Anna Karenina
The third day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to him
again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding
it with communism.
“You’ve simply borrowed an idea that’s not your own, but you’ve
distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it’s not applicable.”
“But I tell you it’s nothing to do with it. They deny the justice of
property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief
stimulus.” (Levin felt disgusted himself at using such expressions, but
ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come
more and more frequently to use words not Russian.) “All I want is to
regulate labor.”
“Which means, you’ve borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it
its force, and want to make believe that it’s something new,” said
Nikolay, angrily tugging at his necktie.
“But my idea has nothing in common....”
“That, anyway,” said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes
flashing malignantly, “has the charm of—what’s one to call
it?—geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a
Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of making of all the
past a _tabula rasa_—no property, no family—then labor would organize
itself. But you gain nothing....”
“Why do you mix things up? I’ve never been a communist.”
“But I have, and I consider it’s premature, but rational, and it has a
future, just like Christianity in its first ages.”
“All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be investigated
from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to
be studied, its qualities ascertained....”
“But that’s utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of
activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There
have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we have the
half-crop system, rent, and day laborers. What are you trying to find?”
Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of
his heart he was afraid that it was true—true that he was trying to
hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and
that this was hardly possible.
“I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for
the laborers. I want to organize....” he answered hotly.
“You don’t want to organize anything; it’s simply just as you’ve been
all your life, that you want to be original to pose as not exploiting
the peasants simply, but with some idea in view.”
“Oh, all right, that’s what you think—and let me alone!” answered
Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.
“You’ve never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to
please your vanity.”
“Oh, very well; then let me alone!”
“And I will let you alone! and it’s high time I did, and go to the
devil with you! and I’m very sorry I ever came!”
In spite of all Levin’s efforts to soothe his brother afterwards,
Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was better
to part, and Konstantin saw that it simply was that life was unbearable
to him.
Nikolay was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him
again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt
his feelings in any way.
“Ah, generosity!” said Nikolay, and he smiled. “If you want to be
right, I can give you that satisfaction. You’re in the right; but I’m
going all the same.”
It was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking
with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother:
“Anyway, don’t remember evil against me, Kostya!” and his voice
quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely
between them. Levin knew that those words meant, “You see, and you
know, that I’m in a bad way, and maybe we shall not see each other
again.” Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed
his brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to
say.
Three days after his brother’s departure, Levin too set off for his
foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in the
railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his depression.
“What’s the matter with you?” Shtcherbatsky asked him.
“Oh, nothing; there’s not much happiness in life.”
“Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall
see how to be happy.”
“No, I’ve done with it all. It’s time I was dead.”
“Well, that’s a good one!” said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; “why, I’m only
just getting ready to begin.”
“Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be
dead.”
Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing
but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished
scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow
till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but
just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the
darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his
strength.
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met
every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey
Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the
servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at
home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house, but Anna saw
him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.
The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would
have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had
not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a
temporary painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch
hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that
everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied.
Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable
than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly
believed, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She
had not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly
believed that something would very soon turn up now. Vronsky, against
his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that something,
apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.
In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A
foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under
his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky was
of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of
behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with
such grand personages—that was how he came to be put in charge of the
prince. But he felt his duties very irksome. The prince was anxious to
miss nothing of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that in
Russia? And on his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost
all Russian forms of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in
satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to
look at places of interest; the evenings they passed enjoying the
national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even
among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had
brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure
he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had
traveled a great deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of
modern facilities of communication was the accessibility of the
pleasures of all nations.
He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made
friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he
had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over
hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got
into a harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia
he wished to taste all the specially Russian forms of pleasure.
Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him,
was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by
various persons to the prince. They had race horses, and Russian
pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and
drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And
the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit,
smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and
seemed to be asking—what more, and does the whole Russian spirit
consist in just this?
In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best
French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal champagne. Vronsky
was used to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of
late, or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that week
seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he
experienced a sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a
dangerous madman, afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from
being with him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky was continually
conscious of the necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of
stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted.
The prince’s manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky’s
surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with
Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women,
whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with
indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly
disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in
him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He
was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very
well-washed man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman—that was true,
and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his
superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his equals,
and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was
himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But for
this prince he was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent
attitude to him revolted him.
“Brainless beef! can I be like that?” he thought.
Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the
prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was
happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant
reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the station on their
return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian
prowess kept up all night.
Chapter 2
When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, “I
am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer
without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to
the council at seven and will be there till ten.” Thinking for an
instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in
spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided
to go.
Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left
the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch,
he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of
the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were
confused together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the
peasant who had played an important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky
fell asleep. He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made
haste to light a candle. “What was it? What? What was the dreadful
thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a disheveled