What's so special about this shit?What's the hype about?
Mostly the characterization and character development and the complex ways they interact with each other
>>24102780Dostoevsky called it the perfect novel
>>24102828And Borges called The Invention of Morel the perfect novel. I'm starting to distrust what these authors call the perfect novel
>>24102780It's a masterpiece, perhaps the best novel ever written. The characters are fully drawn, compelling, complex, the tension and conflict are enthralling. The contrast between modes of living is poignant. What more can one say?
>>24102780Woman moment. Somebody post that book chart for women moment books.
>>24102780Throw yourself in front of a train.
>>24102780It's basically like Mme Bovary done right.
>>24102989I thought Mme Bovary was better desu.
>>24102980
>>24102780>Sergei sees his mother and Vronsky together >Anna and Vronsky try to be nonchalant. >The young boy can sense the tension between them, instinctively dislikes him because unable to parse the relationship>Too pure to understand what's going on between Anna and VronskyAbsolutely gut-wrenching.
>>24102780>if you go live on a farm you'll get a loyal 18 year old gf who'll birth you several children, the book
>>24103016This is why adulterers suck.
>>24102828Ghastly rigmarole
>>24103020I always get this book confused with W&P when it comes to that stuff
>>24103020I WANT THIS.I NEED THIS.
>>24103204NEED IT TO MAKE ME FEEL HEATED
>>24102780>What's so special about this shit?>What's the hype about?It is just a Russian copy of the urban romance novel When the side nigga catch feelings.
>>24103290
>>24102780I fucking hated Levin chapters, so insanely boringSomeone explain to me why this is considered better than War and Peace?I found the Oblonskys and Vronsky/Anna/Karenin interesting, their interactions and stories compelling, but both Levin and to a lesser extent Kitty were an absolute waste of timeKitty was okay to be fair as the story of a girl becoming a woman, she just got worse as she spent more time with LevinLevin literally comes to the realization that he should just think less about life and he'll be happier on page 950 of a 960 page book, when Stiva has been living that lifestyle (and being the only happy one out of all his million relatives) since page 0, so why is this supposed to be interesting to the reader?>>24103016Anna's relationship/lack of relationship with her son and the way that cascades into her mix of hatred/indifference towards her daughter is one of the most interesting parts of the book to me, fantastic truly
it's a sex b0ok, so all women rave about it
>>24102780I was about halfway through when my ex-girlfriend spoiled the ending for me. She didn't even read the entire thing. She'd get bored and skip entire pages/chapters whenever she felt like it. The meta-irony is off the charts.
>>24102989roasties stay mad
>>24102780OK. Imagine you're a wealthy aristocrat coomer suffering a mid-life crisis. You decide to write a preachy moralistic novel on why people (read: you) shouldn't fuck around. Marriage is sacred. Adultery is wrong. Etc. So you create a character, a stupid, vain, selfish little woman, and have her commit adultery, and then show how her entire life collapses as a result. Real Dante shit.Here's the catch: in the same way that some people are born with perfect pitch, or 20/20 vision, or photographic memory, you have a superdeveloped theory of mind (to the point that you can even imitate the point of view of a dog or a retarded peasant if you want to). And as you try to write this hamfisted Christian morality play, that faculty (which has already brought you fame and fortune from your earlier works) refuses to play ball and trivialize your main character.Anna Karenina is the product of that tension. It's great precisely because you can see Tolstoy struggling with his own hypocrisy for 800 pages (without the mask of philosophy or history as in War and Peace) until he just sort of gives up at the end.
>>24104869>imitate the point of view of a dog or a retarded peasant if you want torefresh my memory. did this happen in AK?
>>24102780You need to have experienced a breadth of what life has to offer to appreciate it.
>>24105612>refresh my memory. did this happen in AK?he imitated the point of view of a woman
Every, literally every thread I've seen about Anna Karenina or War & Peace makes me not want to read them. At all. Maybe I will read that one book about a man dying.>>24103016This is what I'm talking about.>>24104180>Anna's relationship/lack of relationship with her son and the way that cascades into her mix of hatred/indifference towards her daughter is one of the most interesting parts of the book to me, fantastic trulyhow is this fantastic?
>>24102780It's really really big which impresses the feeble minded and most people who read it never read his earlier novella Family Happiness which is the entire Levin plot. The whole book is 1/3 Family Happiness, 1/3 Madame Bovary, and 1/3 Tolstoy nonstop sucking his own dick off on how smart he is, how kind he is to the peasants, etc. Read it for the first time in a Tolstoy's Russia history class in college and while learning the extreme details of Russian history helped me appreciate what he was going for a little more, it's still vastly overrated and a genuine chore to read.
>>24102780how would anyone want to read that relationship slop is beyond me. the premise is so insanely boring. we had a lot of romance slop in our literature class but this was too much so I didn't even read the summary to follow the conversations, just completely ignored its existence
>>24105741I can tell you smell and don’t wear deodorant and love TTRPGS
>>24102784>>24102978how could someone looking like lvl 70 hermit write such book
>>24105693Because it's good, impactful art? I don't get your aversion to this stuff
>>24105741this is the exact opposite of slop you retard
>>24105784Dude was a player in his youth. The way he writes dashing young military men? HE WAS ONE.
>>24105784All 70 year olds look like that eventually. Especially back then, when you just gave up at 40
>>24105784He was a rich chad
>>24105791It is called relationship slop because of what it does inside ladies' pants.
>>24105693because it's good and also because I think my mother had a similar relationship to me, so I feel it quite viscerally
>>24105612Yeah we get a glimpse of what’s going on in Levin’s dog’s head, as well as his serfs
>>24105784>if the mainstream pictures of a man depict him as old, that means he was always old.Many such case
>>24104180>I fucking hated Levin chapters, so insanely boringt. femoid
>>24106402Did Gogol do this too? Why do I think there's a Gogol short story with a dog POV? Was it a woman?
>>24106407no but explain if you liked levin chapters then why
>>24105693What? Do you read bing bing wahoo?
>>24102780its boring pretentious shit jack offs pretend to like to look smart
>>24106609If you think AK is pretentious or tries to look smart, you either haven’t read it (most likely) or are completey retarded (possible too).
>>24102780Subhumans, faggots and women love the Realist Movement, the shittiest movement in the history of literature, and shill it well>he understood the psychology of womenFucking kys
>>24106587what is the equivalent of bing bing wahoo
>>24106922based on your last part of the postrealist movement is good when it is about the psychology of man, it is shit when it is about women, as we all know they are subhuman
>>24107108No, it's always garbage.>women, as we all know they are subhumanBased on this part of your post, you think women are subhumans.
>women??>love???>aaaaaaaa I am going crazy noooooooo fellow chuds help me cope with this booklooks like it is a great incel filter
There isn't a single sentence you would stare in awe at, yet it is a masterpiece
>>24107389>>women??>>love???>>aaaaaaaa I am going crazy noooooooo fellow chuds help me cope with this bookI say this
>>24102780The moment Levin's lying on the haystack after working in the field all day and he hears the workers revelling through the night and considers that he can have this freedom in his life too and decides to attain it, then immediately realises his true nature and what kind of life is obtainable for him has stayed with me for the last five years.
>>24107389Literally me and I love the book
>>24109253why? he has like 8 life-changing realizations over the course of the bookI understand that the last is the most "final" because he manages to circle the square of how to live in daily life as well without changing anything, which makes it seem less transient to a readerBut can you explain why this stuck with you? I really tried to appreciate him but can't
>>24107717very well put anon. tolstoy never wrote a beautiful sentence or an ugly book
>>24109253>>24109594this part always made me lol because levin does like ten seconds of yardwork and has this "whoaaaaa peasantry is like, godliness bro because, dude, like, it's so simple to swing a scythe, ohhhhhhhhhh im so sweaty and tired, poetry of the body ughhhhohhghhghhh, what if we all were peasants" and wealth had made him so retarded that he doesn't realize peasantry wouldn't be fun if you had to do it ten hours a day for your whole life lmao
>>24110491>tell me this isn't beautifulOн coшeл вниз, избeгaя пoдoлгy cмoтpeть нa нee, кaк нa coлнцe, нo oн видeл ee, кaк coлнцe, и нe глядя>>24110514literally all of his realizations are on the same level as this ngl
some of you don't get how ~ c o m f y ~ this book is
>>24110586I can't read Russian, anon. can you translate? somehow I think I'm missing the poetry here
>>24110866it's Levin and Kitty at the ice-skating rink, I think, or somewhere near the beginningBasically, "He went away. Like the sun, he avoided looking at her for long, but like the sun, even without looking, he saw her."I don't know how good it sounds in English but it's very romantic in Russian, one of the more famous lines from this book
>>24110945that is striking, thank you for translating anon
>>24110975no problemI wonder, is Tolstoy funny in English? Anna Karenina has quite a lot of famously-funny lines
>>24104180>I fucking hated Levin chapters, so insanely boringget filtered
>>24109253>what kind of life is obtainable for himwhich is?
>>24112578looks like he's getting ready to mow down all those peeps
>>24114598I dunno what that guy thinks but according to Tolstoy it's living exactly as he was before with literally no changes but now having the internal moral feeling that he's always doing the right thing whenever there's no one around to distract him from his sense of his own moral superiority
>>24110866Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation
>>24116736total hacks, do not ever choose their translationst. Russian who read a bunch of English translations of Russian texts in translation schoolRichard literally just makes things up sometimes and it's probably because he can't understand what Larisa is trying to write. The idea that a person who speaks non-native English and her husband that speaks no Russian are somehow a normal translation team is so unbelievably stupid to me. Only an Oprah viewer would buy this version.
>>24117974I posted text from their translation, perhaps you could point out a specific in the text I posted, I will even throw in a whole random page from chapter 24 to critique, perhaps you can post the corresponding text from a different translation for comparison
>>24106099Fucking almond head
>>24118092
>>24102828He called it a perfect work of art btw
>>24116736>>24118092Read this firsthttps://www.commentary.org/articles/gary-morson/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/
>>24118578You don't even own a copy if AK do you
>>24105784He was a fuckboy in his youth (in fact to such an extent that his wife was absolutely disgusted when she found out) and an aristocrat, I'd imagine that he'd have been very charming as well, especially given his literary output>>24106099>chadif that's what "chads" look like in Russia, no wonder alcoholism is so common, he fucked a lot but he was never super handsome
>>24118610of course I do, but I haven't read this translation in English and a sample of 4 paragraphs isn't great material to complain. That said, I think the translation of the line about the sun is pretty shitty here.Clearly the guy who translated above isn't a professional, but at least he understood that the emphasis should switch from Russian to English. In Russian, и нe глядя should be at the end of the sentence for emphasis, but in English it's obviously the main verb that should go there in order to capture the same essence of emphasis.That doesn't matter to Volkhonsky because they are allergic to changing sentence structure out of some idea that it maintains "textual integrity" when it doesn't at all -- it just fucks up the emphasis of the sentence for the reader and thereby severely limits the emotional impact.
>>24118610>>24118683the text I particularly studied for comparisons of translations was the Death of Ivan Ilyich, where the Volkhonsky translation is incredibly obviously inferior to other classics, even Maude's, lol. If you want proof, look at chapters 9/10 of Volkhonsky translation. Literally written like an autist at the most emotional and gripping part of the book.
>>24118691>its perfectly valid english that sounds goodbut you understand that tolstoy isn't writing in perfectly valid russian that sounds good, right?You're like the commentators in this thread throwing platitudes at one another like >Tolstoy has never written a beautiful sentence or an ugly bookActually, he writes a lot of beautiful sentences, but then they're mauled by being turned into "perfectly valid" sentences by translators that miss (necessarily miss, I might add, because of the game of telephone the two of them are playing where neither fully understands both languages) the source.
>>24118705>>24118691sorry, to be clear, by>but you understand that tolstoy isn't writing in perfectly valid russian that sounds good, right?I meant that that's an incredibly low bar to aim far, and that the translators should be attempting to translate style not just meaning that is valid and sounds good
>>24118705I don't really see the problem. I don't want to read writing that sounds like English
>>24118713>sounds like Englishif you're reading Tolstoy, you should want to read something that sounds like Tolstoy, Jesus Christ, you illiterate fuckInstead all the Volkhonskys give you is a totally style-less and neutered expression of Russian grammar turned into English. Their Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are the same fucking thing, because they just translate fucking grammar and no style, it's disgusting
>>24118100Why the hell did they use single quotes in place of double?
no wonder some people find it unremarkable when they are reading butchered translations without even knowing it
>>24118721I went from constance garnett translation of brothers k straight to her translation of war and peace and I couldn't see a difference, it was the same dry stuff and nothing from the original authors came through
Also I get you don't like the pv translation, I'm not defending it I just asked you to pull out your own book so we can take a look at this text like literate mature adults
Women getting what they deserve
>>24104180t. Cityfag>>24104303Kek
>>24102828I did too
>>24102780Halfway though and can't wait to be done. I don't give a shit about these characters. But I do recognize Tolstoy's skill.>>24105784He was born to an aristocratic family. Don't be fooled by his end of life Gandalf look.
>>24105784The actual reason for Tolstoy's genius was experience. Everything that happens in his stories, he actually lived that shit. All he did was take real things that happened in his life and fictionalized them
>>24119096and yet he never wrote about his homosexual experiences unlike dosto
>>24119435There is a brief mention of it in Boyhood but I doubt there was anything deep to it. Basically "women are retarded and only good for fucking, i think i would prefer romance with a man at this point"
>>24102780I don't know. You tell me what have you read about the novel.
