As Anna, in her long soliloquy, traces the career which drives her to suicide, she reaches the same conclusion that Tolstoy mentions in My Confessions. "It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us": He writes, "as soon as we are sober again we see that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion." "Love" is the implicit idea in the term "life intoxication;" when Anna finds her love turned to hate, her life becomes a "stupid delusion" and death provides the only alternative. As spontaneously and naturally as Anna once confronted her love, she now accepts death. Always accepting full responsibility for her actions, Anna's suicide is an affirmation of her deep commitment to life. That death is the final truth of her career is expressed by Tolstoy's analogy of Anna's lighted candle which illuminates her life even while she extinguishes the light.
