Why tolstoy wrote anna karenina

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See our other FREE newsletters. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy. Select free newsletters: The Weekender. Today's Highlights. Christian Science Perspective. Courtesy of Pegasus Books. What are you reading? By Terry W. Hartle Correspondent. You've read of free articles. Subscribe to continue. Read the original article. Looking at George R. File Representational image. A timeless narrative Anna Karenina has generated four ballets, six stage plays, ten operas and 16 films.

Bookmark Print Email. You have successfully sent the article. Mail This Article Your form could not be submitted. Enter the letters from image :. This browser settings will not support to add bookmarks programmatically. Please select subscription. Select payment method. Please select payment method. Confirm your subscription Subscription period:. Payment method:. Debit card. His breakthrough the following March came when by chance he started leafing through the collected works of Alexander Pushkin.

Suddenly, for reasons unclear, Tolstoy was jolted into action and sketched the entire plot of Anna Karenina in short order. Two weeks turned into four years, as it happens. Karenina for me!

Tolstoy also absorbed himself into his school for peasant children, further developing his alphabet primer, and often wondered if Anna Karenina was a useless indulgence in comparison with his work on education. This method has its limitations.

To do so would require a much deeper engagement with the French novel of adultery, to which Anna Karenina was a direct response. In ultimately refusing to make Anna a caricature of cruelty or Karenin a totally pure and pitiful soul, Tolstoy undid the conventions of the genre, preferring to explore the potential for anyone to be overtaken by desire. To read Anna Karenina this way requires not seeing Tolstoy as simply a sui generis artist who stumbled around his estate collecting anecdotes.

Like all writers, Tolstoy read voraciously and borrowed extensively; his art was a response to other art as much as it was to daily life. You are using an outdated browser.