How Anna Karenina drew on Romans
A documented line of influence: Leo Tolstoy demonstrably engaged Paul’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
Relevance
8/10
On Anna Karenina’s page
- The epigraph — "Vengeance is mine; I will repay" — is Romans 12:19, and Tolstoy means it as the book's moral verdict, not decoration
- Paul's distinction between human revenge and God's prerogative of judgment is the frame Tolstoy builds the novel inside
- Read Romans first and the epigraph stops being a quotation and becomes the question the whole book is answering
On Romans’s page
- One line from Romans 12:19 — "Vengeance is mine; I will repay" — became the epigraph and moral spine of one of the great novels
- Paul's claim that judgment is God's prerogative, not man's, is the verdict Tolstoy hangs over Anna's whole story
- A single verse, load-bearing: read it here and you'll recognize the weight it carries when Tolstoy puts it at the door of Anna Karenina