September 16, 2025 • 30 mins
What truly makes Anna Karenina so significant—as an epitome of world literature—is that it is far more than a tale of love and tragedy. Tolstoy offers us a mirror of the common human condition and suffering—his characters are as alive today, with all their emotional turmoil, just as they were in the 19th century. Today, we’re truly honored to welcome back Professor. Julia Titus from Yale University, to guide us into Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece Anna Karenina. Prof. Titus is the author of Dostoevsky as a Translator of Balzac (2022).
Recommended Reading:
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1878)
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Global Novel Podcast, my friends.
It's been a while, but we'refinally back on track.
This season, the Global NovelPodcast will return with a
broader and exciting vision.
It will be living under alarger umbrella called Beyond
Words.
It's meant to be a biggeronline platform devoted to
exploring the arts andhumanities in their full list
(00:24):
range.
Beyond Words will continue tocarry the passion and intensity
of the global novel by includingother subjects such as poetry,
history, film, cultural studies,philosophy, religion, fine arts
or even comic studies.
In other words, we have bigplans to grow the show and are
looking for co-producers andpodcast hosts.
(00:47):
So, if you have relevantexpertise, check out our website
at theglobalnovelorg slash.
Join us for more informationabout becoming part of our
wonderful and creativeproduction team.
Well, last year we closed withRussian and this year we begin
again with Russian literature.
The reason is that I often feelthat 19th century Russian
(01:09):
novels are understated in thosecomparative literature programs
and often European canondominates the landscape when it
comes to the study of the novel,and sometimes because
professors trained in thatparticular field are less
familiar with Russia's uniquesocial and religious context.
For example, unlike ProtestantEurope, russia was steeped in
(01:32):
orthodoxy and that differentreligious background profoundly
shapes the works of Russiannovelists such as Dostoyevsky
and Tolstoy.
Today we're truly honored towelcome back Professor Julia
Titus from Yale University toguide us into Leo Tolstoy's
masterpiece, anna Karenina.
Professor Titus is the authorof Dostoevsky as a translator of
(01:55):
Balzac.
Hello, julia, welcome back tothe show.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you so much, clara.
It's a pleasure to talk to you,as always, and thank you for
inviting me back and giving ourlisteners a chance to learn more
about Tolstoy, who, I'm sure,along with Dostoevsky if anybody
thinks of Russian literature,these are the two names that are
immediately mentioned thinks ofRussian literature.
(02:26):
These are the two names thatare immediately mentioned, and
especially the topic of today'sshow, anna Karenina.
Anna Karenina was actually onOprah's book club choice in 2004
.
And that drew a lot ofreadership, new readers to
Tolstoy and certainly about whatmight be in this novel that so
resonates with today's readers,especially women and, you know,
(02:47):
young women who are trying toalso find these answers about
family and love and longevity ofmarriage, something that
Tolstoy discussed in suchbrilliant ways in Anna Karenina.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Longevity of marriage .
What a great way to put this.
This.
I think what truly makes thisnovel so significant as an
epitome of world literature isthat it is far more than a tale
of love and tragedy.
Right, it is certainly morethan an antidote to unwe.
Building on earlier, you knoweuropean novel tradition and in
(03:21):
fact anna herself is often foundreading English novels, if I'm
correct, or French novels it'sEnglish novels in moments of
solitude.
I think what's great aboutTolstoy is his talent in
offering us a mirror of thecommon human condition and
suffering.
His characters are as alivetoday, with all their emotional
(03:42):
turmoil, just as they were inthe 19th century.
So, julia, you often told methat this is your favorite novel
and of course I have to beginasking why.
Why so?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, it is my favorite novel and in Anna
Karenina you can see if War andPeace, which was also published
previously in the serializedmanner in installments, tolstoy
wrote about Russia's past.
In Anna Karenina he reallyrecreated the life of the
society at Russian history, thatas he knew it.
(04:16):
Because, you're right, it isnot exclusively the novel about
marriage, although the initialtitle was Two Marriages, and of
course there is a story of twocouples, kitty and Leuven and
Anna and Vronsky, and theseevents kind of unfold in
parallel.
But at the same time we can allrelate because of course you
(04:38):
wrote to me that your favoritecharacter is Leuven and Leuven
is often viewed as alter ego, asa portrayal of Tolstoy himself,
with his quest for faith,because it's not only the quest
for happy family, even thoughthe biographical.
There are many episodes inCourtship of Leuven and Kitty
that mirror Tolstoy's owncourtship to Sophia Bers, for
(05:02):
example the sin and proposal,how he proposed, and also Leuven
, just like Tolstoy, gave hisown diary to read to his bride
on the eve before the weddingand with the same nerve-wracking
consequences.
So there are many, manybiographic connections and even
the other portraits of maincharacters.
(05:23):
These are all drawn from thepeople that Tolstoy knew very
well.
But what's appealing, as yousaid, there is this deep
psychology of this novel.
Because if we think on thesurface that, okay, tolstoy's
ideal woman is Dolly and Kitty,because Dolly, just like Sofia
Tolstaya, is completely consumedby her children, by her family
(05:44):
life, and that is ofteninterpreted as Tolstoy's ideal
motherhood, because that's atrue calling for the woman.
And then, of course, anna.
The antinomy is Anna leaves herfamily, she leaves her child to
elope with a lover.
So that would be, on the otherhand, the antinomy, and hence
(06:05):
she has to be punished forabandoning her duties.
But at the same time, tolstoywas, of course, the masterful
author and he didn't want tomake it so one-dimensional.
And so we as readers, I mean, Iwas always drawn to Anna.
I read Anna Karenina as a youngteenager and I reread it since
many times and I was alwaysdrawn to Anna because it's a
(06:28):
complexity of the character.
And even Vronsky.
I mean, of course we know thecritical response Vladimir
Nabokov in his famous lectureson Anna Karenina he didn't like
Vronsky, he just considered himvery superficial, but even so
Anna falls in love with Vronsky.
So there is something inVronsky that him very
superficial, but even so Annafalls in love with Vronsky.
So there is something inVronsky that is very appealing,
(06:49):
but in Anna Karenina, I think inany age, because you would read
it differently Of course.
Now, when I'm older and I havemy own children, I read it
differently from how I read itwhen I was a teenager, because
then I was solely focused,focused on Anna, because her
trajectory, you know, this loveaffair.
But now we can see all theseother shades of meaning because
(07:13):
on one hand, as I said, we cansay it's a story of two couples,
so two marriages.
But there is also the thirdcouple and that is Dolly and
Stiva, and that's kind of anintermediary between she
connects this Steva and Dolly,working in the novel as a
linking couple between Vronskyand Anna and Kitty and Leuven.
(07:35):
So there is that, and so whenthe novel was initially
published, some criticscriticized it for lack of unity,
because they said well, thereis this plot line which is Anna
Vronsky, and then there is thisplot line, kitty Levin, and they
do not connect.
(07:56):
But in fact Tolstoy vehementlydisagreed and Nabokov also said
the same thing.
Tolstoy said that these plotlines are connected not
necessarily through thenarrative intersection but
through the inner architecture.
He says this is actually themark of the great artistry, that
it's like the plafond or thearches, these arches, that they
(08:16):
are done in such deliberate andsubtle way that you cannot see
the structure is not visible.
And when we think about it, thenarrative, of course, is
structured in this way becausethings the starting point right,
it's the ball, where things gobadly for Kitty but things look
up for Anna, right, so Anna.
So then Kitty gets sick, sothat couple goes down and she
(08:40):
refused Levin, so for thatcouple things go badly.
And of course Anna and Vronskycourtship, so this dynamic.
And then ultimately, when thenovel is driven to the finale,
kitty is living in herblissfully happy married state
and Anna is consumed withjealousy and she feels that
Vronsky's passion for her isdiminishing and ultimately Anna
(09:06):
ends up committing suicide andAlevin finds faith and it's
really his family life, orrather that Kitty and her son
are spared by the thunderstorm,that brings him closer to God.
So it's that contrast of thetwo plot lines really shapes the
philosophical content of thenovel.
(09:26):
But, as I said, I mean why Ilike it.
I also like it because, even ifyou read the fragments, if you
look like at one chapter.
If you look at the ball orKitty and Irving skating, you
will see these scenes areconstructed so richly and
Tolstoy was such a master ofdetail that you can really see.
I mean there are more than 30movie film adaptations.
(09:49):
Fana Karenina, because I thinkeverybody's just drawn to bring
it to visual imagery, becauseeven as you read you can totally
picture it, because thesedetails right, you remember
Anna's black dress, the sparklein her eye or the clumsiness of
skitty skating.
(10:10):
And she says with you when shespeaks to Levin, I'm not afraid,
I don't think I will fall,because you really know how to
skate.
So all these details.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, I agree.
Tolstoy's characterizations areso convincing and full of
artistry, just as you talkedabout.
We could talk endlessly about.
You know the major characters,levin, kitty, anna, vronsky,
crennan, even Levin's brothers,and how each of them not only
shapes events but also carriesthe novel's philosophical and
(10:43):
self-reflective weight.
So for me, levin is my favoritecharacter and he feels like, as
we all know, tolstoy's ownself-portrait, as you just
mentioned, who's a philosopher,thinker and feeler who tries to
live his life meaningfully.
But what strikes me most is thecharacter's aliveness, and
(11:04):
especially in those scenes wherehe works in the fields with the
peasants reaping wheat in thescorching sun and pouring rain,
as he slowly recovers fromKitty's rejection.
I've rarely been so touched bythis moment of healing, you know
, done through literature.
Tolstoy makes visible thebeauty of recovery, right, and
(11:26):
something most of us cannot seein ourselves while we're still
healing and busy managing ourown pain emotionally.
What do you think aboutTolstoy's method or his way of
shaping his characters in thisfashion?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Well, I would say that's a great question.
I mean, I'm drawn to Leuven,but also they say that Leuven's
spiritual counterpart, or atleast in some critics' view, is
Anna, because before she meetsVronsky her life is very
superficial and consumed by thissociety duties.
What does she do?
She doesn't really do anything.
Yes, she has her son, butthat's pretty much only one
(12:15):
thing.
Maybe enough for Dolly, but itwas not enough, obviously, for
the woman of this.
You know immense gifts, giftsof intellect, gifts of the heart
, as Anna Levin is a wonderfulcharacter and I think also.
So I'm torn between my heartgoes to Levin and Anna, and it's
(12:40):
interesting when they meetright towards the finale of the
novel.
He's drawn to her right at themusic, at the concert, and then
Kitty is like.
Kitty suspects that it's notvery good either.
So, yes, leuven is like Tolstoy.
Sofia, the wife of Tolstoy,famously said to Leo Tolstoy
that Leuven is him himself,minus the talent.
So Tolstoy was like Leuven, buttalented Right.
(13:03):
So yes, leuven is besieged bythe same.
Again, for Tolstoy the biggestissues were finding faith, so
this journey to God, andregarding Leuven's preoccupation
(13:24):
with his estate, that's ofcourse biographical.
And we have a very interestingcommentary because even though
the novel was published in theRussian Herald every month,
publication was interruptedtwice.
So from May to November of 1875, nothing was published, and it
was the same hiatus thefollowing summer.
Why?
Because Tolstoy was preoccupiedwith his estate.
He had to do all these thingshe was writing about.
(13:45):
So that, of course, again helpsus to see how much of what was
written in Anna Kareninaactually is drawn from the real
life, from the environment thatwas so familiar to Tolstoy,
because people were commentingon the portrayal of the
characters that they actuallyrecognized.
(14:06):
Steve Oblonsky is rumored to bedone from somebody named
Perfiliev, who once said toTolstoy jokingly that he never
ate the whole bagel with coffeefor breakfast.
And so he found it alsoobviously very true, very
(14:26):
resonant.
So all these details peoplecould point out to real
prototypes who were reworked inthe novel as poetic archetypes.
Yes, the quest for Leuven.
Leuven is believable because hewell, anna too, because Anna
undergoes this big journey right.
She starts out with thissocialite.
(14:48):
In some ways her socialsituation is similar to Betsy
and of course Betsy has a lover,which everybody knows, and it's
completely fine.
But Anna finds herself from theappearances in the same
situation and becomes unbearable, because Anna doesn't want
duplicity.
(15:08):
She cannot live like Betsy.
She wants authenticity in herrelationships.
That's why she doesn't want tocontinue in that same fashion.
Because it's interesting thatwhen a relationship begins, for
Vronsky it's a step up in thesociety, right, because he has
an affair with this.
(15:28):
You know very brilliant, madameKarenin, who is high on the
society ladder, it's veryvisible, it's a feather in his
cap.
And of course, anna being awoman, that's exactly the
opposite effect, because womenare never, never treated in the
same, not in Tolstoy's time, notnow.
They are not held to the samestandard, unfortunately.
(15:50):
Also, it may be interesting tonote that Tolstoy was in Paris
during when Madame Bovary waspublished and Flaubert was
famously on trial, right.
So Tolstoy was certainly awareof it.
And some critics say that AnnaKarenina can be viewed as the
(16:11):
Russian response to MadameBovary.
Because, again, problems withAnna Karenina, also tainted by
Russian social situations inpossibility of divorce, right.
And so there is this wholeother layer of complexity and of
course, with Emma, with MadameBovary that one goes from lover
(16:33):
to lover to lover, whereas forAnna it's a very different type
of relationship that she haswith Vronsky.
She says my whole life, you aremy whole life.
If I don't have you, I don'thave anything.
And that's how she's driven tothe suicide, because she feels
that he no longer loves her andthere is nothing left in her
life to draw.
Well, some people, some critics, say that we don't know if
(16:56):
that's what Tolstoy thought, butthere is a biographical fact
that he was in Paris duringFlaubert's trial.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Biographical fact that he was in Paris during
Flaubert's trial, so somecritics suppose that it could be
viewed as such.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But I mean he wanted to write because, again, the War
and Peace is a novel aboutRachev's past and this kind of
epic novel.
And when the novel was firstpublished, the critics, again
the public, the response,critical response was bigger
than War and Peace.
Everybody loved it andanticipated every installment.
It was a big event.
(17:30):
But critics criticized it.
For some said, well, it'sTolstoy's portrayal of upper
society.
So one critic wrote it's justan upper society sketch with art
for pure art.
They really criticized it.
The other critics said that itlacks this unity, as I said,
because why write one novel,write two, right?
(17:53):
So the critics didn't thinkOnly Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky liked it and then,of course, later Thomas Mann
liked it and praised it as themost important social novel.
Because again, there is thissocial relationships that you
can study, because all thecharacters, of course Steva is
(18:14):
one type, then Karenin isobviously the opposite, right?
So you can look at Karenin'scircle vis-a-vis Leuven and
Kitty's circle and you will seehow these are different social
spheres and how there arecompletely different
interactions and the norms ofbehavior that are accepted.
(18:36):
Because you mentioned theletter in your questions.
Karenin writes this letter.
Well, he's mostly concernedwith appearances.
Does he love Anna?
No, he doesn't care.
But he knows a divorce isfrowned upon in the society.
It's not good, so it's betterto continue as is, as if nothing
is the matter.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yep, well, the novel's psychological depth is
truly amazing, because we'retalking about really deep
analytical description ofcharacters way before Freud and
Lacan In terms of theproto-psychoanalysis.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
A lot is always said about dreams and in terms of
imagery.
We remember that Anna and Annameets Vronsky not only at the
railway station but in a veryprophetic moment.
How does she know Vronsky isinterested?
Because when she sees that theman has been cut off by the
(19:34):
train, vronsky immediately givesmoney to the widow, and she
knows that it is because of her.
And she also knows that perhapsthis is not the most natural
thing for Vronsky to do, becauseit's a gesture to draw to her
attention.
And then, of course, that sameimage of the tragedy connected.
(19:57):
She doesn't see the railroadper se, but in her dreams, right
, she sees this man, this scaryman, doing something with the
iron.
So this motif of iron issomething that goes through the
novel, you know, from therailroad to her dream where the
man is working with the hot iron, that nightmare, and then of
(20:20):
course she dies.
Interestingly that Vronsky too.
Vronsky sees a similar dream,right.
So when he comes to her, whenshe writes to him that I have to
see you, and she tells him thatdream that she was so scared
because she thinks she will diein childbirth, she says it's
going to be over soon, and thenhe remembers his dream too, and
(20:42):
so that these two dreams, sothey share the dream.
There is this connection,unspoken connection between the
two and, of course, the otherdevice that we also know,
because one of the things thatmakes Rita aware why Anna is not
like Betsy in one of hernightmares we know.
Of course the first name ofVronsky is Alexei and the name
(21:06):
of Karenin, her husband, sees toAlexei's together, and this she
cannot.
We know that for her it isindeed the nightmare.
She can't like split it, and sothe dreams are very, very
important and when we think whatwould be this motif?
(21:31):
Because there is also theblizzard right, because there is
for Anna, it's that whirlwindand it's a metaphor because the
blizzard she goes out on theplatform when Vronsky says that
he follows her to St Petersburgand the blizzard comes out and
extinguishes the lamp.
(21:51):
So it becomes a metaphor ofAnna's, of course, tragic end.
And another metaphor in thatthere is a parallel right,
because when Vronsky thinks,when he looks at Anna, when
she's already tormented byjealousy, and he says he sees
(22:13):
how she becomes like, he feelsit's like a wilted flower.
He picked the flower and she'snow less beautiful and somehow
less radiant and it evokes thatimage, that plucked flower, but
also it's the image of the horse, right.
When the horse a race horse andhe breaks by one awkward
(22:38):
movement, he breaks the horseback and the horse dies and that
becomes this really alsoforeshadowing of what is to come
, because it was not deliberateand yet it was completely tragic
for the event, for that episodewith the racehorses.
(23:02):
So I would say the dreams weshould certainly think of dreams
as these prophetic moments, howhe shapes his narrative
narrative.
And another thing where Tolstoywas really the visionary is
Anna's last monologue, becausethat last day that she spends
(23:24):
thinking of her suicide, it'sreally the stream of
consciousness, right, and whenTolstoy writes it it's way
before James Joyce, so it'sbefore that technique was
actually used and widely known,and how she spends that whole
day and it's completelyjuxtaposed with the things that
she sees and the things that shethinks.
So that's also somethingartistically, it's a great
(23:47):
contribution to the art of thenovel.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, I'm personally really not a big fan of Vronsky.
We're going to talk about thischaracter in a second, but
before that I was also thinkingof this.
Constant dreams within severalmajor characters that they have
is this image of the despicablepeasant?
You remember that.
Why don't we talk about thiskind of disturbing imagery,
(24:14):
character that appears in somany characters' dreams?
What does that symbolize, doyou think?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, it foreshadows Anna's death because again, it's
very disturbing and you have,it's that, the muzhik, the
peasant.
So I think it's incarnation ofthat tragic image that the
peasant was cut off or therailroad worker was cut off
(24:46):
during the scene where shearrives in Moscow, and it
becomes just a symbol of deathand foreshadowing of this,
because the imagery of fire isalso from hell, right.
So with Kitty and Lovin, lovingazes at the sky during work, in
(25:13):
his hunting scenes, you knowwhen, before he meets Kitty, at
the time she travels.
So celestial imagery for themand just the visions of hell.
For this, because it'sinteresting that in Anna's dream
, that despicable old man, hespeaks French and she, yes, and
(25:36):
she, but she understands he alsospeaks French.
In Vronsky's dream, vronskycannot understand him, but Anna
can, because she says he'sworking the iron and he says one
has to shape this iron and workit.
So it's interesting that againshe is able to understand.
But it's a sheer nonsensebecause dreams, as you recall,
(26:10):
the novel opens with a dream howhe saw some crystal glasses and
they were singing an Italianaria.
But these were not reallyglasses, these were women.
And then he wakes up and hesays, oh, why am I here.
And then he remembers.
But from that dream we know thatwe already know what Oblomsky
(26:30):
is like he enjoys life.
So all these attributes ofhedonistic lifestyle wine, you
know beautiful women, all ofthat very light, you know
Italian opera, it's allcondensed in that light,
hedonistic dream.
So, with Anna, the gist of itis of course this evil image
(26:55):
that is very disturbing, andfire and iron.
As I said, iron becomes asymbol that goes through the
novel, from the railroad to thestreams, then ultimately to
bullets because of the failedsuicide by Vronsky, and then he
ultimately goes to war where hewill probably be killed.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Right, right, well, now that you mentioned
characters speak a lot of Frenchin the novel.
I'm just curious that in AnnaKarenina, characters when they
switch into French at momentsthat are so delicate and
emotionally private, I wasstruck by Karenin's writing Anna
a long letter in French toaddress his decision of their
(27:40):
relationship.
As you say, he's trying tocontain this, he's trying to
control this, he doesn't want adivorce.
What does it mean that suchintimate issues were framed in a
foreign language?
Was French the lingua franca inthe 19th century Russia?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Absolutely.
But for Tolstoy it was actuallyyes, french was a lingua franca
and everybody spoke French.
Nobility spoke French.
It was part of the culturalupbringing.
And maybe you probably know,after the French Revolution a
lot of French immigrated or theyfled Russia and so all of the
(28:18):
Russian society was raised bythe French governors, so to
speak.
French, very good French wasabsolutely necessary, and
Tolstoy in fact writes about itin his memoirs, in his
semi-biography the childhood,youth and in adolescence, youth.
In this trilogy he speaks abouthow he wanted.
(28:41):
He was always trying to speakFrench with impeccable accent.
And Pushkin, the greatestRussian author, he even wrote
verses in French and hisnickname in his high school was
the Frenchman because he was soproficient in French.
If anything.
When the war with Napoleonstarted in 1812, russian
(29:02):
nobility and Tolstoy writesabout it in War and Peace,
russian nobility had to takesome of them had to take lessons
in Russian because theirRussian wasn't good enough and
since Moscow was about to beconquered by Napoleon, it became
a question of personal safety.
They had to speak Russianbecause otherwise, you know,
they would be risking their ownlife, right?
(29:23):
So, yeah, so absolutely.
But for Tolstoy it's very welldone in War and Peace, and it's
done in Anna Karenina too.
Peace, and it's done in AnnaKarenina too, but in War and
Peace it's more visible, becauseif you pick up War and Peace,
you will have these pages andpages of French where now
there'll be a footnote inEnglish.
Here in Anna Karenina it's donea little differently, because
(29:46):
it says, okay, he wrote inFrench, but then you have actual
Russian text, so, or in Englishtranslation, it'll be all in
English.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
In War and Peace, the we hope you liked this episode
so far.
In the second half of thisepisode, professor Titus
explores how French serves as acovert and inauthentic language
for the aristocratic characters.
She will also discuss thetension and conflict between
culture and individual freedom,the true cause of Anna's death
(30:17):
and the novel's reflections onredemption and the meaning of
life.
If you want to dive deeper intothese key interpretations in
Anna Karenina, subscribe attheglobalnovelorg slash
subscribe.
Thank you so much for listening.
Welcome to the Global Novel Podcast, my friends.
It's been a while, but we'refinally back on track.
This season, the Global NovelPodcast will return with a
broader and exciting vision.
It will be living under alarger umbrella called Beyond
Words.
It's meant to be a biggeronline platform devoted to
exploring the arts andhumanities in their full list
(00:24):
range.
Beyond Words will continue tocarry the passion and intensity
of the global novel by includingother subjects such as poetry,
history, film, cultural studies,philosophy, religion, fine arts
or even comic studies.
In other words, we have bigplans to grow the show and are
looking for co-producers andpodcast hosts.
(00:47):
So, if you have relevantexpertise, check out our website
at theglobalnovelorg slash.
Join us for more informationabout becoming part of our
wonderful and creativeproduction team.
Well, last year we closed withRussian and this year we begin
again with Russian literature.
The reason is that I often feelthat 19th century Russian
(01:09):
novels are understated in thosecomparative literature programs
and often European canondominates the landscape when it
comes to the study of the novel,and sometimes because
professors trained in thatparticular field are less
familiar with Russia's uniquesocial and religious context.
For example, unlike ProtestantEurope, russia was steeped in
(01:32):
orthodoxy and that differentreligious background profoundly
shapes the works of Russiannovelists such as Dostoyevsky
and Tolstoy.
Today we're truly honored towelcome back Professor Julia
Titus from Yale University toguide us into Leo Tolstoy's
masterpiece, anna Karenina.
Professor Titus is the authorof Dostoevsky as a translator of
(01:55):
Balzac.
Hello, julia, welcome back tothe show.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you so much, clara.
It's a pleasure to talk to you,as always, and thank you for
inviting me back and giving ourlisteners a chance to learn more
about Tolstoy, who, I'm sure,along with Dostoevsky if anybody
thinks of Russian literature,these are the two names that are
immediately mentioned thinks ofRussian literature.
(02:26):
These are the two names thatare immediately mentioned, and
especially the topic of today'sshow, anna Karenina.
Anna Karenina was actually onOprah's book club choice in 2004
.
And that drew a lot ofreadership, new readers to
Tolstoy and certainly about whatmight be in this novel that so
resonates with today's readers,especially women and, you know,
(02:47):
young women who are trying toalso find these answers about
family and love and longevity ofmarriage, something that
Tolstoy discussed in suchbrilliant ways in Anna Karenina.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Longevity of marriage .
What a great way to put this.
This.
I think what truly makes thisnovel so significant as an
epitome of world literature isthat it is far more than a tale
of love and tragedy.
Right, it is certainly morethan an antidote to unwe.
Building on earlier, you knoweuropean novel tradition and in
(03:21):
fact anna herself is often foundreading English novels, if I'm
correct, or French novels it'sEnglish novels in moments of
solitude.
I think what's great aboutTolstoy is his talent in
offering us a mirror of thecommon human condition and
suffering.
His characters are as alivetoday, with all their emotional
(03:42):
turmoil, just as they were inthe 19th century.
So, julia, you often told methat this is your favorite novel
and of course I have to beginasking why.
Why so?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, it is my favorite novel and in Anna
Karenina you can see if War andPeace, which was also published
previously in the serializedmanner in installments, tolstoy
wrote about Russia's past.
In Anna Karenina he reallyrecreated the life of the
society at Russian history, thatas he knew it.
(04:16):
Because, you're right, it isnot exclusively the novel about
marriage, although the initialtitle was Two Marriages, and of
course there is a story of twocouples, kitty and Leuven and
Anna and Vronsky, and theseevents kind of unfold in
parallel.
But at the same time we can allrelate because of course you
(04:38):
wrote to me that your favoritecharacter is Leuven and Leuven
is often viewed as alter ego, asa portrayal of Tolstoy himself,
with his quest for faith,because it's not only the quest
for happy family, even thoughthe biographical.
There are many episodes inCourtship of Leuven and Kitty
that mirror Tolstoy's owncourtship to Sophia Bers, for
(05:02):
example the sin and proposal,how he proposed, and also Leuven
, just like Tolstoy, gave hisown diary to read to his bride
on the eve before the weddingand with the same nerve-wracking
consequences.
So there are many, manybiographic connections and even
the other portraits of maincharacters.
(05:23):
These are all drawn from thepeople that Tolstoy knew very
well.
But what's appealing, as yousaid, there is this deep
psychology of this novel.
Because if we think on thesurface that, okay, tolstoy's
ideal woman is Dolly and Kitty,because Dolly, just like Sofia
Tolstaya, is completely consumedby her children, by her family
(05:44):
life, and that is ofteninterpreted as Tolstoy's ideal
motherhood, because that's atrue calling for the woman.
And then, of course, anna.
The antinomy is Anna leaves herfamily, she leaves her child to
elope with a lover.
So that would be, on the otherhand, the antinomy, and hence
(06:05):
she has to be punished forabandoning her duties.
But at the same time, tolstoywas, of course, the masterful
author and he didn't want tomake it so one-dimensional.
And so we as readers, I mean, Iwas always drawn to Anna.
I read Anna Karenina as a youngteenager and I reread it since
many times and I was alwaysdrawn to Anna because it's a
(06:28):
complexity of the character.
And even Vronsky.
I mean, of course we know thecritical response Vladimir
Nabokov in his famous lectureson Anna Karenina he didn't like
Vronsky, he just considered himvery superficial, but even so
Anna falls in love with Vronsky.
So there is something inVronsky that him very
superficial, but even so Annafalls in love with Vronsky.
So there is something inVronsky that is very appealing,
(06:49):
but in Anna Karenina, I think inany age, because you would read
it differently Of course.
Now, when I'm older and I havemy own children, I read it
differently from how I read itwhen I was a teenager, because
then I was solely focused,focused on Anna, because her
trajectory, you know, this loveaffair.
But now we can see all theseother shades of meaning because
(07:13):
on one hand, as I said, we cansay it's a story of two couples,
so two marriages.
But there is also the thirdcouple and that is Dolly and
Stiva, and that's kind of anintermediary between she
connects this Steva and Dolly,working in the novel as a
linking couple between Vronskyand Anna and Kitty and Leuven.
(07:35):
So there is that, and so whenthe novel was initially
published, some criticscriticized it for lack of unity,
because they said well, thereis this plot line which is Anna
Vronsky, and then there is thisplot line, kitty Levin, and they
do not connect.
(07:56):
But in fact Tolstoy vehementlydisagreed and Nabokov also said
the same thing.
Tolstoy said that these plotlines are connected not
necessarily through thenarrative intersection but
through the inner architecture.
He says this is actually themark of the great artistry, that
it's like the plafond or thearches, these arches, that they
(08:16):
are done in such deliberate andsubtle way that you cannot see
the structure is not visible.
And when we think about it, thenarrative, of course, is
structured in this way becausethings the starting point right,
it's the ball, where things gobadly for Kitty but things look
up for Anna, right, so Anna.
So then Kitty gets sick, sothat couple goes down and she
(08:40):
refused Levin, so for thatcouple things go badly.
And of course Anna and Vronskycourtship, so this dynamic.
And then ultimately, when thenovel is driven to the finale,
kitty is living in herblissfully happy married state
and Anna is consumed withjealousy and she feels that
Vronsky's passion for her isdiminishing and ultimately Anna
(09:06):
ends up committing suicide andAlevin finds faith and it's
really his family life, orrather that Kitty and her son
are spared by the thunderstorm,that brings him closer to God.
So it's that contrast of thetwo plot lines really shapes the
philosophical content of thenovel.
(09:26):
But, as I said, I mean why Ilike it.
I also like it because, even ifyou read the fragments, if you
look like at one chapter.
If you look at the ball orKitty and Irving skating, you
will see these scenes areconstructed so richly and
Tolstoy was such a master ofdetail that you can really see.
I mean there are more than 30movie film adaptations.
(09:49):
Fana Karenina, because I thinkeverybody's just drawn to bring
it to visual imagery, becauseeven as you read you can totally
picture it, because thesedetails right, you remember
Anna's black dress, the sparklein her eye or the clumsiness of
skitty skating.
(10:10):
And she says with you when shespeaks to Levin, I'm not afraid,
I don't think I will fall,because you really know how to
skate.
So all these details.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, I agree.
Tolstoy's characterizations areso convincing and full of
artistry, just as you talkedabout.
We could talk endlessly about.
You know the major characters,levin, kitty, anna, vronsky,
crennan, even Levin's brothers,and how each of them not only
shapes events but also carriesthe novel's philosophical and
(10:43):
self-reflective weight.
So for me, levin is my favoritecharacter and he feels like, as
we all know, tolstoy's ownself-portrait, as you just
mentioned, who's a philosopher,thinker and feeler who tries to
live his life meaningfully.
But what strikes me most is thecharacter's aliveness, and
(11:04):
especially in those scenes wherehe works in the fields with the
peasants reaping wheat in thescorching sun and pouring rain,
as he slowly recovers fromKitty's rejection.
I've rarely been so touched bythis moment of healing, you know
, done through literature.
Tolstoy makes visible thebeauty of recovery, right, and
(11:26):
something most of us cannot seein ourselves while we're still
healing and busy managing ourown pain emotionally.
What do you think aboutTolstoy's method or his way of
shaping his characters in thisfashion?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Well, I would say that's a great question.
I mean, I'm drawn to Leuven,but also they say that Leuven's
spiritual counterpart, or atleast in some critics' view, is
Anna, because before she meetsVronsky her life is very
superficial and consumed by thissociety duties.
What does she do?
She doesn't really do anything.
Yes, she has her son, butthat's pretty much only one
(12:15):
thing.
Maybe enough for Dolly, but itwas not enough, obviously, for
the woman of this.
You know immense gifts, giftsof intellect, gifts of the heart
, as Anna Levin is a wonderfulcharacter and I think also.
So I'm torn between my heartgoes to Levin and Anna, and it's
(12:40):
interesting when they meetright towards the finale of the
novel.
He's drawn to her right at themusic, at the concert, and then
Kitty is like.
Kitty suspects that it's notvery good either.
So, yes, leuven is like Tolstoy.
Sofia, the wife of Tolstoy,famously said to Leo Tolstoy
that Leuven is him himself,minus the talent.
So Tolstoy was like Leuven, buttalented Right.
(13:03):
So yes, leuven is besieged bythe same.
Again, for Tolstoy the biggestissues were finding faith, so
this journey to God, andregarding Leuven's preoccupation
(13:24):
with his estate, that's ofcourse biographical.
And we have a very interestingcommentary because even though
the novel was published in theRussian Herald every month,
publication was interruptedtwice.
So from May to November of 1875, nothing was published, and it
was the same hiatus thefollowing summer.
Why?
Because Tolstoy was preoccupiedwith his estate.
He had to do all these thingshe was writing about.
(13:45):
So that, of course, again helpsus to see how much of what was
written in Anna Kareninaactually is drawn from the real
life, from the environment thatwas so familiar to Tolstoy,
because people were commentingon the portrayal of the
characters that they actuallyrecognized.
(14:06):
Steve Oblonsky is rumored to bedone from somebody named
Perfiliev, who once said toTolstoy jokingly that he never
ate the whole bagel with coffeefor breakfast.
And so he found it alsoobviously very true, very
(14:26):
resonant.
So all these details peoplecould point out to real
prototypes who were reworked inthe novel as poetic archetypes.
Yes, the quest for Leuven.
Leuven is believable because hewell, anna too, because Anna
undergoes this big journey right.
She starts out with thissocialite.
(14:48):
In some ways her socialsituation is similar to Betsy
and of course Betsy has a lover,which everybody knows, and it's
completely fine.
But Anna finds herself from theappearances in the same
situation and becomes unbearable, because Anna doesn't want
duplicity.
(15:08):
She cannot live like Betsy.
She wants authenticity in herrelationships.
That's why she doesn't want tocontinue in that same fashion.
Because it's interesting thatwhen a relationship begins, for
Vronsky it's a step up in thesociety, right, because he has
an affair with this.
(15:28):
You know very brilliant, madameKarenin, who is high on the
society ladder, it's veryvisible, it's a feather in his
cap.
And of course, anna being awoman, that's exactly the
opposite effect, because womenare never, never treated in the
same, not in Tolstoy's time, notnow.
They are not held to the samestandard, unfortunately.
(15:50):
Also, it may be interesting tonote that Tolstoy was in Paris
during when Madame Bovary waspublished and Flaubert was
famously on trial, right.
So Tolstoy was certainly awareof it.
And some critics say that AnnaKarenina can be viewed as the
(16:11):
Russian response to MadameBovary.
Because, again, problems withAnna Karenina, also tainted by
Russian social situations inpossibility of divorce, right.
And so there is this wholeother layer of complexity and of
course, with Emma, with MadameBovary that one goes from lover
(16:33):
to lover to lover, whereas forAnna it's a very different type
of relationship that she haswith Vronsky.
She says my whole life, you aremy whole life.
If I don't have you, I don'thave anything.
And that's how she's driven tothe suicide, because she feels
that he no longer loves her andthere is nothing left in her
life to draw.
Well, some people, some critics, say that we don't know if
(16:56):
that's what Tolstoy thought, butthere is a biographical fact
that he was in Paris duringFlaubert's trial.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Biographical fact that he was in Paris during
Flaubert's trial, so somecritics suppose that it could be
viewed as such.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But I mean he wanted to write because, again, the War
and Peace is a novel aboutRachev's past and this kind of
epic novel.
And when the novel was firstpublished, the critics, again
the public, the response,critical response was bigger
than War and Peace.
Everybody loved it andanticipated every installment.
It was a big event.
(17:30):
But critics criticized it.
For some said, well, it'sTolstoy's portrayal of upper
society.
So one critic wrote it's justan upper society sketch with art
for pure art.
They really criticized it.
The other critics said that itlacks this unity, as I said,
because why write one novel,write two, right?
(17:53):
So the critics didn't thinkOnly Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky liked it and then,of course, later Thomas Mann
liked it and praised it as themost important social novel.
Because again, there is thissocial relationships that you
can study, because all thecharacters, of course Steva is
(18:14):
one type, then Karenin isobviously the opposite, right?
So you can look at Karenin'scircle vis-a-vis Leuven and
Kitty's circle and you will seehow these are different social
spheres and how there arecompletely different
interactions and the norms ofbehavior that are accepted.
(18:36):
Because you mentioned theletter in your questions.
Karenin writes this letter.
Well, he's mostly concernedwith appearances.
Does he love Anna?
No, he doesn't care.
But he knows a divorce isfrowned upon in the society.
It's not good, so it's betterto continue as is, as if nothing
is the matter.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yep, well, the novel's psychological depth is
truly amazing, because we'retalking about really deep
analytical description ofcharacters way before Freud and
Lacan In terms of theproto-psychoanalysis.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
A lot is always said about dreams and in terms of
imagery.
We remember that Anna and Annameets Vronsky not only at the
railway station but in a veryprophetic moment.
How does she know Vronsky isinterested?
Because when she sees that theman has been cut off by the
(19:34):
train, vronsky immediately givesmoney to the widow, and she
knows that it is because of her.
And she also knows that perhapsthis is not the most natural
thing for Vronsky to do, becauseit's a gesture to draw to her
attention.
And then, of course, that sameimage of the tragedy connected.
(19:57):
She doesn't see the railroadper se, but in her dreams, right
, she sees this man, this scaryman, doing something with the
iron.
So this motif of iron issomething that goes through the
novel, you know, from therailroad to her dream where the
man is working with the hot iron, that nightmare, and then of
(20:20):
course she dies.
Interestingly that Vronsky too.
Vronsky sees a similar dream,right.
So when he comes to her, whenshe writes to him that I have to
see you, and she tells him thatdream that she was so scared
because she thinks she will diein childbirth, she says it's
going to be over soon, and thenhe remembers his dream too, and
(20:42):
so that these two dreams, sothey share the dream.
There is this connection,unspoken connection between the
two and, of course, the otherdevice that we also know,
because one of the things thatmakes Rita aware why Anna is not
like Betsy in one of hernightmares we know.
Of course the first name ofVronsky is Alexei and the name
(21:06):
of Karenin, her husband, sees toAlexei's together, and this she
cannot.
We know that for her it isindeed the nightmare.
She can't like split it, and sothe dreams are very, very
important and when we think whatwould be this motif?
(21:31):
Because there is also theblizzard right, because there is
for Anna, it's that whirlwindand it's a metaphor because the
blizzard she goes out on theplatform when Vronsky says that
he follows her to St Petersburgand the blizzard comes out and
extinguishes the lamp.
(21:51):
So it becomes a metaphor ofAnna's, of course, tragic end.
And another metaphor in thatthere is a parallel right,
because when Vronsky thinks,when he looks at Anna, when
she's already tormented byjealousy, and he says he sees
(22:13):
how she becomes like, he feelsit's like a wilted flower.
He picked the flower and she'snow less beautiful and somehow
less radiant and it evokes thatimage, that plucked flower, but
also it's the image of the horse, right.
When the horse a race horse andhe breaks by one awkward
(22:38):
movement, he breaks the horseback and the horse dies and that
becomes this really alsoforeshadowing of what is to come
, because it was not deliberateand yet it was completely tragic
for the event, for that episodewith the racehorses.
(23:02):
So I would say the dreams weshould certainly think of dreams
as these prophetic moments, howhe shapes his narrative
narrative.
And another thing where Tolstoywas really the visionary is
Anna's last monologue, becausethat last day that she spends
(23:24):
thinking of her suicide, it'sreally the stream of
consciousness, right, and whenTolstoy writes it it's way
before James Joyce, so it'sbefore that technique was
actually used and widely known,and how she spends that whole
day and it's completelyjuxtaposed with the things that
she sees and the things that shethinks.
So that's also somethingartistically, it's a great
(23:47):
contribution to the art of thenovel.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, I'm personally really not a big fan of Vronsky.
We're going to talk about thischaracter in a second, but
before that I was also thinkingof this.
Constant dreams within severalmajor characters that they have
is this image of the despicablepeasant?
You remember that.
Why don't we talk about thiskind of disturbing imagery,
(24:14):
character that appears in somany characters' dreams?
What does that symbolize, doyou think?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, it foreshadows Anna's death because again, it's
very disturbing and you have,it's that, the muzhik, the
peasant.
So I think it's incarnation ofthat tragic image that the
peasant was cut off or therailroad worker was cut off
(24:46):
during the scene where shearrives in Moscow, and it
becomes just a symbol of deathand foreshadowing of this,
because the imagery of fire isalso from hell, right.
So with Kitty and Lovin, lovingazes at the sky during work, in
(25:13):
his hunting scenes, you knowwhen, before he meets Kitty, at
the time she travels.
So celestial imagery for themand just the visions of hell.
For this, because it'sinteresting that in Anna's dream
, that despicable old man, hespeaks French and she, yes, and
(25:36):
she, but she understands he alsospeaks French.
In Vronsky's dream, vronskycannot understand him, but Anna
can, because she says he'sworking the iron and he says one
has to shape this iron and workit.
So it's interesting that againshe is able to understand.
But it's a sheer nonsensebecause dreams, as you recall,
(26:10):
the novel opens with a dream howhe saw some crystal glasses and
they were singing an Italianaria.
But these were not reallyglasses, these were women.
And then he wakes up and hesays, oh, why am I here.
And then he remembers.
But from that dream we know thatwe already know what Oblomsky
(26:30):
is like he enjoys life.
So all these attributes ofhedonistic lifestyle wine, you
know beautiful women, all ofthat very light, you know
Italian opera, it's allcondensed in that light,
hedonistic dream.
So, with Anna, the gist of itis of course this evil image
(26:55):
that is very disturbing, andfire and iron.
As I said, iron becomes asymbol that goes through the
novel, from the railroad to thestreams, then ultimately to
bullets because of the failedsuicide by Vronsky, and then he
ultimately goes to war where hewill probably be killed.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Right, right, well, now that you mentioned
characters speak a lot of Frenchin the novel.
I'm just curious that in AnnaKarenina, characters when they
switch into French at momentsthat are so delicate and
emotionally private, I wasstruck by Karenin's writing Anna
a long letter in French toaddress his decision of their
(27:40):
relationship.
As you say, he's trying tocontain this, he's trying to
control this, he doesn't want adivorce.
What does it mean that suchintimate issues were framed in a
foreign language?
Was French the lingua franca inthe 19th century Russia?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Absolutely.
But for Tolstoy it was actuallyyes, french was a lingua franca
and everybody spoke French.
Nobility spoke French.
It was part of the culturalupbringing.
And maybe you probably know,after the French Revolution a
lot of French immigrated or theyfled Russia and so all of the
(28:18):
Russian society was raised bythe French governors, so to
speak.
French, very good French wasabsolutely necessary, and
Tolstoy in fact writes about itin his memoirs, in his
semi-biography the childhood,youth and in adolescence, youth.
In this trilogy he speaks abouthow he wanted.
(28:41):
He was always trying to speakFrench with impeccable accent.
And Pushkin, the greatestRussian author, he even wrote
verses in French and hisnickname in his high school was
the Frenchman because he was soproficient in French.
If anything.
When the war with Napoleonstarted in 1812, russian
(29:02):
nobility and Tolstoy writesabout it in War and Peace,
russian nobility had to takesome of them had to take lessons
in Russian because theirRussian wasn't good enough and
since Moscow was about to beconquered by Napoleon, it became
a question of personal safety.
They had to speak Russianbecause otherwise, you know,
they would be risking their ownlife, right?
(29:23):
So, yeah, so absolutely.
But for Tolstoy it's very welldone in War and Peace, and it's
done in Anna Karenina too.
Peace, and it's done in AnnaKarenina too, but in War and
Peace it's more visible, becauseif you pick up War and Peace,
you will have these pages andpages of French where now
there'll be a footnote inEnglish.
Here in Anna Karenina it's donea little differently, because
(29:46):
it says, okay, he wrote inFrench, but then you have actual
Russian text, so, or in Englishtranslation, it'll be all in
English.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
In War and Peace, the we hope you liked this episode
so far.
In the second half of thisepisode, professor Titus
explores how French serves as acovert and inauthentic language
for the aristocratic characters.
She will also discuss thetension and conflict between
culture and individual freedom,the true cause of Anna's death
(30:17):
and the novel's reflections onredemption and the meaning of
life.
If you want to dive deeper intothese key interpretations in
Anna Karenina, subscribe attheglobalnovelorg slash
subscribe.
Thank you so much for listening.
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