I will give me vengeance Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina." The meaning of the epigraph. The tragedy of a woman in conflict with class morality. Preaching of work and love. The main characters of the novel

This material presents a study of the role of the epigraph in the novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina". The article may be useful when studying the novel in high school, as well as when studying the role of the epigraph in literary works.

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The meaning of the epigraph “Vengeance is mine and I will repay” in the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina"

EPIGRAPH

(Greek epigraph - inscription)

1) in ancient Greece, an inscription on a monument.

2) In European literature, a short statement placed after the title of a work and prefaced by the text or its structurally allocated part (chapter, volume), the meaning of which reveals to readers the content of the narrative that follows it. The epigraph indicates the theme of the work, emphasizes its main idea, and highlights important circumstances of the plot action. Most often, the epigraph turns out to be an accurately or inaccurately quoted saying of someone else (a fragment of the work of a predecessor author, a catchphrase), but it can also serve as the author’s own statement. Epigraphs are aphoristic and laconic.

[ Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006].

For the formation of the reader's attitude, not only the epigraph is important, but also its origin; temporal, spatial, sociocultural, personological remoteness of the source.

In the epigraph to his novel “Anna Karenina” L.N. Tolstoy chose words from the New Testament. Epistle to the Romans of the Apostle Paul, ch. 12, Art. 19: “Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give room to the wrath of God. For it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.”

This epigraph has its own history. V.A. Zhdanov, in his work “The Creative History of Anna Karenina,” dwells on it in detail. He writes that the idea of introducing an epigraph was first reflected on a sheet of paper with separate notes for the novel. Among them is the entry: “Vengeance is Mine.” In the fourth incomplete edition of the novel, an epigraph appeared: “Vengeance is Mine.” Probably, from memory, Tolstoy quoted the beginning of the biblical saying: “Vengeance and retribution are mine” (Deuteronomy, chapter 32, art. 35). And while working on the eighth edition of the first part of the novel, Tolstoy added the epigraph: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,” that is, he cited the text of the Gospel from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans (chapter 12, art. 19), but introduced an alliance and (canonical text: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay”). Most likely, Tolstoy wrote it in by inertia, perhaps remembering the union in the biblical text. It is hardly possible to unconditionally assert, as B. M. Eikhenbaum does, that Tolstoy originally took this biblical saying from Schopenhauer’s book “The World as Will and Idea.” Tolstoy read Schopenhauer's work in 1869, and the Bible, the Gospel, the Epistle of the Apostle Paul, which Tolstoy knew perfectly well before, were in his hands just in the seventies, when the ABC was created and published with four Slavic books for reading , each of which included passages from the Bible and the Gospel.

So, an epigraph is a sign that refers the reader to the source text, updating in his mind memories and complex associations between two works. The epigraph “Vengeance is Mine and I will repay” refers us, readers and researchers, to the Epistle of the Apostle Paul, which also contains a reference to the Old Testament Fifth Book of Moses. In Deuteronomy (chapter 32, verse 35) we read: “Vengeance and recompense are with me when their foot fails...”

How should we understand the words of the Apostle Paul, to which L.N. refers us? Tolstoy?

Theophylact of Bulgaria in the Blagovestnik [ book 3, M., 2002, 110-111 ] interprets this verse as follows: “Give room for the wrath of God towards those who offend you. If you avenge yourself, God will not avenge you; and if you forgive, then God will take revenge more severely.”

This idea is developed in more detail in the “Interpretation of the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul” [The works of Theophan the Recluse, M., 1879, 239-242]: “... most of all we should pay attention to the motivation for non-vengeance exhibited here, namely, the submission of the case to the judgment of God. There is an avenger of truth - God. He will repay if he must. The wrath of God is His righteous retribution: for God has no wrath, but there is a righteous retribution, which seems like wrath to those who are subjected to it.”

Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.- “God takes upon himself the matter of vengeance. Do not interfere in this matter, He seems to say, I myself will repay. You won't be able to do it properly. In your opinion, it is necessary to take revenge now, but according to the best order, it is better to postpone revenge, either for a while, or completely. You can do without revenge at all: the offender himself will come to his senses and correct his injustice; and this is much better. Take revenge on him now, and he will become even more bitter. I sent you this lie for your iniquities and your sins, in order to save you from future retribution. With Me, everything is directed towards ensuring that good comes out of everything for everyone - not temporary, but eternal, not earthly, but heavenly, not visible, but spiritual.”

Thus, we understand the words “vengeance on me” and “I will repay” as a call to non-vengeance, a call not to judge one’s neighbor, not to return evil for evil, because only God has the right to take revenge and repay. Vengeance is not for human judgment.

It is interesting to consider Tolstoy’s epigraph from the point of view of language. To the modern reader, the pronoun ME is presented in the form of the dative case. This brings different meanings to the interpretation. However, in the Old Church Slavonic form ME corresponds to the modern Genitive case with the meaning of belonging! (cf. Art.\Sl. Forever and ever - forever and ever). Those. should be read like this: vengeance is mine, coming from me = my vengeance. Thus, the words of the Lord become clear, which indicate His right of vengeance and retribution.

The word vengeance goes back to the word REVENGE - Related to Lithuania. miju "to change", Old Indian mḗthati, mitháti "scold", mithás "mutually alternating", Avest. miϑ a- “perverse, false”, lat. mūtō, -āre “to change”, mūtuus “mutual, mutual”, Gothic. missô adv. "each other", missa-dēÞs "crime". [Vasmer. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language]. The negative connotation is obvious.

Az – Old Church Slavonic pronoun of the 1st person singular, resp. modern I. In modern language it has a bookish connotation,

RENDER, (book rhetorician). 1. what. Give, render, provide (as a recompense, as a reward for something). Give honor to someone. Give justice. Give due credit. 2. for what. Give back. Return good for evil. [ Ushakov's Dictionary].

Please note that in the canonical text there is no conjunction I. L.N. Tolstoy introduces it. For what? Thus, the author moves away from exact quotation, as if bringing the sacred text closer to everyday speech: the clarity and unconditionality of the canonical “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” is lost. Each hero can, as it were, “try on” this saying for himself, take on the right of judgment. At the same time, revenge and retribution, thanks to the connecting union, expressing equal relations, are placed on the same level. In Tolstoy's artistic world, revenge and retribution seem to merge. Hence, it seems to us, the special “living life” in the novel: good does not always win immediately, some heroes get away with everything, while others are cruelly punished by higher powers.

Of course, without understanding the meaning of the epigraph, it is impossible to adequately perceive the main ideas of Tolstoy’s work. The epigraph “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” to the novel “Anna Karenina” was written by everyone who wrote about the novel (and it was mainly about the fate of Anna Karenina), trying to unravel its essence. However, the question of the meaning of the epigraph in relation to the novel still remains controversial.

Zhdanov cites such a case in his work. Almost thirty years after finishing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy received a letter from two girls, sixth grade students from Vologda. They asked “in what relation to the content of the novel “Anna Karenina” does the epigraph stand: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it”,” and expressed how they understood it: “We think this way: that a person who violates moral rules will be punished.” . On the envelope of their letter dated October 29, 1906, Tolstoy wrote: “You are right.”

Did the schoolgirls really guess the meaning of the epigraph?! Probably not. After all, if you carefully read the text of the novel, you can even see the contradiction of their bold thought: Stiva and Betsy Tverskaya are unpunished for the moral violation for which Anna dies.

It seems appropriate to us to turn directly to the opinions of writers, critics and literary scholars regarding the epigraph to Tolstoy’s novel in order to more clearly highlight our understanding of the biblical epigraph.

I understood this epigraph in my own way Dostoevsky , who devoted more than one chapter to “Anna Karenina” in the “Diary of a Writer” for 1877. The author of Crime and Punishment sees Tolstoy in the novela new solution to the old question of "the guilt and criminality of people"Noting that Tolstoy's thought is expressed "in the enormous psychological development of the human soul, with terrible depth and strength, with a hitherto unprecedented realism in artistic depiction," Dostoevsky writes: "It is clear and understandable to the point of obviousness that evil lurks in humanity deeper than Socialist doctors assume that in no social structure can you escape evil, that the human soul will remain the same, that abnormality and sin come from it itself and that, finally, the laws of the human spirit are still so unknown, so unknown to science, so uncertain and so are mysterious that there are not and cannot yet be either healers or even final judges, but there is one who says: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” He alone knows the whole secret of this world and the final fate of man" (Vol. 25, pp. 201-202).

Dostoevsky transfers the novel's problems from social to philosophical and sees the reason for Anna Karenina's tragedy in her nature. The author of “Crime and Punishment” considers the tragedy of the heroine of Tolstoy’s novel possible in any society, since evil and sin are hidden in human nature from the very beginning, and do not arise only under the influence of the environment. In this interpretation, Tolstoy’s socio-psychological novel began to resemble Dostoevsky’s philosophical novel, which, pointing out the eternal mystery and mystery of the human soul, recognizes only God as the only moral rewarder who knows fate and therefore can judge people.

For Dostoevsky, it is important that a person “... cannot undertake to decide anything... with the pride of his infallibility...”, because “... he himself is a sinner...”(T. 25. P. 202).

But Dostoevsky sees a way out of the situation created for Anna in forgiveness, “... mercy and love.” This exit “... is brilliantly outlined by the poet in the brilliant scene of the novel in the penultimate part of it, in the scene of the fatal illness of the heroine of the novel, when criminals and enemies are suddenly transformed into higher beings, into brothers who have forgiven each other everything, into beings who themselves, by mutual forgiveness they removed lies, guilt and crime from themselves, and at the same time they justified themselves with full consciousness that they had received the right to do so" (T. 25. P. 202).

However, it should be remembered that this was a very difficult situation only against the background of Anna’s possible death, when the enemies forgave each other and fell in love with true Christian love. And Tolstoy, realizing this, shows that in everyday life heroes cannot live according to Christian commandments.

He offered his interpretation of the meaning of the epigraph to the novel A.A. Fet. “Tolstoy points to “I will repay,” writes Fet in his article about “Anna Karenina,” “not as the rod of a grumpy mentor, but as the punitive force of things.” At the beginning of the article he put Schiller’s poems: “The law of nature watches over everything itself...”

With this interpretation of the novel as “a strict, incorruptible judgment on our entire system of life,” the epigraph receives a new, rather philosophical-historical rather than moral-philosophical meaning - as an indication of the approaching “Last Judgment” over the entire system of life. Tolstoy was familiar with this interpretation of the idea of \u200b\u200bretribution in his novel, referring to Schiller’s words about the “law of nature,” and agreed with it: “Everything that I wanted to say has been said.”

The accusatory point of view was held by Tolstoy's contemporaries - R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik and M.S. Gromeka. For a long time, literary criticism agreed with their position, since Tolstoy himself awarded authorization to Gromeka’s article on the novel Anna Karenina. In a conversation with G. A. Rusanov (1883), Tolstoy called this article “excellent”: “He explained what I unconsciously put into the work. Wonderful, wonderful article! I'm in awe of her. Anna Karenina finally explained! Therefore, we pay great attention to the position Gromeki , since subsequent literary criticism largely repeated the assessments of this critic.

Thus, Ivanov-Razumnik identified the meaning of the epigraph and the novel and reduced all the themes of Anna Karenina to a narrow theme expressed in the epigraph: “the main theme, the main meaning of Anna Karenina, the whole meaning of the formidable epigraph” is that “man is not can build her own happiness on the misfortune of another... Anna took this step, - and for this reason “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay...”

But reducing all the complex and broad issues of the novel to one theme contained in the epigraph would impoverish the meaning of Anna Karenina, this novel of “wide breathing.” The meaning of the epigraph extends not only to Anna Karenina, but also to all the characters in the novel, and the ideological content of the work is much broader than the interpretation of the epigraph proposed by Ivanov-Razumnik.

Like Ivanov the Razumnik,M.S. Gromeka believes that “you cannot destroy a family without creating misfortune for it, and you cannot build new happiness on this misfortune.” [ Gromeka. Course of lectures, 1893].

This judgment is true only in principle, but when applied to the heroine of Tolstoy’s novel, it does not cover her entire tragedy. Shevtsova in her dissertation, she polemicizes with Gromeka’s point of view: Anna is unhappy not only because she made Alexei Alexandrovich and Seryozha unhappy, but also because, having fallen in love with Vronsky and breaking up with Karenin, she violated universal moral laws. Anna, having gone to Vronsky, commits “adultery”: “And if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” At the same time, the Old and New Testaments treat the adulteress differently. Thus, in Deuteronomy, Moses commanded to stone a woman caught in adultery, and in the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ does not condemn the sinner, because among the scribes and Pharisees who brought her to Him, there was no sinless person (“Whoever is without sin among you, Be the first to throw a stone at her." [Shevtsova Diana Mikhailovna. The functioning of biblical epigraphs in the artistic structure of the novels by L. N. Tolstoy ("Anna Karenina", "Resurrection") and F. M. Dostoevsky ("The Brothers Karamazov"): Dis. ...cand. Philol. Sciences: 10.01.01 N. Novgorod, 1997 201 p. RSL OD, 61:98-10/298-1]

For a very long time, researchers analyzed Karenina’s tragedy exclusively from the secular side, while Shvetsova considers it from the spiritual, canonical side.

Turning again to the analysis of Gromeka’s article, we cannot but agree with his opinion that there are “laws of the human spirit” “... and it depends on the will of a person to agree with them and be happy or to overstep them and be unhappy.” With this statement, Gromeka acknowledges that a person himself is free to choose the path of crime or agreement with the “laws of the human spirit.”

We also cannot agree with Gromeka’s idea that Anna, having destroyed her family with Karenin, went against the opinions of the world and could not withstand his isolation and condemnation: “You cannot ignore public opinion completely, because even if it is wrong, it still exists an ineradicable condition of peace and freedom, and an open war against it will poison, ulcerate and cool the most ardent feeling.” It is public opinion that worries Anna the least when, in her dying monologue, she thinks about her future life. She does not see the possibility of becoming truly happy in herself. Therefore, public opinion alone, being only a catalyst for the disastrous development of her feelings, could not lead the heroine to suicide (for example, she did not even have thoughts of suicide after the famous scene in the box of the St. Petersburg Opera House, where public opinion was openly expressed by Madame Kartasova: “She “she said it was shameful to sit next to me,” Anna “screamed,” telling Vronsky about the incident in the theater.

Yes, indeed, one of the meanings of the epigraph “Vengeance is Mine, and I will repay” was that people cannot judge other people, because they themselves are no less sinful than those being condemned. Based on the epigraph, a person can only be judged by God, and this, in Tolstoy’s understanding, can be the “eternal moral law” found in the soul of every person.

Undoubtedly, in Tolstoy’s work there is a heard Veresaev the motive of “living life”, protesting against any violation of nature, naturalness, truth. But Veresaev did not raise the question of punishing a person who violated universal human moral laws, and not just the law of his soul, “his own being.”

D.S. Merezhkovskyrightly drew attention to the fact that “the greatest of human crimes, executed by merciless divine justice in the spirit of Mosaic Deuteronomy - “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” - for the creator of Anna Karenina is a violation of marital fidelity.

In modern literary criticism, as in previous Russian pre-revolutionary criticism, the conversation about the epigraph to Anna Karenina continued.

Thus, B. M. Eikhenbaum in the article “Tolstoy and Schopenhauer” (1935) argued that with the epigraph to the novel “Tolstoy obviously wanted to say not that God condemned Anna, but that he, the author, refuses to judge Anna and forbids this to the readers. The interpretation of Anna’s suicide as a punishment disappears. She is a victim who can be pitied. The words: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” do not apply to Anna, but to all the characters, to the entire novel as a whole: to that untruth. and lies, to that evil and deception, the victim of which Anna dies."

So already here Eikhenbaum rejects the accusatory logic of the author of the novel in relation to his heroine andfocuses on Tolstoy's verdict on secular society, in which the tragedy of Anna Karenina plays out.

In his book “Leo Tolstoy. The seventies” B. M. Eikhenbaum writes: “However, from Tolstoy’s point of view... Anna and Vronsky are still to blame... before life, before “eternal justice”. They are slaves to their passion, their egoism. Therefore, their love is reborn into suffering - into melancholy, into hatred, into jealousy... Anna suffers and dies not from external reasons - not from the fact that society condemns her, and her husband does not give her a divorce, but from passion itself, from the “evil” that has possessed her. spirit." Passion turned into a struggle - into a "fatal duel", in the words of Tyutchev.

Anna and Vronsky began to be subject to their own moral judgment (“eternal justice”) only because they, captured by true passion, rose above this world of sheer hypocrisy, lies and emptiness and entered the realm of human feelings. ... Levin, who also stood on the edge of the abyss, is saved because he lives life to the fullest and strives for the implementation of the moral law."

But, Eikhenbaum continues, if “a terrible retribution hangs over everyone who stumbles on their path,” then what about Betsy Tverskaya and other “professional sinners”? ThisEikhenbaum expressed Tolstoy’s idea that in Tolstoy’s novels all negative characters, devoid of moral sense, do not suffer in Tolstoy’s novels, but all highly moral positive characters suffer and are subject to their own moral judgment.

E.N. Kupreyanova believes that The reason for Anna's suicide was not only secular persecution, but also the destructive development of her own feelings. This meaning is put by Tolstoy in the biblical saying: “Vengeance is Mine, and I will repay”, set as the epigraph to the novel. The epigraph does not cover the full breadth and complexity of what Tolstoy said and described in his wonderful work. The religious idea of divine retribution does not receive artistic embodiment in the novel. Hence,The biblical epigraph should be understood not in a literal, but in a figurative sense: it is not Betsy Tverskaya, not Countess Lydia Ivanovna and other typical representatives of the depraved secular mob who should judge Anna.".

One cannot but agree with Kupreyanova’s opinion that the epigraph does not cover all the themes of the novel and it should not always be understood in the literal sense. However, the epigraph contains not only the theme of divine retribution, but also Tolstoy’s idea that a person who has violated the moral commandments of Christianity and realized this punishes himself. Therefore, in Kupreyanova’s interpretation, the epigraph really does not receive artistic embodiment in the novel.

N. N. Ardens wrote: “Tolstoy understood the epigraph in a humanistic spirit. He does not threaten anyone and does not promise revenge on anyone. In it he conveys the idea that judgment and condemnation of human actions belongs to God, but not to people. The question of revenge and “retribution” is a matter for “God,” but not for human judgment and human vengeance. (“I repay” - that is, the right of vengeance belongs to me - only God can judge, but not people).”

Ardens correctly noted that Tolstoy, with the epigraph to the novel, wanted to show the incompetence of human judgment and the only possible judgment of God, but Ardens did not say how Tolstoy understood God.

M.B. wrote about this later. Khrapchenko in the book “Leo Tolstoy as an Artist”: “Az for the author of "Anna Karenina"- this is not just Jehovah and even, perhaps, not Jehovah at all, butgood, which constitutes the condition of true life, those requirements of humanity, without which it is unthinkable" Thus, God, in Tolstoy’s view, is the highest moral law contained in the human soul, and violation of this law threatens a person with death, coming from himself.

For E.G. Babaeva The epigraph was a reflection of Tolstoy’s moral and philosophical position in the seventies: “Tolstoy thinks about the moral responsibility of a person for his every word and every deed.And the thought of the epigraph consists of two concepts: “there are no guilty people in the world” and “it’s not for us to judge.”Both of these concepts perfectly corresponded to the inner nature of Tolstoy’s epic thinking. Retribution, according to Tolstoy, was in her (Anna’s) soul. Babaev, revealing Tolstoy’s point of view, proves that Anna punishes herself because she realized her deviation from the divine laws of morality, in particular those contained in the Gospel (she fell in love with Vronsky and left Karenin, her legal husband, for him, thereby violating the sacrament of marriage , by which God unites two people).

In our opinion, the point of view of V.V. deserves the closest attention. Nabokov, who wrote in “Lectures on Russian Literature”: “The union of Anna and Vronsky is based only on physical love and is therefore doomed... love cannot be only physical, because then it is selfish, and selfish love does not create, but destroys. So she is sinful."According to Nabokov, the epigraph has two meanings: “firstly, society did not have the right to judge Anna, and secondly, Anna did not have the right to punish Vronsky by committing suicide”.

I. F. Eremina believes that the epigraph carries the thought of God's judgment. Anna Karenina, having violated the Christian commandment about the sacrament of marriage, herself turns her life into hell. “The path of adultery is a terrible, painful path, leading to imbalance, disharmony of personality, Tolstoy repeats after the Gospel. “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” Thus ended the great love, not sanctified by the laws of Christian morality, built on someone else’s grief and misfortune and which before our eyes has turned into a struggle of the sexes, where everyone fights for himself, for his power over his loved one.”

One cannot but agree with the point of view of T. P. Tsapko, who believes that “... the epigraph “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” plays the role of a basis situation that creates philosophical and religious overtones in the storylines of the main and secondary characters. Violation The moral (divine) law leads to a gradual oblivion of God, to lovelessness, to orphanhood, familylessness, and therefore to the perception of the world as a kingdom of chaos, from which there is only one salvation - death, but coming to God is tantamount to recognizing the purposefulness and harmony of the universe, the presence of meaning. and love in a person's life." That's whyT.P. Tsapko connects the epigraph with the storylines of Anna and Levin and, using their example, traces the loss and acquisition of God as the highest moral law in the soul of man himself.

Ranchin: But another interpretation is possible. According to the words of Christ,“from everyone to whom much is given, much will be required”(Luke 12:48). Anna is given more than those who are not faithful to Betsy Tverskaya or Steve Oblonsky. She is mentally richer and more subtle than them. And she was punished more severely. This interpretation corresponds to the meaning of the epigraph to the text of the first completed edition of the novel. When the seventh part of Anna Karenina appeared in print, readers and critics remembered the epigraph to the novel. Many thought that Tolstoy condemned and punished his heroine, following this biblical saying. Subsequently, critics were inclined not only to this accusatory point of view, but also adhered to another, exculpatory position that Tolstoy takes regarding his heroine. Thus, criticism saw in the epigraph a reflection of Tolstoy’s position in relation to Anna Karenina and decided the question: who is the author for her - a brilliant prosecutor or a brilliant lawyer?

““Anna Karenina” does not have one exclusive and unconditional truth - in it many truths coexist and simultaneously collide with each other,” this is how E. A. Maimin interprets the epigraph.

We examined typical views on the meaning of the epigraph in the novel Anna Karenina. From this comparison it is clear that some researchers believed that Tolstoy condemned his heroine, and reduced all the ideas contained in the epigraph to this narrow problem. Other researchers understood the epigraph more broadly: as a recognition of moral laws, the failure of which entails the mental suffering of the person himself. Our point of view is close to a broad reading of the epigraph.

As Tolstoy wrote, the thought expressed by the epigraph cannot be particularly emphasized, but it must be considered “in that endless labyrinth of connections.”

Based on this remark by the author of the novel, we attribute the meaning of the epigraph to all the heroes of the novel as follows. Almost every hero of the novel takes upon himself the right to judge his neighbor. However, petty heroes-sinners judge only those around them, and heroes to whom “much has been given” (Anna, Levin, Karenin, Dolly) judge themselves too! Thus, they take for themselves the right to judge and reward, guided by internal morality. For some it is high, for others it is poor. The motif of guilt and judgment runs through the entire work.

Let's turn to the text. For example, Lydia Ivanovna judges Anna - deprives her of meeting her son, without even imagining her sinfulness: “Countess Lidia Ivanovna covered her face with her hands and was silent. “If you are asking my advice,” she said, after praying and opening her face, “then I do not advise you to do this.”

Lydia Ivanovna wrote the following French letter: “Dear Madam, the memory of you for your son may lead to questions on his part, which cannot be answered without putting into the child’s soul a spirit of condemnation for what should be sacred for him, and therefore I ask understand your husband’s refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I ask the Almighty for mercy towards you.».

A lady in the theater judges Anna: “She said it was shameful to sit next to me.”

Judges Anna and Vronsky’s mother: “Yes, she came, as such a woman should have come. She even chose a mean, base death.

No, no matter what you say, she’s a bad woman. Well, what kind of desperate passions are these? This is all something special to prove. So she proved it. She ruined herself and two wonderful people - her husband and my unfortunate son».

These women with poor morals take upon themselves the right to judge Anna and reward her.

But Anna herself judges, but in a different way. At the beginning of the novel, she takes on the task of reconciling Stiva and Dolly. And to the latter’s question about forgiveness, she answers, judging, first of all, her soul: “- Yes, but would you forgive?

I don’t know, I can’t judge... No, I can,” said Anna, after thinking; and, having grasped the position in her mind and weighed it on the internal scales, she added: “No, I can, I can, I can.” Yes, I would forgive. I wouldn’t be the same, yes, but I would forgive, and I would forgive as if it didn’t happen, didn’t happen at all».

After her fall, her break with the high, heartfelt morality that attracted Anna so much, Karenina begins to judge those around her. First of all, Vronsky. Upon arrival from the theater, she exclaims: “It’s all your fault!” At the end of the novel, the idea of punishing her lover comes to her: “Yes, to die!.. And the shame and disgrace of Alexei Alexandrovich, and Seryozha, and my terrible shame - everything is saved by death. Die - and he will repent, he will regret, he will love, he will suffer for me" “One thing was needed - to punish him.” With such thoughts, Anna throws herself under the train. And now, at the last moment of her life, the real Anna appears again, with high morals and faith in God. Only at the moment of death (like many Tolstoy’s heroes) the truth is revealed to her and she exclaims: “What am I doing? For what? Lord, forgive me everything!” Now Anna returns the right to judge herself and everyone and reward God. She asks for forgiveness! A heavy, painful stone fell from her soul, this stone was to stand outside of generally accepted morality and judge for herself. She herself tried to repay, it led her to death.

However, do not interpret the epigraph only in relation to Anna’s fate. Levin also judges in search of happiness and harmony. He leaves for the village after a rejected offer and condemns himself to the possibility of happiness. Levin considers himself an unbeliever. Therefore, in his life he does not look for the basis for judgment in the Christian commandments. And he finds it in the law of good: “every minute of her (life) is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has an undoubted meaning of good, which I have the power to put into it».

Karenin also judges his unfaithful wife, but forgives her! He follows the Christian commandment according to the dictates of his heart.

Vronsky punishes himself for the death of Anna by going to war. The hero tries to reward himself, wanting to die.

The words about the people fit organically into our point of view: “Through humiliation and deprivation of all kinds, the people bought the precious right to be clean from blood and from judgment of one’s neighbor.».

Thus , in our opinion, the meaning of the epigraph I will take vengeance and I will repay is that the heroes of the novel take upon themselves the right to judge themselves and their neighbors. Accordingly, they arrogate to themselves and God’s right to repay and take revenge. This terrible path leads them to disharmony, misunderstanding, and death.

By quoting verbatim, Tolstoy not only refers us to the sacred text, but also allows his heroes to “try on” these words. An epigraph is one of the ways of dialogizing a monologue, introducing a different, non-author’s point of view into it. And Tolstoy’s epigraph is, as it were, a semantic key to the perception of different heroes: some are only able to condemn others, others condemn and punish themselves, forgive others, and come to faith in God.

The epigraph, taken from the Bible, deepens the semantics of the novel, reflecting the principles of composition of the work as a whole, as well as the system of images.

“Vengeance is mine and I will repay”

Tolstoy chose this phrase as the epigraph to his novel. It means “Vengeance lies upon me, and it will come from me” (I will take revenge, not you). This phrase is found in the Old Testament (Fifth Book of Moses) and in the New Testament (Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 12, Art. 19): “Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give way to the wrath of God. For it is written: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

From a moral point of view, revenge is wrong. It promotes the spread of evil. Evil begets evil, revenge begets more evil. The Christian tradition teaches to forgive your enemies and not take revenge on them. Revenge brings nothing to the avenger.

At the same time, action generates reaction, and any evil will ultimately be punished. However, it is not for people to decide who is to blame for what.

In the context of the novel, this manifests itself as follows. No one took revenge on Anna; her husband forgave her in a Christian way and tried to do good to her. And it would seem that Anna is with the one she loves, no one is interfering with their happiness, she should be happy with Vronsky. But they are anxious, despite their love they are burdened by each other, an anxious atmosphere reigns between them, they are nervous, anxious, jealous, distrustful of each other. Ultimately this wears Anna out, she can't take it anymore and she throws herself in front of a train.

Almost everyone who wrote about the novel wrote about the epigraph to Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. Some believed that Tolstoy, in accordance with the epigraph, condemned Anna Karenina (R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, M.S. Gromeka). Others argued that only God could be a judge and punish Anna for violating universal human moral laws - for her passionate, selfish love for Vronsky (F. M. Dostoevsky, V. V. Veresaev, D. S. Merezhkovsky, N. N. Ardens , I. N. Uspensky, E. A. Maimin, F. I. Kuleshov, I. F. Eremina). There was such a point of view that Anna punishes herself for her sins, and the words of the epigraph do not refer to Karenina, but to secular society, which has no right to judge the heroine (B. M. Eikhenbaum, E. N Kupreyanova, V. Ya. Linkov, V.. V. Nabokov). B. M. Eikhenbaum, B. I. Bursov, G. M. Palisheva, T. P. Tsapko spread the influence of the ideas of the epigraph to other heroes of the novel. N. N. Gusev, M. B. Khrapchenko, E. G. Babaev, V. Z. Gornaya considered the religious meaning of the biblical epigraph (in Tolstoy’s understanding).

For the formation of the reader's attitude, not only the epigraph is important, but also its origin; temporal, spatial, sociocultural, personological remoteness of the source.

This epigraph has its own history. V.A. Zhdanov, in his work “The Creative History of Anna Karenina,” dwells on it in detail. He writes that the idea of introducing an epigraph was first reflected on a sheet of paper with separate notes for the novel. Among them is the entry: “Vengeance is Mine.” In the fourth incomplete edition of the novel, an epigraph appeared: “Vengeance is Mine.” Probably, from memory, Tolstoy quoted the beginning of the biblical saying: “Vengeance and retribution are mine” (Deuteronomy, chapter 32, art. 35). And while working on the eighth edition of the first part of the novel, Tolstoy added the epigraph: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,” that is, he cited the text of the Gospel from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans (chapter 12, art. 19), but introduced the conjunction and ( canonical text: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay”). Most likely, Tolstoy wrote it in by inertia, perhaps remembering the union in the biblical text. It is hardly possible to unconditionally assert, as B. M. Eikhenbaum does, that Tolstoy originally took this biblical saying from Schopenhauer’s book “The World as Will and Idea.” Tolstoy read Schopenhauer's work in 1869, and the Bible, the Gospel, the Epistle of the Apostle Paul, which Tolstoy knew perfectly well before, were in his hands just in the seventies, when the ABC was created and published with four Slavic books for reading , each of which included passages from the Bible and the Gospel.

How should we understand the words of the Apostle Paul, to which L.N. refers us? Tolstoy?

Theophylact of Bulgaria in “The Blagovestnik” [book 3, M., 2002, 110-111] interprets this verse as follows: “Give place to the wrath of God in relation to those who offend you. If you avenge yourself, God will not avenge you; and if you forgive, then God will take revenge more severely.”

This idea is developed in more detail in the “Interpretation of the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul” [Creations of Theophan the Recluse, M., 1879, 239-242]: “... most of all we should pay attention to the incentive for non-vengeance exhibited here, namely, the submission of the case to the judgment of God. There is an avenger of truth - God. He will repay if he must. The wrath of God is His righteous retribution: for God has no wrath, but there is a righteous retribution, which seems like wrath to those who are subjected to it.”

Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord - “God takes upon himself the matter of vengeance. Do not interfere in this matter, He seems to say, I myself will repay. You won't be able to do it properly. In your opinion, it is necessary to take revenge now, but according to the best order, it is better to postpone revenge, either for a while, or completely. You can do without revenge at all: the offender himself will come to his senses and correct his injustice; and this is much better. Take revenge on him now, and he will become even more bitter. I sent you this lie for your iniquities and your sins, in order to save you from future retribution. With Me, everything is directed towards ensuring that good comes out of everything for everyone - not temporary, but eternal, not earthly, but heavenly, not visible, but spiritual.”

The word vengeance goes back to the word REVENGE - Related to Lithuania. miju "to change", Old Indian mḗthati, mitháti "scold", mithás "mutually alternating", Avest. miϑa - “perverse, false”, lat. mūtō, -āre “to change”, mūtuus “mutual, mutual”, Gothic. missô adv. "each other", missa-dēÞs "crime". [Fasmer. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language]. The negative connotation is obvious.

Az – Old Church Slavonic pronoun of the 1st person singular, resp. modern I. In modern language it has a bookish connotation,

“Anna Karenina” has an epigraph that surprises everyone: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it.” There was a lot of debate about this epigraph, and it was interpreted many times; Tolstoy did not give his final interpretation.

An epigraph is often born in order not only to color the reader’s emotions with his own emotions, but also to leave him in the land of the energy of delusion.

Tolstoy did not know what he would write.

The novel began to be published before it was finished.

The novel lived and changed. Anna Karenina changed; the author's attitude towards what he creates changed.

This woman is small at first. She is beautiful, but beautiful in an ordinary way. There is a landowner looking for a way in life, but there is no breadth of the future novel. Work was started for relaxation. Tolstoy wanted to write about the ordinary and say it in ordinary words. This is what he failed to do. He came to the work after the successes of War and Peace; but “War and Peace” began with failure, with the story “The Decembrists.”

We know it worked out well.

The novel became great. But this is a different work, with a different name, with different characters.

There is a Central Asian legend about how a great poet, who lived very poorly, finished his epic (I forgot the name); when he died, a funeral procession left one gate, and a magnificent procession from the Shah with congratulations and gifts passed through the other gate.

It's like a story about glory, about late-coming glory.

Beautiful, but wrong; or, let’s say, it’s true, but there is something else, something else is also true: the poet leaves the gates already outside of glory. He goes away to find refuge from what is called fame, and fame is printed on a sheet of, say, a newspaper; but in Homer's time there were no newspapers, and there was no fame.

The name “Anna Karenina” appears and a note appears that this novel was made on separate sheets of paper, it is like an appendix. It appears in four variants.

The title “Anna Karenina” and the epigraph appear: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it.”

This is an incorrect quote. Such a quote cannot be found in the Bible.

But there seems to be a similar thought: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (“Epistle to the Romans,” 12.19).

In the novel, when Anna Karenina dies, there, on the railway platform, next to which the rails run, this is how the emphasized death is indicated.

The old woman Vronskaya, about whom it is written in the novel that she was very depraved, a woman who knew no barriers in quiet debauchery, the countess says about Anna: “... and then she did not yet feel sorry for him, but deliberately killed him completely... a disgusting death women without religion."

Anna Karenina ruined her son's career and even quarreled with his mother and somehow died on purpose.

Tolstoy's novel, step by step, frees the woman whom he considered the first to blame in the Shcherbatsky family. Tolstoy seemed to love - he didn’t love anyone - this Tolstoy chose Liza in the Bersov family, it was well-intentioned, then Sonya, it was flattering - he considered himself an old man.

In the family novel, Tolstoy loves Anna Karenina.

So, from a previously abandoned religion, a person independently finds a red corner that is no longer associated with religion.

Fatigue frees him.

In his novel, he creates Anna Karenina with difficulty; At first it seemed to him that there was something of Stiva Oblonsky in her, that she was too “com-il-faux”, that she was in vain able to “forget.”

In his novel, the writer wanted to fall in love with Kitty, the youngest daughter of Senator Shcherbatsky. In choosing between Anna Karenina and Kitty, Tolstoy chose Kitty, in life, not in a dream, and in this he seemed to agree with Vronsky.

Although Vronsky was just having fun. He played at love, and she swallowed him up.

Tolstoy chose Kitty, but loves Anna Karenina.

He justifies the woman.

He expanded her world.

Although, perhaps, he wanted to block the world from himself with a woman.

And we must repeat: Alexey Maksimovich Gorky said: it’s strange, she dies beautiful, she walked around Rome, but she didn’t see Rome. He doesn’t have a line about Rome, as if she didn’t see him.

Kitty is a good mother; she will have a lot of children; she is glad that she is building a nest for the future life; and she makes jam in Levin’s house, but in her own way, in her mother’s way.

So as not to upset her husband with such first news, Kitty did not think at the wedding, her husband thought for her; but she smiled.

Sofya Andreevna was glad about the appearance of the novel and its success; The heroes of “The Kreutzer Sonata” and, perhaps, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” were upset for him, because the curtains that Ivan Ilyich hung in his apartment are exactly the same and hung exactly the same way, with a tie, as L. N. himself hung them. . Tolstoy in the house he built; like the staircase he made; did everything for Kitty, a good home. Moderately rich, but Tolstoy could have built better.

And in this modest house he found a low, albeit wide room, in which he wrote a book of disappointments on a very small table, fenced with bars to prevent sheets from falling.

Mikhoels said that Tolstoy rejected Shakespeare, but repeated the story of King Lear.

There was a large family, and the boys wanted to live separately, in their own way, and the girls wanted to get married; and, the people who shared the fruits of great labor, they were even embarrassed, they even pitied their father; but everything was so ordinary.

Sofya Andreevna, an intelligent woman, led her six sons into the narrow corridor of ordinary life. She is sure that there is no other way to live; but she is kind.

She was giving Alexei Maksimovich coffee when he wandered towards her, a half-vagrant who had not yet written anything.

She is the inertia of life.

She is a vengeance that belongs to the old world. He takes revenge because you wanted to defeat him alone.

Having put on his armor, having taken his horse, a man thirsts for his enemy to punish him, as he punished many.

* * *

He managed to resurrect Katyusha Maslova. He examined at least ten books of noble genealogies, looking for the names of those who had left home and were lost.

Alexey, a man of God, left the house of his relatives and then came to them so that they would not recognize him.

And he lived under the stairs.

He lived as a beggar in his family home, and in his dream he dreamed of the crying of his mother, who thought that he was gone.

No one could have done more than he did.

But all this was not enough for him.

And he showed the world, a new light that is not given in retelling; he was an avid hunter, a hard worker, he gave birth to people, and we call them “types,” and sent them into the world so that they, in their plurality, would see the world and tell him what it is.

He himself never changed the world. He recognized the world as unsettled, and, as it seems, this was his task; he populated it with his children, created by him and not born, and there is no contradiction here with the line you just read.

We will say that he was unhappy, although any happy poet, I think every winner would have exchanged with him and taken his grief for his vision.

He taught me to see the world in a new way. He moved people away from the ordinary: from religion, from war, from greed, from the city; he didn't make them happy, but he made them sighted.

“I will repay.”

This was his revenge for their resistance.

But, turning the world around, he could not get out of its rut.

The contradictions between ordinary morality and the morality of passion are already given in the Iliad.

When Paris ran away from Menelaus, the husband of the Beautiful Helen, and came to his wife, his wife greeted him with indignation.

But Venus patronized Paris, who gave her an apple.

She gave him a belt, a belt of passionate love, and they went into the bedroom.

The clash of two moralities is presented here in plot form.

Moreover, the issue is resolved in different ways.

In the Catholic Church, a priest should not have a wife.

But the Apostle Paul in his letter only says that a bishop must be “the husband of one wife.”

A priest has no right to remarry.

I must say, very briefly, about the Pharisees.

They are misunderstood.

They are taken only as liars and scammers.

In reality they are a transition from an old culture to a new culture.

They gave - they had to give a different, softened interpretation of the old laws, which already contradicted the new regulations.

This is the “Pharisee” interpretation of the laws.

When Pushkin’s husband ponders what to do with his wife who has announced her betrayal - to notice, not to notice - he acts like a Pharisee.

The epigraph of “Anna Karenina”, its inaccuracy is due to the fact that the Bible lives - with reservations, lives in different readings.

Tolstoy is a man who moves through different eras of morality; he changed the meaning of the law that is declared in the epigraph.

But he left it, an epigraph, so as not to announce – as a manifestation – the emergence of a new morality.

There is some kind of connection between the broken Frou-Frou ridge, Eikhenbaum said, and Anna’s death.

This connection is the tragedy of Tolstoy himself.

Tolstoy did not assert that the earth rotates and the sun moves, or vice versa, but that I will always be? hire workers; he asserts his position as a truthful landowner.

The analysis of Tolstoy’s actions begins with the analysis of Natasha Rostova’s actions; she wants to run away from one beloved to another beloved.

He himself wanted to run away to another and, perhaps, even wrote about it, her name was the Devil.

Here is one of the conversations that holds the book together.

We see the “energy of delusion” in love affairs, in the contradictions of the love of Mayakovsky, Pushkin, Yesenin; I said inaccurately, we only feel that these contradictions exist or should exist.

Only now can we understand the power of the taken plot of one famous painting - Jesus Christ frees a woman.

The point is also that eras of change in morality are not a statement of the abolition of moral laws in general.

Large, strong, like ice floes not destroyed by the sun, they break each other, cutting off the path of Nekhlyudov and Katyusha Maslova, who left with Simonson.

These ice floes can be compared to the ice floes of one broken morality.

These ice floes are repeated in Tolstoy’s vision on that spring day when Nekhlyudov left Katyusha Maslova - at the beginning.

This is a plot decision.

But even Tolstoy later replaces this decision with many historically undeveloped testimony of the evangelists.

And we have already cited or will again quote the words of Chekhov, he said that it is still necessary to prove their historical fidelity - from time to time.

This confused, multi-epochal - let me be forgiven for this word, it is accurate, you can’t say it more precisely - a multi-epochal man, a man of multiple recognition, recognition of the glory that he sought, who recognized his birth, recognized, called for a new system of morality - Tolstoyism, and that was it it is imprecise, like dreams, in which contradictory decisions of the day are combined and not agreed upon.

Yeast ferments the wort, makes wine from it, and along the way breaks, as the Bible says, “old wineskins into which there is no need to pour new wine.”

We know that in the world of mammals, the male fertilizes the female, but in the world of fish, the female lays eggs, and the male fertilizes her, already born eggs.

In order to do this, both leave the ocean and climb steep rivers, overcoming not only rapids, but even small waterfalls.

Then they do their job, and when fertilization is complete, they die.

This is what is called a change of schools in literature. Let's go back to the beginning. The epigraph was written before it was completed, or, more precisely, before the novel was thought out and written.

One of the main themes in Sevastopol Stories is that officers divide themselves into aristocrats and non-aristocrats. Each group is closed. Brave, illustrious officers take pride in being included in a group of aristocrats who consider themselves superior to the group of these officers.

A divided world is terrible because its division is false.

So they desperately defend themselves. This is the theme of young Tolstoy, Thackeray, Dickens. It is not God, but class society that executes Anna Karenina by exile.

Or, let's say, the circles of hell.

The epigraph “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” is taken from the Bible; but it is repeated there and repeated in different ways.

Christianity in the first centuries was a disorder of the society of that time.

The confusion will be replaced by titles and names of church degrees.

Tolstoy is a genius, but he is not a free man of time. In the last chapters of the novel, Levin, trying to understand his rank, his place in life, understands that “... you should not rent out the land, but manage it yourself.”

“It was impossible to forgive a worker who went home during working hours because his father died...” Workers “had to be hired as cheaply as possible; but it is impossible to take them into bondage by giving money in advance, although it was very profitable. It was possible to sell straw to the peasants for lack of food, although it was a pity for them...”

In general, “now, when after his marriage he began to limit himself more and more to life for himself, although he no longer experienced any joy for himself at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it was going much better, than before, and that it is getting bigger and bigger.”

He crashed “into the ground like a plow, so that he could not get out without opening a furrow.”

The furrow of the world - farming - conquered the rebel.

Tolstoy approved Levin for a time, but he could not establish himself, Lev Nikolaevich, and, turning the plow away deeply, ruined the furrow.

Anna Karenina ends not only with Anna's death, but also with a compromise.

I will say it again and in a different way. Stiva Oblonsky's betrayal has been forgiven. Everyone was fussing about it - the children, the servants, Anna Karenina. But Dolly did not become happy; she had nowhere to go.

Anna's betrayal of her husband, who was twenty years older than her, was tragic.

Anna threw herself under the train.

There is no forgiveness.

The epigraph strangely reinforces the difference between these events.

Previously, the biblical “Vengeance is mine” and I will repay” replaced, say, lynching - stoning the guilty.

The novel contradicts the epigraph; therefore it, the epigraph, will never be interpreted.

Anna deliberately goes against the divine law that protects the family. For the author, this is her fault.

Later, Tolstoy wrote about the biblical saying - the epigraph to Anna Karenina: “People do a lot of bad things to themselves and to each other only because weak, sinful people have taken upon themselves the right to punish other people. “Vengeance is Mine, and I will repay.” Only God punishes, and then only through man himself.” According to A. A. Fet, “Tolstoy points to “I will repay” not as the rod of a grumpy mentor, but as the punitive power of things<…>" Tolstoy rejects strict moralism and the desire to judge his neighbor - only callous and sanctimoniously pious natures like Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who turned Karenin against Anna, are capable of this. “The epigraph of the novel, so categorical in its direct, original meaning, reveals to the reader another possible meaning: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” Only God has the right to punish, and people do not have the right to judge. This is not only a different meaning, but also the opposite of the original one. In the novel, the pathos of unresolvedness is increasingly revealed. Depth, truth - and therefore unresolvedness.
<…>In “Anna Karenina” there is not one exclusive and unconditional truth - in it many truths coexist and simultaneously collide with each other,” this is how E. A. Maimin interprets the epigraph.
But another interpretation is possible. According to Christ, “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48). Anna is given more than those who are not faithful to Betsy Tverskaya or Steve Oblonsky. She is mentally richer and more subtle than them. And she was punished more severely. This interpretation corresponds to the meaning of the epigraph to the text of the first completed edition of the novel: “The same thing, marriage is fun for some, but for others it is the wisest thing in the world.” For Anna, marriage is not fun, and the more serious is her sin.

The meaning of the epigraph is that God can judge a person, his life and actions, but not people. It is not for secular hypocrites to judge Anna. The idea of the epigraph is heard several times in the words of the characters in the novel. Anna's old aunt tells Dolly: "God will judge them, not us." Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev, having met with Vronsky’s mother, in response to Anna’s condemnation, says: “It’s not for us to judge, Countess.” Tolstoy contrasted the biblical saying taken for the epigraph with state and religious legality and secular morality, which affirmed “Evil, lies and deceit” “... all this has been turned upside down and is only falling into place.”

There is also an opinion that Tolstoy took the epigraph not from the Gospels, but from Schopenhauer, who interprets them in his own way: he says that this is the voice of God. “It was she who broke my law, and I can judge her, not you, because I know everything.” The meaning of this epigraph is not condemning Anna, but protecting her from human judgment.

But the Riddle has not been solved, and everyone will solve it for themselves, what is the meaning of the epigraph?

The epigraph to Leo Tolstoy's book "Anna Karenina" is the biblical phrase " Vengeance is mine and I will repay". From the point of view of the formal meaning that Christians and literary scholars give to this phrase, Tolstoy is

Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, give room to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.”

This knowledge reflects the ideology of the New Testament, where this phrase appears in the book of Romans. Thus, this is seen as an indication that one needs to forgive one’s enemies everything and is fully consistent with the concept of “Christian love.”

On the other hand, this phrase occurs for the first time in “The Last Song of Moses”, in the “Deuteronomy” part of the Old Testament and has a more severe meaning, namely:

I have been insulted and I will respond to the insult

I (have the right to) vengeance, and I will repay

Thus, the Old Testament statement belongs to Moses and he actually says that because the Jews insulted their god Yahweh, he will take revenge on them. The New Testament statement belongs to Paul, the founder of Christianity, and actually states that Christians do not need to take revenge on Rome themselves, but that in order to punish Rome there is “God’s judgment.” As shown in the article “The Role of Christianity in the Fall of Ancient Rome,” the real reason for the death of Ancient Rome was the adoption of Christianity.

Vengeance is mine, and I will repay. T. said that in An Kar he loved the “family thought.” Ch. line - historical wives, who destroyed one family and failed to create another, lost themselves, and ended in suicide. In parallel with Anna's fate, another plot develops. line – Konstantin Levin. The novel opens with the phrase: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The family, according to T., is the most natural of all possible paths to understanding the essence of life, to gaining value and harmony with oneself.

Tragedy of A.Kar. Why can the true power of life, love, turn into tragedy? The meaning of the tragedy is expressed by the ambiguous epigraph to the novel: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” A.K. confronts the St. Petersburg and Moscow world as a living person, she is the complete opposite of her husband, abiding. in the life of instructions, projects and other forms of official relationships. Anna's trouble is that she and Vronsky understand love differently, they have their own different romances. For Anna this is the dawn of life, and he needed other interests besides love. They begin to diverge internally. This discrepancy is the collapse of her love. Tolstoy not only sympathizes with the heroine, but also condemns her. Veresaev’s interpretation of the tragedy: “In her marriage to Karenin, Anna was only a mother, and not a wife... Real life does not tolerate this.” The thirst for love cannot be compensated by motherhood. In connection with Vronky, “Anna went only into love... Living life also cannot tolerate this... Man frivolously went against his own being, and the great law... says: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.” Anna is punished by herself, this is evidenced by her dying monologue, in which the deception and evil of her love affair with Vronsky were fully revealed to her, the deception and lie of the feeling that constitutes the only meaning of her life: “everything is not true, everything is a lie, everything is a deception, everything is evil!..” One of the interpretations of the epigraph that is close to Tolstoy’s intention is: no one has the right to condemn a person, for the most severe judgment lies in the consequences of his own actions, for which he is responsible to people and to himself. Anna's fate correlates with the fate of Dmitry Konstach Levin. He, like her, is a living and whole person. He lives in his own separate master's world and tries to live honestly. He decided to work more and indulge in fewer luxuries. At the first stage of his life's journey, before marriage, Levin was passionate about economics = social reform. He wants to make life easier for his peasants. But they see his actions as an intention to rob them more. A happy marriage only exacerbated the feeling of the inauthenticity of the undertaking. Family harmony has created an urgent need for social harmony. Levin strives to break through to an understanding of the truth of human relationships, the meaning of life. But not in an economic way, but in an ethical way. The world collapsed and disintegrated in Anna’s eyes, because she violated the law of the inseparability of truth and goodness, betraying her moral sense. Levin managed to find in himself the law of life, the connection with the universal. The truth does not remove the contradictions in life for him. But it strengthens him in collisions with difficult life and existence.

Passionate love Anna and Vronsky, pure Kitty and Levin. Vronsky is a typical representative of the capital’s aristocracy, “one of the best examples of the golden youth of St. Petersburg.” There is a lot of shine in it, which deceived Anna. He is full of arrogance and contempt for people who do not occupy a high position in the world. His career was most important to him. Having met Anna, he became interested in her, and at the same time hoped that an affair with her would elevate him in the eyes of society and make up for what was lost in the sphere of his professional activities. Vronsky’s feelings were mixed with calculation, which was justified at first. The affair with Anna at first really elevated him in the eyes of people in his circle. And this distracted his attention from his career. So Vronsky was thrown out of the rut of his usual life, and all attempts to enter it led nowhere. But this made him as a person not worse, but better. However, even in this somewhat embellished form, Vronsky is too far from Anna’s ideal. But his moral revival never materialized. Just like Anna Karenina. Konstantin Levin appears in the novel as a fully formed person. Nevertheless, his spiritual world is subject to constant changes in movement and development. Levin's spiritual image combines the features of genuine democracy with the features of noble ideology. The Levin family, in a certain sense, can be called happy, but for Levin, who, along with Anna, is the central character of the novel, the search for family happiness was not a public issue, the subject of his spiritual and moral quest as for Anna Karenina. Between the story about the discord and elimination of discord in the Oblonsky family and the story about the beginning of the romance between Anna and Vronsky, there is a story about Levin’s unsuccessful matchmaking with Kitty. Kitty's refusal makes Levin unhappy, but this misfortune further aggravates and deepens his moral and spiritual quest. Levin sincerely believes that he is unworthy of Kitty. Hence his desire to become better, more perfect, to find his true calling, to fully demonstrate his personality in another field, if the dream of a happy family life did not come true.