CREATING ANNA KARENINA

For Blaisdell, a book critic and professor of English, Anna Karenina is nothing less than a masterpiece: “a holy book, a work of art” worthy of the intense attention he has devoted to it. Besides producing a meticulous close reading of the novel—summaries of chapters as they appeared in serial form, his responses as a reader, and his speculations about how Tolstoy’s contemporaries might have responded—Blaisdell draws on letters, memoirs, drafts, proofs, and Tolstoy’s various other writings to offer a detailed examination of the context of Tolstoy’s life during the four years of the novel’s creation. Tolstoy’s wife, Sofia, who “saved everything she could of what he wrote” and kept a disarmingly candid diary, proves central to Blaisdell’s sources. In addition to chronicling their life, she was closely involved in Tolstoy’s work, copying drafts and revisions. In appreciation for what she describes as her “zealous transcribing,” Tolstoy rewarded Sofia with a diamond and ruby ring. As Sofia portrays him, Tolstoy was a “distractible and fitful” writer, often occupied with matters other than his latest work of fiction: boisterous family life; various illnesses in their family; Sofia’s frequent pregnancies; business negotiations; the acquisition and care of horses; and especially pedagogy. Tolstoy was much concerned with teaching literacy, for which he established a school, wrote texts for students, and worked assiduously on tracts for teacher training. Among Tolstoy’s correspondents, letters to and from literary critic and philosopher Nikolai Strakhov are especially revealing. Strakhov, Blaisdell asserts convincingly, was Tolstoy’s “most important friend” as he faced the challenges of creating characters that came to seem more real to him than people he knew. “I have adopted her,” Tolstoy wrote of his doomed heroine. Anna, Blaisdell asserts, “is the character through whom Tolstoy dramatized and experienced his deepest terrors.” While some general readers may find the exegesis of the novel to be overkill, the author makes it personal and interesting enough to overcome that minor flaw.

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