Photo courtesy of Audra Nemirow
Anna Karenina is a novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy, originally published in 1877.
I was sitting on a train, draped in black velvet when Anna Karenina came to me. It was this past New Year’s Eve, and I had planned to sleep and read during the six-hour train ride home, but I found I could do neither. All I could do was stare, red-eyed, out the window and contemplate my sudden and inexplicable pity for this literary character, a woman who gives up everything for love in 19th century Russia. For days afterward, she continued to haunt me, luring me towards the fat, zealously bookmarked copy of “Anna Karenina” that sat on my bookshelf. Perhaps, I thought, it is time to revisit Leo Tolstoy’s astonishing study of a fallen woman and the world around her.
A week after my initial premonition, I received an email from Benjamin Rifkin, Dean of Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I had taken History of Russian Cinema with him in the fall, and he wanted to alert my fellow classmates and me about an opportunity to continue exploring Russian culture in the spring semester: an “Anna Karenina” reading circle, led by him and open to Hofstra University Honors College (HUHC) students. As Dean Rifkin described it, the reading circle was not meant to resemble a class; it was more like a means to read and discuss the book casually. It shocked me that such a perfect excuse to reread “Anna Karenina” materialized so soon, but the shock quickly gave way to joyful animation. I signed up for the reading circle immediately, and then slid my own old, heavy, gray and purple copy of “Anna Karenina” off its shelf.
The first time I read “Anna Karenina” I was 16 and I did it on a whim, probably to prove that I could. I read it too fast; it was a grey blur of confusing names. Although I liked it well enough, the book did not really seem alive to me. At the time, it was more important for me to be able to tell people I had read “Anna Karenina” than to actually connect with the text. But in the intervening years, my interests have evolved so that they no longer come from a place of pretense.
Now, I read “Anna Karenina” slowly, with deep feeling and attention to detail. It is more than a story; it is a world I like losing myself in, only to find myself in the characters. Tolstoy’s vision of 1870s Russian nobility is strikingly similar to the world today. People can be just as awkward, passionate or uncertain, and it is especially revelatory to rediscover such similarities in the context of the Hofstra reading circle.
We are a small group of three or four students and Warren Frisina, a dean of HUHC. Each member of the group offers terrific insights and heartfelt opinions. We become frustrated when we do not understand Anna’s love choices or Oblonsky’s infidelity, for example, and sometimes disagree with each other regarding why the characters do what they do. But with every opinion comes deeper a understanding of the novel and a deeper appreciation.
COVID-19 has not stopped us from meeting. Our spirited discussions continue over Zoom, as we have several hundred more pages to finish. In a way, the HUHC “Anna Karenina” reading circle seems ready-made for quarantine, seeing as the outbreak has prompted a kind of virtual book club bandwagon. Some of these book clubs, such as novelist Yiyun Li’s “War and Peace” book club, tackle the sort of classics that can double as doorstops. At least until the end of the semester, the members of the “Anna Karenina” reading circle and I have a way to escape our troubles and an excuse to connect with friends.
Reading is, in itself, such an isolating experience, and I often get the feeling that a book belongs to me and me alone. But through the sheer strength of this reading circle, it becomes clear to me that books belong to everyone, but they can only connect people if we actually talk about them. It has been a joy to truly fall in love with “Anna Karenina,” but it has been even more wonderful to watch my classmates fall in love with the novel. I am so grateful for the torturous train ride that hypnotized me into giving Anna a second chance.
