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    Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole)
    Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole)
    Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole)
    Ebook1,347 pages29 hours

    Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole)

    By Leo Tolstoy

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    One of the greatest novels ever written, “Anna Karenina” follows the self-destructive path of a beautiful, popular, and sensual Russian aristocrat. The lovely Anna seems set in a respectable marriage with the powerful statesman Karenin, yet their lack of passion breeds the discontent she fully faces upon meeting the elegant and affluent officer Count Vronsky. Soon convinced that allowing herself to deeply love this man will enable her to find the meaning and truth of her life, Anna defies the conventions of Russian society and leaves her husband and children for her lover. Tolstoy juxtaposes this ill-fated couple with the melancholy Levin and his new wife Kitty. Levin is also searching for the fulfillment and happiness in his life, and he ultimately finds a happiness that Anna’s love does not. A portrait of marriage and infidelity in imperial Russia, “Anna Karenina” explores love, life, and the depths of the human soul in a tale as illuminating as it is tragic. This edition follows the translation of Constance Garnett, includes an introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole, and a biographical afterword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJun 1, 2015
    ISBN9781420951592
    Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole)
    Author

    Leo Tolstoy

    Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is the author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and other classics of Russian literature.

    Read more from Leo Tolstoy

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    Reviews for Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole)

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    • 4/5
      I saw the movie and thought I would listen to the book. Very enjoyable as an audiobook although very long so it was great for painting my walls. The narrator does a fantastic job with the emotions of the characters. A very good classic.
    • 4/5
      Tolstoy’s greatest novel, what some deem the greatest novel ever written, seems to ‘proceed as plotlessly and accidentally as life itself’ (E. B. Greenwood, Introduction to Anna Karenina, p. xii). Tolstoy contrasts two people of different character and temperament both of whom we squirm, flinch and weep in response to their actions. Anna lives for her own needs, passions and freedom. Levin lives for the good of others and his soul. In this way Anna and her affair with Vronsky depicts so outstandingly what modern philosophers call expressive individualism, where being true to our authentic self by expressing our deepest desires and acting on them is heroic. The Tolstoy critic Andrew Kaufman says in an interview that the 1860s were a time of great transition in Russia whereby the more traditional value system was being replaced by a new value systems. Tolstoy watched his friends and family members were getting divorced at alarming numbers. And this concerned him because in his view, the family is one of the key social units. And when families fall apart, he believed societies begin to fall apart. This is a central theme in Anna Karenina. Tolstoy heard people saying, "maybe marriage isn't the be all and end all of life. Maybe even if you do get married, not having kids might lead to a greater happiness." And, and of course, this is something that's very much echoed in today's world. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy shows that the problem with these arguments is that they come from a false set of assumptions: This idea that more freedom means more fulfillment, that the gratification of one's personal desires, leads to more happiness. Tolstoy came to the opposite conclusion; that in many cases, less freedom can lead to a more abiding happiness because it forces us to make choices to make hard choices, and to commit to those choices with the fullness of our being. And family life is the ultimate embodiment of making those kinds of choices, of limiting our freedom for the sake of love. And so it is the characters who embrace the duties, the pain, the vulnerability of family life—of fatherhood, motherhood, being a son, being a daughter—those are often the characters who in the end, end up achieving the deepest kind of fulfillment.Kaufman gives an example from Tolstoy's own life. While writing War and Peace, he used a very interesting metaphor to describe what he was like before he got married, and what he's like now. It was the metaphor of an apple tree that he described himself as. An apple tree, that once sprouted in all different directions. But 'now, that it’s trimmed, tied, and supported, its trunk and roots can grow without hindrance.' It's a very powerful image. At the heart of it is this idea that sometimes limits are what allow us to grow more fully. And limits are actually what allow us to realise our fullest human potential.So according to Tolstoy a life like Anna's, which looks so romantic and promising, usually ends in tragedy. The reversal of fortunes is shown when Anna and Kitty are contrasted by Dolly (Kitty's sister): “‘How happily it turned out for Kitty that Anna came,’ said Dolly, ‘and how unhappily for her! The exact reverse,’ she added, struck by her thought. ‘Then Anna was so happy and Kitty considered herself miserable. Now it’s the exact reverse.’” (p. 551)Anna becomes a slave to her love/lust for Vronsky and finds herself trapped without access to her son, with excessively jealous of Vronksy, and unable to live without his enmeshed love.Tolstoy contrasts Anna's persist of freedom to desire what she wants to Levin's. Upon his engagement to Kitty, Levin's brother and friends question him about the loss of freedom he will experience when he is married. Levin replies, “‘What is the good of freedom? Happiness consists only in loving and desiring: in wishing her wishes and in thinking her thoughts, which means having no freedom whatever; that is happiness!’” (p. 442). Levin’s desire is not possessive self serving eros (like Anna’s), but generous other-centred agape. The result is that while Levin’s life is not easy, although there is doubt and jealousy and fear and conflict, there nevertheless is true freedom, fulfilment and happiness. He is not enslaved but a servant of love and goodness. I found the book long and tedious at points but I suppose that is because Tolstoy so wants us to “love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations”. He packs in so much of life into the 806 pages, not just in the grand moments but also in the ordinary ones. The result is that you end up on a journey through 19th century Russia, a place and time I have now lived vicariously through. But Tolstoy also takes you on a journey to the very heart of human experience. The plot changes don’t come quickly. Instead Tolstoy spends significant time taking you into the mind and heart of all these different kinds of characters: nobels and peasants, philosophers and farmers, men and women, the promiscuous and duty-bound. Tolstoy draws you in to empathise with all these as you realise you share their same hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, temptations and regrets. The conversions of Karenin, Anna and Levin all demand attention. I am not sure Tolstoy ever really grasps the nature of the gospel of grace. He comes close at points but never really gets there. The closest we get is Karenin’s forgiveness of Anna, Anna’s cry for forgiveness at her death, and Levin’s humble recognition of the gift and goodness of life.I think this novel is like the book of Ecclesiastes: it teaches us about life under the sun and concludes that the meaning of life is “to live for God, to the soul” (p. 785). or as Solomon says, "A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?" (Eccl 2:24–25)Yes this is the meaning of life, but what does that look like? And how is atonement possible when we fail. Tolstoy raises this question superbly, hints at an answer, but in many ways it's still a mystery. For a clear answer we must turn to the Gospels or perhaps to the novels of Dostoevsky who perhaps understood better the gospel of grace.
    • 5/5
      I read this many, many years ago and always wanted to re-visit it. Suspecting there were too many other books ahead on my list I chose to download the audio version from my library. Upon first reading I was fascinated by the intricacies of social life as described by Tolstoy. This time around what impressed me was the timelessness of his writing. The characters seem as real as those in any modern novel. The social conventions and political discussions were still interesting but it was the characters lives that remained front and center this time around.
    • 4/5
      One of the best things about being a Russian aristocrat has got to be that you can just stop your carriage alongside any field and yell at a random peasant and they will drop whatever dumb peasant job they’re doing and run off to do whatever thing you yell at them to do. “You there! You! Run ahead to the manor and inform the Count’s groom that I wish him to make ready the stables.”“Riiiight. And just who the hell are you?”But they never say that! They just run ahead to make sure the stables are ready. Fantastic.Reading Anna Karenina was part of my reinvigorated program to grab something on my shelf that I’d been meaning to read and just read the bastard, fifty pages a day until it’s done. It's sublime.This is the mastery of Tolstoy: In a thousand pages of interpersonal failures, slights, feuds, marriages, love affairs, elections, engagements, spa treatments, farming, and philosophical banter, with every human virtue and vice on display, he never once tips his hand and telegraphs what we are supposed to think about a character. They are fully-realized human figures, and all you can do is experience and feel with them. If you’re going to judge them for good or ill, you do it on your own. He doesn’t do any of that for you.
    • 4/5
      First, I started this book 4ish years ago. I would read a chunk of it, than stop for awhile, and pick it up a few months later. Its not an easy read - mostly because it seems like the names keep changing. I understand, what a person in Russia is called is dependent on the relationship, but its difficult. It took me awhile to figure it out. It also helped that the last third of the book had less characters. It would have helped to have a list of full names for the characters. Its a difficult book, but the pay off is immense if you can stick with it.This next part has spoilers, so, read at your own risk.Anne Karenina isn't necessarily about Anna - although the other characters revolve around her. This is a story about relationships. Good relationships, bad relationships and how society views relationships depending on gender. Anna is bored wife of a bureaucrat. Her husband provides for her, and lets her do her own thing, he doesn't make her a part of his life, basically ignoring her until he needs her presence. Anna is intelligent, beautiful, and make a whole room light up when she walks in. When she meets a military man named Vronsky, her whole world is turned upside down. He is a cad, leading young women on, and than dropping them as soon as he looses interest. But, Anna seduces him - even after she denies him, he continue to pursue and eventually Anna gives in. Her husband tries to make it work, but the allure of Vronsky calls - Anna eventually leaves him for Vronsky. But, Anna is still not free. Until she is granted a divorce, she is only a mistress and is ostracized from society, living a lonelier life than before. Eventually, this gets to her and she commits suicide by throwing herself before a train.The next couple is Dotty and Oblansky. Oblansky is Anna's brother, and like to spend money, dote on ballerina's, and gamble. Dotty holds the family together - making sure that there is money for the most basic of upper-class necessities. She considers divorcee him a number of times throughout the book, but it would leave her in a similar state as Anna, even though she would be in the right of the law.The last couple is Kitty and Levin. Kitty is Dotty's sister, and she was the young girl Vronsky led on right before Anna. Kitty ends up sick from the whole experience, but ultimately recovers when Levin ultimately proposes to her. They are the perfect couple, in love, and able to talk through problems, understanding each other's personalities, the good and the bad. These three couples form the core of what Anna Karenina is about. There is also a large parts of the book devoted to Levin's thoughts about peasantry, land management, pointlessness of the upper-class life in Moscow, and belief in God. I'm still pondering what this adds to the book, because it seems not to add anything, and at times, its overwritten and tends to ramble. I do think Levin is based off of Tolstoy and his life, but large chunks of this could have been removed to no effect of the rest.
    • 4/5
      (Original Review, 1981-02-24)If you're not familiar with the The Orthodox Church's intricacies, don't bother reading the novel. It might also to understand the social context in which Anna Karenina is set, which Tolstoy doesn't explain because he was writing for fellow members of the Orthodox Church who would have understood the particular nuances. For Russian society at the time, an immoral act was one that offended all Creation and therefore God himself - it is quite common for Russian priests even now to admonish those confessing to serious sins by telling them that they are 'spitting in Christ's face'. Yet there are subtleties to Anna's predicament that are probably lost on Westerners: unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which forbids divorce for any reason, the Orthodox Church permits this where a marriage has irrevocably broken down, on the basis that it was never based on true love in the first place and thus null and void. So in the novel it is only Karenin's pride (which for the Orthodox is the greatest sin of all) that stands in the way of dissolving his tragically unhappy marriage. Anna's action challenges the hypocrisy of society and she brings down the anger of the hypocrites upon herself because she has the barefaced cheek to expect people to behave towards her as they did before her "fall" from grace. Her "friends", such as the poisonous Princess Betsy, desert her because she is an uncomfortable reminder of their own failings.In fact, I'd go a little further and suggest that the absence of clearly defined mores has led to the proliferation of petty judgementalism infiltrating every aspect of life. It's like Jacques Lacan said about Dostoyevsky's famous quote, ('If God is dead, everything is permitted'), accurately turning it around to say "If God is dead, nothing is permitted." And so we all throw the first stone at one another...The great Victorian judge and political philosopher James Fitzjames Stephen said that the main deterrent to crime is not the law, but public opinion. He was right. One of the reasons Arab countries have such a low crime rate is that a thief would be shunned by his family and wider community. The most judgmental people I know are self-described non-judgmentalists: they hate (straightforwardly) judgmental people, i.e. people with personalities, who don't have to cling on to PC BS in order to create a persona for themselves.PS. Something I didn't know until recently was that Vronsky, like Levin, was based on Tolstoy's own experiences. He represented Tolstoy's own shallow, artificial lifestyle that he gave up and was ashamed of. Vronsky is mature, attractive and amoral. He sees nothing wrong with pursuing a married woman because society's hypocrisy allows for that, but he gets in deeper than he intended. Not the deepest of characters, but Vronsky's casting in this film was absolutely ridiculous.
    • 5/5
      “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So begins this novel, with one of it’s most famous lines, but only one of many in which the author makes broad and though-provoking statements about human nature. Anna Karenina is a study of relationships, love, and adultery - especially Anna’s passionate affair with Count Vronsky. This simple description of the plot, however, hides the truly staggering depth of the novel. Along with Vronsky and Anna’s relationship, the many other romantic relationships presented raise questions about the nature of love; about the way society views men and women differently for their romantic choices; and about what it means to be happy.The writing in this book was a pleasure to read, one of those books were you savor the sentences. The author is often funny, dry, or witty in his insights into human nature. The characters are all amazingly well developed, with both good and bad qualities and believable motivations. Even when characters don’t seem very sympathetic at first, Tolstoy does an incredibly job pulling you into each character’s world view and making you feel for them. The relationships are as complex as the characters and could be difficult to follow. Fortunately, Tolstoy introduces characters clearly and slowly so his readers can keep up. My only complaint would be that he often uses full names, titles, and Russian nicknames for characters, which does make it harder to keep track of who is who.One complaint you’ll often hear about this novel, is that Tolstoy enjoys his digressions. There are hunting expeditions, local elections, and so many character’s philosophical musings, none of which advance the romantic plots that pulled me in. Some of these didn’t bother me, since I enjoyed the book for the author’s study of human nature. Still, I was going to give this novel four stars for the philosophical discussions of things that interest me less than love and relationships, such as the Russian economy. But when I sat down to write the description, I realized that this was a novel so good, I didn’t feel I could do it justice in my description. Anna’s bravery and passion for life captured my heart, as she has the hearts of so many others. Read this one for the characters, the commentary on life, but mostly for the experience of meeting Anna because no one but Tolstoy can really do her justice.
    • 2/5
      I tried. I have read 1/3 of the book, thr writing is amazing. But the story is dull. 3 relationships crash and burn from adultery or failure to communicate. Maybe if I read this back in high school I would think differently. But in 2017, after reading so many books with the same story line. After all the hype over this book, I expected more.
    • 5/5
      many thanks to tom for reminding me i wanted to read this. what a delight of a book.
    • 5/5
      What can I say that will do this novel justice? - Initially I was daunted and intimidated at the prospect of reading this. Once I started, I found it very hard to put down. Tolstoy seems to get into people's heads to the extent that it is possible to empathise with the least attractive characters (I think Anna Karenina's husband is a good example of this). This is an age old story of a loveless marriage and a subsequent doomed love affair, culminating in tragedy. Comparable with Mme Bovary and Tess of the D'Urbevilles as a novel by a man which is sympathetic to the unequal position of women in Victorian society.
    • 5/5
      I would consider War and Peace the greater novel, but gosh, isn't this a fantastic piece of work? What author so successfully places us inside the head of each of its characters, moving them forward with an unrelenting pace while also tying them so closely to the fortunes of their nation? Wondrous.
    • 2/5
      Just because you can take 800 pages to say something about the human condition doesn't mean you should.I'd rather be reading Chekhov.
    • 4/5
      Not only was this a remarkable read, but the love/ hate relationship that I had with several of the characters was an interesting experience. Tolstoy developed his characters in a way that I have never experiences. All of the political hub bub was a bit heavier than I would of likes, but still, brilliant.
    • 4/5
      I found the main plot absolutely gripping, though I got a bit weary of Levin, the character who represents Tolstoy himself.
    • 5/5

      After several months of procrastinating and putting off listening to this book, I finally dived in, deciding that I would finish this before the end of the year. Surprisingly, I ended up finishing it in a little over a week! I enjoyed almost every bit of the book, and the Audible narrative by Maggie Gyllenhall is very good. She is about as far from being my favorite actress as she can get, but she read this classic admirably.

      This book is known as the “single greatest novel ever written”, and it is very good. Tolstoy's narrative moves easily from stage to stage and scene to scene; the characters’ lives progress naturally through Russian society in the 1870s.

      The story focuses on just a few main characters: Anna Arkadyevna Karenina and her husband Aleksey Alexandrovich Karenin; Count Aleksey Kirilich Vronksy, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, and Kitty Scherbatskaya. These characters propel the story, and it is their lives and relationships that are followed most closely. Supporting characters include Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky, his wife Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya, and Levin's brothers, truly a small cast for such a grand Russian novel.

      The novel’s theme centers on relationships, specifically, the relationships in 19th Century Russian aristocratic society of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Anna Karenina is an elite, beautiful woman married to a powerful government official, Aleksey Karenin, with whom she has a son, Seryozha. She has an extended affair with the rich, dapper Count Aleksey Vronksy, and has a child with him, a daughter. Their story follows her inability to divorce her husband, and her increasing unhappiness in the relationship with Vronsky, as she is bannished by society and resents the freedom he has as a man to move in his old circles. Her jealousy and insecurity grow throughout the course of the novel, rendering her nearly mad.

      The other relationship, which serves as contrast Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, is that of Levin and Kitty Scherbatskaya. Levin is several years older than the young and beautiful Kitty, daughter of one of Moscow's many princes. He is an aristocratic farmer and meticulously cares for his family's vast agrarian holdings in the country. At the beginning of the novel, he was courting Kitty, but had returned to the country. When he returns to ask her to marry him, he sees that she is infatuated with Vronksy, whom he doesn't trust. Vronsky meets Anna Karenina at a ball and stops calling on Kitty, breaking her heart. After a long separation, Kitty and Levin meet again and she happily agrees to marry him. Their storyline follows their marriage and the birth of their son, Dimitry.

      This novel is a slice out of life. The characters are incredibly realistic and complex, as is the pace and plot of the novel. The true artistry, however, lies in Tolstoy's effective setting of one relationship against another. The "good couple" Levin and Kitty have difficulties in adjusting to each other and in their relationship. Levin, like Anna, is jealous, but unlike Vronsky and Anna, he is motivated by love and generosity to overcome his angry feelings for the benefit of a harmonious home. Other aspects of the two different relationships greatly contrast one another. A very compelling character is made of Aleksey Alexandrovich Karenin, whom Anna despises, but who undergoes a convincing and sad degeneration of self as Anna leaves him and he maintains custody of the son that she loves. He gets caught up with a society woman who has converted to a fundamentalist, ecstatic Christianity and gives him advice, ultimately leading him to allow a French faux-mystic to decide the fate of his marriage to Anna.

      The novel has a well-known climax, beautifully written, which allows the reader to come through the shock and pain to what Levin discovers beyond the love of the family life he craved. This is definitely a masterpiece, worth the time spent on every page.
    • 5/5
      One book, but in fact two stories: that of Anna, the wife of the very stable but boring Karenin; and that of Levin a man of great doubts and a powerfull wil. Both are very strongly in search for happyness, but in different directions. For Anna thist lies outside her cold marriage, but social pressure and the (inevitable?) evolution of the affair with Vronsky is driving her to insanity. Levin too is tempted by insanity, but he finds stability in marriage, and in the end also in faith. The story and the most important characters are wel develeppod, but occasionely Tolstoi looses himself in diverging stories, as in War and Peace. All in all, this is a really great novel, especcially because of the psychological development of Anna en Levin. The story is lively, there is less moralising in it.
    • 4/5
      Tolstoy's War and Peace is one of my favorite books. Many of the reviews I have read rates Anna Karenina as a superior book. I could not disagree more. I very much appreciate Tolstoy's ability to create unique characters and to invite the reader into the minds and emotions of them. I found that I enjoyed the ups and downs of the multiple stories within the novel. However, I found that this novel did not truly have a plot. Through over 1100 pages, I never once remember thinking, "I can't wait to see what happens next!" The novel just plods along as a study of relationships. Another problem I had was that I had a hard time liking the main character of Anna Karenina. I didn't appreciate her actions, and struggled with the end of her story. Perhaps that was more of my life issues than her's, but either way, it soured the story for me.
    • 5/5
      It's hard to say anything original about a classic, but I would just say this is about lots of things besides romance, although that's in there. The major theme that interested me was the idea of self-centeredness and its destructive effects on relationships.
    • 5/5
      Joy's Review: I just loved the flow of the first half of this classic when the narrative moved seamlessly between characters and locations. After that, things often felt disjointed to me and I thought 100-150 pages shorter would have worked for me. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting a book I hadn't read since High School. All of the characters are so vivid and realistic; few are very likeable. I feel for Anna who had so few options in a society that so severely limited the options open to women and I often wanted to shake her. Most classics are that for a reason; if you've never read "Anna Karenina", pick it up!
    • 4/5
      Another that I don't have that much to say about, others have already said pretty much anything there is to say.Anna is an enjoyable read. It went a bit quicker than I anticipated given its length and age, but Tolstoy has written wonderful "real" characters, and while the nuances & laws may have changed somewhat over time, the experiences are still essentially the same. There's not really much plot, it's all about the people - the romances and heartbreaks, living life, contemplating life. I was slightly underwhelmed with the very end, I guess I was expecting something a bit more ...final, but after sleeping on it I'm a bit more content; it does make sense, given the nature of the entire book. It's good, easily recommended for those who like character-driven novels and/or Russian classics.
    • 3/5
      This book could happily have been ~300 pages long, so by the time Anna fell in front of the train I was rooting for it as a sign that the book was close to over.
    • 5/5
      This one was an unexpected delight for me. I was expecting a melodramatic romance and lots of “woe is me” bits. Instead I found a novel that delved into personal happiness vs. social expectations, religion, and Russian culture. The booked is packed with interesting characters, only one of which is mentioned in the title. Anna might be the headliner, but she’s certainly not the only act. The book really parallels the lives and journeys of two characters, Anna and Levin. At the beginning of the book Anna is optimistic. She travels to visit her family to help her brother put his marriage back together. By the end of the book her life has been thrown upside down and she loses her faith. Levin on the other hand is awkward and pessimistic. He’s in love, but has no idea how to go about wooing the woman he’s interested in. Throughout the book he finds solace in hard labor. Through his struggles and trails he finds his faith. He learns the meaning of true love and understands the difference a good woman makes to his life. Both characters seem to do a complete 180 by the end of the novel. There is so much more that I’m not even touching on. Tolstoy deals with the social customs at the time, the ease at which people can be welcomed or shunned from society and the rights women didn’t have during that time period, etc. He makes the reader consider the difference between momentary bliss and the sometimes sedate, but long-lasting joy of family, but at the same time he never makes it feel like a preachy cautionary tale. If you’re thinking about trying Tolstoy I would highly recommend starting here. There are fewer major characters than there are in War and Peace and the plot is easier to follow.
    • 4/5
      Preview… Although overall, Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” did not match my sky-high expectations for it, this novel is still worth recommending. The Ann Arbor Classics Book Group’s discussion of itboasted the highest turn-out in the group’s history, many members claiming the title as one of the best books they had ever read.The beauty of this story is that it is a work of parallels. The author gives three competing views of love and marriage through the stories of the Oblonskys, the Levins and the Karenins. Stiva and Dolly Oblonsky have a stable loveless marriage — and seven children to go with it — despite Stiva’s constant infidelity and prodigality. Some might say they offer comic relief in an otherwise very serious novel.After their strange and fragmented courtship, Konstantin and Kitty Levin have a very real and normal marriage. They grow closer as they explore the intricacies of their new matrimonial arrangement and how it affects the previous freedoms and pastimes they once exercised. The moment when these two characters discover they have mutual love for one another is one of the absolute sweetest moments in literature — you’ll have to read the story to experience this scene for yourself!Finally, the situation of the Karenins is the most complicated. Anna is married to a high-ranking political figure, Alexey. She is happy enough, until she finds ineffaceable passion with military man Vronsky. Ultimatley, Vronsky and Anna run off together after she almost dies giving birth to their illegitimate love child; all the while the two hope that Alexey will brook the social disgrace of his wife’s betrayal and grant her a divorce. The treatment of Vronsky and Anna presents the double-standard that was present in Russian society at the time. Even after the public becomes cognizant of their arrangement, Vronsky can still move in and out of society as he pleases, while Anna’s denigrated reputation greatly limited what she could and could not do.Throughout the novel, many of the characters search for profound happiness and a deeper meaning in life. Anna hopes to find fulfillment through love and passion. Sergei thinks his higher calling is intellectual enlightenment. Stiva believes happiness lies in revelry and debauchery. Alexey lets superstition overrun his life post-Anna. Levin, initially believing that ‘simplicity is bliss’, eventually finds meaning through a spiritual awakening; all other characters fall short — and some fall under the train — in their pursuits of happiness.You may like this book if… you enjoy societal critiques or feminist literature, you are devoutly spiritual, you enjoy a study in contrasts, you like peasants and farming, you appreciate Tolstoy’s very accurate portrayal of the inner workings of his characters, you like love stories that show how just how challenging being in love can be, you don’t want cookie-cutter characters or scenarios, you are patient and have a good attention span.You may not like this book if… you expect Tolstoy’s writing style and themes to be similar to those of other Russian greats, you get easily bored by long harangues regarding elements that are not so important to the story, you — like me — expect your Russian literature to be much more dark and depressing than this story is, you need your characters to be likable if you are going to spend so much time with them, you find it frustrating when characters in novels make very obvious and annoying mistakes, gender inequality pisses you off, you would have hoped that Anna Karenina could be portrayed more kindly if she is to be a paragon of female independence.
    • 5/5
      There are quite a few Madame Bovary type novels that revel in the details of a woman's weakness and then have her kill herself off as just self-inflicted punishment for her sins. Anna Karenina follows this general storyline but with a difference. I reread Anna Karenina after rereading War and Peace, and there is a connection in my mind. The most truly horrid characters in War and Peace are the incestuous siblings Helene and Anatole, physically beautiful, addicted to physical pleasure, willing to ruin the virtuous....Despite all her affairs, Helene, who does not want to have children, deliberately doesn't. She dies rather abruptly of an unnamed malady after refusing to see a good Russian doctor and relying on a suspect French physician. (One English translator thinks she died of a heart attack! Not likely.) There is no sympathy for her even in death. Anna Karenina is a more sympathetic version of Helene, also very beautiful, very physical, and heedless of the consequences. She loves her first child from her marriage, but is a negligent parent, and then is cold to the second child by her lover. When her lover Vronsky wants more children, she is opposed. "She explained his wish to have children by the fact that he did not value her beauty." Dolly is horrified to learn that Anna took medical steps to prevent having any more children. A woman who rejects her maternal role is lost. Tolstoy in both novels seems concerned about changes in Russian marriage patterns. He is explicit: the French system of family arranged marriages was not approved of in Russia, the British system of letting women decide whom to choose was impossible in Russia. When the old Russian tradition of matchmakers became laughable, there was no longer a clear path to a good marriage. A society that sanctions freely given love would mean allowing things like divorce and worse...medical advances might allow women to think differently about their fate. The novel works because Anna, unlike Helene, is hugely likeable. Her death is tragic. Unlike the movie version, the novel continues after Anna throws herself under a train. Because life goes on. Levin, who himself has had suicidal impulses, conquers them with a good marriage, choosing life, love, kids and -- farming (!). (All the agricultural stuff in both novels annoyed me when I was in college, now it seems more compelling, respect for mother earth.) What is remarkable is that misogynist that he is, Tolstoy still takes time to read the psychology of his female characters with great accuracy, incredible detail, and persuasive realism. And a certain gentle humor. My take is that Tolstoy anticipated the great social changes that were brewing and only really became a force in the 20th century. And he is saying something like "don't go there, it's not worth it, have kids, grow crops, cultivate your garden..." That sense of the impending future makes Anna Karenina much more interesting to me than all the Madame Bovary novels.
    • 4/5
      Of the innumerable characters in Anna Karenina, Kitty and Levin continue to resonate. Truthfully, I'm not sure I still remember why. The novel is a classic which definitely merits a reread.
    • 5/5
      I read Anna Karenina many years ago and although I have since read many other brilliant novels - many of them by famous Russian, French and English authors, nothing has ever eclipsed my love for this novel. It stands head and shoulders above most other works of literature, including Tolstoy's more famous War and Peace, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Hugo's Les Miserables.If you haven't read Anna Karenina, do yourself a huge favour, get yourself a copy and immerse yourself in it. You won't be disappointed!
    • 2/5
      Sorry to say this, but I really had to try hard to get through this. The characters were annoying and the story frustrating. I can see how that would be fun for some people, but it's not for me.
    • 3/5
      I chose this book to begin my program of Russian novels during the summer, mainly because of its reputation as Tolstoy's crowning glory and the favorite novel of countless writers. I was disappointed in Anna's storyline, mainly because I found her to be an irritating, rather than tragic, character. Much more rewarding for me was the storyline of Kitty and Levin. These characters saved what, for me, would otherwise have been a very long and mostly unrewarding book. I seem to differ from the majority of Russian literature fans in this opinion, but would without hesitation recommend that people interested in Tolstoy begin with War and Peace as opposed to Anna Karenina.
    • 5/5
      Words fail to describe the godlike magnitude of what Tolstoy has put into this book... There's just nothing I can say to do it justice. So I'll let my silence and reverence for Mr. Lev Tolstoy speak for it self.
    • 4/5
      Overall, I would say that I did enjoy this novel. It took me a whole 5 months to read it though. Many parts seem to be a little more drawn out and therefore caused my interest to dip a bit at times. I think I would have read it faster if I didn't try to read other books at the same time. When it came down to it, whatever other book I was reading was more interesting to me and therefore took precedence over this one, leaving it neglected.

    Book preview

    Anna Karenina (with an Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole) - Leo Tolstoy

    cover.jpg

    ANNA KARENINA

    By LEO TOLSTOY

    Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

    Introduction by

    NATHAN HASKELL DOLE

    Anna Karenina

    By Leo Tolstoy

    Translated by Constance Garnett

    Introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5158-5

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5159-2

    This edition copyright © 2015. Digireads.com Publishing.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

    Cover Image: A detail of the illustration Rendezvous by artist Zahar Pichugin which originally appeared in Anna Karenina, Moscow. Partnership Sytin. 1914.

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    Part 1

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 32

    Chapter 33

    Chapter 34

    Part 2

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 32

    Chapter 33

    Chapter 34

    Chapter 35

    Part 3

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 32

    Part 4

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Part 5

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 32

    Chapter 33

    Part 6

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 32

    Part 7

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Part 8

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Introduction

    Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet and the inspirer of the two best works of Gogol, the father of Russian realism, may perhaps be regarded as the direct cause of Count Tolstoy’s greatest novel. A relative happened to be visiting at Yasnaya Polyana, and had been reading a volume of Pushkin, Count Tolstoy picked up the work and opened it casually. Someone entered as he was glancing over the pages, and he exclaimed, Here is something charming! This is the way to write! Pushkin goes to the heart of the matter.

    Count Tolstoy was so impressed by Pushkin’s directness that he immediately felt like emulating him. He asked to be kept free from interruptions, shut himself into his library, and began Anna Karenina.

    The publication of it began in the Russky Viestnik or Russian Messenger in 1875; but it was frequently interrupted. Months and even years elapsed before it was concluded; yet it kept public attention. Not even the break of several months between two of the parts was sufficient to cool the interest of its reader. After the appearance of the first part he wrote a friend:—

    You praise ‘Anna Karenina,’ and that is very pleasant to me; the more so as I hear much in its favor; but I am sure that there never was an author more indifferent to his success than I am in this case.

    A year later he wrote:—

    For two whole months I have forborne to stain my hands with ink or to burden my heart with thoughts. Now, however, I turn once more to that dull commonplace ‘Anna Karenina,’ moved solely to rid my desk of it—to make room for other tasks.

    Even then he did not finish it. The next year he wrote: The end of winter and the opening of spring are my busiest months for work. I must finish the novel of which I have grown so tired. But when he once took hold of it the spirit of it quickly seized him again, and much of it was written, as anyone can see, with almost breathless haste.

    Polevoy, in his illustrated History of Russian Literature, says of this story: Count Tolstoy dwells with especial fondness on the sharp contrast between the frivolity, the tinsel brightness, the tumult and vanity, of the worldly life, and the sweet, holy calm enjoyed by those who, possessing the soil, live amid the beauties of Nature and the pleasures of the family.

    This contrast will strike the attention of every reader. It is the outgrowth of Count Tolstoy’s own life; his dual nature is portrayed in the contrasting careers of Levin and Vronsky. The interweaving of two stories is done with a masterly hand. One may take them separately or together; each strand of the twisted rope follows its own course, and yet each without the other would be evidently incomplete.

    As one reads, one forgets that it is fiction. It seems like a transcript of real life, and one is constantly impressed by the vast accumulation of pictures, each illustrating and explaining the vital elements of the épopée. At times one is startled by the vivifying flashes of genius. The death of Anna is dimly suggested by the tragic occurrence of the brakeman’s death in the Moscow railway station. A still more suggestive intimation of the approaching tragedy is found in the death of Vronsky’s horse during the officers’ handicap race at Peterhof. If one may so speak, the atmosphere of the story is electrified with fate. In this respect it is like a Greek drama. There is never a false touch.

    Count Tolstoy’s brother-in-law says there is no doubt that Levin is the portrait of the novelist himself, but represented as being extremely simple in order to bring him into still greater contrast with the representatives of high life in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He also says that the description of the way that Levin and Kitty make use of the initial letters of the words in which they wish to express to each other their mutual love is faithful in its minutest details to the history of Count Tolstoy’s own wooing. And undoubtedly many of the experiences of Levin on his estate are also transcripts of Count Tolstoy’s own experiences.

    Tolstoy, like Levin, sought to reform and, to better everything about him, and took part in the Liberal movements of the time; but his schemes came to naught, one after the other, and his nihilism,—for he declares in his confession that he was a Nihilist in the actual meaning of the word,—his nihilism triumphs in bitterness on their ruins. The struggle in Levin’s mind and the horror of his despair tempting him also to suicide are marvelously depicted. At length, as in Tolstoy’s real life, the muzhik comes to his aid, light illumines his soul, and the work ends in a burst of mystic happiness, a hymn of joy, which he sings to his inmost soul, not sharing it with his beloved wife, though he knows that she knows the secret of his happiness.

    Interesting and instructive as this idyllic romance is, the chief power of the novelist is expended in portraying the illicit love of Vronsky and Anna. Its moral is the opposition of duty to passion. It has been said that the love that unites the two protagonists is sincere, deep, almost holy despite its illegality. They were born for each other; it was love at first sight, a love which overleapt all bonds and bounds. But its gratification at the expense of honor brings the inevitable torment, especially to the woman who had sacrificed so much. The agony of remorse, intensified by the mortifications and humiliations caused by her position, unites itself with an almost insane jealousy, product also of the unstable relation in which she is placed. At last the union becomes so irksome, so painful, so hateful, that the only escape from it is in suicide.

    Count Tolstoy manages with consummate skill to retain his own respect for the guilty woman. Consequently the reader’s love and sympathy for the unhappy woman never flag. He lays bare each throb of her tortured heart. He is the Parrhasius of novelists.

    Mr. Howells says: The warmth and light of Tolstoy’s good heart and right mind are seen in ‘Anna Karenina,’ that saddest story of guilty love in which nothing can save the sinful woman from herself,—not her husband’s forgiveness, her friend’s compassion, her lover’s constancy, or the long intervals of quiet in which she seems safe and happy in her sin. It is she who destroys herself persistently, step by step, in spite of all help and forbearance; and yet we are never allowed to forget how good and generous she was when we first met her; how good and generous she is fitfully, and more and more rarely to the end. Her lover works out a sort of redemption through his patience and devotion; he grows gentler, wiser, worthier through it; but even his good destroys her.

    Mr. Howells also comments on the extraordinary vitality of the work.

    A multitude of figures pass before us, he says, recognizably real, never caricatured nor grotesqued, nor in any way unduly accented, but simple and actual in their evil or their good. There is lovely family life, the tenderness of father and daughter, the rapture of young wife and husband, the innocence of girlhood, the beauty of fidelity; there is the unrest and folly of fashion, the misery of wealth, and the wretchedness of wasted and mistaken life, the hollowness of ambition, the cheerful emptiness of some hearts, the dull emptiness of others. It is a world, and you live in it while you read and long afterward, but at no step have you been betrayed, not because your guide has warned or exalted you, but because he has been true, and has shown you all things as they are.

    It is hardly worthwhile to particularize the immortal scenes with which the panoramic canvas is crowded, though the Vicomte de Vogue characterizes the deathbed scene of Nikolai Levin as one of the most finished masterpieces of which literature has reason to be proud, and the description of the races at Tsarskoye-Selo, apart from its tragic moment, is amazing for its vividness and beauty. Indeed, there are dozens of wonderful pictures of life and death in the story. And no translation, however faithful, can do justice to the quiet humor packed away often in a single word of the staccato muzhik dialect, which no one ever handled more successfully than Count Tolstoy.

    NATHAN HASKELL DOLE

    1899.

    Part 1

    Chapter 1

    Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

    Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.

    Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

    Yes, yes, how was it now? he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he remembered.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that was delightful, only there’s no putting it into words, or even expressing it in one’s thoughts awake. And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.

    Ah, ah, ah! Oo!... he muttered, recalling everything that had happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his own fault.

    Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—all my fault, though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of the whole situation, he reflected. Oh, oh, oh! he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.

    Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.

    She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation.

    What’s this? this? she asked, pointing to the letter.

    And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife’s words.

    There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.

    This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.

    It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all, thought Stepan Arkadyevitch.

    But what’s to be done? What’s to be done? he said to himself in despair, and found no answer.

    Chapter 2

    Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.

    Oh, it’s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful! Stepan Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It’s true it’s bad her having been a governess in our house. That’s bad! There’s something common, vulgar, in flirting with one’s governess. But what a governess! (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she’s already...it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?"

    There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily life.

    Then we shall see, Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.

    Are there any papers from the office? asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.

    On the table, replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, They’ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes asked: Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?

    Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.

    I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or themselves for nothing, he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence beforehand.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through, guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face brightened.

    Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow, he said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink path through his long, curly whiskers.

    Thank God! said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his master, realized the significance of this arrival—that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation between husband and wife.

    Alone, or with her husband? inquired Matvey.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.

    Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?

    Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.

    Darya Alexandrovna? Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.

    Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do what she tells you.

    You want to try it on, Matvey understood, but he only said, Yes sir.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.

    Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let him do—that is you—do as he likes, he said, laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome face.

    Eh, Matvey? he said, shaking his head.

    It’s all right, sir; she will come round, said Matvey.

    Come round?

    Yes, sir.

    Do you think so? Who’s there? asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, hearing the rustle of a woman’s dress at the door.

    It’s I, said a firm, pleasant, woman’s voice, and the stern, pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at the doorway.

    Well, what is it, Matrona? queried Stepan Arkadyevitch, going up to her at the door.

    Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as regards his wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost every one in the house (even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna’s chief ally) was on his side.

    Well, what now? he asked disconsolately.

    Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She is suffering so, it’s sad to hee her; and besides, everything in the house is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children. Beg her forgiveness, sir. There’s no help for it! One must take the consequences...

    But she won’t see me.

    You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to God.

    Come, that’ll do, you can go, said Stepan Arkadyevitch, blushing suddenly. Well now, do dress me. He turned to Matvey and threw off his dressing-gown decisively.

    Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s collar, and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure over the well-groomed body of his master.

    Chapter 3

    When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee, letters and papers from the office.

    He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was buying a forest on his wife’s property. To sell this forest was absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the forest—that idea hurt him.

    When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp morning paper, and began reading it.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress, etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quick-wittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna’s advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

    But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew thoughtful.

    Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.

    I told you not to sit passengers on the roof, said the little girl in English; there, pick them up!

    Everything’s in confusion, thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; there are the children running about by themselves. And going to the door, he called them. They threw down the box, that represented a train, and came in to their father.

    The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him, and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her father held her back.

    How is mamma? he asked, passing his hand over his daughter’s smooth, soft little neck. Good morning, he said, smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a smile to his father’s chilly smile.

    Mamma? She is up, answered the girl.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. That means that she’s not slept again all night, he thought.

    Well, is she cheerful?

    The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and blushed too.

    I don’t know, she said. She did not say we must do our lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma’s.

    Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though, he said, still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

    He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.

    For Grisha? said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.

    Yes, yes. And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.

    The carriage is ready, said Matvey; but there’s some one to see you with a petition.

    Been here long? asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

    Half an hour.

    How many times have I told you to tell me at once?

    One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least, said Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be angry.

    Well, show the person up at once, said Oblonsky, frowning with vexation.

    The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his large, sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a personage who might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff captain’s widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget—his wife.

    Ah, yes! He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed expression. To go, or not to go! he said to himself; and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.

    It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this, he said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing room, and opened the other door into his wife’s bedroom.

    Chapter 4

    Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her husband’s steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in these last three days—to sort out the children’s things and her own, so as to take them to her mother’s—and again she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying to herself, that things cannot go on like this, that she must take some step to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this was impossible; it was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him. Besides this, she realized that if even here in her own house she could hardly manage to look after her five children properly, they would be still worse off where she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the day before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she was going.

    Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau as though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a severe and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.

    Dolly! he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed with health and freshness. Yes, he is happy and content! she thought; while I.... And that disgusting good nature, which every one likes him for and praises—I hate that good nature of his, she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

    What do you want? she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

    Dolly! he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. Anna is coming today.

    Well, what is that to me? I can’t see her! she cried.

    But you must, really, Dolly...

    Go away, go away, go away! she shrieked, not looking at him, as though this shriek were called up by physical pain.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, and could quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.

    My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God’s sake!.... You know.... He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

    She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

    Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing: forgive...Remember, cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant....

    She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe differently.

    —instant of passion? he said, and would have gone on, but at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

    Go away, go out of the room! she shrieked still more shrilly, and don’t talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness.

    She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were swimming with tears.

    Dolly! he said, sobbing now; for mercy’s sake, think of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!

    She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak, but could not. He waited.

    You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember them, and know that this means their ruin, she said—obviously one of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.

    She had called him Stiva, and he glanced at her with gratitude, and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

    I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the world to save them, but I don’t myself know how to save them. By taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious father—yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after what...has happened, can we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible? she repeated, raising her voice, after my husband, the father of my children, enters into a love affair with his own children’s governess?

    But what could I do? what could I do? he kept saying in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and lower.

    You are loathsome to me, repulsive! she shrieked, getting more and more heated. Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger—yes, a complete stranger! With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself—stranger.

    He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. No, she hates me. She will not forgive me, he thought.

    It is awful! awful! he said.

    At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly softened.

    She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though she did not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting up rapidly, she moved towards the door.

    Well, she loves my child, he thought, noticing the change of her face at the child’s cry, my child: how can she hate me?

    Dolly, one word more, he said, following her.

    If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children! They may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you may live here with your mistress!

    And she went out, slamming the door.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread walked out of the room. Matvey says she will come round; but how? I don’t see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how vulgarly she shouted, he said to himself, remembering her shriek and the words—scoundrel and mistress. And very likely the maids were listening! Horribly vulgar! horrible! Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the room.

    It was Friday, and in the dining room the German watchmaker was winding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this punctual, bald watchmaker, that the German was wound up for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches, and he smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: "And maybe she will come round! That’s a good expression, ‘come round,’ he thought. I must repeat that."

    Matvey! he shouted. Arrange everything with Darya in the sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna, he said to Matvey when he came in.

    Yes, sir.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the steps.

    You won’t dine at home? said Matvey, seeing him off.

    That’s as it happens. But here’s for the housekeeping, he said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. That’ll be enough.

    Enough or not enough, we must make it do, said Matvey, slamming the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.

    Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the household cares which crowded upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, the English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay, and which only she could answer: What were the children to put on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?

    Ah, let me alone, let me alone! she said, and going back to her bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when talking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the conversation. He has gone! But has he broken it off with her? she thought. Can it be he sees her? Why didn’t I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers—strangers forever! She repeated again with special significance the word so dreadful to her. And how I loved him! my God, how I loved him!.... How I loved him! And now don’t I love him? Don’t I love him more than before? The most horrible thing is, she began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in at the door.

    Let us send for my brother, she said; he can get a dinner anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again, like yesterday.

    Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you send for some new milk?

    And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and drowned her grief in them for a time.

    Chapter 5

    Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and therefore was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of his habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the service, and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative position of president of one of the government boards at Moscow. This post he had received through his sister Anna’s husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in the ministry to whose department the Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin had not got his brother- in-law this berth, then through a hundred other personages—brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts—Stiva Oblonsky would have received this post, or some other similar one, together with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for him, as his affairs, in spite of his wife’s considerable property, were in an embarrassed condition.

    Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those who had been and are the powerful ones of this world. One-third of the men in the government, the older men, had been friends of his father’s, and had known him in petticoats; another third were his intimate chums, and the remainder were friendly acquaintances. Consequently the distributors of earthly blessings in the shape of places, rents, shares, and such, were all his friends, and could not overlook one of their own set; and Oblonsky had no need to make any special exertion to get a lucrative post. He had only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to be quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his characteristic good nature he never did. It would have struck him as absurd if he had been told that he would not get a position with the salary he required, especially as he expected nothing out of the way; he only wanted what the men of his own age and standing did get, and he was no worse qualified for performing duties of the kind than any other man.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for his good humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black hair and eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good humor on the people who met him. Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! Here he is! was almost always said with a smile of delight on meeting him. Even though it happened at times that after a conversation with him it seemed that nothing particularly delightful had happened, the next day, and the next, every one was just as delighted at meeting him again.

    After filling for three years the post of president of one of the government boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevitch had won the respect, as well as the liking, of his fellow-officials, subordinates, and superiors, and all who had had business with him. The principal qualities in Stepan Arkadyevitch which had gained him this universal respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his extreme indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism—not the liberalism he read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the same, whatever their fortune or calling might be; and thirdly—the most important point—his complete indifference to the business in which he was engaged, in consequence of which he was never carried away, and never made mistakes.

    On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch, escorted by a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private room, put on his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as ever, to his place, shook hands with his colleagues, and sat down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference common to every one in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s office, came up with papers, and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been introduced by Stepan Arkadyevitch.

    We have succeeded in getting the information from the government department of Penza. Here, would you care?....

    You’ve got them at last? said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying his finger on the paper. Now, gentlemen....

    And the sitting of the board began.

    If they knew, he thought, bending his head with a significant air as he listened to the report, what a guilty little boy their president was half an hour ago. And his eyes were laughing during the reading of the report. Till two o’clock the sitting would go on without a break, and at two o’clock there would be an interval and luncheon.

    It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom suddenly opened and someone came in.

    All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the intruder, and closed the glass door after him.

    When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of the members of the board, the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and the Kammerjunker Grinevitch, went in with him.

    We shall have time to finish after lunch, said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

    To be sure we shall! said Nikitin.

    A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be, said Grinevitch of one of the persons taking part in the case they were examining.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch’s words, giving him thereby to understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and made him no reply.

    Who was that came in? he asked the doorkeeper.

    Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come out, then...

    Where is he?

    Maybe he’s gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway. That is he, said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built, broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the stone staircase. One of the members going down—a lean official with a portfolio—stood out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger, then glanced inquiringly at Oblonsky.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.

    Why, it’s actually you, Levin, at last! he said with a friendly mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. How is it you have deigned to look me up in this den? said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and not content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. Have you been here long?

    I have just come, and very much wanted to see you, said Levin, looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.

    Well, let’s go into my room, said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who knew his friend’s sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew him along, as though guiding him through dangers.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky, something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was not a disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt that Levin fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with him before his subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off into his room.

    Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other’s career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.

    We have long been expecting you, said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going into his room and letting Levin’s hand go as though to show that here all danger was over. I am very, very glad to see you, he went on. Well, how are you? Eh? When did you come?

    Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Oblonsky’s two companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch, which had such long white fingers, such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and such huge shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they absorbed all his attention, and allowed him no freedom of thought. Oblonsky noticed this at once, and smiled.

    Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you, he said. My colleagues: Philip Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch Grinevitch—and turning to Levin—a district councilor, a modern district councilman, a gymnast who lifts thirteen stone with one hand, a cattle-breeder and sportsman, and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, the brother of Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev.

    Delighted, said the veteran.

    I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, said Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.

    Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky. Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well known to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him not as Konstantin Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.

    No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with them all, and don’t go to the meetings any more, he said, turning to Oblonsky.

    You’ve been quick about it! said Oblonsky with a smile. But how? why?

    It’s a long story. I will tell you some time, said Levin, but he began telling him at once. Well, to put it shortly, I was convinced that nothing was really done by the district councils, or ever could be, he began, as though some one had just insulted him. On one side it’s a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I’m neither young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the other side (he stammered) it’s a means for the coterie of the district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the district council—not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned salary, he said, as hotly as though someone of those present had opposed his opinion.

    Aha! You’re in a new phase again, I see—a conservative, said Stepan Arkadyevitch. However, we can go into that later.

    Yes, later. But I wanted to see you, said Levin, looking with hatred at Grinevitch’s hand.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.

    "How was it you used to say you would never

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