Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Marissa Volokhonsky

It seems fitting that a new film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s stunningly beautiful novel, Anna Karenina, debuted at the same time that retired General David Petraeus crashed his high horse and fell from grace.  Both stories involve military officers and notable married women who fare less well in the court of public opinion than their paramours.  The essential difference between these two stories is that the former is one of the great works of fiction while the latter is fodder for the tabloids, with elements of Greek tragedy thrown in to prove that humanity hasn’t changed much across the millennia of our documented existence. 

Anna Karenina, one of two main characters in Tolstoy’s novel, is a high-born aristocrat, married to an older man with whom she shares little other than their son.  In the opening scene two things happen:  she witnesses a man fall in front of a train and she meets the man who will become her lover.  At her brother’s home later that day, Anna’s sister-in-law is aggrieved over Stiva’s affair with their children’s governess.  Anna begs Dolly to forgive Stiva and stay with him because that is the best choice for herself, her children, and her husband.  Women in that place and time – pre-Soviet Russia – depended on marriage for their survival both economically and socially. 

Anna’s marriage to Alexei Karenin, an important and painfully uninteresting government official, is slowly killing her soul, but she accepts her lot in life until she becomes involved with the young and dynamic Alexei Vronsky.  Count Vronsky, a military officer and man about town, is under pressure from his mother to marry a woman of high birth.  When he meets the beautiful and quietly passionate Anna he falls for her and loses all interest in other women.  Anna tries to ignore the passion that Vronsky stirs in her to no avail, and soon the two are the talk of the town.  Anna’s husband warns her to stay away from Vronsky, not so much because he is jealous but because of what the talk is doing to their/his reputation.  She abandons the marriage without regard to the consequences so that she and Vronsky can be together, sending shock waves throughout society.  Karenin offers to divorce her but this is not an option because she would lose her son whom she loves dearly;  and so the three live in an increasingly uncomfortable limbo. 

Tolstoy paints a photorealistic picture of the double standard applied to women:  while Stiva suffers no serious consequences for his infidelities, Anna’s choice sends her into social exile.  No longer welcome at soirees and shunned in public, Anna’s mental health begins to deteriorate.  Her total dependence on Vronsky devolves into possessiveness and jealousy which eventually drive him away.   His passion spent, Vronsky heeds his mother’s advice that he needs a “proper” wife in order to advance his career.  He abandons Anna, leaving her bereft and at the mercy of her husband, who has a surprisingly forgiving aspect to his character.  Unable to resolve her internal conflicts and tormented by guilt, Anna makes a devastating choice which echoes the opening scene.

This story line is but one of many in Tolstoy’s book, each of which is rich in descriptions of life in Czarist Russia.  Konstantin Levin,  the other protagonist, is a philosophical character who leaves his government job to return to his rural roots.  He personifies Russia on the cusp of industrialization and sweeping social change, fascinated by the possibilities of mechanized farming and free serfs while afraid of losing generations of tradition and economic stability.  Like Anna, Levin lives outside of social convention, but unlike her he is free to do so.  His story of love and marriage is a contrast to Anna’s and heightens the unfolding tragedy of hers. 

Tolstoy was not a proponent of equal rights for women, but he was sympathetic to the inequities they faced.  Previous translations of Anna Karenina into English have failed to capture the nuances of Tolstoy’s writing and as a result have left many readers to conclude that he was misogynistic.  Richard Pevear and Marissa Volokhonsky succeed in keeping Tolstoy’s words alive across the two languages where the old school standards have left many student readers cold.  These two scholars respect Tolstoy’s original text and attempt to capture both the letter and the spirit of his words.  Thus their translation goes beyond literal and into psychological, cultural, and personal understanding of what Anna Karenina was about.  According to a New Yorker article by David Remnick (“Translation Wars”, November 7, 2005), Volokhonsky – a native Russian speaker – takes the first pass through the text, making notes on the author’s choice of words and idioms as well as analyzing the author’s intent, based on how he used the language, as she goes along.  Then her husband, Pevear, translates her translation into a first English draft.  After that, the two go through as many iterations as necessary until they are both happy with the result.  It takes them years but their technique has yielded numerous prizes and awards for breathing new life into classic works of Russian literature by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Translation of even the simplest piece of writing from one language to another is nicely described in Vladimir Nabokov’s poem on the subject, lifted from that same New Yorker article:

What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O Pushkin, for my stratagem.
I travelled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza, patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose—
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.

Anna Karenina, so beautifully translated and so true to Leo Tolstoy’s original words, takes the reader deep inside Russian high society.  I hope that before you run out to see Keira Knightley attempt to capture the essence of one of literature’s most beloved tragic heroines, you do yourself a favor and buy or borrow the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, published in 2000 by the Penguin Press.  Anna Karenina is an intricately woven tapestry of Russian society and history in the period leading up to the Russian Revolution.  It reveals the living and working conditions of serfs and their growing discontent and it exposes the decadence of the aristocracy which will soon fall to the Soviets.  Finally, and most important, Anna Karenina – the book – explains the plight of women in a way that is timeless and universal, and relevant to the Petraeus scandal.

David Petraeus’ lover, Paula Broadwell, is highly intelligent, a graduate of West Point and Harvard, a competitive athlete, and is described by those who know her as an over-achiever.  In other words, she is no bimbo.   And yet, the media have slapped the label “mistress” on her as if she does nothing but sit around in her negligee waiting for her general to rescue her from boredom.   It would be nice if the media either neutralized the female label or used something similarly pejorative such as “gigolo” or “Narcissus” or “playboy” when describing Petraeus.  Moreover, the assumption is that she seduced him and not the other way around, and therefore she is responsible for the shame he brought to his wife and family, the CIA staff he directed, the Army he represented, the nation he served, the president he failed, the soldiers he commanded, and the citizens whose lives he was supposed to be protecting.  The only people she hurt were her husband and children.   Petraeus will likely rehabilitate his image by becoming a news commentator for one of the cable news channels.  Broadwell’s future is less certain. We can only hope, for the sake of her family that she does not do as Anna Karenina did. 

The Petraeus/Broadwell episode highlights a subtle misogyny which continues to pervade our culture.  While much has changed for women in the 135 years since Tolstoy published Anna Karenina, women are still thought of as the temptresses who lead men to ruin.  It might be worth considering the possibility that after Eve picked the apple, Adam took it by force and then blamed Eve because she was naked.  The Bible has been translated so many times and in so many ways, there is no way to know for sure.   In the interest of humanity, we would all do well to question our assumptions and choose our words carefully, especially when labeling others.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

There is a 50/50 chance that Mitt Romney will be elected president this November which is a reflection of how divided our nation remains at this point in time.  In an attempt to increase his appeal with the so-called Conservative Base of the Republican Party and tip the scales away from President Obama, he selected Congressman Paul Ryan, a young, dynamic, Tea Party favorite to be his running mate.  Mitt Romney’s biggest problem with his fellow Republicans is that he governed the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the way a “Blue Dog” Democrat might, after all, Obamacare is Romneycare’s disowned child.  In order to prove that he now thinks his own highly successful program was a terrible mistake, Governor Romney invited a bona fide conservative to go on the Great American Road Trip with him.  Vice presidents, historically, have been akin to window display mannequins at urban department stores:  they are designed to entice voters who might otherwise sit an election out.  (A notable exception was Dick Cheney, but that’s a topic for another day.)  As a pre-emptive strike, Governor Romney stated that he, and not Congressman Ryan, will be setting the agenda;  and that, if elected, Vice President Ryan will do as he is told.  In other words, no worries about him “going rogue”.

By now, we pretty much know who Joe Biden is, so no surprises there, although he does sometimes surprise his boss.  Paul Ryan, on the other hand, while not the wild card that Sarah Palin was four years ago, is still somewhat unknown and therefore requires a closer look.  One of the best ways to gain insight into a person is to ask him or her what his or her favorite book is.  Required reading in Congressman Ryan’s office is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, an immensely popular novel (published in 1957) about a dystopian America where the big, mean, government has crushed the entrepreneurial spirit of the pioneering free market capitalists who made this country great.  Out of despair, these free market capitalists have gone into self-imposed exile in their own private state where they wait for the big, mean, government to beg them to come back and Save the Country.  Meanwhile, the earnest corporate executives who depended on these excellent entrepreneurs in order to keep their corporations running felt as if they were whipping dead horses (bureaucrats) and being forced to feed the lazy, unwashed masses.

Dagny Taggart, the heroine of Atlas Shrugged, is woman way ahead of her time:  an unmarried, but extremely beautiful (in a no-nonsense way), executive whose sole goal is the economic success of her family’s railroad.  Unfortunately, her boss (who is also her brother) is an incompetent twit who makes bad economic decisions at every possible opportunity, leaving Dagny to swim upstream in her quest for profitability.  Even worse than her worthless brother is the blood-sucking and coercive government which takes the hard-earned profits of her hard work to support people who are too lazy to get jobs and feed themselves.  And then, suddenly, the men who do and make the things which create the profits that the government steals disappear, mysteriously.  No entrepreneurs, no profits, no internal revenue. 

 

With the economy in cardiac arrest, Dagny and a very attractive steel executive named Hank Reardon take to the roads to solve the mystery of the disappearing rain-makers.  During their travels, they fall in love and this allows Ayn Rand to discourse on her feelings about sex.  Reardon’s wife is a controlling shrew who prevents him from realizing his potential (in every way).  Before he and Dagny move beyond a platonic relationship, they both must come to recognize that their superior qualities as people will justify their physical union (which will be as amazing as they are).  Ms. Rand was no prude and neither was she religious, so the fact that Hank Reardon was married was not an issue because he went through an elaborate searching of his conscience which enabled him to see that being with Dagny was in his own self-interest and was therefore The Right Decision.  

Ayn Rand (nee Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lived through the Bolshevik Revolution which destroyed her father’s business and caused the family to flee to Crimea.  One benefit of the Revolution was that women were allowed to attend university.  After returning from exile, Ms. Rand studied literature, philosophy, and cinema at Petrograd State University.  In 1925, she obtained a visa to travel to the United States and immediately fell in love with the Manhattan skyline.  In order to remain in the US, Ms. Rand traveled to Chicago to stay with relatives, who happened to own a movie theater.  Ms Rand passed many hours watching movies and, apparently, was bitten by the movie bug because she next traveled to Hollywood, California, to become a screenwriter.  

Ayn Rand enjoyed some success as a screenwriter but it was her novel The Fountainhead which catapulted her into the limelight.  It is in this book that her notion of “individualism” versus “collectivism” begins to take form.  Ayn Rand believed that the individual was much more important than the community, but that a community of fully realized individuals, operating out of the purest of motives, would make an ideal society.  If everyone feeds and takes care of himself, without taking from his neighbor, the role of government is simply to make sure that everyone is minding his own business while not being invaded by tyrants.

With Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s evolving political philosophy emerged with more clarity.  In 1962, she wrote:

 Objectivism  holds that:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. (Copyright 1962 by Times-Mirror Co.)

Taking this at face value, I can only conclude that Ayn Rand believed that humans, if they put their minds to it, could be the excellent and moral individuals that Objectivism requires.  She wasn’t clear about how we would get there or what we would do with those who would not or could not evolve (which leaves me with an uneasy feeling).  As a political philosophy, it makes good fiction.  As the basis for a running a country, it is a house of cards which, when scattered by the prevailing winds, could easily serve the needs of those with the will to power and the means to seize it.  (Perhaps Congressman Ryan should read War and Peace or Generations of Winter?)

In Atlas Shrugged, a popular phrase, “Who is John Galt?” is another way of saying “who cares?”  John Galt, it turns out, is the brilliant engineer who discovered a way to create a motor using static electricity in the air to produce electric current.  His employer, representing the Communist or collectivist mentality, decided that everyone in the company should benefit from Galt’s innovation, so Galt quit in disgust, leaving his prototype behind him, with no instructions.  John Galt, recognizing that the country’s ills stemmed from a government that espoused Karl Marx’s famous slogan: “ From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” organized a strike on the part of the makers and doers in society, leaving the mooching masses and bureaucrats to fend for themselves.  Feds with Big Guns wanted to put a stop to this and they almost succeeded in making a martyr of John Galt, but Dagny Taggart saved the day.  Apparently, Ayn Rand viewed the government of her adopted country as two steps away from Bolshevik-style communism, but given her personal history, this is completely understandable.

So here we are, 55 years after Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged, with a troubled nation still leading an even more troubled world.  Sea levels are rising, deserts are expanding, populations are exploding, and rogue nations are working overtime to develop their own arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.  Meanwhile, our own fragile government is crippled by partisan warfare which serves only the needs of the political power brokers (i.e., the political party organizations, corporate lobbyists, and the richest one percent of the population who will be damned if they will pay another dollar in taxes).  Nobody in Washington wants to say the dreaded “T-word” lest he or she be branded a “Tax-and-Spend Liberal”; instead, a frightening number of our esteemed representatives in Congress and the Senate are busy planning the funeral of the United States of America which they believe will be killed by malignant budget deficits (not to mention our huge debt to China for funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq).  It all sounds pretty hopeless.  Except it isn’t.  Unless we allow political forces to divide and conquer us by discouraging us.  

Political parties do their best to create simple and appealing messages so that we don’t have to think too hard, and this is the real problem facing our nation.  If we love our country, then our duty is to become informed:  to read everything, especially the writings of people who challenge us; to question what candidates tell us; to hold them accountable for the impacts of their agendas and belief systems.  Lots of people are going to tell you what to think and believe across the next many weeks, but only you can decide whom to vote for.  Decide carefully because, believe it or not, as long as enough of us show up at the polls, every vote counts.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved