Tolstoy and the "Gospel" of Polite Society

Wishing for Dostoyevsky as I read Anna Karenina

Note:

1. This essay contains spoilers for Anna Karenina

2. This is a hot take and I may be misreading Tolstoy.

3. If I am, correct me in the comments.

Years ago, while I struggled to read War and Peace, I ran across a comment that said something like, Tolstoy wrote more about society, while Dostoyevsky wrote more about the inner human struggle. That was all it took. I put down War and Peace, picked up Notes from the Underground, and I never looked back.

This summer, however, I decided to give Anna Karenina a try. I’ve read enough Dostoyevsky that I now understand how Russian novels work and, of course, the novel couldn’t be more highly recommended. It’s regularly considered one of the greatest novels of all time, and I have even heard it described as the best illustration of the gospel in all of literature. Unfortunately, I spent most of the 800+ pages wondering why.

Of course, Tolstoy is a great writer. I think he’s better than Dostoyevsky. But from a gospel perspective, I didn’t get it. I didn’t see much gospel. People say it gets better with multiple readings, but it doesn’t warrant one from me. It’s certainly no Brothers Karamazov, which is my pick for the-best-illustration-of-the-gosple-in-all-of-literature. I’ve wondered if there aren’t just two kinds of people in the world: those who see the gospel in Tolstoy, and those who see it in Dostoyevsky. Here’s why I side with the latter.

Anna and Polite Society

Anna is a hot mess. She follows her heart only to find herself imprisoned by the consequences. She sometimes comes across as just a spoiled white girl who tells off her husband, chases her boy-toy, and ends up strung out on morphine.

But she’s also honest. When she tells off her husband, I get the feeling that other women in the novel would have liked to say the same thing to theirs. Anna simply has the force of personality to try and reshape the world to her liking. Like any society defined by a rigid social order, Anna’s world was rife with hypocrisy and double standards. She sees through it and tries to be free.

Maybe I’ve read too much Dostoyevsky, but I kept expecting Tolstoy to do something meaningful with this. When she breaks free of society, I expect some aspect of society to be exposed. I didn’t approve of Anna’s behavior, but I expected her to cause the reader to re-evaluate our cultural norms. But that’s not what happens. Polite society is an immovable force that crushes her with hardly a thought. Tolstoy could have treated her like a prophet, but she was never given much voice.

It’s probably unfair to keep waiting for an aristocrat like Tolstoy to see the world like the commoner Dostoyevsky, but the difference couldn’t be more pronounced. Anna reminded me of Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Myshkin lands like an alien in polite Russian society. He doesn’t play by their rules because he doesn’t understand them. Myshkin simply tells the truth, and polite society wasn’t ready. He threw himself against convention and flamed out like Anna, but he held up a mirror as he went.

Dostoyevsky turned Prince Myshkin into a sacrificial lamb, while Tolstoy treated Anna like a cautionary tale. Anna doesn’t cause anyone to look in the mirror or question their own worldview. When Dolly visits Anna, she envies her until she sees her life. But Dolly doesn’t learn anything about herself other than it’s nice to have stability. Dolly’s husband still cheats on her, but Tolstoy celebrates her false sense of security. Others pity Anna, or are momentarily beguiled by her, but no one—ever—identifies with her. She challenges no one and changes nothing.

The Gospel and Polite Society

Tolstoy can write startling descriptions of the Gospel. The self-debasement of Alexei Karenin might truly be one of the best illustrations of the gospel I’ve read in literature. So my greatest frustration wasn’t about Tolstoy’s portrayal of the gospel as much as where he put it.

I kept waiting for Anna to have a Christ-experience that overshadowed that of her husband’s. She fell so far that I expected her rise to be unmatched. But she doesn’t. Again, I admit my unfair expectations, but I’m used to Dostoyevsky.

The hardest part for me was that it was Levin’s Christ-experience that closes out the book. I loved Levin, but his coming to faith means that the very best person—the most naturally compassionate and sober-minded—suppliments his upstanding-ness with a Christ-experience. After reading so much Dostoyevsky, not to mention the New Testament, that came as a shock.

The spiritual genius and societal commentary in Dostoyevsky is that it’s the Anna’s of the world who meet God. With Dostoyevsky, God moves independent of the natural order of polite society. Meanwhile, Anna Karenina reminded me of the Left Behind movies, where the sinners all had tattoos and the Christians all had their shirts tucked in. It reinforced the idea that good things happen to good people.

Maybe that’s why Tolstoy left Anna lying dead on the tracks and redirected our attention toward Levin. Maybe he had to. Is it possible that his theological vision was limited to the plausibility structures and safe confines of polite society? Levin had everything: a beautiful wife, a happy child, and a wonderful country home. Unfortunately, those are the only sorts of people who find God in this novel. And that made me sad. It’s why I love my Dostoyevsky. He would have never left Anna on the tracks.