Anna Karenina

OYSTERS and CUCUMBER MIGNONETTE

In my junior year of college, I took an American literature class—a huge bleacher-seated lecture with 250 sleepy, hungover kids. Looking back on these days, I recall there was almost always someone who stood out in these big auditorium classes, not necessarily as the smartest, but certainly as the coolest. In this particular class it was Ruthie, a pixie-boned girl with sallow skin and unkempt, dyed-black curls that sprung from her head like an overgrown houseplant.

Ruthie smoked Sobranie Black Russians, one of which was always tucked behind her ear, the gold tip gleaming out of her curls. She introduced herself on the first day of our recitation by announcing in a bored voice that she was taking the course as a requirement, that her actual area of study was Russian literature with a focus on Leo Tolstoy’s moral writings. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded so much cooler than “I’m studying English and Latin.” No matter how cold it was, Ruthie wore slouchy black tank tops to expose a tattoo on her right arm—a strikingly realistic portrait of Tolstoy, heavily shaded in deep grays and blacks. Underneath it was a quote in typewriter font that I spent the entire semester trying to make out; it read: “Don’t steal fresh bread.”

I had, in those days, a deep-seated dislike of Russian literature, stemming from an earlier dark period in high school in which I was assigned Crime and Punishment, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and the similarly titled and equally depressing One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I walked around for weeks with a gray hollowness in my gut after reading those books, and vowed I would never read any Russian literature again, but Ruthie’s tattoo haunted me. I was frantic to know what it meant. Apparently, so were other students in class, because finally, on the last day of recitation, a group of them worked up the nerve to ask. She gave the subtlest eye roll and said, “It’s complicated. It’s from Anna Karenina,” before packing up her bag and lazily sauntering out.

When I think about Ruthie now, it’s not with fondness, but I do owe her a thank-you for lifting my self-imposed ban on Russian literature. Immediately after class that day I went and bought a copy of Anna Karenina and tore into it, intending only to find the source of Ruthie’s tattoo, but I became so engrossed that I finished it in just under two weeks. I loved the book, not only because it was beautifully written, and tragic, and epic, but also because of the heavy symbolism attached to every scene involving food and eating—perhaps the most famous of which was quoted on Ruthie’s arm.

Early in the novel, Tolstoy gives readers a glimpse into the moral character of two of the novel’s leading men, Konstantin Levin and Stepan Oblonsky, by showing us what, and how, they eat at a restaurant. Oblonsky handles the ordering, making it clear not only that he has a large appetite, but also that he is used to eating in fine restaurants. He demands “two, or no, that’s not enough, three dozen oysters, vegetable soup… then turbot with a thick sauce, then roast beef, but see to it that it’s all right. Yes, some capon, and lastly, some preserve,” and as an afterthought he tacks on a bottle of Chablis and some Parmesan cheese.

Levin, who lives the simple life of a landowner and farmer, is uncomfortable during Oblonsky’s exchange with the waiter; he feels “out of his element in this restaurant, amid the confusion of guests coming and going, surrounded by the private rooms where men and women were dining together; everything was repugnant to his feelings—the whole outfit of bronzes and mirrors, the gas and the Tatars.” More than that, though, he fears that by participating in such lavishness, “the sentiment that occupied his soul would be defiled.”

He tells Oblonsky that what he would really like is some shchi—a humble cabbage soup—or kasha, a simple buckwheat porridge, and eats his oysters hesitantly, wishing instead for cheese or white bread. When he realizes that Oblonsky is disappointed that he is not enjoying himself more, Levin explains, saying, “In the country we make haste to get through our meals so as to be at work again; but here you and I are doing our best to eat as long as possible without getting satisfied, and so we are eating oysters.”

Unlike Levin, Oblonsky devours his oysters in a way that is suggestive of his insatiable sexual appetite. He tears “the quivering oysters from their pearly shells with a silver fork and swallow[s] them one after another,” his eyes “moist and glittering” with satisfaction. “The aim of civilization,” he tells Levin, “is to translate everything into enjoyment,” to which Levin responds, “If that is its aim, I should prefer to be a savage.” Levin responds in a similar manner when the notion of infidelity comes up later on, telling Oblonsky (a known adulterer) that cheating is like emerging full from dinner and then stealing a loaf of bread from a bakery. Oblonsky replies, “Bread sometimes smells so good, that one cannot resist the temptation,” and asks, “What is to be done?” Levin answers simply, “Don’t steal fresh bread.”

For Levin, food and morality are closely linked, and the same was true for Leo Tolstoy. While Tolstoy was writing Anna Karenina in the 1870s, he was also undergoing a major spiritual transformation, a significant aspect of which included becoming a strict vegetarian. Tolstoy wrote passionately about his renunciation of “flesh-meat” in several essays, detailing the horrors of nineteenth-century Russian slaughterhouses, and speaking to farmers and butchers about the impact that killing and eating animals had on their spirit. Tolstoy believed that eating meat was not only immoral, because of the suffering it caused other living creatures, but that it blocked man’s path to spiritual enlightenment by suppressing his capacity for “sympathy and pity toward other living creatures like himself.”

Of all the food in Oblonsky and Levin’s dinner that is ripe for re-creating—vegetable soup, turbot in a thick sauce, roast beef and capon—I chose to focus on the oysters because of their complicated moral standing in the world of vegetarianism and veganism. A handful of the vegans and vegetarians I know eat oysters because, they argue, they are biologically indistinguishable from plants in that they cannot feel pain and are not motile. They argue also that farming them has little to no impact on the environment, and can actually be beneficial for water quality. Other vegans and vegetarians maintain that this is a ridiculous position, that oysters are living creatures and therefore should not be consumed. It’s an interesting debate, and I sincerely wish we could have gotten Tolstoy’s view on it. For now, though, let’s conjure Oblonsky, for whom eating is “one of the pleasures of life,” and enjoy these oysters.

ANNA KARENINA

Oysters and Cucumber Mignonette

Makes 3 dozen oysters with sauce

1 cup champagne vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup minced shallots

1 cup peeled and finely minced hothouse cucumber

1½ teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper

36 oysters, shucked

In a large, nonreactive bowl, whisk the champagne vinegar, sugar, and salt until they are completely dissolved. Add the minced shallots, cucumber, and pepper and mix to combine. Spoon onto oysters and enjoy.