The character of a statesman in the novels of Leo Tolstoy and Anthony Trollope (Alexey Karenin and Plantagenet Palliser)

The paper aims to prove that Leo Tolstoy’s enthusiastic review of Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister during the period of work on Anna Karenina was due to the fact that Trollope depicts a type of character similar to the character of Karenin - a statesman with intelligence and love for his work, but characterized by inattention to the private, human side of life. The paper shows that the characters follow a similar path of evolution. The trials they have to go through transform them: both Plantagenet Palliser and Karenin acutely feel the drama of their situation and seek support. At different stages, such support is provided by female characters: in both cases, the authors portray an image of an elderly and unbeautiful woman who has strong convictions and gives advice to her companion. However, the spiritual ‘awakening’ of the characters does not last long: both Palliser and Karenin fail when they adopt values that until recently seemed unacceptable to them. The paper suggests that both Trollope and Tolstoy retain sympathy for their characters: this is indicated by Palliser’s desire to ‘be of some humble use’ and the mention of the child taken in by Karenin. Tolstoy may have been attracted to The Prime Minister by Trollope’s deep and precise psychological analysis as the English novelist traces in detail the ‘mechanism’ of the insensitive character’s transformation. The Russian writer could also have been interested in the traditions of the political novel as a genre: following Trollope, he tries to show the influence of politics on the character and spiritual evolution of man. The paper concludes that the points of intersection between the two characters of statesmen are another piece of evidence of Tolstoy’s close attention to English literature, which, to a large extent, formed the concept of his most ‘English’ novel Anna Karenina.