The blurb of the Oxford World’s Classics paperback edition of “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy says that “Many believe ‘Anna Karenina’ to be the greatest novel ever written”. With praise like that, I had expected to be bored and confused for the first couple of hundred pages. The classics, especially the really highly esteemed ones, tend to be slow to start the action, slow for me to get feelings for the characters, slow to reveal their greatness. Usually, I only get them in the end, when I’ve taken in everything and have had some time to think.
Still, I enjoy reading the classics. The epics, the big stories, they’re usually written with so much finesse and such a feeling for detail. Writing is a handicraft, and the writers that have survived through the centuries are usually masters of this careful building with words. To find that kind of modern word artists is hard, you have to get through so many just ordinary ones before you find that diamond.
That’s why I don’t mind the slow beginnings of most classics. I know the effort I put into get through the first few hundred pages will probably pay off in the end. But god, with “Anna Karenina” I didn’t have to wait long. Already after ten pages, it no longer required any effort to continue reading. After fifteen, I started to sympathize with the characters. And after an additinal twenty, I was hooked.
And really, it’s not heavy. It’s almost nine hundred pages long, but it’s not heavy. It’s a drama, following several characters for a couple of years, letting you get to know them intimately, all their faults and virtues, and it doesn’t judge. It’s an emotional adventure with something for all tastes.
I got this copy that I’m now reading from Kirke just before I left Stockholm. It’s a big and heavy book, physically, dispite the paper covers, and as a backpacker I have a limited amount of space to occupy all my belongings with. Still, there was never any doubt as to my bringing ‘Anna Karenina’ with me. It was a gift for my journey, and with the dedication that she had written in it, a lively and humorous and loving poem (exactly like Kirke), I just had to pack it. And I haven’t regretted it for a second.
I’ve only reached halfway through, so I can’t say if the claim in the blurb is true. But I do know that I’m hooked, and that I could read all day every day until I reached that last page. If I didn’t have so many stalls to clean, that is.
Katja Malmborg 