make your sister-in-law an offer,’ though that was precisely
what he had come for.
The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were
old, noble Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms. This intimacy had grown still
closer during Levin’s student days. He had both prepared
for the university with the young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the
brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the same
time with him. In those days Levin used often to be in the
Shtcherbatskys’ house, and he was in love with the Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was with
the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was in
love, especially with the feminine half of the household.
Levin did not remember his own mother, and his only sister
was older than he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys’
house that he saw for the first time that inner life of an old,
noble, cultivated, and honorable family of which he had
been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the
members of that family, especially the feminine half, were
pictured by him, as it were, wrapped about with a mysterious
poetical veil, and he not only perceived no defects whatever
39
in them, but under the poetical veil that shrouded them he
assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and every
possible perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had
one day to speak French, and the next English; why it was
that at certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the
sounds of which were audible in their brother’s room above,
where the students used to work; why they were visited by
those professors of French literature, of music, of drawing,
of dancing; why at certain hours all the three young ladies,
with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to the Tversky
boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Dolly in a long one,
Natalia in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short that her
shapely legs in tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to
all beholders; why it was they had to walk about the Tversky
boulevard escorted by a footman with a gold cockade in his
hat—all this and much more that was done in their mysterious world he did not understand, but he was sure that
everything that was done there was very good, and he was
in love precisely with the mystery of the proceedings.
In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest, Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he
began being in love with the second. He felt, as it were, that
he had to be in love with one of the sisters, only he could not
quite make out which. But Natalia, too, had hardly made
her appearance in the world when she married the diplomat
Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university.
Young Shtcherbatsky went into the navy, was drowned in
the Baltic, and Levin’s relations with the Shtcherbatskys, in
spite of his friendship with Oblonsky, became less intimate.
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Anna Karenina
But when early in the winter of this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and saw the Shtcherbatskys,
he realized which of the three sisters he was indeed destined
to love.
One would have thought that nothing could be simpler
than for him, a man of good family, rather rich than poor,
and thirty-two years old, to make the young Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all likelihood he would at
once have been looked upon as a good match. But Levin was
in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in
every respect that she was a creature far above everything
earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly
that it could not even be conceived that other people and
she herself could regard him as worthy of her.
After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing Kitty almost every day in society, into
which he went so as to meet her, he abruptly decided that it
could not be, and went back to the country.
Levin’s conviction that it could not be was founded on
the idea that in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for the charming Kitty, and that
Kitty herself could not love him. In her family’s eyes he had
no ordinary, definite career and position in society, while
his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two,
were already, one a colonel, and another a professor, another
director of a bank and railways, or president of a board like
Oblonsky. But he (he knew very well how he must appear
to others) was a country gentleman, occupied in breeding
cattle, shooting game, and building barns; in other words,
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a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out well, and who
was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world, is
done by people fit for nothing else.
The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love
such an ugly person as he conceived himself to be, and, above
all, such an ordinary, in no way striking person. Moreover,
his attitude to Kitty in the past—the attitude of a grownup person to a child, arising from his friendship with her
brother—seemed to him yet another obstacle to love. An
ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might,
he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a
love as that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be
a handsome and, still more, a distinguished man.
He had heard that women often did care for ugly and
ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by
himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.
But after spending two months alone in the country, he
was convinced that this was not one of those passions of
which he had had experience in his early youth; that this
feeling gave him not an instant’s rest; that he could not live
without deciding the question, would she or would she not
be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only from his
own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would
be rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a firm
determination to make an offer, and get married if he were
accepted. Or…he could not conceive what would become of
him if he were rejected.
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Anna Karenina
Chapter 7
On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had
put up at the house of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes he went down to his brother’s study,
intending to talk to him at once about the object of his visit,
and to ask his advice; but his brother was not alone. With
him there was a well-known professor of philosophy, who
had come from Harkov expressly to clear up a difference that
had arisen between them on a very important philosophical
question. The professor was carrying on a hot crusade against
materialists. Sergey Koznishev had been following this crusade with interest, and after reading the professor’s last article,
he had written him a letter stating his objections. He accused
the professor of making too great concessions to the materialists. And the professor had promptly appeared to argue the
matter out. The point in discussion was the question then in
vogue: Is there a line to be drawn between psychological and
physiological phenomena in man? and if so, where?
Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly
friendliness he always had for everyone, and introducing him
to the professor, went on with the conversation.
A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore
himself from the discussion for an instant to greet Levin, and
then went on talking without paying any further attention to
him. Levin sat down to wait till the professor should go, but
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he soon began to get interested in the subject under discussion.
Levin had come across the magazine articles about which
they were disputing, and had read them, interested in them
as a development of the first principles of science, familiar to
him as a natural science student at the university. But he had
never connected these scientific deductions as to the origin
of man as an animal, as to reflex action, biology, and sociology, with those questions as to the meaning of life and death
to himself, which had of late been more and more often in
his mind.
As he listened to his brother’s argument with the professor,
he noticed that they connected these scientific questions with
those spiritual problems, that at times they almost touched
on the latter; but every time they were close upon what
seemed to him the chief point, they promptly beat a hasty
retreat, and plunged again into a sea of subtle distinctions,
reservations, quotations, allusions, and appeals to authorities, and it was with difficulty that he understood what they
were talking about.
‘I cannot admit it,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase.
‘I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world has been derived from perceptions.
The most fundamental idea, the idea of existence, has not
been received by me through sensation; indeed, there is no
special sense-organ for the transmission of such an idea.’
‘Yes, but they—Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov—would
answer that your consciousness of existence is derived from
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Anna Karenina
the conjunction of all your sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the result of your sensations. Wurt,
indeed, says plainly that, assuming there are no sensations, it
follows that there is no idea of existence.’
‘I maintain the contrary,’ began Sergey Ivanovitch.
But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close
upon the real point of the matter, they were again retreating,
and he made up his mind to put a question to the professor.
‘According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body
is dead, I can have no existence of any sort?’ he queried.
The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at the interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer,
more like a bargeman than a philosopher, and
