Finis: Anna Karenina

Mom was right. Part VIII is anticlimactic. In fact, I think that's an understatement. About four pages are devoted to the aftermath of Anna's death, and then the next 100 are devoted to Vronksy thinking.

First of all, I'll discuss the aftermath, since that's the most interesting part of Book VIII anyway. Because Anna is dead, we can no longer view events (when there actually are events) from Anna's point of view. So from whose perspective does Tolstoy tell the rest of the story? Not Vronsky's. No, that would be too easy. And not Karenin's, probably because the fraudulent psychic and Lidia had him in a trance. No, we get to hear the rest of the story from Vronsky's mother, whom we haven't heard from since about Book III.

The only positive thing I can say about reading from Countess Vronsky's perspective is that we learn the apple doesn't fall far from the Vronsky tree. Vronsky and Anna couldn't hold a candle to the countess's self-involvement. When Levin's brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, runs into the countess at the train station, and as soon as she has someone who will listen, she says, "Oh, you have no idea what I've been through!" And then she tells the story of about what her son has been through. Apparently Vronsky's grief exacted a great toll on his mother.

So this is what happened: Anna knelt in front of the train. Vronsky had to go to the train station to recover her body. He was prostrate with grief for weeks. Karenin took Anna's baby daughter, because even though she wasn't biologically Karenin's, she was legally his because he and Anna had never divorced. Vronsky remained in a grieved state until political unrest developed in Serbia, to which many Russian soldiers volunteered to travel to offer support. Vronsky was one of them, and he was at the train station with his mother when they came upon Sergey Ivanovitch.

And that's all we get to know about that. As for the other 127 pages of Part VIII, I've written one-sentence synopses of each chapter, and they go like this:

1. Sergey Ivanovitch spent six years writing a book, which nobody read. He decides to visit his brother Levin.
   
2. At the train station, Sergey Ivanovitch encounters Vronsky departing to Serbia to war.
3. On the train, Sergey's friend Katavasov meets some soldiers and doesn't like them. How is any of this content relevant to the story? And why does Tolstoy introduce a new character now?
4. Countess Vronsky tells Sergey how awful Anna's death has been on her.
   
5. Sergey talks to Vronsky, who is still traumatized by Anna's death. We learn what happened when he went to the train station after hearing of Anna's suicide.
6. Sergey and Katavasov arrive at Levin's farm. Kitty welcomes them, then goes to breast feed her baby.
7. Kitty contemplates her husband's lack of religious faith.
8. Levin contemplates his religious ambivalence.
9. Sometimes Levin is so confused and troubled by his ambivalence that he considers suicide--how extreme. But he doesn't kill himself because he loves his wife and child. Levin is the king of overanalysis.
   
10. Levin, religion, blah, blah, blah.
    
11. It's harvest time. Levin throws himself into his work.But when a peasant inadvertently answers Levin's spiritual questions, Levin doesn't want to listen. Stupid Levin.
12. More over analysis.
13. Thank God! Levin finally figures out all he really needs to know he learned in kindergarten!
14. Having finally figured out his faith, Levin takes a walk with Dolly, Sergey, and Katavasov. They go to the bee house.
15. Levin and his visitors discuss people's decisions to volunteer to support the Serbians, like Vronsky has.
16. Levin argues with Katavasov and gets irritated with him.
17. A terrible storm blows up and the party makes it home just in time, only to learn that Kitty is out in the woods with the baby and nurse. Levin goes to find them. Lightning strikes a tree and it falls, but not on Kitty. They're all right. This is the most exciting chapter in all of Part VIII.
18. Kitty bathes the baby. She and Levin realize that the baby recognizes their faces.
19. And they all lived happily ever after. Except Anna.

And there you have it, my readers. Now you don't even have to read Part VIII of Anna Karenina.

If Susan Baldwin decides to finish this novel, I will give her a medal. And then we will discuss how this novel became a classic work of literature. My guess is that there was not much else to read at the time.

And now on to other novels. My next pic is Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith.