Defining Moments in Anna Karenina

This essay returns to F. R. Leavis’s 1965 essay on Anna Karenina as its point of departure, arguing that the novel is ultimately more tragic in its effect than Leavis allows. Beginning with an account of some representative moments which define the unbridgeable gaps between certain major characters, it moves to consider the differences between the new Penguin and the Maudes’ World’s Classics translation of a passage which is seen as embodying Tolstoy’s consistent attempt to imagine life as always lived in time. The essay then proceeds to consider the three ‘defining moments’ which together provide the rationale for its title. These related moments - Koznyshev’s aborted proposal to Varenka, Anna’s suicide and the death of Frou-Frou in the famous horse race – are at the heart of this essay’s claim for the tragic status of Anna Karenina.