In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, understanding of the real is attained only through struggle. There are three main types of struggle in the novel: that which characters bring upon themselves, that to which characters resign themselves, and finally, the kind of struggle that is an active search. This last type of struggle is a response to a sense of absence, of lack, a need for change and growth. Levin’s inner turmoil and his constantly reexamined, renegotiated relationship to the world around him derives from this lack, and through it, he moves closer to real knowledge, real spirituality, and real love.

Throughout the novel, Levin is portrayed as the primary seeker of the real; of course, the very notion of the “real” is problematic and requires definition. In Anna Karenina, this idea is developed in contrast to the falseness and appearance-centeredness of certain ideologies and social settings. The real is something genuine, an essence that cannot be found without delving beyond the surface of thought or of human interaction. It is not an absolute, nor is it a set of values that characters can conveniently adopt on a whim. When seeking the real, the seeker will always undergo a transformation, but this transformation works both ways--throughout the search, reality itself is shaped by the seeker, becoming truer and closer to its essence as its dimensions are revealed. The characters who are the most unbending, the least amenable to change, are thus the furthest away from the real.

One of Levin’s transformations occurs in the realm of knowledge and ideology. In his acquaintances, he finds rigid codes of behavior and thought that are inconsistent with the actions they undertake. Sviyazhsky, “whose judgment was very logical though never quite original,” lives life in a very “definite and stable” manner that is entirely disconnected from the beliefs he espouses during drawing room conversations (298). Even Levin’s half-brother Koznyshev preaches ideals that seem hollow compared to the actual practices of his existence:

The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed that Koznyshev and many other social workers were not led to this love for the common good by their hearts, but because they had reasoned out in their minds that it was a good thing to do that kind of work, and took to it accordingly. What strengthened this conviction, was noticing that his brother did not take the question of the general welfare, or of the immortality of the soul, any more to heart than a game of chess, or the construction of a new machine (218).

In contrast to Sviyazhsky and Koznyshev, Levin arrives at his political and social beliefs through questioning and experimentation, and in searching for the connection between a “man’s life and his thoughts,” he determines that this synthesis would ideally be found in his work (308). His way of life necessitates the integration of thought and experience—in order to maintain his estate, he must develop agricultural and managerial practices that are reasonable for his workers and fruitful for the land. He devotes considerable energy to codifying these methods before realizing that bringing “everything into accord with what were considered the best models” ignores both “the natural order of things” and his own experience (292). To better understand the peasants and their work, he begins mowing alongside them, temporarily inverting the social hierarchy and discarding all that he had learned from farming books. While mowing, he does best when he is not constantly analyzing the scythe’s movement and speed—“[but] as soon as he began thinking about it and trying to work better, he at once felt how hard the task was and mowed badly” (229). This incident, as well as his travels to other estates, shows Levin that “the natural order” surpasses “the best models” because it is not merely theoretical, but tied to rhythms that fit both the workers and the land. When mowing, as while managing his estate, Levin “had to do what he was doing, and could not do otherwise,” instead of imposing a structure at odds with what is natural (715).

Throughout the novel, Levin also undergoes a spiritual transformation. His religious views change from agnosticism to a new kind of spirituality that is not necessarily synonymous with religiosity. Indeed, he is not especially receptive to religion, finding its forms inconsistent with the beliefs he has cultivated. Oblonsky informs him that he must receive communion before his marriage to Kitty, but Levin feels that this societal compulsion cheapens the very real emotions that arise from his love:

And in his present softened state of mind the necessity of pretending not only oppressed him but seemed to him quite impossible. To be obliged to lie or blaspheme now—at the very height of his glory, when his life was just bursting into flower! (398)

But when he did not think, but just lived, he unceasingly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge deciding which of the two possible actions was the better and which the worse […] In this way he lived, not knowing or seeing any possibility of knowing what he was or why he lived in the world, and he suffered so much from that ignorance that he was afraid he might commit suicide, while at the same time he was firmly cutting his own particular definite path through life (717).

Levin’s gradual spiritual growth is contrasted with Karenin’s sudden embrace of religion. Karenin is at first “interested in religion chiefly from a political point of view,” as a marker of morality within the public sphere (464). However, when he believes that Anna is dying, he experiences a true epiphany: “He was not thinking that the law of Christ, which all his life he had wished to fulfill, told him to forgive and love his enemies, but a joyous feeling of forgiveness and love for his enemies filled his soul” (376). After a lifetime of professing Christian beliefs, he finally grasps one of its central values, not because he feels that he is supposed to, or that something “told him to forgive,” but because he sincerely feels the power of forgiveness and love in his soul. In that moment, he “surrendered to his faith” (465). The effects of his revelation are only temporary; indeed, Karenin is portrayed as an empty vessel for anything that might ease the pain caused by his decaying marriage, and when a more mystical version of the religion he abandoned in favor of true faith comes along, he uses it as a salve. Lydia Ivanovna’s soothing words, derived from the “ecstatic, mystic influence” that had captivated all of Petersburg (463), are less real than Karenin’s spiritual renewal at Anna’s deathbed, but the fashionable interpretation of Christianity grants him a sense of moral superiority:

…[W]ithout thinking that his forgiveness was the act of a Higher Power […] he had experienced more joy than when, as now, he was perpetually thinking that Christ lived in his soul, and that while signing documents he was fulfilling His will. But it was absolutely necessary for Karenin to think thus; it was so necessary for him in his humiliation to possess at least this imaginary exaltation, from the height of which he, the despised of all, was able to despise others, that he clung to his mock salvation as if it were the real thing (465).

Levin also grows closer to an understanding of real love through sacrifice and struggle. To understand what distinguishes real love—a love that is fulfilling and sustains both partners—from that which is unsatisfying and false, an examination of Anna and Vronsky’s relationship is helpful. Anna and Vronsky struggle for their love, but it is a struggle against conventions and, ultimately, against themselves. At first, their problems derive from the mechanics of orchestrating an affair, but as they attempt to build a life together, they fail to find the happiness that always seemed just around the corner—indeed, Vronsky comes to feel that their “best happiness was already in the past” (326). For him, their affair is only satisfying when it causes a “sensation” and “invest[s] him with fresh glamour” (279); when Society is watching, Vronsky can forget the reality of their situation, can forget that in consummating their relationship, something very real was sacrificed:

He felt what a murderer must feel when looking at the body he has deprived of life. The body he had deprived of life was their love, the first period of their love…But in spite of the murderer’s horror of the body of his victim, that body must be cut in pieces and hidden away, and he must make use of what he has obtained by the murder (135).

In contrast to Anna and Vronsky’s unhappy affair, Levin eventually finds true love with Kitty, suggesting that successful partners struggle together, not against each other. After Kitty rejects Levin’s first proposal, Levin devotes himself more fully to his work and the management of his estate. He labors to become “better than he had been formerly,” deciding that he should no longer “underrate the present” by investing all of his emotional energy into a future that suddenly seems less hopeful (85). He must re-order his world to reflect a life without Kitty, but in the process, Levin builds the strength he needs to approach her again. Because they have both changed—Levin, by discarding the assumptions he had nurtured (that marriage was a necessity, the only route to “exceptional happiness” (85)), and Kitty, through her illness and her time with Mlle. Varenka—the shape of their interaction is altered. Their conversation becomes “a kind of mystic intercourse” (355), and Kitty is able to provide a “laconic, clear, and almost wordless communication of a very complex idea” essentially by translating Levin’s half-formed thoughts into a language they both understand (361). Their transformations, undergone while they were apart, allow them to change together as well, transforming themselves with their love. Kitty and Levin are in a series of situations that test them as a couple—particularly when dealing with Levin’s dying brother (part V)—but these struggles are part of the life that they establish together, an adult life that is not an escape from the past or from Society (as in the case of Anna and Vronsky). The couple grows ever closer through honesty (as when Levin shares his diary (371)) and adaptation:

As a bachelor seeing the married life of others—their petty cares, their disputes, their jealousies—he used mentally to smile contemptuously. In his future married life he was sure he would have nothing of this kind, and even the external forms of his married life would be quite unlike other people’s. And now, behold! his life with his wife had not shaped itself differently, but was all made up of those petty trifles which he had formerly so despised, but which now, against his will, assumed a strange and incontestable importance (436).

Throughout the novel, the characters that cannot access the real, or have forsaken the opportunity to search for it, often sense that there is something missing, and they feel a deep dissatisfaction caused by an indelible lack. Karenin, for example, knows that there is something shady about the fashionable Christianity that he comes to embrace, but that does not inspire him to seek an alternative. Eventually, under the influence of Lydia Ivanovna, he settles for falseness and easy comfort. Likewise, Anna and Vronksy recognize that their relationship is not what they had hoped it would become, and pressures from their society and from within themselves ultimately tear them apart. They become so desperate, so trapped in their relationship that both partners try (and Anna succeeds) to commit suicide as a means of escaping their volatile pseudo-marriage. The question, then, is what holds these characters back from seeking the real? Why does Levin grow while they remain static? Ignoring an explanation based on pop-psychology or on a biographical sketch of Tolstoy, it seems that the characters that do not pursue the real become too focused on one aspect of their lives to the detriment of the other areas. Karenin devotes so much of himself to religion, Anna pours the entirety of her being into her relationship with Vronsky, and this singularity of purpose blinds them to other ways of thinking, living, and loving. Levin’s struggles, on the other hand, actually fortify him, preparing him for challenges elsewhere in his life and relationships. He seeks synthesis, a melding of thought, action, and feeling, while the others strive to develop the one thing that seems to have the power to save them, not realizing that this single-mindedness will cause everything else in their lives to atrophy.

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Ed. and trans. George Gibian. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.