Death by Train Wreck: Anna Karenina and the Changing Zeitgeist
There’s something about a train wreck that changes lives whether we’re talking about the participants or the witnesses. Even for people who hear about the catastrophe after the fact, the steaming chaos of the crash leaves an indelible print on the psyche. Bent rails, shattered cars, black smoke, and the horror of bloody pulp: combined, the image makes for an iconic nightmare motif of that which can go wrong in the modern world. That’s why Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina caught my attention. It’s a novel that features suicide by train and was inspired by an actual train wreck, and not just any train wreck, but one that resulted in the tragic death of Anna Stepanova, the housekeeper of Tolstoy’s neighbor, who threw herself beneath a train to protest her husband’s infidelity. Her suicide had a ripple effect, deeply touching not only the author but his readers who observe the suicide in reconfigured terms. Critics interpret the novel as commentary on Tolstoy’s Russia, the disorder and chaos of the times finding voice in a more personal drama, and yet the drama of Anna Karenina speaks volumes about current times.
Anna Karenina is a work with timeless, universal import, but somehow the relationship drama seems especially timely now. As a witness of the passing years and the changing Zeitgeist, I’ve seen the norms of relationships change from standard dating to hook up culture to polyamory, and now it seems like the vulnerability of love and the obsession with it is once again changing what it means to be together. It’s something about the connectivity of the world wide web and its drawbacks that is shaping the changing face of love. I’m not even sure if this change has hit the awareness waves of the general public, but I see the change nevertheless. Anna Karenina as a work of literature gains even more importance in this context since the text reveals the importance of finding something beyond oneself for which to live. The virtues and benefits of true, wholesome love are demonstrated in the text, but that higher purpose is still beyond the connection with one other person however connected, however fateful, or however worthy. Ups and downs, expansions and contractions are microcosmic reflections of macrocosmic fluctuations. This is true of relationships with others and oneself, but if one lives for a purpose outside the small nucleus, that is the way to avoid suicide if the other person lets us down.
Anna Karenina’s Levin illustrates this paradigm in a deeply meaningful way. On the one hand, Levin prioritize love to the point where it to influences his moods and lifestyle, yet he finds himself harmonizing with tradition despite his contemplations about the plight of the mushiks. He seeks to improve life for the mushiks but also to maintain the integrity of the land. After marriage, he has inevitable ups and downs with his wife, but he stands tall through the storm, becoming a husband and a father. He becomes the father archetype and lives according to the archetype. Even while married to his true love, he struggles spiritually and sometimes ponders suicide, but he achieves felicity in his higher purpose as head of his household. The harmony he achieves is enough Eudaimonia to prevent him from the ultimate flight. His spirit is what I see brewing beneath the surface of our current culture. It’s a vision of life many people lost touch with and couldn’t connect to, but its absence has left a wound in the soul. People recognizing the absence it brings are once again seeking to fulfill their higher callings in a more traditional way.
On the other hand, the character of Anna is worth considering as her archetype is also very much alive in the current culture. As much as Anna loves, she only loves herself and the gratification of her ego. Despite what she thinks is true about her love, she lives for the stimulation of petty conquest, feeding off exterior attention and gratification at the expense of all others. Fleeting exterior satisfaction leaves her in a draining loop of ecstasy and despair, fulfillment and emptiness. She may very well love Bronsky, but she sacrifices herself and her first born son with her first husband to satisfy her desire, yet when Bronsky finds the need to satisfy himself before her, she is tortured by the effects of her poor life choices. She can not give Bronsky the liberty she once enjoyed, instinctually feeling that such liberty, if offered in equal measure, would be damaging for their relationship. Anna lives for his gratification alone. Without him and his attention, Anna finds a brittle shell. Having rejected her traditional socially acceptable roles, her vocation, which offered wholesome gratification rather than the illicit, she has rejected harmony with the larger purposes that have been passed down generationally to ensure the general well being of all. That was the liberty she pursued, and so she equates all liberty with such severed ties. Anna knows that her liberty hurt her ex, who was always only gently flawed, and in pursuing her liberty without a higher purpose, she demonizes, plays with, and then degrades her first husband. She then hurts her son by abandoning him in pursuit of her desire. Although she wishes she could see him more, her reckless and chaotic behavior count as signs that she could be a bad influence. Whether that is true of a character such as hers is debatable, but it does show that she is in it for herself and not the selfless side of herself but for the unstable self, dominated by ego and short-term reward. In a culture that glamorizes shallow forms of liberty and gratification, it is all too easy to see herds of Annas, thinking they are free while not seeing the snares that bind them, the snares of their own generation, snares of the moment, lacking the foundation of tradition.
When reality crashes down upon those dominated by shallow, transient forms, the crisis feels like hell, but what I hope is that people view it as a doorway to connecting with higher purpose rather than as an invitation to suicide. Anna, when she comes to see the long term, when her honeymoon of lust and flattery mellows to domesticity and more independent life within the relationship, she discovers pain. She does not enter Eudaimonia, nor harmony with any larger purpose, and she finds life devoid of meaning. Perhaps enough people have found themselves at this point and that is why the Zeitgeist is changing. In Anna’s case, she throws herself in front of the train, seeing death as the solution.
When I think of modern life and even my own past, in a way, I think of few Levins and far too many Annas. It isn’t clear to me why the culture grew to emphasize Anna’s vision at the expense of Levin’s, but the mad train of unbridled desire packaged in an infinitely entertaining form might very well be part of it. Online, it is all too easy to spend hours staring at those we desire, to submerge ourselves in easy pleasures, and to fool ourselves into thinking that the instant gratification of online engagement is anything worth our time. Thus, I worry for our youth, many of whom would never throw themselves before a train but who may find years of unhappiness, conflict, and stress ahead. Still, I see a subtle shifting, a growing awareness, and a desire to reconnect with the slowness and depth of a more traditional culture, a connection that would heal wounds, like golden, enriching sunshine in the soul.
