"My Anna has bothered me like a bitter radish": How the famous novel by Leo Tolstoy was created
"My Anna has bothered me like a bitter radish": How the famous novel by Leo Tolstoy was created

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Tatiana Samoilova as Anna Karenina
Tatiana Samoilova as Anna Karenina

“All happy families are similar to each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” - with this phrase begins the famous work Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy "Anna Karenina" … Today this novel occupies a prominent place in the gold fund of world literature, and its creation was not at all easy for the author. He planned to write the book in just two weeks, which ended up taking four years. In his hearts, the writer exclaimed: "My Anna has bothered me like a bitter radish!"

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy at work
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy at work

According to literary scholars, the idea of creating the novel "Anna Karenina" was born in Tolstoy after reading one of the works of Alexander Pushkin. When Lev Nikolaevich flashed before his eyes the phrase "Guests were going to the dacha …", the imagination immediately began to draw a plot. As the writer himself noted:

Leo Tolstoy manuscript
Leo Tolstoy manuscript

However, Tolstoy did not manage to write Anna Karenina so quickly. From a family and everyday romance it grew into a socio-psychological one. Tolstoy began work in 1873. When several chapters of the work were ready, the writer took them to the Russian Bulletin. Now he had to manage to write the continuation of the novel by the release of each issue.

Contemporaries recalled how hard it was for Tolstoy. Often he got to work with inspiration, and it also happened that the writer shouted: Only four years later the novel was ready.

Still from the film "Anna Karenina" (1914)
Still from the film "Anna Karenina" (1914)

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was about to breathe a sigh of relief, but Mikhail Katkov, the editor of the Russkiy Vestnik, did not like the epilogue and did not let it go to print. Instead of an epilogue, a note appeared in the magazine:

Readers and critics alike felt that the ending of Tolstoy's novel was too harsh
Readers and critics alike felt that the ending of Tolstoy's novel was too harsh

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was repeatedly reproached for the fact that the death of the main character was too cruel. To this the writer answered quite wisely:

Portrait of M. A. Gartung, daughter of A. S. Pushkin. E. Ustinov
Portrait of M. A. Gartung, daughter of A. S. Pushkin. E. Ustinov

About who became the prototype of the main character, literary scholars are still wondering. Describing the appearance of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy imagined the daughter of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin:

Still from the film "Anna Karenina" (1967)
Still from the film "Anna Karenina" (1967)

Tolstoy knew the family drama of his close acquaintances, in which his wife filed for divorce and remarried. This was an unheard-of resonance in those days.

About a year before the start of work on the novel, not far from Yasnaya Polyana, a certain Anna Stepanovna Pirogova, abandoned by her lover, threw herself under the train. The mutilated corpse made a strong impression on Tolstoy.

Photo of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy at work
Photo of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy at work

Thousands of readers waited impatiently for each issue of the "Russian Bulletin", but contemporary critics wrote dozens of angry reviews on "Anna Karenina". Nikolai Nekrasov even sent Tolstoy a biting epigram:

Anna Karenina is considered the most screened work of Russian literature. A the image of Anna Karenina was tried on only by the brightest and most famous actresses.

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