Hi all, hope you’re well. I recently finished reading Anna Karenina, translated by Rosemary Edmonds and just wanted to share my thoughts.
Wow! What a beautiful novel. I’ve never read something that encapsulates so many different aspects of the human experience.
There are lots of things I could talk about but one particular part of the book that stood out for me was the end of part five when Anna tearfully admitted to Vronsky how upset she was following an altercation with a woman during the theatre performance. It made me feel sorry for her and I started looking at her in a new light.
This made me think about and reflect on the concept of shame, and just how destructive and hurtful it can be. Shame seems to be a tool that’s all-encompassing; it doesn’t attribute itself to a particular behaviour, but reflects the entire person as a whole. I imagine it’s even more hurtful when shame is self-internalised, which makes it even harder to escape.
Prior to this part of the book, I had little sympathy for Anna and thought she deserved all the things going wrong for her. But this little passage reminded me that we’re all human, we all have our flaws and you never know what someone else is going through. Publicly humiliating or shaming others can have far reaching consequences, all for the sake of appearing superior at someone else’s expense.
It made me think about times in my life where I perceived myself as better than others, when in fact I was just looking for an excuse to inflate my own ego. It also made me realise how important it is to show compassion to yourself and others for any wrongdoings. Life’s difficult and nobody’s perfect; most of us are just doing the best we can. A little kindness can go a long way 🙂
Thanks for reading!
by leonardodatolstoy