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

"The New Yorker"

REQUIRED READING: The New Yorker Magazine

My introduction to The New Yorker was made by a nice young man who brought me an issue in 1982 when I was hospitalized following a serious injury. He hoped some good reading material would help me pass the weeks of bed rest. This particular issue which I remember clearly – a Sempé drawing of a cat looking out a window in Paris on its cover and a profile of the great jazz musician, Thelonius Monk – was the beginning of a long love affair. Except for a brief few years, I’ve been a subscriber ever since.

The New Yorker was the brainchild of Harold Ross, an self-taught journalist, and his wife Jane Grant, a writer for the New York Times. Back in the day, the literati frequently ate lunch at the Algonquin Hotel on west 44th Street in Manhattan and a notorious clique dubbed themselves the Vicious Circle. Mr. and Mrs. Ross, Edna Ferber, Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Parker, and Harpo Marx and many others involved in New York’s rich cultural life were part of this group, which later came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table. Imagine the smartest, funniest, best informed, and most verbally adept people in America having a few martinis and you get an idea of where the energy for The New Yorker came from. It was a heady time and the resulting magazine – designed to inform, entertain, and energize the reader – established a unique presence in American journalism and literary life. As editor, Mr. Ross obtained financial backing from Raoul Fleischmann, founder of Fleishmann’s Baking Company (whose family retained ownership of the publication until selling it in 1985). Within a few years of its inaugural issue, The New Yorker had garnered a loyal readership by publishing some of the most important writers of the last 100 years, including J. D. Salinger, E. B. White, John Updike, and more recently T. C. Boyle, David Sedaris, and Adam Gopnik.

A typical issue of The New Yorker begins with a detailed listing of cultural happenings within the city – concerts, art exhibits, dance performances, theatre, operas, cinema, poetry readings, etc. A recently added feature is “Tables for Two” on dining. “The Talk of the Town” is no longer about the city per se but has become national in scope and is where the editors discuss issues of importance and interest to well-informed people. The bulk of the magazine is some combination of journalism, humor, essays, fiction, poetry, and cultural reviews. Scattered throughout the pages are what the magazine is probably most famous for: the cartoons.

While The New Yorker has had five editors since its inception, and chronicled the most rapidly changing century in human history, it has maintained many long-held traditions such as The Talk of the Town, Personal Histories, Annals, and letters from far flung correspondents. Each cover is an original illustration by one of the many artists who collectively have given the magazine its look. Rea Irwin drew the first cover which featured a top-hatted dandy looking down his nose through a monocle at a butterfly. This was a bit of artistic irony as the magazine was anything but effete; it was all about the American literary and creative spirit. The dandy soon became a personality in his own right and was given the name Eustace Tilley. Eustace continues to grace the cover every February on the issue nearest to the magazine’s anniversary. Cover artists can be quite creative in how they portray him; like the magazine he changes with the times but remains true to himself.

Of The New Yorker’s five editors, Tina Brown, who took over in 1992, was the most controversial. Until her reign, The New Yorker had had no major stylistic changes. It was all black and white with line drawings rather than photographs and had stable of long-term writers. Ms. Brown made an indelible mark by hiring Richard Avedon as the magazine’s first staff photographer. New Yorker loyalists took an immediate dislike to her and were outraged by many of her other changes to the magazine, in particular reducing the number of printed words. As Harold Ross originally described it, the magazine “is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” Ms. Brown agreed with that statement, but decided to appeal to a wider (i.e., younger and less discerning) readership. A significant change she brought about was permitting certain words which heretofore were not considered necessary to good writing. Under Tina Brown’s editorship, 79 writers were let go to make room for 50 new writers of her choosing. Long time New Yorker subscribers, who liked the magazine the way it was, considered Ms. Brown to be “vulgar” and were dismayed at how she seemed to “dumbing down” the magazine. She argued that she cleaned house and brought life back into a periodical that was dying. In her defense, readership increased by approximately 30 per cent while she was editor, and the photographs in the magazine are a nice change. Love her or hate her, the magazine survived her six year tenure and the writing has returned to its former high standards thanks to current editor, David Remnick, formerly of the Washington Post, although the magazine does print the previously unprintable words.

If we ignore the Tina Brown years, most issues of the magazine are worth reading from cover to cover. Because the magazine is published 47 times per year, weekly except for five double issues, subscribers usually have stacks of unread or partially read magazines throughout their houses. The magazine is too good to throw away and you never know when you might need a supply of reading material (see above). The current issue, in celebration of the season, focuses on politics: why Obama won, why McCain lost, and what’s next. Each piece is an example of what journalism should be: painstakingly researched, objective, carefully edited, and factually accurate. If you have had enough of politics, this issue, like most others, includes fiction, poetry, and reviews of the art scene. Or you can browse the cartoons; there is something for everyone.

Across the last 83 years, The New Yorker has published many works which have raised public awareness of important topics. For example, Rachel Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring, published in three consecutive issues in 1962, explained the hazards of pesticides, awakening environmental awareness in the United States. If it were not for Silent Spring, many familiar animal and plant species would have disappeared, including our beloved bald eagle. Two decades earlier, in 1946, one year after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, John Hersey published “Hiroshima” in the magazine. Then editor, William Shawn discussed ideas for a report on the human dimension of the bombing with Mr. Hersey, a journalist and author who had grown up in China and was working as an overseas correspondent. Mr. Hersey’s article featured six survivors of the attack, a widow with three children, a missionary, a Methodist pastor, a surgeon, an office clerk, and a physician, chronicling their experiences immediately before, during, and after the bombing. The resulting piece, 31 thousand words in all, took up almost the entire issue and immediately sold out.

The New Yorker has never shied away from controversy and Seymour Hersh’s piece on Abu Ghraib may be one of the most shocking exposés in the magazine’s history. Mr. Hersh’s reporting reveals a military prison run amok where a leadership vacuum reduced the wardens to savages like something out of Lord of the Flies. By the time the article went to print, CBS’s 60 Minutes and most national newspapers had already shown several of the photographs the soldiers took of themselves committing atrocities in an apparently Bacchanalian frenzy. Mr. Hersh’s article sought to understand how and why Abu Ghraib deteriorated into a national disgrace. While The New Yorker article offers no cover for the people who committed the abuses, it is damning of that entire prison operation all the way up the chain to the Commander-in-Chief. How could a nation as great as ours permit such human rights abuses? That is the big question Mr. Hersh wants us to grapple with. In addition, he wants his readers to understand the state of temporary insanity that the prison wardens fell into as they tried to make sense of the inhumanities they were witness to and participants in. Mr. Hersh’s article reveals how easy it is to cross the line between human and savage when moral leadership is absent. We all hope that in similar circumstances we would choose the high road, but most of us have never experienced anything remotely like Abu Ghraib.

Unlike pure news magazines, The New Yorker gives its “far flung correspondents” the time and resources they need to dig for facts and the details to support them. It is the details that often tell the real story, but it is the details that daily news reports by necessity leave out. Very few of the crises facing our world can be reduced to multiple choice questions. To solve a problem, first we must understand it in all of its complexity, because without clear, unbiased fact-finding and reporting our leaders will never move beyond political posturing and we, the people, will never know if a solution is viable. Being well informed and able to think beyond simplified rhetoric is a true act of patriotism: our country can only remain great if we care enough to keep watch over our elected and appointed leaders.

We Americans love our country, warts and all, and most often we express that love by waving flags, singing the National Anthem (or God Bless America), and expressing our personal philosophies on our vehicles. The New Yorker is a different celebration of our country: it exists thanks to the Bill of Rights in our Constitution. Unlike many nations, our citizens have permission to express themselves without fear of censorship or worse. While artists, writers, and musicians are a dime a dozen, only a few are doing work with the potential to become classics. The New Yorker is not afraid to look for the merits in controversial works, and a good example of this is the work of the late Robert Mapplethorpe, whose images of male genitalia and homosexuality were so upsetting that his masterpieces were almost overlooked. Shock value aside, Mr. Mapplethorpe’s work sells in the six figures at auction and is in some of the world’s greatest photography collections. By seeking out today’s cutting edge artists, writers, and musicians, The New Yorker helps us see beyond our personal belief systems so we can understand what is happening in our culture and why it is important and worthy of our attention.

If the idea of subscribing to The New Yorker is daunting, here’s a suggestion: next time you find yourself with time to kill, pick up a copy. Not only will it make the time pass more quickly it might just change your life. Remember that young man who brought me The New Yorker while I was in the hospital? I married him.