Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Deep Analysis of Anna Karenina Part Two: The Meaning of Life (Chapters 12 to 17) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-02-18 10:00:00
Imported:
2026-06
haven't archived this post yet. have a subscription? use the importer!

Content

These are some of the most profound chapters in all of Anna Karenina (and the novel is bloated with profound chapters). And I preface a deep reading of them with a reading from Ecclesiastes and a poem by Shelley. 

We also touch upon Joseph Campbell and Viktor Frankl, as we learn to assign meaning to our lives, find the right season for what we need, begin our own hero's journey, and learn to talk to ourselves with love.

As usual, if you're in a pinch and don't have thirty minutes to spare, I might direct you to the bolded timestamped parts of the video below as I believe are some of the most profound points.

Timestamps:

  • 1:07 Reading Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes ("to everything there is a season)
  • 4:25 Why a knowledge of the great religious texts is necessary
  • 6:30 Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' ('If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?')
  • 9:28 Do you identify with Levin?
  • 10:30 Tolstoy's first draft and conception of Anna Karenina
  • 11:00 Tolstoy's art of juxtaposition
  • 12:53 Joseph Campbell and the "Hero's Journey"
  • 14:45 How to read deeply 
  • 16:00 Viktor Frankl and how to designate a meaning for your life
  • 18:40 How Tolstoy's characters teach us to talk to ourselves
  • 21:00 Tolstoy's anhedonia and spiritual crisis
  • 21:45 "the character of the worker"
  • 23:00 One of my favourite passages
  • 24:08 "Spring is the time of plans and projects"
  • 26:16 Interior monologue of Laska, the dog

Joseph Campbell:

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

‘God’ by Gavrila Derzhavin:

Although a great mind might contrive
To fix the ocean's depths,
To count the sands, the rays of stars,
Thou can't be summed or fixed!
Enlightened souls who have emerged
From your creative light
Cannot begin to grasp your ways:
Our thought alone aspires to thee,
But in your magnitude is lost,
A moment in eternity.

Nietzsche:

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.

Happy reading, folks! And, as always, please feel free to weigh in as deeply or as cursorily as you like.

Files

Previews only

Deep Analysis of Anna Karenina Part Two: The Meaning of Life (Chapters 12 to 17)

0:00 Introduction 1:07 Reading Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes ("to everything there is a season) 4:25 Why a knowledge of the great religious texts is necessary 6:30 Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' ('If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?') 9:28 Do you identify with Levin? 10:30 Tolstoy's first draft and conception of Anna Karenina 11:00 Tolstoy's art of juxtaposition 12:53 Joseph Campbell and the "Hero's Journey" 14:45 How to read deeply 16:00 Viktor Frankl and how to designate a meaning for your life 18:40 How Tolstoy's characters teach us to talk to ourselves 21:00 Tolstoy's anhedonia and spiritual crisis 21:45 "the character of the worker" 23:00 One of my favourite passages 24:08 "Spring is the time of plans and projects" 26:16 Interior monologue of Laska, the dog

Comments

Anonymous

Definitely one of my favorite sections and I think it’s because it’s purely beautiful writing. It’s masterful poetic prose and I can’t get enough of that sort of thing. I’ve read plenty of boring writing attempting to be this but this passage is anything but boring. It’s like reading itself, a somewhat higher form of pleasure perhaps. Also, I wonder if perhaps there’s something to Levin thinking about plans and projects and that spring is the time for plans and projects. It’s a sign that perhaps the winter was just too early to plant his love for Kitty and in the end he only had to wait for the spring to make those plans and start that project. Time is necessary, and timing is key.

Phil

I love the description of Levin joining the peasants mowing the fields. It is such an accurate and beautiful illustration of “flow.” That state of bliss levin reaches at fleeting moments when he loses his sense of time. How his scythe cut by itself. The feeling of lightness and oblivion. “The longer Levin mowed, the more often he felt those moments of oblivion during which it was no longer his arms that swung the scythe, but the scythe itself that lent motion to his whole body, full of life and conscious of itself, and, as if by magic, without a thought of it, the work got rightly and neatly done on its own. These were the most blissful moments”. YES!!