In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy’s characters are accepted by society according to their ability to maintain a natural demeanor in the face of society. Anna and Stiva exhibit the same naturalness as Anatole of War and Peace and achieve the same acceptance in Russian society. Levin’s unawareness and inability to keep himself under control in the presence of others alienates him from his peers. His inability to interact appropriately with others as a result of low self-esteem and constant over-thinking creates an uncomfortable aura of unnaturalness around him. As exhibited by Anna Sherer of War and Peace who expertly navigates her gatherings in order to keep conversation flowing in a smooth manner, any incongruent action, such as the comments of Pierre, disrupt the accepted and expected societal current. Volonsky’s visit to the Oblonsky house in order to inquire about the hour of a get-together strikes the characters as unnerving. Tolstoy writes, “There was nothing either extraordinary or strange in a man calling at his friend’s house at half-past nine to find out the details of a dinner that was being planned and not coming in; but they all thought it strange. To Anna especially it seemed strange and not right,” (Anna Karenina 76). Anna Karenina, a touchstone character for detecting sincerity, is the most affected by Volonsky’s actions, even though she is enticed by them. Naturalness becomes the meter by which the reader may measure the morality of a character’s actions. Before reading What Is Art?, we acknowledged in class that Tolstoy prizes the natural man. He cannot always accurately capture this lower class realistically in his characters, but the fact remains that he lauds naturalness, which he associates with nature, and detests falsity. In What Is Art?, he asserts that real art captures felt emotion in such a way that universal audiences come away with the same emotion after experiencing it. Tolstoy does not publicly express this take on art until this volume is published after Anna Karenina and War and Peace, but the sanction of natural, sincere actions exists before he collects his thoughts in What Is Art?.
Tags: Anna Karenina, Literature, Marijke, Russian, Tolstoy, van de Stadt, War and Peace, what is art?, Williams College
