Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
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| Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - PDF novel |
This is a rare version of Anna Karenina containing the best translation by Nathan Haskell Dole and beautifully illustrated by E. Boyd Smith, It was published in 1899 by New York: T.Y. Crowell. Enjoy!
From the introduction::
Mr Howells says: " The warmth and Hght of Tolstoi's good heart and right mind are seen in 'Anna Karenina,' that saddest story of guilty love in which nothing can save the sinful woman from herself, — not her husband's forgiveness, her friend's compassion, her lover's constancy, or the long intervals of quiet in which she seems safe and happy in her sin. "
"It is she who destroys herself persistently, step by step, in spite of all help and forbearance; and yet we are never allowed to forget how good and generous she was when we first met her; how good and generous she is fitfully, and more and more rarely to the end. Her lover works out a sort of redemption through his patience and devotion; he grows gentler, wiser, worthier through it; but even his good destroys her."
"There is lovely family life, the tenderness of father and daughter, the rapture of young wife and husband, the innocence of girlhood, the beauty of fidelity; there is the unrest and folly of fashion, the misery of wealth, and the wretchedness of wasted and mistaken life, the hollowness of ambition, the cheerful emptiness of some hearts, the dull emptiness of others."
"It is a world, and you live in it while you read and long afterwards, but at no step have you been be- trayed, not because your guide has warned or exalted you, but because he has been true, and has shown you all things as they are."
The translation has been thoroughly revised and largely rewritten. All passages formerly omitted have been restored, and the occasional temptation to embroider by paraphrasing what the author left purposely simple, plain, and direct, has been resisted.
The Russian words and interjections (which, with the idea of giving local colour, were employed in the first edition) have been for the most part eliminated, and the glossary is therefore superfluous. The translator's whole purpose has been to give a faithful presentation of this immortal work.