by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
‘So charming! He succeeded so well and so simply! He doesn’t understand how good it is. Yes, we must buy it and not let it slip,’ said Vronsky.
XIII
Mikhailov sold Vronsky his little painting and agreed to do Anna’s portrait. On the appointed day he came and set to work.
From the fifth sitting the portrait struck everyone, especially Vronsky, not only by its likeness but by its special beauty. It was strange how Mikhailov was able to find this special beauty in her. ‘One would have to know her and love her as I do to find that sweetest inner expression of hers,’ thought Vronsky, though he had learned of that sweetest inner expression of hers only from this portrait. But the expression was so true that he and others thought they had always known it.
‘I’ve been struggling for so long and have done nothing,’ he said of his own portrait, ‘and he just looked and started painting. That’s what technique means.’
‘It will come,’ Golenishchev comforted him. To his mind, Vronsky had talent and, above all, education, which gives one an exalted view of art. Golenishchev’s conviction of Vronsky’s talent was also supported by the fact that he needed Vronsky’s sympathy and praise for his articles and thoughts, and felt that praise and support ought to be mutual.
In other people’s houses, and especially in Vronsky’s palazzo, Mikhailov was quite a different man than he was at home in his studio. He showed an unfriendly deference, as if wary of getting close to people he did not respect. He called Vronsky ‘your highness’ and, despite Anna’s and Vronsky’s invitations, never stayed for dinner, but came only for the sittings. Anna was nicer to him than to others, and was grateful for her portrait. Vronsky was more than polite, and was obviously interested in the artist’s opinion of his painting. Golenishchev never missed an opportunity to instil true notions of art into Mikhailov. But Mikhailov remained equally cold to them all. Anna felt from his eyes that he liked looking at her; but he avoided talking with her. To Vronsky’s talk about his art he remained stubbornly silent, and he remained as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky’s picture and, obviously burdened by Golenishchev’s talk, did not contradict him.
Generally, once they got to know him better, they very much disliked Mikhailov, with his reserved and unpleasant, as if hostile, attitude. And they were glad when the sittings were over, the wonderful portrait was left with them and he stopped coming.
Golenishchev was the first to voice a thought they all had – namely, that Mikhailov was simply envious of Vronsky.
‘Or let’s say, not envious, because he has talent; but it vexes him that a courtier and a wealthy man, who is also a count (they do hate all that), without much effort does the same, if not better, as he who has devoted his life to it. Above all, it’s education that he lacks.’
Vronsky defended Mikhailov, but in the depths of his soul he believed it, because to his mind a man of a different, inferior world had to be envious.
Anna’s portrait, the same subject painted from nature by himself and by Mikhailov, ought to have shown Vronsky the difference between himself and Mikhailov. But he did not see it. He merely stopped painting Anna’s portrait after Mikhailov finished, deciding that it was now superfluous. However, he went on with his painting from medieval life. And he himself, and Golenishchev, and especially Anna, found it very good because it looked much more like famous pictures than Mikhailov’s picture did.
Mikhailov, meanwhile, though he had been much taken up with the portrait of Anna, was even more glad than they were when the sittings ended and he did not have to listen to Golenishchev’s talk about art anymore and could forget about Vronsky’s painting. He knew it was impossible to forbid Vronsky to toy with painting; he knew that he and all the dilettantes had every right to paint whatever they liked, but he found it unpleasant. It was impossible to forbid a man to make a big wax doll and kiss it. But if this man with the doll came and sat in front of a man in love and began to caress his doll the way the man in love caressed his beloved, the man in love would find it unpleasant. Mikhailov experienced the same unpleasant feeling at the sight of Vronsky’s painting; he felt it ridiculous, vexing, pathetic and offensive.
Vronsky’s enthusiasm for painting and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture. The picture came to a stop. He vaguely felt that its defects, little noticeable in the beginning, would become striking if he went on. The same thing happened with him as with Golenishchev, who felt he had nothing to say and kept deceiving himself by saying that his thought had not ripened, that he was nurturing it and preparing his materials. But Golenishchev was embittered and tormented by it, while Vronsky could not deceive and torment himself, still less become embittered. With his peculiar resoluteness of character, without explaining anything or justifying himself, he ceased to occupy himself with painting.
But without this occupation his life and Anna’s, who was surprised by his disappointment, seemed so boring to him in this Italian town, the palazzo suddenly became so obviously old and dirty, so unpleasant the sight of the stains on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the chipped stucco of the cornices, and so boring became this ever–the–same Golenishchev, the Italian professor, and the German traveller, that a change of life was necessary. They decided to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Vronsky intended to make a division of property with his brother, and Anna to see her son. The summer they planned to spend on Vronsky’s big family estate.
XIV
Levin had been married for three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected. At every step he found disenchantment with his old dream and a new, unexpected enchantment. He was happy, but, having entered upon family life, he saw at every step that it was not what he had imagined. At every step he felt like a man who, after having admired a little boat going smoothly and happily on a lake, then got into this boat. He saw that it was not enough to sit straight without rocking; he also had to keep in mind, not forgetting for a minute, where he was going, that there was water underneath, that he had to row and his unaccustomed hands hurt, that it was easy only to look at, but doing it, while very joyful, was also very difficult.
As a bachelor, seeing the married life of others, their trifling cares, quarrels, jealousy, he used only to smile scornfully to himself. In his own future married life, he was convinced, there not only could be nothing like that, but even all its external forms, it seemed to him, were bound to be in every way completely unlike other people’s lives. And suddenly, instead of that, his life with his wife did not form itself in any special way, but was, on the contrary, formed entirely of those insignificant trifles he had scorned so much before, but which now, against his will, acquired an extraordinary and irrefutable significance. And Levin saw that to arrange all those trifles was by no means as easy as it had seemed to him before. Though he had thought that he had the most precise notions of family life, he had, like all men, involuntarily pictured it to himself only as the enjoyment of love, which nothing should hinder and from which trifling cares should not detract. He was supposed, as he understood it, to do his work and to rest from it in the happiness of love. She was supposed to be loved and only that. But, like all men, he had forgotten that she also needed to work. And he was surprised at how she, this poetic, lovely Kitty, in the very first, not weeks, but days of married life, could think, remember and fuss about tablecloths, furniture, mattresses for guests, about a tray, the cook, the dinner and so on. While still her fiancé, he had been struck by the definitiveness with which she had renounced going abroad and decided to go to the country, as if she knew something necessary and, besides her love, could still think of extraneous things. This had offended him then, and now, too, her petty fussing and cares several times offended him. But he saw that she needed it. And loving her as he did, though he did not understand why, though he chuckled at those cares, he could not help admiring them. He chuckled at her arranging the furniture brought from Moscow, decorating her room a
nd his in a new way, hanging curtains, assigning future quarters for guests, for Dolly, setting up quarters for her new maid, giving the old cook orders for dinner, getting into arguments with Agafya Mikhailovna, dismissing her from her charge of the provisions. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders; he saw how Agafya Mikhailovna thoughtfully and gently shook her head at the young mistress’s new instructions in the pantry; he saw how extraordinarily sweet Kitty was when she came to him, laughing and crying, to tell him that the maid Masha kept treating her like a young girl and because of it no one listened to her. It seemed sweet to him but strange, and he thought it would have been better without it.
He did not know that feeling of change she was experiencing after living at home, where she would sometimes want cabbage with kvass or sweets, and could not have either, while now she could order whatever she liked, buy heaps of sweets, spend any amount of money and order any pastry she wanted.
She now dreamed joyfully of Dolly’s coming with the children, especially because she was going to order each child’s favourite pastry, and Dolly would appreciate all her new arrangements. She did not know why or what for, but housekeeping attracted her irresistibly. Instinctively sensing the approach of spring and knowing there would also be bad weather, she was building her nest as best she could, hastening both to build it and to learn how it was done.
This trifling preoccupation of Kitty’s, so opposite to Levin’s ideal of the exalted happiness of the initial period, was one of his disenchantments; yet this sweet preoccupation, the meaning of which he did not understand but which he could not help loving, was one of his new enchantments.
Their quarrels were another disenchantment and enchantment. Levin never imagined that there could be any other relations between himself and his wife than tender, respectful, loving ones, and suddenly, in the very first days, they quarrelled, and she told him he did not love her, loved only himself, wept and waved her hands.
This first quarrel occurred because Levin went to a new farmstead and came back half an hour late, having lost his way trying to take a shortcut. He was returning home thinking only of her, of her love, of his happiness, and the closer he came to home the more ardent his tenderness for her grew. He rushed into the room with the same feeling and even stronger than when he had gone to the Shcherbatskys’ to propose. And suddenly he was met with a sullen expression he had never seen in her. He wanted to kiss her, but she pushed him away.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’re having fun …’ she began, trying to be calmly venomous.
But she no sooner opened her mouth than reproachful words of senseless jealousy, all that had tortured her during the half hour she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from her. Only then did he understand clearly for the first time what he had not understood when he had led her out of the church after the wedding. He understood not only that she was close to him, but that he no longer knew where she ended and he began. He understood it by the painful feeling of being split which he experienced at that moment. He was offended at first, but in that same instant he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was him. In the first moment he felt like a man who, having suddenly received a violent blow from behind, turns with vexation and a desire for revenge to find out who did it, and realizes that he has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with and he must endure and ease the pain.
Never afterwards did he feel it so strongly, but this first time it took him long to recover. Natural feeling demanded that he vindicate himself, prove to her that she was wrong; but to prove that she was wrong would mean to upset her still more and make the breach that had caused all the trouble still wider. One habitual feeling urged him to shift the blame from himself to her; another, stronger one urged him quickly, as quickly as possible, to smooth over the breach and keep it from growing bigger. To remain under so unjust an accusation was tormenting, but to hurt her by vindicating himself was still worse. Like a man suffering from pain while half asleep, he wanted to tear off, to throw away the sore spot and, coming to his senses, found that the sore spot was himself. He could only try to help the sore spot to suffer through it, and that he did.
They made peace. Realizing that she was wrong, but not saying so, she became more tender towards him, and they experienced a new, redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not keep such confrontations from being repeated and even quite frequently, for the most unexpected and insignificant causes. These confrontations also often took place because they did not yet know what was important for the other and because during this initial time they were both often in bad spirits. When one was in good and the other in bad spirits, the peace was not broken, but when both happened to be in bad spirits, confrontations occurred for such incomprehensibly insignificant reasons that afterwards they were simply unable to remember what they had quarrelled over. True, when both were in good spirits, their joy of life was doubled. But all the same this initial period was a difficult time for them.
Throughout this time they sensed especially keenly the tension, the tugging to one side and the other, of the chain that bound them. Generally, that honeymoon – that is, the month following the wedding, from which, by tradition, Levin had expected so much – not only had no honey in it, but remained in both their memories as the most difficult and humiliating time of their life. They both tried equally in later life to cross out of their recollections all the ugly, shameful circumstances of that unhealthy time when they were rarely in a normal state, were rarely themselves.
Only in the third month of marriage, after their return from Moscow where they had gone for a month, did their life become smoother.
XV
They had only just come back from Moscow and were glad of their solitude. He was sitting at the desk in his study writing. She, in that dark lilac dress she had worn in the first days after their marriage and had now put on again, and which was especially memorable and dear to him, was sitting on the sofa, that same old leather sofa that had always stood in the study of Levin’s father and grandfather, and doing broderie anglaise. He thought and wrote, rejoicing all the while at the feeling of her presence. He had not given up work either on the estate or on his book, which was to explain the principles of a new way of farming; but as this work and thought had once appeared small and insignificant to him compared to the darkness that covered his whole life, so now, too, they appeared unimportant and small compared to the life flooded with the bright light of happiness that lay before him. He continued his occupations, but he now felt that the centre of gravity of his attention had shifted elsewhere, and owing to that he looked at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly his work had been a salvation from life for him. Formerly he had felt that without it his life would have been too bleak. But now this work was necessary to him so that life would not be so uniformly bright. Taking up his papers again, rereading what he had written, he was pleased to find that the thing was worth working on. It was new and useful. Many of his former thoughts seemed superfluous and extreme, but many gaps became clear to him as he refreshed the whole thing in his memory. He was now writing a new chapter on the reasons for the unprofitable state of agriculture in Russia. He maintained that Russia’s poverty came not only from an incorrect distribution of landed property and a false orientation, but had recently been contributed to by an alien civilization abnormally grafted on to Russia, particularly by the means of communication and the railways, entailing a centralization in cities, the development of luxury and, as a result of that, to the detriment of agriculture, the development of factory industry, of credit and its companion – the stock exchange. It seemed to him that when the wealth of a state develops normally, all these phenomena occur only after considerable labour has already been invested in agriculture, after it has arrived at the correct or at least at definite conditions; that the wealth of a country should grow uniformly and, in particular, so that other bran
ches of wealth do not outstrip agriculture; that, in conformity with a given state of agriculture, there should exist corresponding means of communication, and that considering our incorrect use of the land, the railways, brought about not by economic but by political necessity, were premature and, instead of contributing to agriculture, which was what they were expected to do, had outstripped agriculture and halted it, causing the development of industry and credit, and that therefore, just as the one–sided and premature development of one organ in an animal would hinder its general development, so credit, the means of communication, the increase of factory industry – though undoubtedly necessary in Europe, where their time had come – here in Russia only harmed the general development of wealth by setting aside the main, immediate question of the organization of agriculture.