>>25052552
He thought women were retards who belonged in the kitchen and therefore had the highest understanding of women out of any writer

>>25052552
He talks to women and had sex with one

>>25052552
This is the paradox. He hated women, like really, and felt homosexual eros. He probably was himself hysterical. Really an awful husband. Could never get over all the debaucheries he committed.
Compare him to other famous misogynists and he might come up too.

>>25052596
>He felt homosexual eros

Huh?

>>25052552
tolstoy "did it" by not doing it at all. he opened a vein & bled anna onto the page & then spent the rest of his life trying to become a peasant because he was so horrified by what came out. the "portrayal of women" you're praising is a portrait of one man's civil war with his own anima, painted in drag, punishment & train-wheels.
you didn't read a woman.
you read a man's attempt to exorcise one from himself by pinning her to paper & watching her slowly stop moving.

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>>25052657

>>25052552
>How did Tolstoy do it?
He copied a strong African American woman's book.

>>25052552
Madame Bovary by Flaubert is brilliant too. The answer it that the true novelist can create new whole worlds with fully formed humans in it, much like a god.

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>>25052552
>This is the best portrayal of women I have ever read.
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doll_(Prus_novel)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Py3-U956w
Wokulski is the average anon (well, simp) and Łęcka is the average roastie. Similar in meaning to Lolita but way predating it

Some hold it to be the greatest Polish novel

>>25052606
I am another anon. There's a page from Tolstoy's diary where he is in his early 20s and riding a carriage with a slightly older Russian guy he knows, he is describing how he was burning with desire to cover the guy in kisses but did not act upon it. I think he suppressed this as he aged though

>>25052860
What competition is it up against?

>>25052876
Who hasn't been there. Means nothing.

you retards are such hypocrites, why is tolstoy praised while schopenhauer is ridiculed when they came to the same conclusion?

>>25052552
>Anna finally meets Levin
>immediately charms him
>Tolstoy writes that she could've had Levin (his self-insert) however she wanted him if she only wanted to
What did he mean by this? Seriously. That entire section fascinated me the first time I read it, and still does

>>25052657
This is correct. The reason Anna Karenina turned out so good is because the entire thing is Tolstoy fighting against his urge to moralfag about what an awful person she is so he created the most vivid characters ever written

>>25052923
>What competition is it up against?
what OP said. who i quoted directly in: >>25052860

anna karenina is a cheating bpd whore
not all women are like this, saying its the best portrayal of women isn't fair to women
however, what ALL women are, are cold calculating and emotionally manipulative creatures hiding under a pretense of innocence

>>25052552
I feel like he was just extremely talented and didn't even really know how he was doing it, he just did. I don't know any other author that would write so effortlessly

>>25053144
I meant as in what other Polish novels is it in competition with to be the best Polish novel.

>>25053154
Ferdydurke is funny

>>25052606
>>25052876
There’s also something about wife believing be was in love with one of his friends. But his sex drive towards women has extreme and tortured him his entire life. We can say that as with Byron he may have been better off with lower social status at first.

>>25053393
Why are genius authors such perverts? Victor Hugo was the same, and fucked like 20 women the week he was dying when he was 80

>>25053512
The animal heat converts into the energy of imagination, so its helpful for the genius to have as much as possible

>>25052860
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and Joseph Conrad's oeuvre mog it.

>>25052552
He knew that deepest desire of woman is to be loved. A real woman, by force of her nature, does not feel her obligations towards the logic of life called ethics(To quote one philosopher). Almost every woman will reject everything else if that is the price of being loved by a sublime man.
>>25053017
Anna was in a strange state at the time. Some dark passion had taken hold of her, which was very tempting for any man. Anna at the beginning of the novel might not have been able to win Levin over, but Tolstoy portrayed her in Levin's moment as a true predator of men.
>>25052876
It doesn't have to be homosexual love. Who knows what took hold of him at that moment, maybe love for man in general.

>>25052596
>>25052876
fags always projecting their disgusting debasement

>>25052976
It's cause Schopenhauer was an incel.

Tolstoy refused the Nobel Prize, calling it all a charade. Schopenhauer would have taken the Nobel Prize.

>>25053780
>Anna was in a strange state at the time. Some dark passion had taken hold of her, which was very tempting for any man. Anna at the beginning of the novel might not have been able to win Levin over, but Tolstoy portrayed her in Levin's moment as a true predator of men.
Yeah, I get that. But what makes it fascinating to me is that Levin IS Tolstoy, and he basically wrote himself getting (mentally) dominated by arguably his greatest character, and then later Anna herself, when she projects her hatred onto Kitty while spiraling, says that she could've ruined their happiness.

>>25053154
>what other Polish novels is it in competition with to be the best Polish novel.
the several others that won the Nobel Price in Literature, something the russians never received :^) (not counting solzhenitsyn's biography or that jew pasternak)
aside from the Nobel laureates there's the Doll and there's Sienkiewicz's Deluge, as another anon mentioned Gombrowicz, also Witkacy's Insatiability

>>25053744
Conrad Korzeniowski was ethnically Polish but his literature is British not Polish lol
>The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
the film is great but idk about the novel, all i know is its one of the earliest novels

>>25053983
>Tolstoy refused the Nobel Prize, calling it all a charade.
you can't refuse the Nobel Prize, they simply never cared to award any russians any, maybe for a reason
Dylan tried refusing but he's still listed as a recipient LOL

>>25053988
Yes, if you look from the Levin=Tolstoy starting point and if we take into account that Anna symbolizes the passions of Tolstoy's soul, then it seems strange and as if Tolstoy's "anima" could have prevailed and totally taken over him and "robbed" his happiness
but... it's all fiction after all :)

>>25052552
by talking to them, and by being deeply interested in what they thought and felt and how they expressed it - just like every other heterosexual male author of value, such as Flaubert, Joyce, etc.

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>>25052552
By letting the Leonora thoughts run loose—same as all those WAP passages where the ladies are speaking with comically dainty affectations while flitting their dresses around.

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Why did Tolstoy make Karenin such a cuckold?

>>25054926
He’s a cold bureaucrat pretending everything in the world is going fine ignoring the ticking time bomb right under him. In fact he’s the best representation of Tsarist Russia at the time

>>25054947
So what does it say about him that he still raised the bastard child from his wife's love affair with Vronsky?

>>25052976
Tolstoy is more even handed. His Anna also has Vronsky and Karenin to sap up some of the evil actions so it’s not just a WOMAN BAD book.

>>25053062
Tolstoy is a moralist but he’s good in spite of that not because of it. No one takes his peasant living lifestyle seriously outside of self styled Levin-bros of /lit/.

I want to make a video series going chapter-by-chapter on how good Anna Karenina is, and how most chapters use a distinct literary device or motif to make them stand apart, it's really incredible how good this book is when you read closely

>>25055232
A demonstration with The horse race chapter please

>>25052552
Tolstoy was a dope-smoking hippie

>>25055435
There's a horse rape chapter in Anna Karenina?

>>25054329
It's surprising that she complains so much about him yet he must have been fucking her a lot to produce 13 children.

>>25052860
polacks coming out of the woodwork to beg for attention whenever big bro Russia is mentioned is so pathetic

>>25055604
They had a bizarre relationship, much more strange than the public consensus that he was a tyrannical husband suggests. She was still intensely devoted to him through all their fighting and they read each other’s diaries where they all shit on each other

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>>25055438
This has got all messed up, now you're thinking of Catherine the Great.

>>25055604
Feeling guilty about being horny is an essential part of Tolstoy and his fiction.

>>25054926
What a sad character.
Shell of a person. Especially in the scene where he realizes he has no one to talk to about what has happened.

Leo Tolsoy

>>25052552
Anna Karina

>no one posted the true classic yet

>>25054011
why lie so transparently lol. Boris Pasternak was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature

>>25056950
It was some kind of depraved humiliation ritual.

>>25052876
Covering the homie in kisses is not gay. Just sounds like you've never had a real male friendship.

>>25054926
Karenin had a son to consider. He cared deeply about duty and family, and instead of having a hysterical outburst he just tried to damage control.

>>25057450
Iirc he was a high ranking political personage who couldn't just dump her because of the social order of Tsarist Russia in that time and the upcoming re-election of himself was a main reason for not just leaving her.

>>25057450

In Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin is a high-ranking government official in Imperial Russia. He occupies a senior position within the St. Petersburg bureaucracy, serving as a member of a ministerial department.
Key details regarding his professional position include:
High-Ranking Bureaucrat: Karenin is described as a "solid citizen" and a prominent figure in the civil service, holding a position of significant influence.
Committee Specialist: He is known for managing governmental affairs through "solutions by committees," often heading special commissions, such as the investigation into the "condition of the native tribes".
Provincial Governor Experience: In his earlier career, he served as a provincial governor.
Characteristics: He is portrayed as a "cold," rational, and methodical man who treats his administrative work with the same rigid, procedural approach he applies to his personal life.
Towards the end of the novel, his political career stagnates, though he retains his official standing.

>>25053017
Work with a girl who seems to be able to charm any guy who comes through. What should I make of this? Is she a Anna Karenina

>>25057465
Thank you, ChatGPT.

>>25052552
I always wonder why people insist so much on monogamy and treating their spouse as a personal possession. 90% of problems in these books wouldn't happen if they just let each other fuck someone else from time to time and get it over with. I can never get this out of my head while reading these Russian drama books. The envy is almost hilarious, like little kids arguing over a cookie

Anyway, good book, I enjoyed it more than the Karamazov brothers that I'm currently finishing

>>25057450
Did he really care about family tho? Only from a duty point of view.

>>25057465
fuck off with this ai slop

>>25057780
As I said above he cared about his son insofar as he cared about his position in society. In Tsarist era in his position he needed a wife and son and a seeing Christian lifestyle.

>>25052876
Many such cases!

>>25057780
Are you a woman? "Oh, you're not caring about me in the right way". He fulfilled every duty in a forthright and complete way.

>>25057936
He ended up being looked over for a promotion by his rival. Everyone knew about the affair and ridiculed him behind his back for being such a beta cuck. Ultimately he should have divorced Anna. She was for the streets.

>Leon Tolstoy

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Obligatory

“The birches are not stuck in, they are planted or seeded, and they ought to be carefully tended. Only those nations have a future, only those nations can be called historical, that have a sense of what is important and significant in their institutions, and value them.”

>>25052552
I'm 36 and haven't had a gf since ei was 20

I've missed the boat for a decent girl haven't i

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>>25059821

>>25052552
>This is the best portrayal of women I have ever read.
Anna Karenina is the best because it masterfully depicts different type of women, but when it comes to a zooming in on a single character, Madame Bovary is at the top.
>>25055224
Tolstoy is a moralfag, but he was also incredibly conscious that morality is relative to the times and that's what made him so much better than most moralists. He's always inquisitive of the limits of his own perspective. I've seen some people disliking the ending of AK, with Levin simply deciding to be a Christian despite not having a solid argument as to why Christianity should be more real than any other religion, but that's precisely what made Tolstoy so brilliant. He took a leap of faith to be a man of his time, but remained open minded about not having landed in the exact right place.

>>25052552
I prefer Clarissa

>>25061081
Yeah Tolstoy is awesome. Generally I am more of an antiquity guy and I try to stay in my lane, but of 19th c lit I can stand I enjoy Tolstoy and Victor Hugo a lot. Most 19th c lit especially Austen, Bronte and that garbage Id burn it all if I could.

>>25054004
Lmao this subtle seething

>>25059821
wew lad

>>25061081
>he was also incredibly conscious that morality is relative to the times
Nowhere in any book does he voice this sentiment. He constantly ridicules the privileged urban class for arrogantly forming their own contemporary morality in the backdrop of traditional wisdom.

>>25065235
>Nowhere in any book does he voice this sentiment
Read his book on art. When it comes to the question of what makes art good or bad he concludes that we consider good art whatever art that expresses the morality of its time. He gives explicit examples like the Romans liking art that communicated the honor of self sacrifice for the state. For the Greeks instead good art was the art that communicated a feeling of earthly beauty and physical strength. I'm pretty sure he gives other examples too. Maybe the Chinese and the jews, but can't remember what he said of them from the top of my head. Following this line of thought, he believed the morality of his time was the christian faith and good art was the art that successfully communicated the brotherhood of all men, which he saw as the basis of Christianity. He did believe Christianity was a superior morality than the ones that came before though, as he thought its universal values were a natural development over the previous more localized religions, but, while he held strong positions, through the book he remains open about the possibility of being wrong about most things, because he understand he's blindsided by his own historical context just as much as anyone else through history. It's a great read. You would think it's going to be full of Christcuckery and cheap moralism, and it is, but his reasons to get to those conclusions are all brilliant, regardless if you agree with him or not.

>>25065520
I'm decidedly not a Christian but sympathize with his views on art very much. I definitely think a good Pixar movie is more valuable art than some dark, serious avant-garde European arthouse movie or whatever because it transmits a universal morality that anyone in the audience can be affected by. There has to be some kind of utilitarian purpose for art in my opinion and Tolstoy makes a good case for it

>>25052552
Am I weird for enjoying the Levin chapters more than the Anna or Alexei ones.

>>25065897
NTA, but I view art as something evoking genuine feeling (genuine since it must be authentic and true), thus a "utilitarian moral purpose" which is too hamfisted may well meet the criteria you just outlined, but would instantly put me off as too artificial and poorly constructed; it would be the literal definition of the word "artless", lacking skill or finesse in it's creation. Art, in it's best form, creates a transcendent experience, and while this can take the form of transcendent morality, it does not have to. Maybe this makes me a snob, but I find the best art is that which also transcends the moral and times it was created in, it ought to be "timeless".

>>25052552
BUMP