How Anna Karenina drew on The Gospels
A documented line of influence: Leo Tolstoy demonstrably engaged Matthew’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Gospels
Matthew · c. 85
BibleThe influenced
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1877
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On Anna Karenina’s page
- Anna Karenina ends not with the affair but with Levin's Gospel-driven conversion — the Sermon on the Mount's call to live for God, not self
- Tolstoy is wrestling centrally with this scripture; Karenin's bedside forgiveness and Levin's faith are both arguments worked out from it
- Knowing the Sermon on the Mount first reveals that the love story is, at heart, a religious novel
On The Gospels’s page
- Beneath the love story, Anna Karenina turns on a single Gospel doctrine — forgiveness — and Tolstoy wrestles centrally with the Sermon on the Mount
- Karenin's bedside forgiveness of Anna and Vronsky is the Gospel ethic tested against wounded pride; Levin's closing conversion is its resolution
- Tolstoy began his own Gospel-harmony project in these same years — the religious reading drives the whole book