Anna Karenina
that the conversation turned again on the university question. As Levin
had already heard it all, he made haste to tell Metrov that he was
sorry he could not take advantage of his invitation, took leave, and
drove to Lvov’s.
Chapter 4
Lvov, the husband of Natalia, Kitty’s sister, had spent all his life in
foreign capitals, where he had been educated, and had been in the
diplomatic service.
During the previous year he had left the diplomatic service, not owing
to any “unpleasantness” (he never had any “unpleasantness” with
anyone), and was transferred to the department of the court of the
palace in Moscow, in order to give his two boys the best education
possible.
In spite of the striking contrast in their habits and views and the
fact that Lvov was older than Levin, they had seen a great deal of one
another that winter, and had taken a great liking to each other.
Lvov was at home, and Levin went in to him unannounced.
Lvov, in a house coat with a belt and in chamois leather shoes, was
sitting in an armchair, and with a pince-nez with blue glasses he was
reading a book that stood on a reading desk, while in his beautiful
hand he held a half-burned cigarette daintily away from him.
His handsome, delicate, and still youthful-looking face, to which his
curly, glistening silvery hair gave a still more aristocratic air,
lighted up with a smile when he saw Levin.
“Capital! I was meaning to send to you. How’s Kitty? Sit here, it’s
more comfortable.” He got up and pushed up a rocking chair. “Have you
read the last circular in the _Journal de St. Pétersbourg?_ I think
it’s excellent,” he said, with a slight French accent.
Levin told him what he had heard from Katavasov was being said in
Petersburg, and after talking a little about politics, he told him of
his interview with Metrov, and the learned society’s meeting. To Lvov
it was very interesting.
“That’s what I envy you, that you are able to mix in these interesting
scientific circles,” he said. And as he talked, he passed as usual into
French, which was easier to him. “It’s true I haven’t the time for it.
My official work and the children leave me no time; and then I’m not
ashamed to own that my education has been too defective.”
“That I don’t believe,” said Levin with a smile, feeling, as he always
did, touched at Lvov’s low opinion of himself, which was not in the
least put on from a desire to seem or to be modest, but was absolutely
sincere.
“Oh, yes, indeed! I feel now how badly educated I am. To educate my
children I positively have to look up a great deal, and in fact simply
to study myself. For it’s not enough to have teachers, there must be
someone to look after them, just as on your land you want laborers and
an overseer. See what I’m reading”—he pointed to Buslaev’s _Grammar_ on
the desk—“it’s expected of Misha, and it’s so difficult.... Come,
explain to me.... Here he says....”
Levin tried to explain to him that it couldn’t be understood, but that
it had to be taught; but Lvov would not agree with him.
“Oh, you’re laughing at it!”
“On the contrary, you can’t imagine how, when I look at you, I’m always
learning the task that lies before me, that is the education of one’s
children.”
“Well, there’s nothing for you to learn,” said Lvov.
“All I know,” said Levin, “is that I have never seen better brought-up
children than yours, and I wouldn’t wish for children better than
yours.”
Lvov visibly tried to restrain the expression of his delight, but he
was positively radiant with smiles.
“If only they’re better than I! That’s all I desire. You don’t know yet
all the work,” he said, “with boys who’ve been left like mine to run
wild abroad.”
“You’ll catch all that up. They’re such clever children. The great
thing is the education of character. That’s what I learn when I look at
your children.”
“You talk of the education of character. You can’t imagine how
difficult that is! You have hardly succeeded in combating one tendency
when others crop up, and the struggle begins again. If one had not a
support in religion—you remember we talked about that—no father could
bring children up relying on his own strength alone without that help.”
This subject, which always interested Levin, was cut short by the
entrance of the beauty Natalia Alexandrovna, dressed to go out.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, unmistakably feeling no
regret, but a positive pleasure, in interrupting this conversation on a
topic she had heard so much of that she was by now weary of it. “Well,
how is Kitty? I am dining with you today. I tell you what, Arseny,” she
turned to her husband, “you take the carriage.”
And the husband and wife began to discuss their arrangements for the
day. As the husband had to drive to meet someone on official business,
while the wife had to go to the concert and some public meeting of a
committee on the Eastern Question, there was a great deal to consider
and settle. Levin had to take part in their plans as one of themselves.
It was settled that Levin should go with Natalia to the concert and the
meeting, and that from there they should send the carriage to the
office for Arseny, and he should call for her and take her to Kitty’s;
or that, if he had not finished his work, he should send the carriage
back and Levin would go with her.
“He’s spoiling me,” Lvov said to his wife; “he assures me that our
children are splendid, when I know how much that’s bad there is in
them.”
“Arseny goes to extremes, I always say,” said his wife. “If you look
for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it’s true, as papa
says,—that when we were brought up there was one extreme—we were kept
in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it’s
just the other way—the parents are in the wash house, while the
children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at
all, but to exist altogether for their children.”
“Well, what if they like it better?” Lvov said, with his beautiful
smile, touching her hand. “Anyone who didn’t know you would think you
were a stepmother, not a true mother.”
“No, extremes are not good in anything,” Natalia said serenely, putting
his paper-knife straight in its proper place on the table.
“Well, come here, you perfect children,” Lvov said to the two handsome
boys who came in, and after bowing to Levin, went up to their father,
obviously wishing to ask him about something.
Levin would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would say to
their father, but Natalia began talking to him, and then Lvov’s
colleague in the service, Mahotin, walked in, wearing his court
uniform, to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept up
without a break upon Herzegovina, Princess Korzinskaya, the town
council, and the sudden death of Madame Apraksina.
Levin even forgot the commission intrusted to him. He recollected it as
he was going into the hall.
“Oh, Kitty told me to talk to you about Oblonsky,” he said, as Lvov was
standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin off.
“Yes, yes, maman wants us, _les beaux-frères,_ to attack him,” he said,
blushing. “But why should I?”
“Well, then, I will attack him,” said Madame Lvova, with a smile,
standing in her white sheepskin cape, waiting till they had finished
speaking. “Come, let us go.”
Chapter 5
At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were
performed. One was a fantasia, _King Lear;_ the other was a quartette
dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style,
and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his
sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to
listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to
let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by
looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always
disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets,
with strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people
either thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things
except the music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or
talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before
him, listening.
But the more he listened to the fantasia of _King Lear_ the further he
felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a
continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some
feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new
musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer,
exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary
musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable,
because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything.
Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one
another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And
those emotions, like a madman’s, sprang up quite unexpectedly.
During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching
people dancing, and was in a state of complete bewilderment when the
fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain
on his attention. Loud applause resounded on all sides. Everyone got
up, moved about, and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his
own perplexity from the impressions of others, Levin began to walk
about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-known
musical amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.
“Marvelous!” Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. “How are you,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch? Particularly sculpturesque and plastic, so to
say, and richly colored is that passage where you feel Cordelia’s
approach, where woman, _das ewig Weibliche,_ enters into conflict with
fate. Isn’t it?”
“You mean ... what has Cordelia to do with it?” Levin asked timidly,
forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to represent King Lear.
“Cordelia comes in ... see here!” said Pestsov, tapping his finger on
the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand and passing it to
Levin.
Only then Levin recollected the title of the fantasia, and made haste
to read in the Russian translation the lines from Shakespeare that were
printed on the back of the program.
“You can’t follow it without that,” said Pestsov, addressing Levin, as
the person he had been speaking to had gone away, and he had no one to
talk to.
In the _entr’acte_ Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the
merits and defects of music of the Wagner school. Levin maintained that
the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying to take
music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes wrong when it
tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to do, and as an
instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble
certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the
pedestal. “These phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they
were positively clinging on the ladder,” said Levin. The comparison
pleased him, but he could not remember whether he had not used the same
phrase before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he said it he felt confused.
Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest
manifestations only by conjunction with all kinds of art.
The second piece that was performed Levin could not hear. Pestsov, who
was standing beside him, was talking to him almost all the time,
condemning the music for its excessive affected assumption of
simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity of the Pre-Raphaelites
in painting. As he went out Levin met many more acquaintances, with
whom he talked of politics, of music, and of common acquaintances.