In our last article, we examined how Fyodor Dostoevksy’s novel Crime and Punishment argued for the objective moral evil of murder.

The book showed how sin, and evil more generally, is fundamentally self-destructive. Rodion Raskolnikov commits a murder, but one gets the impression, and indeed the novel seems to endorse the position, that it is Raskolnikov himself who suffers most due to this evil decision.

Most of the novel is concerned with Raskolnikov’s crime and attempts to escape punishment. But one aspect of the novel that is not always noticed is the nature of rehabilitation that is argued for in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece. Raskolnikov’s eventual conversion is not inevitable, even on a narrative level; it is, instead, carefully written, with a close eye on human psychology and the nature of interpersonal relationships.

Today, we are going to talk about the person most responsible for Raskolnikov’s conversion: Sonia.

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Why Raskolnikov Committed Murder

As the novel follows Raskolnikov through his struggle with his own conscience, one thing becomes apparent: Raskolnikov is terrified of his own insufficiency.

For just one instance, one of the things that prompts his choice to murder the pawnbroker in the first place is his sister’s financially driven marriage to a terrible man. Raskolnikov is ashamed that his sister would be driven to such meanness, and is willing to do whatever it takes to avoid such shame on his family and, by extension, on himself.

But Raskolnikov has plenty of reasons to be ashamed: he is a failed student. He has little career, less money, and no obvious way to find a new path forward. So, as Raskolnikov himself reflects, the murder is meant to find a way for Raskolnikov to reclaim control and power in his life:

“I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her…I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I⁠ ⁠… I wanted to have the daring⁠ ⁠… and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!”

Raskolnikov is convinced that he is shameful, cowardly and unlovable. The murder is meant to fix that. It is meant to make him strong, courageous and admirable. But as we saw in the last newsletter, it does the opposite: Raskolnikov is even worse off than before.

So, in a fit of desperation, Raskolnikov tries the one thing he has been avoiding: he admits his sin to somebody. The somebody he chooses is the woman who loves him: Sonia.

Why Raskolnikov Tells Sonia

There is a tremendous risk in Raskolnikov telling Sonia about his murder. She could tell the police, after all. But that is not what Raskolnikov fears. What he really fears is that she will abandon him, telling her:

“I asked you for one thing, I came to you for one thing⁠—not to leave me. You won’t leave me, Sonia?...And can you love such a mean wretch?”

Raskolnikov seems, multiple times, to be most worried with the impact that his story is having on Sonia’s opinion of him; he asks her whether she will leave him, if she can still love him, and what she thinks of him.

The remarkable thing is how Sonia responds:

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Episode 14 of the podcast is now live! This time, we’re discussing a modern work.

Jeremy is joined by the fascinating Johann Kurtz to discuss his new book, Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, & Thousand-Year Families.

They explore why so many wealthy families lose everything in just three generations (“shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves”), why celebrities publicly disinheriting their children reveals a failure of purpose, and what truly multi-generational families do differently.

Johann explains the importance of passing on not just wealth but also purpose and duty. If you enjoy the episode, we highly recommend you get a copy of Johann’s book!

You may watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

Reminder: we are a 100% reader-supported publication.

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We do what we do because we’re passionate about spreading the stories, wisdom, and virtues of the Western canon as widely as possible — but we need your help.

If you want to support our efforts, please consider a paid subscription. It makes a huge difference to the time and resources we can dedicate to this project. You’ll get:

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We are currently reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The next discussion is on Tuesday, May 26, at noon ET — come study it with us!

Thanks so much for joining the book club on Tuesday. That was easily one of the best discussions we’ve had so far — electric! 🙌

Ahead of our next discussion on Crime and Punishment (May 26, noon ET), below is a breakdown of the most important themes and questions to carry in your mind as we continue reading on.

Next session, we’ll cover Parts V–VI of the novel. Part V largely follows Luzhin’s failed attempt to frame Sonya for theft. His denunciation, however, backfires and he’s publicly humiliated. But by far the most important scene follows on from this scheme:

Raskolnikov confesses his murder to Sonya…

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Our third and final session on Crime and Punishment will be at the same time in two weeks: Tuesday, May 26th, at noon ET. See you soon!

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Reminder that our second session on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is taking place tomorrow, May 12, at noon Eastern Time.

Please do join the live discussion via Zoom if you want to participate or ask questions directly.

Here is the Zoom link:

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave the most controversial speech, or polemic attack, of modern Western Civilization in the 20th century.

The man was adored by Western Intellectuals — he had survived the horrors of Russian Gulags in the Soviet Union, and later published The Gulag Archipelago, which made a global mockery of the communist ideology.

In 1978, at the height of the Cold War, Harvard invited him to give a commencement speech. They expected Solzhenitsyn to praise the hallmarks, achievements, and wonders of Western Civilization as the global enemies of communism. Instead, Solzhenitsyn gave a speech that can only be chalked up to career suicide.

What followed was a scathing, but prophetic, critique of the West, and a mournful promise that it was doomed to fall if it didn’t change course.

Here’s what Solzhenitsyn warned the world, why it fell on deaf ears, and how we can heed his warning today…

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We are currently reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The next discussion is on Tuesday, May 12, at noon ET — join us!

Commercialism and Cowardice

Solzhenitsyn begins by noting a decline in courage in the West:

“The constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings.

This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.”

He claims the commercial spirit of the West — which has placed material goods, GDP, and prosperity above God and the moral law — has led to spiritually impoverished, cowardly men.

Rather than “one nation under God,” united by a love of virtue, America specifically has backslid into division, individualism, and legalism… we are to respect one another’s autonomy and personal freedom at all costs, with no concern for virtue or vice:

“destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror”

Thus far, Solzhenitsyn’s argument makes sense, but he might be accused of moralizing: is it really a big deal to let everyone do whatever he wants, so long as he harms no one else? Is Solzhenitsyn not sounding obtuse, or too morally uptight?

We’ll see that his moral critiques are not “ivory tower moralizing,” but have real world consequences. Let us remember that he blamed the horrors of USSR communism on spiritual immorality and lying above all…

Beyond Politics

Solzhenitsyn stresses that the West enjoys a false sense of security, blind to an impending civilizational doom.

The problem is, the consequences of their amorality, vice, and spirit of cowardice are delayed by their hegemonic power. For the time being, the West is sheltered from foreign invaders behind its weapons of mass destruction. Yet he warns not even atomic bombs can save them from their internal vices:

“No weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons even become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, in this case, but concessions, attempts to gain time, and betrayal…

The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one; I do not believe it will be) may well bury Western civilization forever.”

Solzhenitsyn contrasts the West with the communist East — though its people suffer under many evils, they have become spiritually fortified through their sufferings. If one considers the cliche “strong men make good times, good times make soft men, soft men make bad times,” then Solzhenitsyn laments that the East is filled with strong men, the West with soft men.

What exactly was the core of the rot? Where did everything go all wrong?

Solzhenitsyn addresses it with precision. It goes back to a grave ideological mistake the West made 500 years ago, and is still poisoning society to this very day. Whether the West can rediscover and fix this mistake, or not, determines whether or not the civilization will survive, per Solzhenitsyn…

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Episode 13 of the podcast is now live!

Jeremy is joined by Fr Calvin Robinson to discuss C.S. Lewis’s The Space Trilogy. They unpack how Lewis weaves deep religious truths about good and evil, temptation, and spiritual warfare into a gripping sci-fi narrative — and moral universe.

The discussion covers Lewis’s critique of scientism, modern idolatry, and the surreptitious rise of evil in everyday life — especially in That Hideous Strength — and why these underrated stories feel so strikingly relevant today.

You can watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

Reminder: we are a 100% reader-supported publication.

We do what we do because we’re passionate about spreading the stories, wisdom, and virtues of the Western canon as widely as possible — but we need your help.

Subscribe now

If you want to support our efforts, please consider a paid subscription. It makes a huge difference to the time and resources we can dedicate to this project. You’ll get:

• Live community book discussions (biweekly)

• Regular essays to guide you through the books we’re reading

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• Access to all member discussion threads (via the subscriber chat)

• Ability to vote on what we read next…

We are currently reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The next discussion is on Tuesday, May 12, at noon ET — come study it with us!

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What do you do when you disagree with somebody? Argue with them? Talk behind their back? Make angry comments on social media? What about write a novel showing they were wrong?

That last one might seem out of place; who writes novels to disprove their intellectual opponents?

No less a writer than Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky is most popularly known as perhaps the greatest of the 19th century Russian novelists, but far fewer people know that Dostoevsky is an incisive philosopher who wrote his novels as extended Platonic dialogues.

Today, we will discuss one of his most famous novels, which also happens to be one of his most poignant philosophical parables: Crime and Punishment…

We are currently reading Crime and Punishment in the book club! Next discussion is on Tuesday, May 12, at noon ET.

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Beyond Good And Evil?

Friedrich Nietzsche famously argued that there were men who were completely beyond good and evil, and could only actualize their ultimate potential by being willing to do whatever it took, no matter how apparently evil, corrupt or shameful, to achieve their ends.

But Dostoevsky beat Nietzsche to the punch by writing Crime and Punishment years before Nietzsche published a word. In it, we meet exactly this would-be superman: Rodio Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov, a failed university student, is really a rather pathetic figure. He is obviously quite intelligent, but his career has, up to this point, been completely non-existent.

He is penniless, lives in a small apartment and has done very little in his life. Despite this, Raskolnikov is convinced of a proto-Nietzschean argument that he himself has defended in print, arguing in an essay that some great men may transgress moral laws — even to commit grave evils — for a higher purpose. Raskolnikov, of course, thinks that he is one of these great men, and is trying to achieve that success that he knows he is destined for.

The problem, of course, is that Raskolnikov is poor, and he sees no immediate way to get the money he needs. Moreover, the financial need is pressing for more than just himself: his sister is about to marry a terrible man only because she needs his wealth. So, in desperation, Raskolnikov does the only thing he can think of: he murders and robs a despised pawnbroker. In the process, Raskolnikov also has to murder Lizaveta, the pawnbroker’s stepsister, who happened to be there when he showed up. For a purse of money, Raskolnikov is a murderer.

What Evil Does To You

Almost 2400 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that good and evil were derived from our human nature. What was morally right helped our human nature achieve its ultimate end, and what was morally wrong did the opposite. But unlike many modern philosophers, Aristotle did not take our “ultimate end” to be self-determined. We do not get to choose what our ultimate end is; it is determined by our nature itself.

This means that morality is not just about following rules. Really, it is about avoiding self-destruction: when you do evil things, it leads to the degradation of your own personality. When you do bad things, you become less happy, less healthy, and less yourself.

And this is exactly what happens to Raskolnikov: rather than become a superman who is above good and evil, he becomes a nervous, pathetic wreck. He faints in the face of investigation. The murder, as well as its subsequent cover-up, eats away at Raskolnikov constantly. The only salvation available to him is offered, ironically, from his friend Sonia, a prostitute who also happens to be in love with Raskolnikov.

It is Sonia who fully realizes the effect that this crime is having, not on society or the victim, but on Raskolnikov himself. Raskolnikov admits the murder to Sonia because she was a friend of Lizaveta. And Sonia responds, not with anger, but tragic sadness:

“‘What have you done⁠—what have you done to yourself?’ she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tightly. [...] ​​’There is no one⁠—no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!’”

Sonia is no stranger to evil; she is a devout Christian who went into prostitution out of desperation, and knows how sin can destroy a soul.

That makes her the perfect person to bring about Raskolnikov’s conversion.

From Crime To Punishment

To Sonia, it is obvious what Raskolnikov must do: he needs to turn himself in.

“‘Well, what am I to do now?’ he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.

‘What are you to do?’ she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had been full of tears suddenly began to shine. ‘Stand up!’ (She seized him by the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) ‘Go at once, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again. Will you go, will you go?’ she asked him, trembling all over, snatching his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes full of fire.

He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.

‘You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?’ he asked gloomily.

‘Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.’”

Sonia sees what Raskolnikov cannot: only by bringing himself back into justice, by acting virtuously again, will it be possible for Raskolnikov to be happy. And, incredibly, Sonia assures him that he will not be alone; she will go with him, and help him, even while in Siberia.

Despite initially resisting, the power of Sonia’s love and his own misery compel Raskolnikov to do what she asks: he admits to his crime, even though somebody else was almost guaranteed to be convicted for it. And so Raskolnikov goes to Siberia, but not alone: Sonia follows him, and her love in the midst of Siberia ultimately wins his repentance and his reformation.

What is brilliant about Crime and Punishment is that the greatest damage to Raskolnikov is not the legal or social consequences that eventually catch up to him. Instead, Raskolnikov’s actions destroy him bit-by-bit from the inside. Where Raskolnikov thought that his own superiority would allow him to commit crimes with impunity, he finds that it is the personal cost that actually damages him.

Thus Dostoevsky makes a poignant argument that morality is objective. And if we live according to our own will, and to our own ambition, disaster is lurking.

Evil lures us with temptations and great promises, but ultimately, Dostoevsky shows that evil is self-destructive. And when we have committed a crime, punishment is not just required; it is the only way to stop the destruction.

Thank you for reading!

Please do join our read-along of Crime and Punishment if it interests you. All paid subscribers to Athenaeum can participate in the live discussions via Zoom (or via the Substack live streams if preferred).

The next discussion is on Tuesday, May 12, at noon ET — come join our fantastic group of readers!

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Real education is not what you think it is. In fact, most people have never received one.

Today we think of education as a litany of scattered disciplines that you study for careerism and social mobility:

Math is for engineers
Medicine is for doctors
Science is for biologists
Humanities are for poor people (it’s okay, I was an English major!)

The philosophy of modern education is to pick a discipline, stay in your lane, graduate, and begin your career. But this is not what education is at all — for most of history, education was meant to set you free.

A classical education taught you the seven liberal arts so that your soul could be liberated; freed from confusion and vice, ordered toward wisdom, and capable of living a meaningful life.

So what did that education actually look like? And how could it set you free?

Today, we’ll look to recapture the wisdom of a classical education, and learn how to give ourselves the true education that we never had…

Thank you for being part of our mission! If you’d like to support us and join the book club, please consider a paid subscription. You’ll get:

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We are currently reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The next discussion is on Tuesday, May 12, at noon ET — join us!

The 7 Liberal Arts

I’ve written in depth on the 7 liberal arts before, but I’ll briefly recap below.

The seven liberal arts were divided into two groups:

The Trivium — Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric
The Quadrivium — Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy

Your education would begin with the Trivium:

• Grammar teaches you how to read and speak

• Logic teaches you how to think

• Rhetoric teaches you how to express truth persuasively

Once you could think, speak, and articulate yourself clearly, you moved to the Quadrivium:

• Arithmetic — number in itself

• Geometry — number in space

• Music — number in time

• Astronomy — number in space and time

Why the emphasis on numbers? Because the Quadrivium is about training you to see order in reality itself. You learn that nature has an intelligent design, and that you are connected to it: you belong in the cosmos.

Despite this outline, however, it’s not yet obvious how this education is distinct from modern education. All of these disciplines, in some form, still exist today.

The difference with a true liberal arts education, however, is not simply what you study, but why you study it…

It’s All Connected

In a nutshell, a classical liberal arts education taught you how to find God. This doesn’t mean that you have to be strictly religious to receive a true education, but if you make God — the Ultimate, Transcendent Good — the end point of all education, it changes everything.

If your education is grounded in God, then the entirety of your education serves the same end: Goodness itself.

In other words, your education is no longer a set of scattered, independent disciplines. Instead, it becomes a deeply interconnected moral pursuit, teaching you to be attuned with truth, beauty, and goodness.

This interconnectedness is why the 7 liberal arts are presented as a wheel.

A true education is an encyclopedia, which literally means, “a circle of learning.”

Such an education assumes three key ideas:

1. Knowledge is ordered toward unity

2. The mind must be formed to perceive that unity

3. Learning is a returning motion — you circle back to older ideas, seeing more deeply each time

So in totality, education is about learning to be in harmony with reality, and more than that, it’s about transforming the soul itself.

This might sound strange, but let’s turn to symbolism to explain. Have you noticed that the symbol of the 7 liberal arts looks strikingly similar to the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals?

That is no coincidence. Rose windows symbolize Heaven, suggesting that reality itself is patterned after them — and this same circular pattern is the symbol of classical education in the liberal arts.

The implication is that the liberal arts liberate your soul by forming you according to the pattern of heaven itself. Education, then, is preparation for eternity.

But how do you actually see this? How do you study in such a way that you’re not just accumulating knowledge, but learning to mirror the structure of Paradise itself?

Dante Alighieri answers this question in the Paradiso. He reveals the connection between the liberal arts, the rose, and the final destiny of the human soul:

He reveals how a life is brought into perfect alignment with the divine, and how you can reach it yourself…

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Our second session on Crime and Punishment will be at the same time in two weeks: Tuesday, May 12th, at noon ET. See you soon!

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Reminder that our first session on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is taking place tomorrow, April 28, at noon Eastern Time.

Please do join the live discussion via Zoom if you want to participate or ask questions directly.

Here is the Zoom link:

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One of the most important chapters of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the Fellowship’s stay in the Golden Wood of Lothlórien, shortly after Gandalf’s fall in Moria.

It is somewhat skipped over in the movies and often overlooked in general, but it’s a fascinating interlude that reveals something critical about the story as a whole — namely, the transformative power of beauty.

Lothlórien is the fairest Elven kingdom left in Middle-earth. When the Fellowship walks among its golden “mallorn trees,” they’re only seeing it in winter, yet it radiates such beauty that none of them have ever seen: “on the land of Lórien no shadow lay.”

When they first approach the wood, however, Boromir is wary of entering:

‘But of that perilous land we have heard in Gondor, and it is said that few come out who once go in; and of that few none have escaped unscathed.’

Aragorn suggests he replace “unscathed” with “unchanged,” but we soon learn that Boromir was right, in a sense. Because while Lórien’s beauty is nourishing and transformative for the visitors, it is also dangerous.

The journey in Lothlórien is an analogue to our own experiences with beauty — just as beauty restores our vision in life, it also wounds us deeper than any evil can…

Thank you for being part of our mission! If you’d like to support us and join the book club, please consider a paid subscription. You’ll get:

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We are about to start reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The first discussion is on Tuesday, April 28, at noon ET — join us!

A Timeless Place

The Fellowship is guided deep into the wood by the elf Haldir, passing through the boughs of its great trees, bathed in a golden light that shines through the canopy.

The sight is captivating, and when they reach the ancient heart of Lórien, Cerin Amroth, Samwise says he feels as though he is inside a song. This is a nod to the creation story of Tolkien’s universe, which was sung into existence through the Music of the Ainur (as we read in The Silmarillion). Lothlórien is a heavenly garden concept resembling Eden, and seeing it brings one closer to the “unfallen” beauty of Creation.

This is the first point to make about beauty. Beauty is a property that points to something far beyond the world we inhabit — it is where form has come into alignment with ultimate truth, with infinitude. Lothlórien is a glimpse of the eternal.

It is here that the Company completely loses track of the passing of time. Frodo wanders among the trees, suddenly more aware of their feel and texture than ever before. In this ethereal place the world feels more than real, and compared to the Golden Wood, everything else now seems “formless and vague” to Frodo.

He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.

It’s well known that Tolkien abhorred the desecration of nature and wanted us to live in communion with all things that grow. The desire to harness nature is a hallmark of evil in Middle-earth, and one of Tolkien’s guiding concepts is that, to change the world, you should learn to participate as part of it first: “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

In Lothlórien, as when faced with any beauty, you’re invited to reconnect with a deeper truth about the way things are. Stopping to appreciate the world in this way — being in it instead of using it — refocuses our perspective. And because beauty points to an “unfallen” state of things, it reconnects us with our highest aims.

For the Fellowship, the interlude in Lothlórien comes after they ascend out of the terrible darkness of Moria, and so it is needed to reattune them to the beauty and goodness they set out to save — and it renews their desire to succeed.

Why Beauty Wounds Us

But this is only the start of Lothlórien’s lesson on beauty. Note that Gimli is the character most shaken by Lothlórien and the encounter with Galadriel, Lady of the Wood.

When the Fellowship departs for the next stage of their journey down the River Anduin, Gimli’s parting request of Galadriel is that he may take a single hair from her golden head — to which she responds by handing him three. The gift is a symbol of how Gimli is sustained and nourished by beauty, but it is not without a deep pain:

‘Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli son of Gloin!’

Gimli, by this point, has made it through much darkness and faced mortal peril more than once. When he joined the Fellowship, he was ready to confront all the evil that the world had to throw at him. He was prepared to go into the heart of Mordor and face down Sauron himself.

But Gimli was not ready to feel the light and love that he found in Lothlórien. It is, in his words, the worst wound of all.

Why would beauty strike such a wound in his heart? The answer to this is Lothlórien’s most significant lesson, and a moment of stunning profundity from J.R.R. Tolkien…

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What makes a good marriage?

The institution of marriage has seen better days. Culturally speaking, marriage is not valued as it once was, partially because what was once considered a bastion of societal stability has become remarkably unstable.

You don’t need to get into the statistics of divorce to know that most people do not think of marriage as especially important, partially because they do not necessarily think it is good for people.

After all, if marriages usually fail, why try? Why risk that pain?

Leo Tolstoy was, himself, concerned with the direction that marriage was taking in society. But rather than run a course or give lectures, he did what novelists do: write a novel. The result was a powerful example of why some marriages fail despite the personal talent of those in it, and why some marriages succeed with remarkably average people in them.

Today, we are going to look at how Tolstoy provided a guide for a good marriage in Anna Karenina, and how it should help us live a better life even if we are not married…

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We are about to start reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The first discussion is on Tuesday, April 28, at noon ET — join us!

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The Three Couples of Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina focuses on three couples, all of which attempt some sort of married relationship. The first is the titular couple: Anna Karenina and her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin. Where Anna is a vibrant, talented, beautiful woman, Alexei Alexandrovich is a textbook case of having “married up:” he is boring, sarcastic and passive, even in his relationship with his wife.

Eventually, Anna and Alexei Alexandrovich’s marriage collapses, as Anna commits adultery with a military officer, Alexei Vronsky, forming the second couple of the novel. Vronsky is everything that Karenin is not: suave, passionate, chivalric, handsome and devoted to Anna. It is easy to see how a woman could fall for him.

The third couple is a pair of friends of Anna and Vronsky’s: Levin and Kitty. Where Anna and Vronsky are dynamic individuals of immense talent, Levin and Kitty are far more ordinary: Kitty is impulsive and immature, Levin is boring and plain. But Levin and Kitty’s marriage succeeds, leading them both to happy lives, while the other two couples fail: Anna and Karenin’s marriage ends in adultery while Anna and Vronsky’s relationship leads to Anna’s personal collapse and, eventually, suicide.

What leads such otherwise powerful people to fail at the fundamental human relationship, while incredibly ordinary people like Levin and Kitty find happiness and security?

Tolstoy’s answer? Virtue.

What Sets Levin and Kitty Apart

One of the most striking things about the different marriages in the novel is the way that, where Anna and Karenin’s marriage fail tests of devotion, Levin and Kitty’s succeeds.

Alexei Karenin is, to put it bluntly, not a very virtuous man. He emotionally neglects Anna, and fails to support her or lead her. When Anna expresses emotion, Karenin struggles to open up to her because he prefers to avoid his own emotions. And, even more importantly, when Anna tells Karenin that she is worried about where her friendship with Vronsky is going, Karenin refuses to do anything about it, saying that he considers jealousy to be beneath him. Karenin takes his beautiful, talented, extraordinary wife for granted, and she feels it.

When portrayed against this backdrop, it is tragically unsurprising that Anna gradually falls for a man who is dashing, emotionally available and really interested in winning her heart. Tolstoy does not let Anna off the hook for her own bad decisions; she ends up suffering greatly for her sins. But Tolstoy is also willing to take a hard look at the ways that Karenin’s own failures led to the breakdown of his marriage. Karenin was not willing to fight for Anna; he was not even willing to get uncomfortable. And Anna could tell.

This is contrasted quite clearly in an episode from Kitty and Levin’s marriage. Kitty and Levin are hosting a group of friends for a hunting trip when one of the friends, a very eligible bachelor named Vasily Veslovsky, begins flirting with Kitty. Everyone sees it; one of Levin’s friends even considers it a compliment!

But Levin struggles over what to do. He is not confrontational by nature; he worries that he might be overreacting. But he cannot bear to see Kitty pursued by any other man. And he knows that to allow it to continue would put his marriage at risk. Finally, Levin pours out his heart to Kitty then goes to confront her would-be suitor. Tolstoy does not tell us the details of that confrontation, but what he does tell us is illustrative: Vasily leaves quickly, never to be heard from again.

Where Alexei failed, Levin succeeded. Where Alexei shunned conflict, Levin struggled through it. Where Alexei failed to open up to Anna, Levin was willing to pour his heart out to his wife.

In these episodes, Levin did not need to be suave, impressive, talented or smart. In fact, throughout the whole book it is made pretty obvious that Levin is a bit ridiculous by personality, and that he, like Karenin, has “married up” regarding the beauty and charisma of his wife. But it does not take talent or charisma to have a good marriage. It takes virtue. When Levin is willing to be emotionally available and socially courageous, it saves his marriage at the precise pressure point where Anna and Karenin’s marriage collapses.

Unfortunately, that is not the only way that Anna’s life will be ruined by her own lack of virtue.

The Self-Destructive Sins of Anna and Vronsky

Remember that Anna and Vronsky are remarkably talented people. And when they set off to create their life together, it seems like they have everything going for them. While, legally, they cannot get married, Anna and Vronsky surround themselves with sympathetic friends who will call their relationship a marriage. They refer to each other, and others refer to them, as husband and wife. And they travel, meet important celebrities, and live a life of comfort and wealth.

What is not to like?

But it does not save Anna and Vronsky. While the exterior of their life is perfect, Anna and Vronsky do not have the vital thing for any healthy marriage: trust.

Their relationship gradually takes a toll on both of them, and Anna discovers to her terror that she does not trust Vronsky not to do to her what she did to Karenin. Every trip, every woman they meet, gradually becomes a source of suspicion to Anna. Where she was originally self-possessed, sure of herself and incredibly beautiful, Anna becomes nervous, insecure and harried.

Tragically, it comes to head when Anna commits suicide. It did not have to be this way; Anna is, by far, the most impressive character in the whole book, and a worthy titular character. But sin is self-destructive, and Anna’s sin has destroyed her.

What We Can Learn About Life and Marriage From Anna Karenina

Put it all together, and Tolstoy’s novel provides a powerful moral tale that give two important lessons that apply to life in general and marriage especially:

1. Virtue is more important than talent. Levin and Kitty are boring and ridiculous, but their virtue allows them to be happy. Karenin, Vronsky and Anna all have immense personal talents, but their vice creates misery for them.

2. Vice is self-destructive. It really seems like things should go well for Anna and Vronsky once they have left Karenin to pick up the pieces. They have everything going for them. But the fundamental truth about their relationship is actually a lie: they are not married, and their relationship has no trust. It eventually leads to the personal destruction of both.

When you read this novel, it is easy to get lost in the intrigue, romance and drama of it all. But in the end, do not forget to take the lessons Tolstoy wanted you to learn, lest you fall from being a Levin or Kitty to become a Vronsky, Karenin, or even an Anna Karenina.

Thank you for reading!

We are starting Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment next week in our book club — now is a great time to join if you’ve been considering it.

The first group discussion is on Tuesday, April 28, at noon ET (will be recorded in case you can’t make the live session). See you very soon!

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We are the most entertained people in history, but might we be the least creative?

Nowadays, it is frighteningly easy to spend the best part of a day consuming the creations of others: listening, streaming, scrolling. For most of us, the ratio of consumption to creation has never been more lopsided — and yet, the tools of creation are more accessible than ever.

Let me establish at the outset that consuming art is itself a worthy pursuit. But if this is all you do, what are you giving up?

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that a culture has become decadent when its people prefer to pay others to dance for them, rather than a whole room of people doing the dancing for themselves.

This matters because creation is not just a joyful addition to human life, but the defining feature of it. This is an argument made by several great writers, from Ruskin to Chesterton to Tolkien: that created beings are designed to create things themselves.

This article examines why — and importantly how — we must all pick up a pen or a brush, and bring into the world something of our own…

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We have just voted to read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment next! The first discussion is on Tuesday, April 28, at noon ET — join us!

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Learn to See

At the foundation of why creating things matters is the following: you never really notice the world until you try to reproduce some part of it.

Anyone who has tried their hand at sketching, for example, knows this. You thought you knew what a tree or a bicycle looked like, and then you sat down with a sketchpad and realized you had never truly looked at one.

English polymath John Ruskin believed this so fervently that he set up a rudimentary drawing school in Oxford to encourage others to learn how to see. He wasn’t concerned so much with the actual art they produced, and never sought to train artists — he merely hoped to prompt ordinary folk to “see greater beauties than they had hitherto seen in nature and in art, and thereby gain more pleasure in life.”

To Ruskin, drawing was the process by which you educate the eye, and come to consume the world more meaningfully. Where many think the creative act is about departing from the world to imagine something entirely new, it is really about the creative process that brings you into fuller participation with what’s already there.

Fight Cognitive Atrophy

Writing is another form of creation, perhaps the most important of all.

Just as sketching a tree branch helps you to see the tree, composing words about something confers a new understanding of the thing you are communicating. You can see a concept anew by forming your own words about it.

When you log into ChatGPT and ask it to compose a paragraph or email for you, you are depriving yourself of this most precious faculty: the thinking process that is writing. LLM users, abdicating their duties as humans born with the capacity to think, risk losing that ability by way of cognitive atrophy. Each time they defer to the chatbot, the more their ability to think deteriorates — many of us are aware of this new danger and attempting to limit our AI exposure already.

Similarly, if you abdicate your wider creative duties (to compose stories, songs, drawings, etc.), you risk losing a profoundly important part of yourself. The creative act is part of you, and one that you cannot afford to lose…

Satisfy Your Innate Desire

There is a school of thought that argues that humans, as beings of a created universe (indeed, created beings), are thereby designed to create themselves.

Dorothy L. Sayers, an Oxford contemporary of J.R.R. Tolkien (and honorary Inkling in my view), made this compelling argument in her book, The Mind of the Maker. In it, she argues why the desire to create is an integral part of the human experience.

When we turn back to see what [the author of Genesis] says about the original upon which the ‘image’ of God was modeled, we find only the single assertion, ‘God created’. The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.

It is through the process of imaginative creation that a human being in some sense emulates the God of Genesis: creating something out of nothing.

It is the artist who, more than other men, is able to create something out of nothing. A whole artistic work is immeasurably more than the sum of its parts.

This is also how J.R.R. Tolkien thought about the creative act. The ‘Lord of the Rings’ author famously wrote that every human being carries a deep impulse to “sub-create” secondary worlds: to take the raw material of the primary world they inhabit and fashion from it something new.

As I compile this article, I’m aware how easy it is to talk about the importance of creation. In reality, creating things is hard. Sure, we might all be happier writing novels of our own, but here comes the objection: “my life is busy.”

If you or I even get the time to write or paint something substantial, how can we be sure of creating anything worthwhile? And what if we never finish? How does one find the time to be a creator amid the duties of modern life?

Here, I want to introduce the advice put forward by Tolkien himself. He knew that for most of us, there is rarely the time to pen a novel or sculpt a masterpiece. Creation must be thought of another way, and it must take place in the margins of ordinary life.

So, here’s what Tolkien revealed about the struggles and rewards of the creative act — and how creation must work in practice for you and me…

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Episode 12 of the podcast is now live!

Jeremy is joined by Jeremy Tate, founder of the Classic Learning Test and passionate advocate for classical education, for a discussion on Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop.”

They explore the novel — a story of a French missionary bishop in the rugged American Southwest — and its underlying theme of lived faith versus proclaimed faith. Cather reveals the inherent beauty that comes through daily struggle, and why modern distractions make it so hard for us to embrace the “desert” seasons of life. An incredible book that calls us all to choose the harder path over endless entertainment…

You can watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

We do what we do because we’re passionate about spreading the wisdom, stories, and virtues of the Western canon as widely as possible — but we need your help.

Reminder: we are a 100% reader-supported publication.

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If you want to support our efforts, please consider a paid subscription. It makes a huge difference to the time and resources we can dedicate to this project. You’ll get:

• Live community book discussions (biweekly)

• Regular essays to guide you through the books we’re reading

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• Access to all member discussion threads (via the subscriber chat)

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We have just voted to read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment next! The first discussion is on Tuesday, April 28, at noon ET — come study it with us!

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We are about to take a vote on what to read next inside the subscriber chat. Stay tuned!

The first discussion on the next book will then take place on Tuesday, April 28, at noon ET — see you all soon!

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Reminder that our second session on Virgil’s Aeneid is taking place tomorrow, April 14, at noon Eastern Time (you can find the recording of the first session here).

Please do join the discussion via Zoom if you’d like to participate or ask questions directly.

Here’s the Zoom link:

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Some of the most beautiful things ever written were penned in the author’s darkest moments.

J.R.R. Tolkien began his epic saga from the trenches of WWI, in a senseless war that claimed the lives of several of his close friends. Homer, author of the Iliad, witnessed the most brutal acts of Bronze Age warfare (as you can tell from the descriptive manner in which his war poetry is written), yet turned them into a tale of virtue that became the foundational work of Western literature.

Once again, it seems, our world lives under the threat of a horrifying war — one which could displace or destroy countless innocent lives in the Middle East.

So, how on earth does one create a thing of beauty when all around is gripped by evil and suffering? How can your mind be so impervious as to create beautiful art at such a time?

The art that we see come forth from these dark hours is itself revealing. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, we see that those characters who hang onto beautiful thoughts in dark times can withstand virtually any tribulation — but how do they manage it?

Tolkien provides an answer via two conflicting perspectives: the “doomerism” of Denethor, and the eternal optimism of Samwise Gamgee…

Thank you for being part of our mission! If you’d like to support us and join the book club, please consider a paid subscription. You’ll get:

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We are currently reading Virgil’s Aeneid! The next discussion is on Tuesday, April 14, at noon ET — join us!

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The Great Shadow

In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the free people of Middle-earth live under the threat of seemingly inevitable occupation by evil. Sauron, Lord of the One Ring, threatens to engulf it all — even the Shire — under his terrible shadow. No alliance of Elves and Men appears to have the muscle required to resist it.

The situation is dire, and Denethor, Steward of Gondor, knows it.

“The West has failed. It shall all go up in a great fire and all shall be ended. Ash! Ash and smoke blown away on the wind!… It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.”

The problem with criticizing this perspective is that Denethor is right. If one were to calculate the likelihood of success in his position, it would be impossible to envision any outcome beyond total annihilation. Death or torture awaits anyone still lingering in Minas Tirith when Sauron’s hordes arrive.

Denethor, already suffering from grief, spirals into suicidal despair at the thought of Sauron’s insurmountable army. He turns in on himself, his mind driven to madness, and perishes in his own fire rather than die at the sword of the enemy.

Before examining why this mindset is wrong in the eyes of Tolkien, consider first the perspective of another…

The Light Beyond Reach

After passing into Mordor and escaping the orc tower at Cirith Ungol, Frodo and Sam are physically and spiritually depleted. Pausing for a moment, semi-conscious from exhaustion, Sam looks up at a distant star in the night sky. One of the most quoted and uplifting passages of the entire novel follows:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

At the edge of all things, the star is a symbol of the goodness Samwise clings to within his own heart, and this sustains him to the very end of his quest — but what provides a person the determination to cling on?

You might be thinking: “Is Sam’s situation really comparable with Denethor’s?”

Denethor could well be a pessimist because he’s seen too much of war. He’s seen countless battles, lost family members, lived on the edge of Mordor for decades. Sam had seen nothing of evil before his first and only journey out of the Shire.

This, I think, is not the answer. Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis, recalling his own time in the trenches of WWI, once remarked that the closer one got to the front line the less everyone spoke of the war effort. Their minds went back to what matters most: spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic pursuits.

And so it is with Samwise. The closer he gets to Mount Doom the more it seems to fill him with memories of home, and thus with fortitude. Proximity to evil is not the explanation for Denethor’s “doomerism.”

But why, then, is Samwise able to cultivate beautiful thoughts at the brink of annihilation and Denethor is not?

Tolkien’s philosophical framework provides the answer, and the antidote to despair…

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Once your culture is gone, it isn't coming back.

If you want to keep a culture, you have to choose to live it yourself. You have to continually study the books, ideas, and people that created it.

Cultures die — or cease to exist — when they neglect to study their founding ideas. It is enthralling to discuss how, at a few key moments in history, Western culture was saved from a knife-edge by great men or great wars (think the battles of Lepanto or Vienna). Pivotal moments, yes, but it was only thanks to the quiet work done long beforehand that there was anything worth saving.

What we call “Western Civilization” only exists because of the hard work spent maintaining it through an exceedingly painful transition. When the Western Roman Empire fell to the barbarians, and centers of learning across the continent were lost forever, it was the monks who took it upon themselves to keep the fire burning.

Without scholars like Cassiodorus in Italy or Gildas in Britain, who between them established a great tradition of manuscript copying and classical education across Europe, we’d know almost nothing of the Greco-Roman world. We’d have no written record of Western thought, and in no meaningful sense would we have the society we know today.

However — be careful not to assume an abundance of records is all you need.

The story of the Library of Alexandria, for example, is often oversold as the loss of a millennium of collective knowledge in one fell swoop, set ablaze by a foreign army. In fact, the Great Library had long been left to decay, and by the time fires ripped it apart, the tradition of learning and preservation it once stood for was largely forgotten. A culture needs more than just shelves of books.

Take Virgil’s Aeneid, which we are currently reading in our book club. The only reason we get to read Virgil today is not because one monk made a manuscript. Manuscripts are easily lost. It’s because readers and educators across Europe collectively decided his poetry was worth passing down — Virgil was deemed essential to the forming of the Western mind, and educators united across centuries agreed.

At Athenaeum, we feel deeply fortunate to have inherited the tradition of philosophical thought and storytelling that the West has given us. That so much of it can be accessed with the click of a button is a miracle.

However, we know that we can never afford to become complacent. No system of records is enough if it remains unused. One must make the conscious decision to pass down what he inherits.

A lot of you have joined this community over the last few days, and we could not be more thankful. We hope you find these resources helpful.

The mission of this book club is very simple: we are an online community interested in studying the great texts of the Western canon, thoughtfully and openly, together.

Every month we study something new. So far, we’ve covered texts like Homer’s Odyssey, Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, etc. Texts that represent significant stepping stones in the journey of Western thought.

If you can, please do join our live book discussions. They have been incredibly fruitful recently and we’ve begun to form a wonderful group of regular contributors.

If you have questions about how the book club works (format, pacing, etc.), please check out this FAQ page. If you cannot attend a live session, don’t worry. Everything is recorded and posted here.

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A paid subscription allows us to double down and spend more time building this into a powerful online resource. It doesn’t just fund your own participation, but also our efforts to produce and spread this work widely.

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Episode 11 of the podcast is now live!

Jeremy is joined by university professor Joshua D Phillips for a discussion on one of the greatest novels ever written, Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

They explore how Tolstoy dismantles the “great man theory” of history, showing how power is actually bestowed by the masses rather than held by a single leader. The conversation dives deep into Tolstoy’s critique of war, his emphasis on the small, everyday moments of family and friendship, and why those quiet scenes around the dinner table ultimately matter more than the battlefield…

You can watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

We do what we do because we’re passionate about spreading the wisdom, stories, and virtues of the Western canon as widely as possible — but we need your help.

We are a 100% reader-supported publication.

Subscribe now

If you want to support our efforts, please consider a paid subscription. It makes a huge difference to the time and resources we can dedicate to this. You’ll get:

• Live community book discussions (biweekly)

• Regular essays to guide you through the books we’re reading

• The full archive of articles, essays, and our 100 Great Texts reading list

• Access to all member discussion threads (via the subscriber chat)

• Ability to vote on what we read next

The book club is currently reading Virgil’s Aeneid. The next discussion is on Tuesday, April 14, at noon ET — come study it with us!

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