If adultery is a sin of the flesh, then a novel about adultery must necessarily be occupied with the human body. Or, at least, the author of world literature’s most canonical novel about adultery certainly was. Lev Tolstoy was at many points in his life consumed by questions about the power and autonomy of the body—perhaps due in part to his struggle to reconcile the insatiable lust of his own youth with his later married and religious life. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy broaches these questions by considering whether the body is an inseparable part of a living person or merely a vessel, divorced from some other spiritual essence of life, that one may only do so much to control. Still, in life the body is inescapable, and every major character in the novel is confronted by or embodies this physio-spiritual quandary in some way.
With adultery omnipresent, it is perhaps unexpected that the figure who stands farthest from that sin of the flesh should be most tormented by the tension between body and spirit, save Anna herself. Yet Constantine Levin experiences this tension not due to the force of unruly sexuality, but due to the pull of a latent faith in God and a search for the spiritual meaning of a life contained in flesh and blood. The oscillations Levin undergoes throughout the novel between being defined by his physical self in one moment and by his spiritual self in the next culminate in his epiphany that meaning is found in the place where the consciousnesses of the body and of the soul coexist as one.
On the Physical Self
Constantine Levin is a sizable man. His first appearance in the novel is a physical sketch rendered as he appears at Stiva Oblonsky’s office; the reader watches through Oblonsky’s eyes as the earthy, rural Levin trots up the stairs into that polished shrine of bureaucracy (15). Our first impression of Levin is therefore based not only on a description of his physical features, it is also tinted by the point of view of a character for whom it is abundantly clear that the physical self—physical appearance, maintenance, and pleasure—is of the utmost importance. While ostensibly the opening pages of Anna Karenina center on the aftermath of the discovery of Stiva Oblonsky’s affair, this plot point is filtered through the narrator’s discussion of Oblonsky’s morning grooming as well as Oblonsky’s own reflections on his physical state—both figuratively and literally, as he gazes into the mirror. Oblonsky’s body is meticulously described as “plump [and] well-kept” (1), “stout” (3), and “carefully tended” (5) within the first five pages alone, and indeed Oblonsky blames his ungovernable physical virility for his affair, as though it were something separate from, yet dominant over, the rest of him. After a dozen pages of examining the hedonistic creature that is Stiva Oblonsky, the reader is primed to approach Levin in terms of his physical characteristics.
Tolstoy is expeditious in demonstrating, however, that Levin is no Oblonsky. He presents Levin’s physicality in relation to the more metaphysical when, a handful of pages later, he places Levin in the crosshairs of a thematically parallel debate between Levin’s half-brother, the writer Sergius Koznyshev, and a professor of philosophy on the connection between the natural sciences and the meaning of life and death. The two men engage in an intellectual discussion in which Levin feels as out of place as he does in Oblonsky’s office—his physicality is once again emphasized through third-party eyes when it is noted that the professor thinks Levin more resembles “a barge-hauler than a philosopher” (22). Nonetheless, it becomes clear that Levin wishes to engage substantively with the question at hand rather than wallow in “the domain of fine sub-divisions, reservations, quotations, hints and references to the authorities” (22), as do the other two men, when he finally asks outright: “Consequently, if my senses are destroyed, if my body dies, no further existence is possible?” (22). It is this question that will, in its most basic essence, come to consume Levin for the remainder of the novel as he searches for the meaning of life in the shadow of death. Despite the fact that Levin’s physicality looms larger than his philosophy in this scene, Tolstoy makes it abundantly clear that Levin is deeply concerned with understanding the relationship between the body and the spirit. For Levin, an understanding of this relationship is essential to a life lived in earnest and ended by a natural death rather than one philosophized to death (the kind Tolstoy seems to suggest is lived by men like Koznyshev and the professor). For Tolstoy, a proponent of simple words and gestures, this interaction demonstrates that Levin’s occupation with the debate is more, rather than less, genuine than that of his counterparts.
Still, consideration of Levin’s physical self continues to prevail in the first three parts of the novel. Levin relies on his athletic prowess to impress the object of his affections, Kitty Shcherbatskaya, at the ice rink in Moscow (29), yet his physical adroitness alone proves insufficient for achieving his aims when Kitty rejects his proposal of marriage a dozen pages later (44). Despite the hints of a lesson Tolstoy inserts into this shortcoming, Levin returns to his country estate and devotes himself even more completely to refining his physical self. While many of Levin’s fellow noblemen may consider the countryside a place of respite and idleness, the narrator notes that “To Constantine the country seemed a good place because it was the scene of unquestionably useful labor” (216). As such, Tolstoy explicitly links the setting of the countryside with physical labor and characterizes this physical labor as good. In the wake of Kitty’s rejection, facing a life devoid of the marriage and family he had once so clearly imagined, Levin returns to the countryside to seek solace in his work.
The mowing scene at the beginning of Part III provides an apt example of Tolstoy’s focus on Levin’s physical self in the context of labor. As Levin sets to work with the peasants, the narrator describes how, “He thought of nothing and desired nothing, except not to lag behind and to do his work as well as possible” (228). As the scene progresses, Levin abandons himself more and more completely to his physical self to the point that his body appears to become disentangled from all other parts of him:
The longer Levin went on mowing, the oftener he experienced those moments of oblivion when his arms no longer seemed to swing the scythe, but the scythe itself his whole body, so conscious and full of life; and as if by magic, regularly and definitely without thought being given to it, the work accomplished itself of its own accord. These were blessed moments. (230)
Almost paradoxically, in focusing his entire being on something so purely physical, Levin begins to transcend the limits of his physical self and approach a state of spiritual euphoria. This spiritual, holy quality is echoed in the simple yet sacred communion of bread and water he later shares with one of the old peasants (231), as well as in the nearly superhuman amount of labor the crew is ultimately able to complete, during the course of which Levin feels as though “some external force were urging him on” (233). The mowing scene is one of Levin’s most jubilant moments. It is one where the physical self becomes a conduit for spiritual enlightenment, revealing the intimate connection between the two and the power that resides in that connection.
When Levin visits his sister’s village soon after, he considers devoting his life fully to physical labor in hopes it will fill the spiritual cavity that has been yawning ever-wider inside of him since Kitty’s rejection, the full meaning of which he has yet to comprehend. Gazing at the sky, he contemplates withdrawing from noble society and marrying a peasant woman after witnessing that, in the lives of the peasantry, “All [was] drowned in the sea of their joyful common toil” (251). But Levin cannot let himself drown in that sea. The spiritual joy derived from physical labor alone is not enough to satisfy him—a truth which dawns upon him as he sees Kitty drive by in her carriage and realizes that his love has not faded. “Beautiful as is that life of simplicity and toil,” he admits, “I cannot turn to it. I love her!” (253, emphasis in original).
On the Spiritual Self
By the end of Part III, Levin’s work—metonymic for his physical self—has become rather less of a spiritual joy than a distraction from spiritual torment. At this point, “Everything was for him wrapped in darkness; but just because of the darkness, feeling his work to be the only thread to guide him through that darkness, he seized upon it and clung to it with all his might” (321). Despite Levin’s imposing physical stature and the satisfaction he encounters in purely physical labor, Tolstoy demonstrates that prioritizing solely the physical self does not a complete and meaningful life make.
If Levin’s retreat into his physical self was a result of Kitty’s initial rejection, then her acceptance of his proposal at the card table in Part IV has a near-equal, yet opposite, effect. Levin passes the hours between the evening dinner party at which she reciprocates his love and the following morning when he asks for her hand “as in a dream” (366), fueled by the spiritual nature of his feelings for her. Tolstoy emphasizes the supernatural, otherworldliness of these feelings through the quasi-telepathic quality of the proposal scene—in which Levin and Kitty easily communicate using chalk to write out only the first letter of each word in their sentences to each other (362)—as well as through Levin’s reluctance to reduce Kitty or their love to mere earthly words, which felt “so ordinary, so insignificant, so inappropriate to his feelings” (363). The state of spiritual and emotional ecstasy in which Levin finds himself causes an out-of-body experience that is a mirror image of that described in the mowing scene:
All that night and morning Levin had lived quite unconsciously, and felt quite outside the conditions of material existence. He had not eaten for a whole day, had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours half-dressed and exposed to the frost, yet he felt not only fresher and better than ever before, but quite independent of his body: he moved without his muscles making any effort, and felt capable of anything. He was sure that he could fly upwards or knock down the corner of a house, were it necessary. (366-7)
This is a perfect reversal of the mowing scene in that Levin’s spiritual euphoria engenders an ability for physical exertion rather than vice versa. Tolstoy thus employs a parallel structure in these two monumental moments in Constantine Levin’s life to demonstrate the interwoven nature of the spiritual and physical selves. In one scene, physical exertion brings spiritual jubilation. In the other, spiritual jubilation is manifested in borderline supernatural physical strength.
And yet, in both instances, there remains a fundamental imbalance between these two selves. Levin’s physical efforts in the mowing scene, though begetting a feeling of spiritual satisfaction, were also partially intended to drown spiritual uncertainty in the physical self. After the proposal, his spiritual ecstasy strengthens him to the extent that his physical self barely seems to be himself at all anymore. And, just as the physical satisfaction of the mowing scene fades, so too does the spiritual reverie of the post-proposal scene prove temporary, or at least somewhat imperfect. As the narrator describes, “At the commencement of his married life the new joys and new duties he experienced completely stifled [the] thoughts [about his ignorance regarding the meaning of life and death]” (712); and yet, by the beginning of Part VIII, neither mowing nor marriage is enough to distract him any longer. Levin finds himself in “a state of mind which rendered knowledge of what he needed impossible” (712), and, despite his previous revelations, is so “painfully out of harmony with himself” (713) that he is driven to the brink of suicide.
The torment Levin experiences due to this ignorance and imbalance is fueled retrospectively by another pivotal scene: the death of Levin’s brother, Nicholas. Levin watches with horror as the battle between the physical and spiritual halves of man—halves which Levin has himself been desperately seeking to reconcile—tears his brother apart. When he first arrives at Nicholas’s deathbed, Levin thinks it “Impossible that this terrible body can be… Nicholas,” only to be confronted with “the dreadful truth that this dead body was his living brother” (446). The narrator imparts how “all [Nicholas’s] desires were merged into one: a desire to be released from all this pain and from its source—his body” (457). Levin’s brother’s body has become a prison for the spirit, with death the only liberation.
The Synthesis of Constantine Levin
In the immediate aftermath of his brother’s last moments, the presence of Kitty amidst the horror of death gives Levin a brief grasp of the necessity of life:
…he felt even less able than before to understand the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared yet more terrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife’s presence, that feeling did not drive him to despair; in spite of death, he felt the necessity of living and loving. He felt that love had saved him from despair, and that that love under the menace of despair grew still stronger and purer. (459)
Still, love alone, no matter how strong and pure, is not enough to save Levin indefinitely. The horror and despair Levin experienced at his brother’s deathbed return in Part VIII, when Tolstoy’s narrator explains how it was
…with the clear and obvious thought of death at the sight of his beloved brother hopelessly ill [that Levin] for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself, there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, [and] he had concluded that to live under such conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself. (721)
Part of the explanation Levin seeks, I argue, lies in the question he poses to Koznyshev and the professor in Part I: how, essentially, is one to reconcile the body and the spirit in the course of an ultimately ephemeral life? The answers Levin appears to encounter in the mowing and proposal scenes prove temporary; they are not sufficient to elucidate the meaning of Nicholas’s death and of Levin’s own life. Levin only begins to approach a true answer toward the end of the novel, when the peasant Theodore tells Levin that one must only live “rightly, in a godly way” (719). To a simple peasant, that means practicing fairness in one’s physical labor while honoring God and tending to the soul—to live a life at once physical and spiritual.
The intermingling between these two selves is again displayed as Levin walks down the road and reflects on Theodore’s words. He is engrossed by “a condition of his soul he had never before experienced” (719) while at the same time “oblivious of the heat, of his fatigue, and filled with a sense of relief from long-continued suffering” (720), reminiscent of his transcendence from his physical self in Parts III and IV. And yet, this proves to be a more powerful and decisive moment because Levin’s sense of meaning does not fade as it did in those previous instances. Rather, it remains with him even as he is brought back to reality by daily concerns:
Just as the bees, now circling round him, threatening him and distracting his attention, deprived him of complete physical calm… so the cares that had beset him from the moment he got into the trap had deprived him of spiritual freedom; but that continued only so long as they surrounded him. And as, in spite of the bees, his physical powers remained intact, so his newly realized spiritual powers were intact also. (728)
For Levin, meaning is found neither in allowing the physical self to dominate the spiritual, nor vice versa. It is likewise found not in submitting to the idea that the spirit must escape the physical form, an escape that can only be achieved through death. Instead, it is found where groundedness in the physical self and faith in the spiritual self—for Levin, and for Tolstoy, faith in God—exist in equal measure.
Conclusion
When Levin first returns to his estate from Moscow in Part I, Agatha Mikhaylovna, Levin’s aging nurse, dismisses his gentlemanly woes by telling him: “Never mind, my dear, as long as you have good health and a clean conscience!” (88). This may seem like a trite oversimplification, but in this quotidian peasant wisdom lies both the essence of Theodore’s words and the crux of Levin’s final epiphany. Though the joys of mowing and marriage were not sufficient to quell his fear of inevitable death, his newfound faith in God causes the physical and spiritual seeds of these scenes to eventually bear the fruit of meaning. Constantine Levin may appear to be more of a barge-hauler than a philosopher, but this does not stop him from eventually discovering an innate sense of why life must be lived. He is at once of flesh and blood and something more. He is a man of the earth, husband to a wife, and now a physical being in perfect harmony with a spiritual power that dwells within us all.
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