Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2026 season is here. The 2024 and 2025 archives are here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the third in a three-part sequence on Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. We discuss Tolstoy’s anti-political natural politics of the scholar, the peasant, and the mother, and his corresponding rejection of liberalism; his critique of modern art and his vindication of the novel from his own anti-aestheticism; his innovation in stream-of-consciousness narrative technique; his abandonment of materialism, philosophy, and reason and his embrace of faith in their stead, as relayed in the novel’s autobiographical passages; his controversial move toward pacifism in the novel’s final pages despite the contemporaneous social atmosphere of pan-Slavic war fever; and more, plus an opening consideration of the Tom Stoppard-scripted 2012 film adaptation. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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