Novels by Anthony Trollope and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Genetic and Typological Similarities

The article discusses the ideological and thematic similarities of the novels by Anthony Trollope and Leo Tolstoy and evaluates the possible images and motives that Tolstoy could creatively master after reading Trollope’s novels and use to create the novel Anna Karenina. The author of the article states that more than two dozen Trollope’s novels, which were especially popular among his contemporaries, were translated into Russian and published in Russia. Moreover, some of them were released more than once, appearing first on the pages of literary journals, and then in the form of separate books. Trollope’s novels were included into a kind of an artistic polylogue of Russian novelists who talked about the future of the country, about a new hero, about current problems of the present and the development path of Russia. A careful comparison of Trollope’s novels and the Anna Karenina novel allows the author of the article to conclude that the English writer, his artistic images and ideas had a significant influence on Tolstoy. Anna Karenina gives an important “hint”: the protagonist reads a book whose plot elements resemble the collective image of Trollope’s works very much. The author of the article, for the first time, thoroughly studies the possible effects of Trollope’s novels on Tolstoy, notes the lines of the writers’ ideological convergence and divergence. She analyzes individual plot schemes and elements of Trollope’s novels that Tolstoy could creatively master and the most important images and motifs of Trollope’s works that influenced Tolstoy’s artistic search. The author shows that the Russian classic admired Trollope’s skill in portraying characters, his thought-out system of heroes’ changing, passing certain stages of development as artistic time progresses. She notes specific exchanges at the character level in Trollope’s novels Orley Farm and Can You Forgive Her? and Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. While comparing the novels, the author pays special attention to the topics of human destiny, family, to the images of statesmen and strong, resolute heroines; notes the special veracity and artistic accuracy of Trollope and Tolstoy; analyzes the images of narrators in the writers’ novels. The author states that, following Trollope, Tolstoy illustrates many diseases of society and strange, pathological deviations towards artificial life. However, all the artistically mastered elements of Trollope acquire a different scale in Tolstoy not only due to the truthful and accurate transfer of facts and events by the Russian writer, but also due to the religious consciousness present in Tolstoy’s works. Externally evaluating Trollope’s novels as novels of life’s reflections, Tolstoy used many of the positive features of Trollope’s heroes, shuffling them in his own way and endowing them with his characters.

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