I forgot again! Technically, it wasn't entirely my fault, because I had asked Anne to send me some pictures, and she didn't get around to it, and I was waiting for the pictures to write the blog.
Alas. Well, since I have to do two today, let me recap for you the compelling pages of Anna Karenina.
The book opens with Anna coming to the aid of her sister, whose husband has been unfaithful and plans to leave him. Anna, with heroic grace, saves the marriage and leaves the family in peace. However, while she is there, she encounters a man, Vronsky, who is pursuing her niece, Kitty. Vronsky is an amoral sort, entirely unaware that his attentions to Kitty ought to result in an honorable proposal, and falls in love with Anna on sight. (Anna is married to a dull politician.) Vronsky follows Anna back to town, where he pursues her for months until she consents to the adultery (to the devastation of Kitty, who had turned down the proposal of another man in order to marry Vronsky, who never proposed). Anna and Vronsky's affair becomes rather public, to the mortification of her husband, the politician, whose first concern is how badly this will reflect on him. Anna, discovering she is pregnant with Vronsky's child, confesses everything in a rage toward her husband, who she has learned to hate. However, as she brings the baby to term, she becomes very ill, and on the verge of death, calls back her husband and begs for his forgiveness, to the dismay of Vronsky. Even more to Vronsky's shame, her husband returns, and seeing her deathly ill, forgives her from the heart in the first selfless act of his life. Vronsky returns home and shoots himself in humiliation, but misses and ends up surviving! Anna, in the meantime, recovers, and is distraught to find herself back with her husband, who loves her generously, hating him for his virtue! She finally runs away with Vronsky and uses her societal connections to force her husband to get a divorce against his will (he doesn't want to ruin her name or force her into the streets, but is willing to take the blame of adultery onto himself in order to spare her some shame). He is left miserable in his goodness, and she leaves ecstatic in her sin, but soon, Vronsky begins to grow tired of her and their love begins to wane. In an ironic twist, Kitty reconnects with the man whose proposal she turns down, Levin, and they get married! (She spent the year rehabilitating from her loss at a wellness spring, where she encounters the ill and invalids and learns Christian love.) The pages are artistically woven together so that you are reading of Anna's corrupt love for Vronsky at the same time as you read of Kitty's love for Levin, and the author uses the same words to describe both. The last page I read noted sarcastically how opposite it all seems, because at the start of the book, Kitty was miserable and unmarried, while Anna was married and loved (and stole Kitty's happiness), but now Kitty was happily married and Anna was miserable and nearly divorced. Fate twisted so that Anna's affront to Kitty actually saved Kitty from misery and made Anna miserable!
Well, that's only the first 1400 pages (I left a lot out) and I still have another 500 or so to go! I imagine it will all become far more dramatic as the end nears.
I love you and was so grateful to see your email! I hope you are doing well and I'm praying for you! I imagine that around this time, the novelty of being outdoors and walking the Camino is starting to wear thin, and the difficulties of the road are starting to mount high. I hope that grace is felt in all of that, but if it isn't, be reminded of the goodness of your journey, and the prayers that you brought with you! You can do it! (Philippians 4:13) Stay tough, buddy.
Ponder love today!
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