Vengeance and mercy in Anna Karenina

摘要

Tolstoy’s famous novel begins with an epigraph, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” which leaves out the purported speaker of these words in Romans 12:19 (“sayeth the Lord”). As a result, these opening words allow for major ambiguities in understanding the motives of the novel’s characters. The Lord’s power to avenge wrongdoing, which asks that human beings strive to be merciful, can become the prerogative of any first-person subject. As is seen in Vronsky’s mother’s harsh condemnation of Anna near the novel’s end, such language allow for pitiless self-righteousness to overwhelm the true goal of humble forgiveness. This paper considers the implications of this ambiguity by examining the dialectic of vengeance and mercy that runs through Tolstoy’s novel. Emphasis falls on Anna and her husband Karenin, but the discussion also includes telling episodes involving Dolly Oblonsky (Anna’s sister-in-law) and Konstantin Lyovin, Anna’s counterpart in the novel’s second plot. The issues explored range from the power of compassionate forbearance and the problematic impact of authoritative words on people’s behavior to social ostracism, the transience of peak experiences, and the anguish of losing one’s capacity to forgive, not just other people, but—tragically—one’s very self.