Leo Tolstoy was a complex and brilliant man. He was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana and educated privately. He led both a wild life filled with guilty pleasures and a domestic, simple life devoted to his family and religion. Tolstoy was an extreme rationalist and moralist who tried to further his views and ideas through his writings. Because of this, much of his personal experience and ideas are expressed through his intricate characters. In the novel Anna Karenina, Tolstoy is best represented through Levin, a simple man who believes in land, nature, faith and marriage. Many things that occurred in Tolstoy life also are described in Levin’s. They have parallel ideas on many themes discussed in the novel such as marriage and adultery, city versus country life and religion.
Tolstoy is very explicit in his use of Levin as his mouthpiece. This is clearest in the direct parallels between Tolstoy’s own life and events in the character Levin’s life. Tolstoy was16 years the senior of Sonya, the women he married. He proposed to her by writing the first letter of each word on the table between them in chalk. Tortured with guilt, Tolstoy then presented her with his diaries, which he had kept specifically for that purpose. In them he confessed that in his early years he had indulged in a wild life filled with gambling, alcohol and women. Levin reenacts these exact scenes when he proposes to Kitty. She is many years younger than he, and the proposal takes place in exactly the same way. Levin too confesses, “that he was not as chaste as she was, and that he was an agnostic.”[1] These are just a few of the direct connections between Tolstoy and his character Levin.
After his younger years, when his life had little direction, Tolstoy eventually moved into the country and immersed himself in agriculture and the affairs of his estate. He attempted to improve the lives of peasants by allowing them to buy out land. However, the peasants never fully trusted this nobleman and in anger about this, Tolstoy moved back into the city of Moscow to reacquaint himself with his former lifestyle. Similar events occur with Levin. His love of agriculture and lack of fulfillment in other aspects of his life lead Levin to completely engross himself with Pokrovskoe, his estate. He also concerns himself with the peasants. He tries to increase the farm’s productivity through farming innovations, although the peasants resist them. He also attempts to help them by allowing them to sharecrop a portion of his land, but due to their distrust of the upper class, the attempt fails.
Tolstoy’s feeling about the peasants was also very directly related through Levin. He was fascinated by them and felt that there was much for him to learn through them. Levin feels the similarly and tries to enter into a partnership with the peasants. The passage where Levin mows with the peasants is one of the most salient images of the novel.
The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of oblivion in which it seemed that the scythe was mowing by itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and precise by itself. These were the most blissful moments.[2]
He works side by side with them, enjoying the simplicity of their lives. This scene clearly expresses Tolstoy’s emotion regarding the peasants. He felt so strongly that in the later years of his life he renounced material goods and lived a close approximation to a peasant’s life – something his character Levin was unable to do.
The strongest parallel between the two is the idealized family life. Tolstoy
did not believe in nihilist theories about marriage. He believed that men
rarely became emotionally involved in their relations with mistresses and
would rarely consider leaving their marriage and break apart their family. He
felt that women on the other hand, would throw themselves at the first man who
satisfied their emotional needs, and this came before the sanctity of
marriage. These ideas are easily seen in Anna Karenina. While writing
this novel Tolstoy was an older man in his forties and his wife Sonya was in
her twenties, the tragic ending to Anna’s life may very well have been a
message to adulterous women of the tragic consequences. Tolstoy once said,
“The one thing necessary, in life as in art, is to tell the truth.” However
when Tolstoy was married he had an affair with one of his peasants and
abandoned the child that resulted. He never forgave himself about this.
Tolstoy’s marriage to Sonya, especially their happiness in the beginning, is
paralleled to Levin’s marriage to Kitty. Levin also believes strongly in
marriage and happiness in family life. He knows that marriage is an arduous
task that must constantly be worked at. For Levin, marriage and a family are
necessary to lead a happy life. Once married, love and family clearly become
the priority in life. He leads a wholesome life, carefully faithful to his
ideal of family and marriage.
The soul-searching and spiritual struggle the Levin experiences in part eight of the book directly mirrors the turmoil that Tolstoy was experiencing as he finished writing Anna Karenina. At fifty years old, healthy, happily married with children and at the peak of his literary success, Tolstoy was torn by thoughts of suicide. This was due to his desperate search for truth and the meaning of life. It was necessary for him to find a meaning of life that could not be obscured by death. For Tolstoy, the conclusion to this struggle was the belief in the inner goodness of man. He found the very essence of Christianity to be universal love and to live according to ones conscience. His beliefs were contrary to the church’s official doctrine, and due to this the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him. Later in life, Tolstoy welcomed spirituality and faith even though he struggled with it for many years. He even renounced meat, alcohol, tobacco and blood sports. He eventually came to understand that he was happier when he believed than when he did not believe.
Levin very clearly goes through the same struggle as Tolstoy and arrives at the same solution. Despite being happily married and content in his work, the death of his brother and even birth of his son cause Levin to wonder at the point of life if everyone is destined to die. This greatly torments him, and he too becomes obsessed with the idea. “And Levin, a happy father and husband, in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he had to hide a rope lest he be tempted to hang himself, and would not go out with a gun for fear of shooting himself.”[3] Through a peasant he comes to the conclusion that reason is not the sole point of life, and he recognizes his soul and his belief.
Tolstoy was a complex man who was searching for a simple life. He struggled with temptation through his early years and eventually found happiness in an almost peasant lifestyle. His writings were meant to evoke thought in his readers and to further his ideas about love, life, marriage, lifestyle and religion. In Anna Karenina he used the moral character, Levin, to represent himself and his ideals. The parallels between the two permeate the novel. He wrote himself into the book and examines and expounds his own moral and philosophical beliefs through his character. The connection between the two invites the reader to examine both Levin and Tolstoy more carefully.
