In this blog post, I will examine the hidden meanings of ‘Anna Karenina’ by reinterpreting it—not as a simple love story, but through the lens of Levin’s reflections on death and the questions of life and death.
There is a book titled ‘The Ideal Library on a Desert Island’, which asks readers to name the three books they would take with them if stranded on a desert island. In that book, several authors, including Orhan Pamuk, cited Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’. Novelist Kim Young-ha once appeared on a television program and, when asked which book he would choose if he had to take just one to a deserted island, named ‘Anna Karenina’.
The reasons he gave were, first, that the book is quite lengthy, making it suitable for passing the time on a deserted island; second, that it remains enjoyable even after repeated readings; and third, that the story is straightforward. However, the real reason he cited was the novel’s delicate psychological portrayal. Given the limitations of television as a medium, he likely used the concise phrase “subtle psychological portrayal,” but if you actually read the novel while focusing on the psychological depictions of its characters, you can greatly develop your ability to read people’s minds.
You might learn to see through outward hypocrisy, gain a fresh understanding of what jealousy truly feels like, or even experience a vicarious romance by empathizing with the psychology of a man and woman in love. What’s even more surprising is that a male author was able to understand a woman’s heart so well.
Not only that, but through this novel, readers can reflect deeply on marital fidelity, family, marriage, human passion, and carnal desire; they can read it by contrasting rural life, closely tied to the land, with urban life; and they can focus on the lives of Russians at that time.
Nevertheless, many readers have likely focused their attention on the love and life of the heroine, Anna Karenina. In fact, all the films based on this novel center their narratives on the love of “Anna Karenina,” as the title suggests. Actresses who have portrayed the heroine in this work—including Greta Garbo (1927, 1935), Vivien Leigh (1948), Sophie Marceau (1997), and Keira Knightley (2012)—were each chosen to bring their own unique perspective to the character of Anna.
If you have the chance, it’s fun to read the book first and then watch the films to compare which actress best embodies the Anna of the novel. Furthermore, Anna’s “love for love’s sake” can be compared to the reckless love in Abbé Prévost’s ‘Manon Lescaut’, the pure yet tragic love in Goethe’s ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ and Balzac’s ‘The Lily of the Valley’, the mad love in Racine’s ‘Phèdre’ and Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, the wholesome and happy love in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, the calculated love in Stendhal’s ‘The Red and the Black’, and the dangerous love in Dumas fils’s ‘La Traviata’ and Émile Zola’s ‘Thérèse Raquin’—you’ll find yet another layer of enjoyment.
But now I’d like to examine this book on a slightly grander scale: the scale of life and death. ‘Anna Karenina’ is a romance novel, but it is also a novel about death—or, to be more precise, a novel that reflects on death.
Living animals instinctively fear death. Since humans are animals, they are no exception. However, there is one aspect that distinguishes humans from other animals. While animals instinctively fear death, they often accept it calmly when it is actually imminent. This is evident even from scenes commonly seen in documentaries. Humans, on the other hand, become frantic in the face of death.
No matter how long one lives, or how natural one’s death may be, it is rare to find someone who remains detached in the face of death. We describe such people as having attained enlightenment or as having transcended life and death. Viewed another way, it might be said that, unlike humans, other animals naturally reach a state of enlightenment.
To put it more politely, the fact that humans are anxious in the face of death means they are conscious of it. In that sense, humans can be said to be the only animals that are conscious of death. While other animals face death instinctively, only humans are conscious of it, attempting to eliminate or tame it, imagining the world beyond death, and dreaming of eternal immortality.
While the way people dream of death varies from person to person and culture to culture, these dreams ultimately become the source of imagination and religion. Conversely, a life lived believing that this finite reality is all there is—having forgotten even the thought that one might die someday—might be considered an animalistic existence. Humanity, to some extent, begins with an awareness of death.
This tragic love story is interwoven with death at every turn. At the train station where Anna and Vronsky first meet, a railroad worker is struck and killed by a train, and Anna eventually throws herself in front of a train to commit suicide. Vronsky attempts suicide twice, and the death of Levin’s older brother Nikolai has a profound impact on Levin. Among them all, the character who confronts death most directly is Levin.
In my view, the two main characters of ‘Anna Karenina’ are Anna and Levin. If I had to choose one of them, I would choose Levin without hesitation. Considering that scholars of Tolstoy’s biography have viewed Levin as the author’s alter ego, it seems only natural that the author’s persona and worldview are projected onto Levin, giving him a prominent position in the novel.
The occasion that first led Levin—the most down-to-earth and ordinary of the characters—to engage in deep reflection on death was the death of his brother Nikolai. He discovers that he is utterly ignorant about death. Although he had never considered himself wise, he prided himself on having thought more about death than his wife had, and he had read many writings on the subject by great minds. Yet he feels that he knows not even one-hundredth as much about what death actually is as his wife does. He is shocked to see her, in the presence of a dying person, show no fear whatsoever and immediately know exactly what to do. His anguish stemmed from the realization that, while he might be able to talk about death in various ways, he actually knew almost nothing about it.
This realization of his own ignorance regarding death reveals that his gaze is already directed toward something beyond reality, beyond the conditions of ordinary life. He has a similar experience while anxiously awaiting and watching the birth of his son.
The only thing he was clearly aware of was that what was happening now was similar to his brother Nikolai’s death a year ago. But back then it was sorrow, and now it was joy. Yet both that sorrow and that joy were alike in that they existed beyond the conditions of ordinary life. They were experiences like holes pierced through the fabric of everyday life, through which something sublime seemed to pass by from time to time. When we contemplate that sublime thing, our soul is elevated to heights we had not previously dared to imagine, while reason, unable to keep up, lags far behind.
This depiction, which links the birth of new life to death, is deeply striking. Thanks to such a portrayal, birth and death do not stand in opposition but are connected as one. Thus, it is only natural that Levin, upon seeing his newborn son, feels anxiety and fear before joy or love. In the presence of this new life, he has already glimpsed the shadow of suffering and death.
Feeling compassion before joy and love in the presence of a newborn son is a major characteristic of Tolstoy’s literature and a quintessentially Russian trait. It is precisely that compassion that becomes the bond connecting people, even more so than love.
However, compassion alone is not enough. Levin suffers because he does not understand the nature of his own compassion. Because he has not yet mastered a new way of seeing the world or a new way of living, he feels only a bone-deep awareness of his own ignorance and powerlessness. The reason he has become so ignorant is that he abandoned the faith of his childhood and began to view the world through reason and conviction. While that conviction may satisfy his intellectual curiosity, it is powerless in the face of death. The reason he is suffering now is that he is still viewing the world through that very conviction.
While witnessing the death of his beloved older brother up close, Levin examined the question of life and death for the first time through the so-called “new convictions” that had held him captive from the age of twenty until now, at thirty-four. Suddenly, he became as afraid of life as he was of death. He realized he knew absolutely nothing about where life comes from, what its purpose is—or, indeed, what life itself actually is. Up until then, the beliefs of his childhood had been replaced by words such as “organism,” “the destruction of organisms,” “the permanence of matter,” “the law of conservation of energy,” and “evolution.” Such words and concepts were excellent for achieving intellectual goals, but they were of no use whatsoever to “life” itself. As he looked at life and death through the lens of his own beliefs, he realized his complete ignorance and felt fear. He felt as if he were a person who, having taken off his warm clothes and donned only a thin muslin garment, was facing sub-zero temperatures for the first time in his life. He sensed—not with his reason, but with his entire being—that he was naked and would die a miserable death. Although outwardly he was living a life no different from before, Levin had never for a single moment been free from this terror of ignorance.
A very important passage appears in the quote above: “He knew absolutely nothing—where life came from, what its purpose was, or indeed, what life itself actually was.” Ignorance of death means ignorance of the very life one is currently living. The moment he realizes this, he is gripped not by a fear of “death” but by a fear of “ignorance.”
To illustrate the extent of that fear: Levin—a husband loved by his wife, a happy father, and a man in perfect health—found himself hovering on the brink of suicide on several occasions. The reason is simple: “He thought that if he could not know who he was or why he existed here, there was no point in living, and since there was no way to know, he believed he could not go on living.” He believed that if life—and this world—were composed of meaningless lies and evil, then the only way to avoid that evil and not depend on it was death.
However, he eventually breaks free from that fear of ignorance. It happens after hearing a simple remark from a farmer. When the farmer mentions that a man named Plato would be unable to lease his land because he couldn’t turn a profit, Levin asks the farmer why. The farmer replied that it was because that man only gave to the farmers, and then added, “Sir, there are different kinds of people in this world. There are those like Kirilov who live solely to line their own pockets. But Old Pokachini (Platon) is a good man. He lives for his soul. He hasn’t forgotten God. (…) He follows the truth and God’s will.”
Hearing this, Levin becomes so overcome with emotion that he can hardly breathe. He feels as if thoughts—indescribable yet profoundly important—that had been locked within his soul suddenly burst forth, and he is nearly blinded by their radiance. He thinks to himself, “Not to live for oneself, but to live for God? To live for God, whom we cannot define? Where on earth is such an absurd notion to be found? How foolish, vague, and unclear those words are! Yet I understood him, and I understood the meaning of those words exactly as he did. I understood them more completely and certainly than anything else I had ever understood in my life. I had never doubted it in my life, nor could I have doubted it.”
He awoke from ignorance and attained “knowledge.” However, that “knowledge” was not acquired through the mind or reason. It was, quite literally, like a sudden miracle—his entire being had internalized and accepted it. Knowledge acquired through the mind belongs solely to the person who acquired it. But that miracle “can happen to anyone—whether a sage or a fool, a child or an old man, a farmer or a landowner, an uneducated person or an intellectual, a beggar or an emperor.” It is a common truth accepted by the entire world—one that remains unchanged regardless of how much the world may change, whether in the past or present—yet it is not self-evident. It is a mysterious experience of transcendence. Although it is an unchanging truth shared by all humanity, the miracle of realizing it occurs purely within the individual. That miracle cannot be shared with others. Therefore, he resists the temptation to tell Kitty about it, for it is something that cannot be put into words.
It is only after acquiring this knowledge that he truly comes to love his son. He did not come to love his son out of the joy of having him, but through fear and compassion; it was only after enduring that fear in the midst of a raging storm that he finally understood how much he loved the child. And that fear and compassion are synonymous with the awareness of death. Thus, in this novel, the awareness of death becomes the womb from which love for humanity is born.
Did Levin’s life change after he gained that “knowledge,” that “realization”? No. Far from any earth-shattering transformation, not even the slightest change occurred. He kept thinking, “These new feelings didn’t change me, as I had dreamed they would, nor did they suddenly make me happy or fill me with light. They’re just like the feelings I had when I was with my child. There’s nothing surprising about either of them. Whether it’s faith or not—I’m not quite sure what it is—this feeling has found its way to me through my anguish, without my even realizing it, and has taken firm root in my soul. I’ll still get angry at Ivan the coachman, and I’ll engage in futile arguments, mindlessly spouting my opinions. A wall will still exist between the most sublime part of my soul and other people—even my wife. Out of groundless fear, I’ll blame my wife and then regret it. I’ll keep praying even though, rationally speaking, I don’t know why I’m praying. But now, my life—my entire life—no matter what happens to me, every moment will no longer be as meaningless as it once was. I now have the power to breathe goodness into my life, and my life will take on the crystal-clear meaning of being that very goodness.”
On the surface, nothing has changed. I’ll still argue with my beloved wife just as I did in the early days of our marriage, and I won’t suddenly transform into a saint with a benevolent smile. But there is a truly significant change. Life has gained meaning. That meaning does not come from any conscious realization or dramatic action. Rather, it is that life has become meaningful within the same ordinary daily routine as before. This is because “goodness” has been etched into that life.
Levin’s life did not end with that realization. His life continues. There is no conclusion to a life that has found meaning through the awareness of death. Life is always accompanied by death, and death is always accompanied by life. Therefore, every single moment of living—if that moment is an ending, then it is an ending. No, rather than an ending, that is the very answer. Why? Because every single moment of life is meaningful and precious.
What do you think? Why not immerse ourselves once more in ‘Anna Karenina’ to give our own lives that kind of meaning? Shouldn’t we take a moment to look inward and ask ourselves if we’re too captivated by superficial glamour? And shouldn’t we, like Levin—a character who appears utterly ordinary on the surface and seems to undergo no change—fight fiercely within ourselves? To acquire our own unwavering resolve that won’t falter under any circumstances!
And as we read this novel, shouldn’t we ask ourselves: Why am I living? What is the meaning of my life? Where did we come from? What lies beyond death? Reflecting on life before and after death does not cause our lives to wither; rather, it leads us to cherish our lives even more.
So, like Levin, do not be disappointed that the word that sustains that precious life is so simple. “Goodness.” What a naive and simple word it is. But think about it. While we may occasionally resolve to act kindly, how difficult is it for that to become our guiding principle—our supreme goal—or even to permeate our entire way of thinking and our entire life?
Then again, perhaps all this talk is unnecessary. It might be enough simply to read ‘Anna Karenina’ and become completely absorbed in it. One literary critic even remarked that ‘Anna Karenina’ itself is life. Just as talking endlessly about life doesn’t necessarily help us understand it better, experiencing and living out ‘Anna Karenina’ fully may be more important than merely discussing it.
‘Anna Karenina’ is a novel that Tolstoy began writing in 1873 and serialized in the magazine ‘The Messenger’ from 1873 to 1877. It was published as a standalone book in 1878. When he first conceived the novel, his original idea was titled “Two Marriages, Two Couples.” Even though he had already earned the status of a master with his epic ‘War and Peace’, Tolstoy openly referred to this work as his very first novel. This was because he did not want to place ‘War and Peace’ within the existing category of novels.
‘Anna Karenina’ attracted immense public interest from the very start of its serialization in the magazine. Its popularity can be gauged by the fact that some aristocrats even sent their maids to Tolstoy to ask about the content of the next installment before the magazine issue was even published.
As soon as ‘Anna Karenina’ was published, it was translated into French and English, causing a sensation throughout Europe. Even the discerning French critics praised it as the world’s greatest novel. While countless masterpieces by great authors have left their mark on the history of world literature, it is rare to find a work that has captured the attention of so many people and received such unanimous acclaim. One critic even went so far as to say that this work does not merely depict art or life, but is “life itself”—the life of a human being with a beating heart, a life that thrills, not an external life but an inner one, the life of a mysterious soul.
‘Anna Karenina’ has been staged nearly ten times on theater stages around the world and adapted into fourteen feature films. In addition, it has been adapted countless times into television dramas, operas, and ballets, and has consistently enjoyed unwavering popularity.
Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, as the fourth son of a distinguished count. He lost his mother at the age of eight and his father at fifteen, and was raised by relatives living in Kazan. While studying law at Kazan University, he dropped out in 1847 under the pretext of “health and family issues,” though in reality he had become disillusioned with university education.
After leading a dissolute life in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Tolstoy enlisted in the army in 1852. During his military service, he published his first novel, ‘Childhood’ (1852), which received high praise from Nekrasov. He went on to write ‘Boyhood’ (1854) and ‘The Sevastopol Stories’ (1855–1856) while still in the army, solidifying his reputation as a writer, and was discharged in 1856.
In 1862, he married Sophia, the daughter of a court physician, and the following year began writing ‘War and Peace’, which he published in 1869. In 1877, he began serializing the novel ‘Anna Karenina’ in a magazine, publishing it as a book the following year, and in 1899, he published the novel ‘Resurrection’, which caused a great stir. Thereafter, despite his poor health, he actively wrote and published literary works such as ‘Father Sergius’ (1898), the play ‘The Living Corpse’ (1900), and the short story “Alyosha in the Jar” (1905), as well as essays such as ‘Religion and Morality’ (1894), ‘On Shakespeare’ (1903), and ‘The Meaning of Revolution in Russia’ (1917).
He passed away on November 20, 1910, after his health deteriorated when a cold he caught while traveling developed into pneumonia.
In addition to the authors cited earlier, countless contemporary and later writers praised Tolstoy. Anton Chekhov, who frequently visited his country home, said, “As long as Tolstoy the writer exists, becoming a writer is both easy and enjoyable. Even if you achieve nothing, it is not a terrible thing, for Tolstoy has already accomplished something on behalf of all writers.” Matthew Arnold of 19th-century Britain remarked, “Tolstoy’s novels are not works of art but a part of life.”
Furthermore, Virginia Woolf praised him highly, saying, “Tolstoy is the greatest artist,” while Thomas Mann remarked, “Nothing resembles nature as much as his works.” For this reason, the title “literary giant” fits Tolstoy more naturally than the simple designation of “writer.”
