•	The older landowner comments that he lives at home, doesn't buy anything, and doesn't rent anything. He thinks that the peasants are running wild into drunkenness because everything is individually owned. The old feudal system, in which village ploughing and farming was for the good of the group (under the authority of the nobility) is gone. When his peasants run wild and he turns them in to the new-fangled justice of the peace, they just get acquitted. It's all seems useless. (He's teasing Sviyazhsky, and Sviyazhsky takes the joke.)
•	
•	Mikhail Petrovich says, that some of the peasants are shameless, but for the most part, he's got a rational system going: he loans them enough money to pay the first third of their taxes, and gets them to work for him in exchange, sowing oats, making hay, and so on.

•	Levin's disappointed with this patriarchal method, and asks the old landowner how he gets his work done.

•	The landowner replies that everything has gone to the dogs since the emancipation of the serfs (in 1861, under Czar Alexander II). Before then, landowners were able to carry on their own improvements to farming tools and methods. Now, without that authority over the peasants, everything is sinking into a primitive condition. Without a feudal relationship, you can't make the hired help do anything right.

&bull;	Levin's not so interested in the landowner's proposal for how to liberate himself from this decline in farming (and the novel doesn't go into detail on that point) but he <span class="italic">definitely</span> agrees that the quality of farming is dying down.

&bull;	Sviyazhsky finally gets serious, saying that the quality of farming when the serfs were around was actually low because they didn't have machinery or good accounting systems. Now that there are banks and, more money can be invested into farming.

&bull;	Levin disagrees adamantly. He's spent tons of money improving farming and has gotten nowhere. The new livestock were lost, his new tools have been lost. What's more, says Levin, all wealthy farmers who conduct their business on rational principles operates on a loss.
&bull;	
&bull;	Sviyazhsky replies that his (Levin's) farm might not be profitable, but that isn't necessarily due to agricultural methods. It could just be because Levin is a bad manager.

&bull;	Sviyazhsky blocks Levin from probing his mind too deeply, and heads out of the room before he gets caught up too much in the discussion.

&bull;	Levin and the old landowner get into a discussion about the appropriate relationship with peasants. Levin wants to know why true partnership between the nobility and peasantry is impossible. The landowner replies that such a thing would be impossible with the Russian <span class="italic">muzhik</span>, who needs the stick of authority to make him do anything.

&bull;	Sviyazhsky returns, having smoked a cigarette, and says, serfdom is a barbaric institution. What we need now are new forms of community that have been defined and accepted in Europe.

&bull;	Levin wonders why there can't be a uniquely Russian form. What if these newly invented European ways don't suit the Russian context? This brings the argument to a standstill, because Sviyazhsky can't answer, and starts fumbling with terms he doesn't explain. The two landowners take their leave, and Sviyazhsky uses this as a pretext to end his discussion with Levin.

07/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 26

•	Sviyazhsky is five years older than Levin and has been married for a long time. Part of Levin's reason for not visiting sooner is that Sviyazhsky's wife has a sister whom Sviyazhsky and his wife would like Levin to marry.
•	On one hand, Levin has no interest in this girl. But on the other hand, he thinks it might be good to test out his feelings for her.

•	In any case, the Sviyazhsky family life is pleasant and amiable.

•	For Levin, Sviyazhsky is an interesting person because he has a number of opinions that seem to contradict the way he lives his life.

•	For example, at the same time that he looks down on the peasants, his interactions with them are heartfelt, sincere, and respectful. Levin considers Sviyazhsky to be a living enigma.

•	Levin also looks forward to seeing some neighboring landowners and discussing farming with them.

•	The day's shooting is not very good.

•	During tea, Levin is sitting with his hostess and her sister. Levin is uncomfortable and distracted because the sister is wearing a revealing dress.

•	Levin blushes and finally escapes to the other side of the room where Sviyazhsky is talking with two other landowners.

The solution is to wander off somewhere else and have a manly conversation about cows, or serfs, or some such.

I know! The Dilemma of The Trapezoidal Neckline 😅

To look or not to look? Where to look?!
That is the question.

Finding myself highly amused by Levin's desperate attempts not to look at a provoking décolletage today. That's very Levin!

Every time I start to like Levin, he says something that puts me off him again.

I kind of like Levin! I like how he gets swept up in things in the heat of the moment. I agree that he's being a pillock where Kitty is concerned though.

Thanks for the farming input @Sadik!

06/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 25

•	Since there's no other form of transportation to the Surovsky District (where his friend Sviyazhsky lives), Levin drives himself.
•	

He stops halfway at the home of a rich peasant to feed his horses.
•
The old man talks easily to Levin, has a wonderfully prosperous farm, and is not at all against innovation.
•
The old man has carefully expanded his farm through hard work. He began by leasing land that he eventually purchased. He then used the profits from farming his first plot of land to lease a second and so on. He has been plowing his hundred acres alongside his own sons, nephews, and daughters-in-law. The farm holds together because it is the group effort of a strong family. Each member of the family does his or her own work, and are willing to try their own innovations because it's all in the name of advancing the family's profits.

•	The old man's household is happy and impresses Levin.

FFS, Levin is a total pillock, isn't he. I can just imagine him going to the gym for 5 minutes then mansplaining how to use the kit to some woman who's been working out for the last X years. I'm really hoping that Kitty won't marry him now, surely she can do better than either Vronsky or Levin - there must be other men out there?

(For the record, I've used an old school horse drawn tedder, bits fall off all the sodding time. Yes much faster than turning by hand, if you have the skills to coddle it into good behaviour. Strangely, if you're a peasant whose landlord doesn't believe in education, that's perhaps less likely. )

I hadn’t picked up as much as I should have that Anna was about to go double in her soul. It’s a great phrase and can apply to so many scenarios in life where there is no clear cut and easy answer. I keep now thinking of that.

And poor Anna, Vronsky is so not equipped for dealing with a pregnant mistress who already has a child by another man. Something I’ve seen in my friends - a man enjoying an affair, it’s all exciting and he probably believes he’s up for this and saving the woman from her unhappy life. He’s a hero and saviour in his mind. And then the reality hits - pregnant woman who isn’t feeling on top form, the custody battle over the child, disposable income no long stretching to doing fun things as now there are more expenses ………. It’s a show motion car crash.

05/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 24

•	We now return to Levin in the country. After his transformative experience out on the haystack, Levin now feels completely disappointed with farming. That moment when he wanted to become a peasant has left him feeling, perversely, even more at odds with the peasants who are working for him: he's disgusted by their resistance to his reforms.
•	

He has profitable innovations he wants to implement, but the laborers want to work as easily as possible, with lots of breaks and without having to think too hard. They don't want to alter the way they've been farming.
•
Making everything worse is the presence of Kitty Shcherbatsky less than twenty miles away. Still, he refuses to go and see her. He doesn't want to be Kitty's fallback plan—it would be terrible for her to accept him as her husband just because Vronsky didn't want her.

•	Dolly tries to engineer a meeting between the two by sending over a request to Levin for a sidesaddle that she knows he has. He sends the saddle over without going himself, and he's furious with Dolly for trying to arrange a meeting between Kitty and himself when he's sure that Kitty doesn't want to see him.
•	

To take his mind off his troubles, Levin decides to visit his friend Sviyazhsky. He has excellent snipe marshes, and Levin had long ago promised to go shooting with him.

04/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 23

•	On Monday, Karenin has a Commission meeting during which he successfully reaches his objectives (which are not elaborated). He's successful in convincing everyone of his point of view on National Minorities; the next day no one talks about anything else. What's even better, he manages to triumph over that rival of his we met at Princess Betsy's croquet party, Stremov.
•	On Tuesday, Karenin is in his study, completely absorbed in work with his secretary. He forgets that today is the day he told Anna to return home.

•	He ignores her for a while, even after a servant tells him of her arrival.

•	Finally, she goes in to see him. He blushes, which is not something he does frequently. He tries to say something, but keeps stopping. In spite of herself, Anna feels sorry for him.
•	
•	Anna takes the lead in the conversation. She really wants her position to be clarified. She doesn't see how they can go on living as husband and wife under the circumstances.
•	Karenin's retort is that she doesn't have to perform her wifely obligations (read: sleep with her husband), but that he doesn't ever want to see Vronsky in the house, and that he doesn't want either society or the servants to have just cause to reproach her.

Good point about the middle-aged (old!) women being depicted as even less attractive than the middle-aged (old!) men.

And I agree, Vronsky's moral code seems mostly to be about reinforcing his own image of himself. Duels -- he's up for them!

He's not the kind of man you can turn to in a crisis, which is what poor Anna is discovering.

StColumbo said, Whats interesting from Betsy and her salon is that Anna and Vronsky are not particularly unique in carrying out an affair and of course we are given no insight into what the other affairs are like but it all seems to be broadly ok at some level.

That's interesting, and the fact that the book started out with an extramarital affair (Stepan Oblonsky cheating on Dolly) is also worth remembering. I think we see a spectrum of views about marriage in this novel: at one end of the spectrum is Levin, very idealistic; and at the other end are Betsy and the members of her salon. Anna and her husband (and maybe also Dolly and her husband?) are stuck somewhere in the middle, trying to negotiate the competing demands of familial obligation and desire.

In Ch 15 it's said of Anna that 'everything was beginning to go double in her soul, as an object sometimes goes double in tired eyes.' Such a great metaphor. And Tolstoy comes back to it in the next chapter: 'Again she felt that things had begun to go double in her soul.'

This is a bit random as an anecdote, but I read AK a long time ago (I read a lot of long 19th c. novels in my late teens and early twenties, and they didn't really stay with me for the most part). And literally the only bit I remembered about this novel was that Anna's husband, when he found out she'd been unfaithful, spoke to her using the French 'vous' form instead of the formal Russian 'you', because the formal Russian you was too formal. I don't know why this weird detail stuck in my head. I suspect it was because I was learning French at the time, and the French 'vous' already seemed very formal to me, so it was strange for me to imagine an even more formal 'you'! Anyway, I started to wonder whether I had hallucinated this detail about the novel, but no, there it was in Ch 14! It's Alexei A writing his 'what I expect of you' letter to Anna. Very gratifying, ha. Although I noticed that Vronsky is said at one point to say 'vous' to Anna as well.

Just geeking out here a little over forms of 'you' address in different languages 😁

I keep on reading the wrong chapters!

03/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 22

•	Vronsky uses Yashvin's hired carriage so that he's not recognized as he heads over to his date with Anna.
•	He's quite cheerful and happy to be meeting the woman he loves.
•	When he gets to the gardens, he recognizes Anna immediately although she is veiled.
•	Anna tells him that her husband now knows everything.
•	Vronsky becomes stern and proud because he believes Karenin will challenge him to a duel. Anna misinterprets his expression, believing instead that he feels offended for some reason.
•	
•	They don't understand each other. Anna feels betrayed and thinks that her situation must continue as before, and Vronsky feels that there's no way Anna can continue being Karenin's wife.
•	Anna then brings up the question of Seryozha.
•	Both of them feel miserable and helpless, particularly Vronsky, who feels like everything is his fault.

02/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 21

•	Petritsky comes in to their shared cottage, and tells Vronsky that their colonel is expecting him.
•	Vronsky asks why music is playing.
•	Petritsky tells him that Serpukhovskoy has arrived (that's the childhood friend of his who has just gotten two promotions and a decoration). Having decided to sacrifice his ambition for his love for Anna, Vronsky no longer feels any sort of jealousy. In fact, he's looking forward to catching up with his old friend.
&bull;	Debauchery ensues at the party for Serpukhovskoy. Particularly notable is a keg&mdash;yes, a <span class="italic">keg</span>&mdash;of vodka.
&bull;	
&bull;	Vronsky and Serpukhovskoy have a conversation that turns to ambition versus women. Serpukhovskoy argues that Russia needs men like Vronsky (i.e., men of independent means who are harder to buy off, as opposed to agitators like the communists) and that women are the primary obstacles to men advancing in their career. Marriage, Serpukhovskoy argues, is the only answer.
&bull;	According to Vronsky, Serpukhovskoy has simply never been in love.
&bull;	Serpukhovskoy says that's possible, but tells Vronsky to remember that women are more materialistic than men, and that men tend to view love as something vast and abstract.
&bull;	A footman comes up with Betsy's note. As soon as he reads it, Vronsky promptly says he has a headache and must go home.

01/04/23

Part 3, Chapter 20

•	Vronsky's life is both contented and simple because he follows his own, unquestionable set of rules, which govern all the possibilities in his narrow range of experience. This includes extramarital relationships: he knows all about how to treat a woman he's sleeping with on the down low (i.e., treat her with all respect; her husband's just an interfering tick; if the husband challenges Vronsky to a duel, he'll be available to answer it).
•	Lately, however, his relationship with Anna has been taking new directions outside of his comfort zone, and he doesn't know what do anymore. For instance, he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that Anna is pregnant. This is a new situation for him.
•	
•	He decides that he can't take her away if he continues serving in the military.
•	This line of thought leads him to think about his guiding passion: his own ambition.
•	He made a mistake early in his career in trying too hard to display his independence.
•	For a time, his affair with Anna distracted him from his ambition.
•	Last week, however, his childhood playmate and colleague of the same age, same wealth, same education and same rank, Serpukhovskoy, was promoted twice and awarded important distinctions unusual for an officer of his youth.
•	Vronsky decides that it actually doesn't matter, because he has something more important: Anna's love. With her love, he decides, he has put his emotional affairs in order: Anna's like that ten thousand rubles he borrowed from that moneylender in the previous chapter.
•	He now feels serene and resolute because he has put things in order.

I think Stremov still fares better than his middle-aged female counterparts. The description of his looks seems to paint him as suave and debonair, where there is no saving grace at all for women past their twenties. I'm still cross at Tolstoy's description of a female character's squat figure and stumpy legs at the spa (I can't remember her name at the moment. The religious woman who was an invalid).

Chapter twenty outlines Vronsky's shifting moral code. He sounds flakey to say the least, which is what we were surmising since the start of their affair.

A minor point, but I had to laugh when the character repeatedly referred to as 'old Stremov' and 'an old man' turns out to be ... drumroll ... 50!

I know we've seen before that Tolstoy has a habit of describing middle-aged women as old. At least we're getting a bit of gender equity I guess? 😀