The novel Anna Karenina is based on real events. "Anna Karenina": interesting facts about the great novel

“The powerful are always to blame for the powerless.”
-Ivan Andreevich Krylov

Tolstoy lied. In fact, this long-standing story of a special woman, not enslaved by her family and false traditional morality, was much more interesting. The classic prude decided to cruelly and prematurely deal with the heroine for disobedience by running over her with a train. Fortunately, however, there were no trains to Russia at that time. They appeared a few years later. In the same year when fate settled a difficult score with her lover.

All happy families are equally happy...with their show off. All unhappy families are unhappy for the same reason - the man does not respect the woman, does not value her soul, but sees only a physical product that he uses if she becomes dependent on him. He also often sees her as a being of a lower caste, unworthy of respect, born to fulfill his whims and not have any aspirations of her own.

It seems that all men suffer from this syndrome, from the most ordinary drunkards to the greatest geniuses. And also all the women from Tanya and Manya to Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. As soon as I begin to be fascinated by the family, they immediately disappoint me. I just told my friend that I envy her and that she has such a harmonious family, when she immediately brings me down to earth, describing how her husband beats her, calls her names and disappears for weeks somewhere. I just admired the way the elderly judge spoke touchingly about his wife (and he’s not a young man, he’s probably lived his life with her), and then he explains that he divorced his old wife and just married a twenty-year-old wife.

Men are allowed to create depravity and then blame it on women. If he has a mistress, the wife is to blame! Why did you marry him? If you leave your pregnant girlfriend, it’s your girlfriend’s fault! Why didn’t she demand that he marry her? If you rape someone, it’s again the victim’s fault! Why did you flirt with him? If you go to a prostitute, then prostitutes are vilified, but he is good! In short, the powerful are always to blame for the powerless. So in the novel "Anna Karenina" it was not the husband who was condemned, who clearly married not his wife and then did not give her the necessary warmth, not the admirer who seduced and abandoned her to the mercy of fate, but first of all the victim herself, honest and innocent Anna, who turned out to be a toy in the hands of men. In the novel, it seems that society condemns her and takes the side of men. However, in real life this was not the case at all.

Classic literature, usually written by men, such as the novel Anna Karenina, teaches women to be unconditionally faithful and devoted to their husbands, even in an unhappy marriage. Of course, this kind of worldview has its advantages (usually for men). Now they can cheat with impunity, without fear that their wife will also cheat on them. Treat her rudely and ignore her requests without fear of losing her. In short, for women, such a “Tolstian” worldview inevitably leads to unequal relationships and male abuse. Let's look at the situation of the real Anna Karenina from a more neutral, objective, or even from a female point of view.

True writers believe that only Indians themselves can objectively write about Indians, and only blacks themselves can write about blacks, well, that’s why I thought that only Anna Karenina herself can write fairly and correctly about such a person as Anna Karenina. But you might think, how is this possible, since Anna Karenina is just a fictional character? No, Anna Karenina is a very real woman who lived in the nineteenth century, and whose name was Anna Kern. But how then can she write about herself, because now it’s the 21st century and she’s been gone for a long time? But she just did it a long time ago and I will use what she wrote and add a little information from other sources to get a complete picture. Well, did Tolstoy do it badly? No, he did it perfectly, but he did it somewhat from the position of a man, and therefore Anna turned out to be some kind of immoral monster, whose tragic death seemed to the author the only “logical” and “fair” outcome. However, this denouement has nothing to do with reality. Its author is not reality, but male bestial malice, a false principle: “if you are not mine, if you are not anyone’s.”

In fact, Anna lived to see her gray hair and found her true (although in my opinion, a little strange, and even most likely false) love, which lasted until the grave, and her seducer heavily repented of having violated her. It seems that it was he who suffered severe consequences and was subjected to persecution and humiliation in society, because of which he died quite early.

Tolstoy simply did not finish the novel to its true logical conclusion, he came up with a fictitious ending at the most interesting place, with which he spoiled the whole essence of this mysterious story and made this novel the way a man would like to make it. He settled scores with a woman for being unfaithful to her husband, drove over her with a train, or even with an asphalt roller, which in fact never happened. Well, what did her admirer have to do with the constant betrayal? Nothing really. He’s a man, he’s allowed to do everything and gets away with it. However, in real life everything was exactly the opposite.

(To be continued)

Reviews

Mila, having read your article, so far only the first part, thought: this is what classic means - everyone sees something different in it, their own. It depends on the era and the age of the reader. I re-read Anna Karenina several times - and each time there was a new impression, new thoughts came to mind.
Perhaps, after reading the novel a few years later, you will find something different in it.
It's good that you sincerely express your opinion.

Quite possible. And now these few years have passed, and life is perceived a little differently. However, the fact that the plot was copied from the novel by Pushkin and Kern and that Tolstoy deliberately changed the ending remains a historical fact.

) and remembers that thirty years earlier the officer was his mother's lover. Sergei barely remembers Anna, and he knows about her only from the words of those relatives who despised her for her betrayal. Therefore, he asks Vronsky to tell what happened between him and Anna, and the colonel begins to remember how their relationship developed.

As often happens now, Karen Shakhnazarov filmed his “Anna Karenina” at the request of the Rossiya-1 TV channel. Therefore, the new film adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel was created in two versions - an eight-episode television version and a two-hour film. Usually the film version comes out before the TV version, but in this case it’s the other way around. The TV version aired in April, but the film version is just now being released and does not contain any additional scenes. In other words, in the cinema you will see a shortened version of what you could already see (and what will be shown more than once) for free. Unless, of course, you watch TV and track high-profile premieres.

A reasonable question immediately arises: why spend money on a ticket and go to the cinema if the new “Karenina” has already come to your home? To be honest, this doesn't make much sense. Shakhnazarov shot and edited the film in such a way that only the final battle scene benefits from the movie screen and film sound - just a few minutes from the entire picture, and this is by no means “War and Peace” or “Waterloo”. So, only film purists and those who do not have high-quality reception of “Russia-1” with the ability to watch the broadcast on a decent TV should go to the cinema for new impressions.

It would seem that this review could be completed. What's the point of watching a two-hour film adaptation of an 800-page novel when there is a six-hour film version that covers three times as much events and includes key characters from the book who are completely absent from the film version? Leo Tolstoy said that he could not eliminate a single word from Anna Karenina, and in theory this means that a more detailed film adaptation of such a book is always better than a short summary.

But it's not that simple. “Anna Karenina” by Shakhnazarov is not an “academic” film adaptation, but a reinterpretation of the book, which tells not Anna’s truth, but Vronsky’s truth. At the very beginning of the project, the hero warns that he is not objective and that his memories are presented from his point of view. Therefore, although the events in the new Anna Karenina are approximately the same as in the book, the feeling from them is different. And the film, due to its conciseness and focus, conveys the key ideas of the production better than the series. On a television screen, they are easy to lose among the abundance of scenes and characters. While the television “Anna Karenina” can be mistaken for an ordinary film adaptation and rightly criticized for all sorts of oddities and inappropriateness, the film version highlights the unconventionality of Shakhnazarov’s approach and appears as a more integral and intelligible work, where every “failure” is internally justified.

Take, for example, the invitation of Vitaly Kishchenko to the role of Alexei Karenin. The actor looks and plays so sinisterly and demonically that it is clearly inappropriate in a serious film adaptation of Anna Karenina, where Alexey should appear as a complex, ambiguous character. However, in Vronsky's eyes, Karenin is a rival and a villain, and this is exactly what he is in Vronsky's memories. While Vronsky himself is shown almost as a knight without fear or reproach. Yes, he is courting a married woman, but he has no other claims.

In turn, Anna, played by Elizaveta Boyarskaya, is a much more determined and modern woman than she is usually shown. Which again emphasizes that the screen is from Vronsky’s point of view, who insists that he only offered Anna a reprehensible relationship - the decision was hers, and she also made further decisions. This doesn’t go well with the masculinity that Maxim Matveev exudes, but that’s why memories are deceptive. It is quite possible that everything was not so or not quite as Vronsky says. But who can be a good witness to the events that happened 30 years ago? We all remember not what happened, but what we chose to remember. And the new “Anna Karenina” first of all makes you think about the nature of memories, and not about the “great story of great love” that advertising for Tolstoy’s film adaptations traditionally promises.

Another thing is that Vronsky at the center of the story is not nearly as interesting as Anna. Tolstoy's novel has many merits, and one of them is the depth and meticulousness with which the writer analyzes the consciousness of a restless woman. Anna Karenina has become one of the highest achievements of the psychological novel because it tells the story of a complex character. Vronsky in Shakhnazarov’s film version is as simple as a boot. This is a sincerely and forever in love man who is full of frustration due to the fact that he has become attached to a woman whose status is “Everything is complicated”: husband, child, daughter from her lover, cockroaches in her head the size of a cat...

150 horses and 20 historical vehicles, from carts to carriages, were used for filming

Thirty years later, Vronsky is exactly the same, only grief and regret are mixed with his feelings. It is not surprising that even in the film version, Shakhnazarov more than once gets lost in his analysis of Anna and shows scenes that Vronsky could not see and which he was unlikely to be told about. Analyzing Vronsky is as fun as splashing in a puddle, if you can swim in the sea. Maybe it was worth filming Anna Karenina from Karenin’s point of view?

The scenery of the Manchu village was built in the open air in the vicinity of Feodosia

We also have to admit that the Manchu scenes that frame the main narrative seem unnecessary, needed only to introduce the theme of memories into the script. In theory, they symbolize the collapse of the Russian Empire. But for this they needed to show the Russian Empire, and not a hospital in distant lands that the country had just annexed and which had never been “its own” for it. You never know what's going on there! What does this have to do with Russia? The drama in the relationship between Alexei and adult Sergei is barely visible and quickly disappears. Although the heroes have something to discuss in high tones.

Overall, if you missed Anna Karenina on TV and you're not going to spend six hours watching it, but want to know what the production is all about, then the film version is your friend. It's better to watch it than to look for the essence in watching the TV version on fast forward. If you have already watched the television version and formed an impression about it, then the film version will not add anything to this, but perhaps it will clarify something. In any case, we must remember that this is not a film adaptation of Anna Karenina, but a reinterpretation, and it is best to watch it by comparing it with traditional film adaptations in order to grasp all the similarities and differences between Shakhnazarov’s vision and the usual view of the book.

In fact, the story of writing a brilliant novel looked like this:
Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, on the initiative of the People's Commissar of Railways L.M. Kaganovich was instructed by the former. Count L.N. Tolstoy write a novel about railway construction in the USSR. (N.A. Nekrasov’s attempt to describe the successes of socialist construction on the railways was unsuccessful).
Leo Tolstoy was sent on a creative trip to GULZDS - the main directorate of railway construction camps, together with Pravda correspondent and employee of the women's department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Anna Karenina.
She, as you know, was the wife of the most powerful chief of Glavlit, the chief censor, member of the party Central Committee - K.P. Pobedonostsev - a dry, obscurantist old man, about whom the poet Mikhalkov wrote during the Thaw years that he “spread the wings of an owl over Russia!”

He regularly “cut” entire chapters from Tolstoy’s works! And their relationship was strained.
L. Tolstoy and A. Karenina began a whirlwind romance during their creative work.
As a result of his creative trip, Tolstoy wrote several stories that were not popular with readers, despite the fact that they were translated into the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR and the countries of the socialist camp - “How was the rail tempered?”, “The Raised Sleeper”, “The Red Engine”, etc. .
Tolstoy received a reprimand from the Central Committee. In addition, his affair with Anna Karenina became known to the Politburo.
However, by that time, Anna Karenina had already abandoned Leo Tolstoy and was cohabiting with the secretary of the Komsomol organization, the Kremlin cadet Vronsky, who was three times the USSR champion in show jumping and dressage, repeatedly won the Budyonny Cup at equestrian competitions and was the most accurate Voroshilov shooter.
On the Central Committee of the party there was K.P. Pobedonostsev and L.N. Tolstoy raised the question of expelling Karenina and Vronsky from party organizations and removing them from responsible positions.
During the discussion of this issue N.G. Chernyshevsky wailed as usual: “What to do? What to do?”
Stalin mimicked him by saying: “What should we do? What should we do? We’ll envy them!”
In her explanation to the Central Committee of the party, Anna Karenina wrote that Pobedonostsev stopped satisfying her and caring for her, and Leo Tolstoy promised to divorce Sofia Andreevna and marry her, but did not fulfill his promise. And with Vronsky they will create an exemplary Soviet family. In addition, she said that Soviet power freed a woman who ceased to be a house slave in a stinking kitchen and made her a free creative person.
The vengeful Tolstoy handed over to a foreign correspondent for publication intimate photographs of Anna Karenina, taken during a creative business trip on the railways.
They were published in Playboy magazine just during the International Women's Congress, at which Anna Karenina gave a report.
She could not stand the bullying and ridicule in the foreign press, the sidelong glances of her colleagues and committed suicide on the railway!
An international scandal occurred. As a result, Leo Tolstoy was removed from the Central Committee of the party and was sent to head the Yasnaya Polyana state farm in the Krapivensky district of the Tula region.
It was decided to retain the positions of head of the Tula regional organization of the Writers' Union and deputy of the Krapivensky district council.
At this time, L.N. Tolstoy had a lot of free time, which he spent on writing a masterpiece novel - "Anna Karenina", where he described the true events!

WATCH MY vid "ANNA KARENINA FROM THE PREMIERE"

Yesterday I attended the premiere screening of the film “Anna Karenina” directed by Sergei Solovyov. This tape is part of the “2-Assa-2” duology. It took Sergei Solovyov 10 years of preparation to begin filming the film. The film itself was shot in a year and a half. In total, 15 years passed from the conception of the film to its premiere.
I liked the film. Real Russian cinema, with outstanding Russian actors, beautifully shot in Russian. Excellent work by cameraman Yuri Klimenko. I enjoyed watching it. Although it feels like the film was shot as a TV series.
This is a completely adequate adaptation of the novel by Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Although the director, in his own words, did not seek to unravel the intention of the classic of Russian literature. Meanwhile, the words from the Bible “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” were not chosen by Tolstoy as an epigraph by chance.
When Lev Nikolayevich was asked what his novel Anna Karenina was about, he said: to answer, he needed to write the novel again.
Why did Anna Karenina die?

This is a film about forgiveness and love for your enemies!
There are almost 30 film adaptations of the famous novel. The most famous are Greta Garbo (1935) and Vivien Leigh (1948).
Sergei Solovyov's film is more psychological than Alexander Zarkhi's 1967 film adaptation. Then Tatyana Samoilova starred in the role of Anna, Nikolai Gritsenko in the role of Karenin, and Vasily Lanovoy in the role of Vronsky.

The intrigue of Sergei Solovyov's film is that Karenin (Oleg Yankovsky) is handsome and not too old, and seems to sincerely love his wife Anna (Tatyana Drubich).
I liked how director Sergei Solovyov filmed the lovers’ journey through Italy. I remembered how I rode the same gondola along the canals of Venice last year.

In 1996, I was lucky enough to star in the Hollywood film Anna Karenina (directed by Bernard Rose). The role of Anna was played by Sophie Marceau, Vronsky was played by Sean Bean. I described this in my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery). During the filming process, I observed Americans' lack of understanding of the driving forces of Leo Tolstoy's novel.

On the set of the film "Anna Karenina" - Vitebsky Station in St. Petersburg

The tragedy of Anna Karenina is, first of all, the tragedy of Leo Tolstoy himself. Lev Nikolaevich wrote both the novel “Anna Karenina” and the story “Family Happiness” based on the experience of his family life. In the story “The Kreutzer Sonata,” Tolstoy completely described the story of his wife Sofia Andreevna’s falling in love with a friend of their house, composer Alexander Sergeevich Taneyev.

Leo Tolstoy was an amorous man. Even before his marriage, he had numerous relationships of a prodigal nature. He got along with the female servants in the house, and with peasant women from subordinate villages, and with gypsies. He even seduced his aunt’s maid, the innocent peasant girl Glasha. When the girl became pregnant, the owner kicked her out, and her relatives did not want to accept her. And, probably, Glasha would have died if Tolstoy’s sister had not taken her to her. (Perhaps it was this incident that formed the basis of the novel “Sunday”).

After this, Tolstoy made a promise to himself: “I will not have a single woman in my village, except for some cases that I will not look for, but I will not miss.”
But he could not overcome the temptation of the flesh. However, after sexual pleasures there was always a feeling of guilt and bitterness of remorse.
When the wife could not share the marital bed with her husband, Tolstoy was carried away either by another maid or cook, or sent to the village for a soldier.

Later, justifying himself through the mouth of Stiva in the novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy admits: “What should I do, tell me what to do? Your wife is getting old, but you are full of life. Before you know it, you already feel that you cannot love your wife with love, no matter how much you respect her. And then suddenly love turns up, and you’re gone, gone!”

If Tolstoy wrote Levin from himself, then the prototype of Karenin was the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, who, according to rumors, had a similar family situation. The actor who plays Karenin, Oleg Yankovsky, even looks like him, especially when he wears glasses.

Tolstoy wrote that Karenin was an old man. Although by today's standards he is still young - he is only 44 years old. Anna is about 26-27 years old. She has an 8-year-old son. In those days in Russia she was no longer considered a young woman. Girls of marriageable age were 16-17 years old, so for the 70s of the 19th century Anna was a mature woman, the mother of a family, and Vronsky was very young.

In the film by Sergei Solovyov, Sergei Bezrukov initially starred in the role of Vronsky. But, apparently, he didn’t grow up. Yaroslav Boyko is tall and stately, but absolutely not convincing. There is not a spark of passion or a drop of love in him. He cannot be compared with Vasily Lanov, who played Vronsky in the film by Alexander Zarkhi.

It is believed that Anna Karenina's appearance is based on Pushkin's daughter Maria Hartung.
Tolstoy does not make a single mention of Anna's age. Karenin was 44. Stiva says that it was a mistake that Anna married a man twenty years older than her.

Actress Tatyana Drubich, who plays Anna, believes that “... society... has changed dramatically. Today, no one would notice her suicide or would consider it stupid... Most women, I'm sure, still dream of being Kitty. But this is... the way I would like to live, and Anna’s fate is, unfortunately, reality. A love triangle is a plot for a melodrama, and Karenina is the heroine of a tragedy.”

Anna Karenina, performed by Tatyana Drubich, clearly does not live up to the tragedy played by Tatyana Samoilova in the film by Alexander Zarkhi.
Tatiana Samoilova and Tatiana Drubich

Tatyana Drubich is the ex-wife of Sergei Solovyov. They got married after the director cast Tatiana in several of his films. The age difference was about the same as that of Anna and Karenin. But despite the fact that Drubich divorced Solovyov, the director continues to consider her his muse and makes films.

Why did Anna Karenina die?

Anna was tired of her quiet life, she wanted adventure. And she found them. Just like her brother Stiva searches for and finds love adventures.

Why do women love to play with fire and have secret affairs? What do they lack in marriage?

Here's how women themselves formulate the reasons for female infidelity:
1\ In life, every woman has a favorable chance to make such a small, imperceptible change. I really want novelty and flight! How can you stand here?!
2\ Almost a third of married women find lovers at work. Common cause, common interests, common... bed. And often also a salary increase, career growth...
3\ Cheating as a means to increase tone, self-esteem, gain self-confidence...
4\ Revenge for betrayal. Cuckold your spouse and you will immediately feel better. Just not openly, of course, otherwise something might not happen, it might get worse...
5\ I have the right, since my husband is such a fool and a loser...

If the husband married for love, and the wife married for convenience, without love, then it is likely that she will not miss her chance to feel like a happy lover, at least for a short time.

If a woman does not want to be cheated on, then she herself will not do it. After all, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov said: “A cheating wife is a big cold cutlet that you don’t want to touch, because someone else was already holding it in their hands.” Well, “if your wife cheated on you, be glad that she cheated on you and not on the Fatherland.”

A woman can hardly resist the temptation of a handsome lover, who is also younger than her.
But the development of the conflict in the novel Anna Karenina is determined not by the age of the characters, but by the social situation of the crisis of marriage, sanctified by the church. In those days it was almost impossible for those married in church to get a divorce.

By committing adultery, Anna gradually turns from a charming woman into a creature addicted to sex and drugs. She rejects all the laws of society and morality, almost going crazy. “I’m not the same,” Anna says about herself, and in fact tries to kill the evil monster in herself that she has turned into.

A woman’s love defies understanding, especially a man’s.
Anna was internally determined to die. During childbirth, she constantly says that she will die.
Anna is the type of victim woman. Love in general is a sacrifice in itself.

How should a husband react when he finds out that his wife has fallen in love?
“All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
I know of cases where a wife brought her lover into the house, with whom she slept on the marital sofa, while the ex-husband slept next to him on the floor.

I read the novel Anna Karenina twice.
Have you ever wondered why Anna Karenina cheated on her husband with Vronsky?
Public morality is bashfully silent about the main thing, as if it is afraid to pull out the last brick from under the shaky sacred myth of marriage.
No, not at all because of her husband’s annoying habit of cracking his knuckles. Karenin simply could not satisfy his young wife, and then he was replaced by the energetic Vronsky.

David Gerberg Lawrence’s famous book “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” clearly shows that a woman ultimately leaves a wealthy but “sexually impotent” husband for a sexually active forester, even if he is a forester.

A woman begins to grow wiser, come into her own and begin to understand at least something about sex after the age of 23. In reality, the “female age” is 5-7 years. Women need to have time to decide their entire female destiny in a few years: find a husband, quickly build a nest, give birth to a baby, establish relationships with all relatives on all sides, etc.
Men only think that they choose women. In fact, it is women who choose men.

What is the tragedy of Anna Karenina?
The age-old question: why marry and live with an unloved person?!

There have already been many productions of the famous drama. However, for some reason people do not learn from other people's mistakes. Perhaps because everyone must fulfill their own life, and not watch the lives of others. It is impossible not to make mistakes. For there are no mistakes, but there is destiny!

The biggest secret is that a woman needs sex no less than a man, only in a different way. It is estimated that a man thinks about sex about 18 times a day, and a woman about 10 times. At the same time, men and women have different attitudes towards sex. For a woman, sex is not something valuable in itself; for her, he is a continuation of love and the possibility of procreation.

American scientists have found that women whose blood contains a large amount of the hormone estradiol are prone to intimate relationships with several partners at the same time. Thus, hormones are to blame for female polygamy, experts say.

Perhaps human sexual nature is polygamous, but how to resolve the issue of preference? What if one wants to leave, thereby depriving the other of the meaning and joy of life?

Of course, the Anna Karenina problem cannot be reduced only to the problem of sex.
The tragedy is that she could not live in sin, in the dichotomy between love for her son and love for a man.

The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (who did not marry and lived alone) in his work “The Meaning of Love” said: “Strong individual love is never a service instrument of generic goals that are achieved in addition to it... Seeing the meaning of sexual love in expedient procreation means recognizing this meaning where there is no love at all, and where there is love, take away from it all meaning and all justification.”

Scientists have found that for most people, the feeling of love lasts no more than thirty months. Spiritually and physically, a man and a woman are capable of “high feelings” for only one and a half to two years, which is quite enough to get acquainted, strengthen feelings and give birth to a child.

The novice Sigmund Freud was surprised to discover that sexual dissatisfaction was the basis of hysteria and mental disorders. Psychoanalysis had as its goal to save a marriage without sex, to help a person compensate for the lack of sex life.

Very often people are bound by the bonds of marriage, and not by love. War of the sexes usually occurs within marriage, but not outside of it. A typical example is the film "The War in the Rose Family" starring Katherine Turner and Michael Douglas. They almost killed each other, not wanting to give up the property they had acquired together in a divorce!

76-year-old Mikhail Kozakov was convinced: “Well, a girl who is fifty years younger than you cannot love you as if you were young! Most likely she needs an inheritance, and it is in her interests that you quickly play the game.”

Wealthy older men can afford to marry young women. But for some reason this often ends in the quick death of the “newlywed.” Alexander Abdulov (who played Stiva in the film Anna Karenina) at the age of fifty, after two unsuccessful marriages, married a young woman. The happy actor had a daughter, Zhenya. But suddenly the actor began to fade away from a terrible disease - lung cancer and soon died. And the young widow immediately wanted to sell his house, and appeared at the wake in a flirtatious polka dot outfit and with a smile on her face.

If a woman many years younger appears in the life of an older man, regular intimate relationships begin. They can affect the aging body in two ways. If there are problems with the heart or blood pressure, they can get worse. But it happens the other way around - a relationship with a young woman seems to awaken a man to life. No one can predict what option is in store; it is a kind of lottery.

Edward Radzinsky put it this way: “Marriage is not an obligation. This is nonsense. This is the life of two people. And everyone has the right to live the way they want... The person next to you, he should be busy with something of his own, very important.”

Or maybe it’s all about the falsity of marriage, its artificiality? And what is marriage: something far-fetched or absolutely necessary? symbiosis or unnatural convention?
No, marriage is not an empty formality. First of all, this is the need for trust, for a feeling of reliability and security. If, of course, the marriage is sanctified by love.

You will say, love is subject to reason. And yes, and not always. In some cases, love for some reason turns out to be higher than rational calls.
In the movie Last Night in New York, the main character cheats on his wife with a “workmate” while on a business trip. The wife (Keira Knightley) also cheats on her husband, although she does not enter into an intimate relationship.

You can live together out of necessity, but never know love; You can even have children, but love... love!.. only crazy people are capable of this, because love is insanity! it is something more than passion, because it is insatiable!

Love is compared to madness, since any arguments of reason are broken in the waves of feeling!
No, logical conclusions do not fit into the mystery of love, they do not provide an answer. This is beyond logic, beyond biochemistry. This is a transcendental mystery! How, why do people fall in love and then kill each other? - incomprehensible!

The relationship between a man and a woman is not a sexual or even a moral problem, it is a cosmic problem - the combination of spirit and matter; This is the secret of the universe! Sex is not an empty affair, it is a cosmogonic act!

Today, relations between the sexes have been simplified to the point of impossibility. But this is a Secret! A mystery still unsolved.
Having revealed the mystery of sexual desire and conception, people thought that there were no more secrets in the relationship between a man and a woman, while the true secret is in preference, in fidelity, in uniqueness - this is the secret of love, and not at all in sex.

The institution of marriage, in its current quality, apparently cannot be preserved. But it will be possible to preserve love, to cleanse love of self-interest.

Leo Tolstoy was one of the first to diagnose the end of the traditional form of marriage.
Anna challenged society, and society rejected her because it could not accept such a style of behavior leading to the collapse of the family.

If subjectively Anna’s action can be explained by falling in love, then objectively by her actions she undermined the institution of family. And the institution of family was created primarily to protect the rights of children (legally born). History knows a lot of examples of wars started between legitimate and illegitimate, and even adopted children. The most famous case is the legendary Moses. You can also remember Cleopatra’s child from Caesar. Perhaps it was he who became one of the reasons for the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Senate.

Marriage never protected from affairs and illegitimate children, but marriage solved and still solves deeper problems of heritage and the meaning of life. However, what to do if one suddenly falls out of love, and the other continues to love? It is possible to allow free sexual relations and organize the upbringing of children, but it is impossible to solve the problem of reciprocity: when one loves and the other does not.

Everything, everything because of love, everything for the sake of love, including so-called evil!

By choosing love, Anna chose her destiny. And she died. Why? Because these are the laws of love? or was she unable to live with the feeling of sin? Who is she: a slave of love or an adulteress? Should she be acquitted for love or convicted of adultery?

Why did Anna decide to commit suicide?
Maybe the morphine that Anna abused was to blame for everything?
“I want love, but there is none. Therefore, it’s all over. And it must end.”

In my opinion, Anna was killed by guilt!
She committed a crime - she entered into a forbidden relationship, violated the commandment “thou shalt not commit adultery.”
The commandments are not a simple establishment, but a thousand-year experience of human relationships, these are the laws of life, the violation of which inevitably leads to death (spiritual or physical). But people do not believe in the commandments; they break them again and again, while being surprised at the tragic consequences. "What goes around comes around"!
Maybe you are right. But the commandments are impossible to fulfill. Any law is broken. Nature is stronger than culture.

Or maybe there is a deeper pattern hidden in the commandment “thou shalt not commit adultery”? Perhaps this is a kind of protection from the destructive effects of promiscuity, self-preservation of both oneself and children, where jealousy is a natural reaction to maintaining mental fullness and purity, a kind of self-defense, including from venereal disease?

Patriarch Kirill said:
“Fornication, which refers to carnal sin, carnal impurity, a sin that destroys a person’s chastity, in the Slavic language means delusion. Hence we say: to fornicate, to wander, to be mistaken. These are words of the same root. Fornication and delusion are words of the same root. As a result of delusion, loss of life guidelines, destruction of the system of moral values, a person begins to neglect his body. And by entering into unclean relationships with others, he causes mystical harm to this body... It is not only physical illness that harms the human body... A person damages himself with prodigal passion, and makes him unable to ultimately enter the Kingdom of God. This is why the Apostle says: “Fornicators will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”

Perhaps the commandment “thou shalt not commit adultery” contains a pattern hidden from us: by committing a sin, a person destroys himself because he renounces faith? Is adultery a betrayal? and whoever betrays faith loses love too? And from this the need for self-destruction? Love cannot withstand the sin committed?

Personally, I believe that the tragedy of Anna Karenina is her fall from grace. She abandoned her husband, her son, and ultimately could not bear the duality: she was torn between love for her son and love for Vronsky. What woman is capable of this?!

Anna is entangled in sin. She says about her husband: “I hate him for his virtue.”
In Anna’s situation there is no way out, the intolerability of sin is oppressive, and there is no escape from condemning oneself. Can a woman choose between a lover and a child, between sin and conscience, love and betrayal? Sin is unbearable and inexorably pushes towards death. In fact, the Fall is suicide!

Can Anna escape her fate? She simply could not do otherwise! Yes, fate is when it is impossible otherwise! Anna understood, she was warned, but she could not help herself. It's stronger than her! And so with everyone! We know, we understand, but we can’t change anything. And therefore we obey, sometimes we even consciously make a “mistake,” because this is not a mistake, but an inevitability!

Could Anna have failed to notice Vronsky? After all, if it weren’t for this “chance” meeting at the station, perhaps nothing would have happened?
Everything is chance, His Majesty Chance! Or is it fate? Or maybe just Tolstoy’s invention?

What is fate? This meeting and this look? the look of fate! Was everything really predetermined? But she felt, and even from the sign, she understood that this meeting was not good. Could she have escaped her fate? Could you not have thrown yourself under the train? It’s easy to say she could, but in reality she was unable to. It's stronger than her! Is fate stronger than man? By choosing love, she chose her destiny.
Through love our destiny is manifested and realized. Love controls us, creating our destiny! For love is God!
LOVE CREATES NEED!”
(from my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery) on the New Russian Literature website

WATCH MY vid "TOLSTOY'S WANDERER"

P.S. Read my other articles on this issue: “Tolstoy’s Last Sunday”, “The whole truth about the lie of marriage”, “Love is a mystery”, “Either polygamy or loneliness”.

SO WHY DID ANNA KARENINA DIED?

Nikolai Kofirin - New Russian Literature -

Yentsov Yuri 03/18/2013 at 17:30

The long-awaited film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, directed by Sergei Solovyov, has been released. It is generally accepted that great works of literature are difficult to film. We need to match them. Solovyov complies. But the meeting of two classics, literature and cinema, probably could have been more interesting if it had happened earlier.

For one hundred and thirty-five years since the novel was published, people have been asking the question: did Anna Karenina do the right thing? Actually, Anna is a fiction, a literary character, a myth. At one time, Komsomol members had such entertainment - the “trial” of Pushkinsky by Evgeniy Onegin for the murder of Lensky. Times change, and we change with them, but something remains the same: we “judge” Onegin, analyze the character of Anna as a living person, and Tolstoy as her psychoanalyst.

Since the invention of cinema, there have been about twenty-five film adaptations of the novel. Of these, nine are only in silent films. Already in those days, not only Russians, but also Germans, Italians, Hungarians and, of course, Americans turned to this plot. Perhaps the most famous silent film adaptation was with Greta Garbo in 1927. But in that film there was very little of Tolstoy, but there was a happy ending.

Garbo starred as Anna twice, the second time in a 1935 talkie directed by Clarence Brown. He was advised by one of the writer’s relatives, Count Andrei Tolstoy, and therefore the film adaptation is closer to the original source. It is already interesting to watch for connoisseurs of Tolstoy’s work.

Lev Nikolaevich designed the character of Anna, sculpting him like Pygmalion Galatea or like Praxiteles Aphrodite. But he also described his contemporary, otherwise there would not have been such undying interest in the novel. It's almost a reportage novel. No wonder a legend arose that the plot was taken from a newspaper. In fact, it was not just the note about the accident that caused everything. The prerequisite for writing the novel, according to literary scholars, in particular, Doctor of Philology Eduard Babaev, was the reading of Pushkin’s passage “Guests were going to the dacha”, and other events...

Among the post-war film adaptations, one cannot fail to mention the British film of 1948, directed by Julien Duvivier. Anna was played by the incomparable Vivien Leigh, and the script was written by the wonderful French playwright Jean Anouilh.

Some people like the Soviet film, more precisely the Moscow Art Theater performance filmed by director Tatyana Lukashevich in 1953. Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Vasily Sakhnovsky staged it back in 1937, Anna was played by Alla Tarasova. Alas, the author of these lines is not one of its connoisseurs; by the time of filming, Tarasova was already well over fifty. Tatyana Drubich, who played Solovyov in the film, has less.

Leo Tolstoy wrote in great detail, therefore, although it is not precisely stated in the novel, it is not difficult to find out that the hereditary princess Anna Arkadyevna Oblonskaya-Karenina was born in 1846. At the age of 16, as was then customary, that is, around 1862, she married Alexei Karenin, a man who was only 18 years older than her, and not 20 years, as her brother Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky stipulates. Perhaps her husband Karenin is the same age as Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy himself? Eight years later, that is, in 1870, that ill-fated meeting with Count Vronsky took place. Anna Karenina was 25-27 years old - no more.

It’s hard to mess with Anna; she’s a passionate beauty. There were a lot of absurdities with Karenin. Both in the play of 1937 and in the wonderful film of 1967, directed by Alexander Zarkhi, Alexei Aleksandrovich Karenin is a monster in which something human is sometimes visible. No wonder, because he was a courtier, otherwise it was impossible to interpret this image. However, in Zarkhi’s film, almost all the actors are great. And Tatyana Samoilova, in the role of Anna, and Vasily Lanovoy, Vronsky, and Nikolai Gritsenko, and Karenin are also quite a living person. Only one Levin - for some reason Soviet, sterile.

Tolstoy’s novel does not end with the death of the main character; there is also a part dedicated to Konstantin Levin’s search for the truth. This is curious - the work called "Anna Karenina" does not begin with Anna and does not end with her. After all, life is diverse, and Tolstoy invites us to seek and find ourselves in this diversity.

The novel shows three families: the Karenins, “unhappy in their own way,” the Obolenskys, “happy in their own way,” and the future family: Levin and Kitty. Everyone is important, but Anna is the harbinger, the “banner” of emerging feminism. It would not be Tolstoy who would raise this banner, but rather Madame Georges Sand, whom Lev Nikolaevich, by the way, did not like. Lenin called it "the mirror of the Russian revolution." I don’t know if anyone called Tolstoy a mirror of world emancipation? But thanks to Anna Karenina, it's appropriate. Tolstoy is a mirror of life, and everyone sees in him what they want.

In those days there were few people like Anna. She lived in an atmosphere of active idleness. By the way, modern “professional wives” are the main clients of psychoanalysts. This is not an easy task. They are used to spending money, relieving stress by buying new mink coats.

Of course, it’s difficult to talk about everything in detail in a movie lasting an hour and a half. Television came to the rescue. For the first time in 1961, the British Air Force made a series with some very homely, downright Russian Claire Bloom in the role of Anna. Vronsky was played by the handsome Sean Connery, who had already starred in the role of Agent 07 by that time.

The 70-80s of the last century were rich in film adaptations of the novel. In 1974, a ballet film appeared in the USSR to the music of Rodion Shchedrin; the role of Anna was performed by the incomparable Maya Plisetskaya.

In 1974, a series was filmed on television in Italy, directed by Sandro Bolchi, and the role of Anna was played by Lea Massari. In 1975, the French made the film “The Passion of Anna Karenina,” where Anna was played by Russian-born ballerina Lyudmila Cherina, directed by Yves-André Hubert. In 1977, another series was filmed in the UK with Nicola Paget in the role of Anna, directed by Basil Coleman. In 1985, Anna was played by Jacqueline Bisset, directed by Simon Langton.

In our country, all these films and TV series went unnoticed. But the 1997 film directed by Bernard Rose with Anne Sophie Marceau and Vronsky Sean Bean turned out to be quite interesting. At that time, Sophie herself left her aging husband, Andrzej Zulawski.

There was also a British series in 2000 with Helen McCrory in the role of Anna, directed by David Blair, but now, of course, one cannot help but compare the Russian film by Sergei Solovyov with Tatyana Drubich with another British film adaptation, in which Anna Karenina is Keira Knightley, and the director is Joe Wright . Both of these films were released in 2012.

In terms of its style, Wright's Anna Karenina is more of a film-performance, of which there were plenty, but the style was chosen deliberately. The director distanced himself from time and place, he was only interested in human relationships. But by showing Anna and her two Alekseevs: her husband and her lover in theatrical settings, the director also conveys his attitude towards the city, a secular society living according to its own dramatic laws. There is also a modern interpretation of Anna’s nervousness - in those days it was customary to use morphine drops as a sedative. The consequences of using this drug were not yet known.

Shot primarily for television screening, but successfully shown in two or three cinemas, Solovyov’s film is detailed, one can feel a reverent attitude to the source material, the hand of a master. But there is also a shortage of funds, an eternal Russian problem, and Tolstoy’s heroes suffered from this.

Like it or not, there will be conversations about who likes which Anna more: some are Keira Knightley, some are Tatyana Drubich. Or this: if only the red-haired Irishman Domhnall Glisson, who played Konstantin Levin in the British version, had the skill of Sergei Garmash.

As for Vronsky, it would be interesting to include his portrait here. According to Tolstoy, Anna’s lover bears little resemblance to Vasily Lanovoy in 1967, Sean Bean in 1997, or Aaron Taylor Johnson in 2012: he is “a short, tightly built brunette, with a good-natured, handsome, extremely calm and firm face. “Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped black hair and freshly shaved chin to his wide, brand new uniform, was simple and yet elegant.” Why not a portrait of Yaroslav Boyko, chosen by Solovyov?

There will probably be more film adaptations and new interpretations. There is artistic material for this. So, for example, in the second part of the novel, a meeting between Levin and Karenina took place, Anna tries to seduce Konstantin and she almost succeeds. There is so much passion under the thin skin of a secular woman, an educated woman!

Stiva Oblonsky and Princess Tverskaya, with good intentions, are destroying and destroying the family of their sister and friend. It is painful to read how Karenin, this statesman, cannot keep his wife for her and his own good. At first Anna consciously does not want to divorce him, she strives to be with her husband and son, she is torn to pieces. Then she doesn’t want a divorce deep down.

Karenin at first wanted to divorce her, then he changed his mind, because he realized that he loved her very much. He succumbed to persuasion and let his wife go, also out of love for her. And she wanted people to fight for her. In essence, the husband punishes Anna with his nobility. But this is not nobility, but cowardice and isolation from life.

A moment before Anna’s death, the author puts into her parched lips: “Everything is untrue, all lies, all deception, all evil!...” That’s why she wants to “put out the candle,” that is, to die. We are most likely talking about the writer himself, tired of work. He also had a candle on the table. In the novel, this candle flashed before the eyes of Anna, dying under the wheels, illuminated for a moment “everything that was previously in the darkness, crackled, began to fade and went out forever.” It turned out that not forever. This one will either fade or flare up, and Anna, like a Phoenix, will endlessly be reborn from the ashes.