My dear Anna...

I was mere an adolescent when I first read a Tolstoy’s story. It was a remarkable story about a wife’s dream of her husband who has snow white hairs instead of black which sadly comes true at the end. This fictional dream hunted me for long.

Mystery of dreams and intuitions always engage my deepest attention. I still remember how I had felt after reading Tolstoy’s story .  And same I felt again after reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. For me , this epic fiction oscillates between a super-realistic dream and an awareness of corporeal world and human relations.

 

Though being world’s greatest fiction it deals with every aspect of mundane life but what really attracted me was psychological struggles of major characters. Where Lenin strives for Katie’s love and later to feel God’s blessings , Alexei suffers and tries to overcome the blow on his sophisticated social life. Dolly chooses to accept her husband’s character as a philanderer and thus lives a spurious life like other major characters except Anna. Anna doesn’t love her husband and later begins to feel for Count Vronsky. She spurns to live a double life as offered by her husband who doesn’t really care whom her wife loves but wants to save his reputation. But Anna can not sacrifice her honesty and so chooses to be an outcast by living with Vronsky without a formal divorce with her husband.

“Can one ever tell anyone what one’s feeling?” Anna asks to herself towards the end. And this question can pose more somber one in a reader’s mind, “Can one ever know anyone ? Or even oneself?”  … “the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds men together. No it’s a useless journey you are making.”  Anna is talking to herself. Human relations and the motives behind one’s action are very intricate to understand. Self-interest , consciously or unconsciously overshadows love most of the times.

We perished , each alone ,

But I beneath a rougher sea… (As Mr. Ramsay mumbles in To The Lighthouse)

And yet why should the life be ended like this? Why our faith should diminish when hope is a lifeline given to us by God? The novel ends along with Levin’s struggle. After Anna’s episode is left unresolved and romantically ended , it is through Levin Tolstoy gives the Mantra to his deserving reader. But that mantra is like a precious gem which reader must seek and bring out himself . 

P.S. -

To my Anna , 

 Immoral , moral , or beyond that (as my teacher used to say – nothing is moral or immoral) , my Anna I don’t judge you , will never. Because I know you listened to your heart and did what you needed to do because you could have never done otherwise. Only human eyes see tragedy otherwise there is no such thing called a tragedy. Life goes on , and there is an afterlife and so on and so forth…we born ,  we learn , we perish and only wisdom we carry with us… you also did , I am sure… and you have won my heart my dear Anna...