THE ENDLESSNESS OF ANNA KARENINA

It's often been said that the power of great art/literature/psychoanalysis lies in the compulsion it stimulates in the reader/viewer/analysand to feel the greedy necessity of re-reading the work in order to fully understand it. The act of a good read can become a fascinating form of a repetition compulsion -- charged with the satisfaction of going through the story AGAIN combined with the new excitement of saying there's a level of understanding lurking here that can only be grasped the second (or third) time around.

One of my favorite college teachers had the funny notion of a year long course in the novel that would have one semester of reading the great 19th century classics -- Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, The Red and the Black -- and then re-reading them the following semester. His idea was that the first time around the reader is so engrossed in the story with primary identifications with the characters that you don't notice the structure, you don't notice the subtle messages lurking in the background, he described his urgency to get to know Anna and how irritated he was with the Kitty/Levin plot -- and it was only as he matured that he realized this created the brilliance/balance of the novel.

In the new translation of Anna Karenina Tolstoy himself is referenced in the foreword regarding his own need to "find" Anna -- for a few years he wrestled with the idea of a story of a "bad" woman -- outside the social norms, someone who would be punished for transgressing। It was only when he came to fall in love with her -- and found himself unable to think of an ending good enough for her -- that he began to reconsider her suicide along the lines of a courageous woman -- a split off part of his own personality -- torn between the hunger for stability and the desire for unconventionality। Those four years were time well spent। After four readings Anna Karenina continues to capture, delight, reverberate with the deepest themes of existence rendered without an ounce of pretension. It made me wonder: is there contemporary literature today that rises to this level of ambition?