Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 2 of 253 · 20 per page

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  What are the signs of true masculine love? Copyright restrictions won’t allow us to quote the song’s lyric in full, but most readers know the words by heart anyway. To review, when a man loves a woman: He becomes obsessed and can’t think of anything else. He’ll exchange anything, even the world, for her company. He’s blind to any fault she may have, and will abandon even his closest friend if that friend tries to warn him about her. He’ll spend all his money trying to hold her attention. And last but not least, he’ll sleep in the rain if she tells him to. We’d like to suggest an alternative title for this song: “When a Man Becomes Pathologically Obsessed and Sacrifices All Self-Respect and Dignity by Making a Complete Ass of Himself (and Losing the Woman Anyway Because Really, Who Wants a Boyfriend Who Sleeps Out in the Rain Because Someone Told Him To?).” Similarly, “Every Breath You Take” sits at a respectable number 84 on Rolling Stone’s list of all-time great songs. One of the biggest hits of 1983, the song topped the U.K. charts for a month and the U.S. charts for two. It won Song of the Year, and The Police won that year’s Grammy for Best Pop Performance. To date, the song has logged in over ten million registered air plays on radio stations around the world. Again, we’re assuming you know the words. But have you ever really listened to them? Though often held up as one of the great love songs of all time, “Every Breath You Take” is not about love at all. Sung from the perspective of a man who’s been rejected by a woman who refuses to acknowledge that she “belongs” to him, he says he’s going to follow her every step, watch her every move, see who she spends the night with, and so on. This a love song? It should be #1 on Billboard’s ranking of “Crazed & Dangerous Stalker Songs.” Even Sting, who wrote the song after awakening in the middle of the night when the line “every breath you take / every move you make” bubbled up from his subconscious, didn’t realize until later “how sinister [the song] is.” He suggested in an interview that he may have been thinking of George Orwell’s 1984 —a novel about surveillance and control—certainly not love. So is jealousy natural? It depends. Fear is certainly natural, and like any other kind of insecurity, jealousy is an expression of fear. But whether or not someone else’s sex life provokes fear depends on how sex is defined in a given society, relationship, and individual’s personality.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  But nobody’s very clear what all this incessant war was over. Despite his certainty that foragers’ lives were plagued by “constant warfare,” Wade acknowledges that “ancestral people lived in small egalitarian societies, without property, or leaders or differences of rank….” So we’re to understand that egalitarian, nonhierarchical, nomadic groups without property … were constantly at war? Hunter-gatherer societies, possessing so little and thus with so little to lose (other than their lives), living on a wide-open planet were nothing like the densely populated, settled societies struggling over dwindling or accumulated resources in more recent historical times. 3 Why would they be? We’ve no space for a comprehensive response to this aspect of the standard Hobbesian narrative, but we’ve selected three well-known figures associated with it for a closer look at their arguments and data: evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker, the revered primatologist Jane Goodall, and the world’s most famous living anthropologist, Napoleon Chagnon. 4 Professor Pinker, Red in Tooth and Claw Imagine a high-profile expert stands before a distinguished audience and argues that Asians are warlike people. In support of his argument, he presents statistics from seven countries: Argentina, Poland, Ireland, Nigeria, Canada, Italy, and Russia. “Wait a minute,” you might say, “those aren’t even Asian countries—except, possibly, Russia.” The expert would be laughed off the stage—as he should be. In 2007, world-famous Harvard professor and best-selling author Steven Pinker gave a presentation built upon similarly flawed logic at the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in Long Beach, California. 5 Pinker’s presentation provides both a concise statement of the neo-Hobbesian view of the origins of war and an illuminating look at the dubious rhetorical tactics often used to promote this bloodstained vision of our prehistory. The twenty-minute talk is available at the TED website. 6 We encourage you to watch at least the first five minutes (dealing with prehistory) before reading the following discussion. Go ahead. We’ll wait here. Though Pinker spends less than 10 percent of his time discussing hunter-gatherers (a social configuration, you’ll recall, that represents well over 95 percent of our time on the planet), he manages to make a real mess of things. Three and a half minutes into his talk, Pinker presents a chart based on Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. The chart shows “the percentage of male deaths due to warfare in a number of foraging or hunting and gathering societies.” He explains that the chart shows that hunter-gatherer males were far more likely to die in war than are men living today. But hold on. Take a closer look at that chart. It lists seven “hunter-gatherer” cultures as representative of prehistoric war-related male death. The seven cultures listed are the Jivaro, two branches of Yanomami, the Mae Enga, Dugum Dani, Murngin, Huli, and Gebusi. The Jivaro and both Yanomami groups are from the Amazon region, the Murngin are from northern coastal Australia, and the other four are all from the conflict-ridden, densely populated highlands of Papua New Guinea.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  It signifies “a powerful nonhuman with deeply disturbed tendencies and wild eccentricities.” 33 Since 1995, Chagnon has been legally barred from returning to the lands of the Yanomami. When anthropologist Leslie Sponsel lived among the Yanomami in the mid-1970s, he saw no warfare, just one physical fight, and heard a few loud marital disputes. “To my surprise,” writes Sponsel, “people in [my] village and three neighboring villages were simply nothing like ‘the fierce people’ described by Chagnon.” Sponsel had brought along a copy of Chagnon’s book, with its photos of fighting Yanomami warriors, as a way to explain the sort of work he was doing. “Although some of the men were absorbed by the pictures,” he writes, “I was asked not to show them to children as they provided examples of undesirable behavior. These Yanomami,” Sponsel concluded, “did not value fierceness in any positive way.” 34 For his part, in over a decade living among them, Good witnessed a single outbreak of war. He cut his association with Chagnon eventually, having concluded the emphasis on Yanomami violence was “contrived and distorted.” Good later wrote that Chagnon’s book had “blown the subject out of any sane proportion,” arguing that “what he had done was tantamount to saying that New Yorkers are muggers and murderers.” The Desperate Search for Hippie Hypocrisy and Bonobo Brutality For a certain kind of journalist (or evolutionary psychologist), nothing is more satisfying than exposing hippie hypocrisy. A recent headline from Reuters reads, “Hippie Apes Make War as Well as Love, Study Finds.” 35 The article states, “Despite their reputation as lovers, not fighters, of the primate world, bonobos actually hunt and kill monkeys….” Another assures us that “Despite ‘Peacenik’ Reputation, Bonobos Hunt and Eat Other Primates Too.” A third, under the headline “Sex Crazed Apes Feast on Killing, Too,” opens with an audible sneer: “As hippies had Altamont [where Hell’s Angels killed a concert-goer], so bonobos have Salonga National Park, where scientists have witnessed the supposedly peace-loving primate hunting and eating monkey children.” “Sex crazed”? “Supposedly peace-loving”? “Eating monkey children”? Do monkeys have “children”? If both chimps and bonobos make war, maybe we are “dazed survivors” of a “5-million-year habit of lethal aggression” after all. But a closer look reveals that it’s the journalists who are a bit dazed. Researchers witnessed ten attempts to hunt monkeys over five years of observing the bonobos in question. The bonobos were successful three times, sharing the monkey meat among the hunters—mixed groups of males and females. A brief reality check for science journalists: Researchers have long known and reported that bonobos regularly hunt and eat meat, generally small jungle antelopes known as duikers—as well as squirrels, insects, and grubs. The evolutionary line leading to humans, chimps, and bonobos split from that leading to monkeys about thirty million years ago.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Gowdy (1998), p. xvii. Chapter 13: The Never-Ending Battle over Prehistoric War (Brutish?) 1. From his closing argument in the Scopes case. 2. Wade (2006), p. 151. 3. Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA suggest that even before the human migrations out of Africa that began about 60,000 years ago, human populations were largely isolated from each other for as much as 100,000 years, localized in eastern and southern Africa. Only about 40,000 years ago did these two lines reunite, becoming a single pan-African population, according to this research. See Behar et al. (2008). Full paper available online at http://www.cell.com/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-9297%2808%2900255-3#. 4. Readers interested in further exploration of the critique of Hobbesian assumptions regarding war in prehistory could begin with Fry (2009) and Ferguson (2000). 5. Pinker’s talk was based upon an argument he presents in The Blank Slate (2002), particularly in the last few pages of the third chapter. 6. The link to Pinker’s presentation is http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html. You can find many other interesting presentations at this site. You might want to search Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s talks on bonobos, for example. If you prefer to read Pinker’s remarks, an essay based upon the talk can be found at www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html. 7. Note that Pinker’s chart represents part of a chart in Keeley’s book (1996), and that Keeley refers to these societies as “primitive,” “prestate,” and “prehistoric” in his charts (pp. 89–90). Indeed, Keeley distinguishes what he calls “sedentary hunter-gatherers” from true “nomadic hunter-gatherers,” writing, “Low-density, nomadic hunter-gatherers, with their few (and portable) possessions, large territories, and few fixed resources or constructed facilities, had the option of fleeing conflict and raiding parties. At best, the only thing they would lose by such flight was their composure” (p. 31). As we’ve established, these nomadic (immediate-return) hunter-gatherers are most representative of human prehistory—a period that is, by definition, before the advent of settled communities, cultivated food, domesticated animals, and so on. Keeley’s confusion (and thus, Pinker’s) is largely due to his referring to horticulturalists, with their gardens, domesticated animals, and settled villages, as “sedentary hunter-gatherers.” Yes, they do occasionally hunt and they sometimes gather, but because these activities are not their sole source of food, their lives are dissimilar to those of immediate-return hunter-gatherers. Their gardens, settled villages, and so on make territorial defense necessary and fleeing conflict much more problematic than it was for our ancestors. They—unlike true immediate-return foragers—have a lot to lose by simply fleeing aggression. Keeley acknowledges this crucial difference, writing, “Farmers and sedentary hunter-gatherers had little alternative but to meet force with force or, after injury, to discourage further depredations by taking revenge” (p. 31). The point bears repeating. If you live a settled life in a stable village, have a labor-expensive shelter, cultivated fields, domesticated animals, and too many possessions to carry easily, you’re not a hunter-gatherer.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  But neo-Hobbesians ignore this rather straightforward analysis and the data supporting it, insisting that war must be an eternal human drive, all too often resorting to desperate rhetorical tactics like Pinker’s to defend their view. In the fourth chapter of his book Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony, for example, Robert Edgerton writes, “Social stratification developed in some small-scale societies that lacked not only bureaucracies and priesthoods but cultivation as well.” Okay, but in support of this assertion about social stratification and brutal rule by elites in “small-scale societies,” he offers fifteen pages of vivid descriptions of, in this order (and leaving nothing out): the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island (a slave-owning, settled, property-accumulating, potlatch-celebrating, complex, hierarchical society); the Aztec Empire (numbering in the millions, with elaborate religious structures, priesthoods, and untold acres of slave-cultivated land around a capital city larger than any in Europe at the time of first contact, featuring sewage systems and lighted streets at night); the Zulu Empire (again, numbering well into the millions, with slavery, intensive agriculture, animal domestication, and continent-wide trade networks); the Asante Empire of present-day Ghana, which, Edgerton tells us, “was incomparably the greatest military power in West Africa.” 25 What any of these empires have to do with small-scale societies with no bureaucracies, priesthoods, or cultivation, Edgerton doesn’t say. In fact, he doesn’t mention a single foraging society for the rest of the chapter. This is like declaring that cats are difficult to train, then offering as evidence German shepherds, beagles, greyhounds, and golden retrievers. In Beyond War, anthropologist Doug Fry rebuts the neo-Hobbesian view of universal war. “The belief that ‘there has always been war,’” Fry writes, “does not correspond with the archaeological facts of the matter.” Anthropologist Leslie Sponsel agrees, writing, “Lack of archaeological evidence for warfare suggests that it was rare or absent for most of human prehistory.” After conducting a comprehensive review of prehistoric skeletal evidence, anthropologist Brian Ferguson concluded that apart from one particular site in modern-day Sudan, “only about a dozen Homo sapiens skeletons 10,000 years old or older, out of hundreds of similar antiquity examined to date, show clear indications of interpersonal violence.” Ferguson continues, “If warfare were prevalent in early prehistoric times, the abundant materials in the archaeological record would be rich with evidence of warfare. But the signs are not there.” 26 Our bullshit detectors go off when scholars point to violent chimps and a few cherry-picked horticultural human societies mislabeled as foragers, claiming these as evidence of ancient tendencies toward warfare.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  They were sitting in a corner of the carriage, talking loudly and obviously aware that the attention of the passengers and Katavasov as he got in was concentrated upon them. More loudly than all talked the tall, hollow-chested young man. He was unmistakably tipsy, and was relating some story that had occurred at his school. Facing him sat a middle-aged officer in the Austrian military jacket of the Guards uniform. He was listening with a smile to the hollow-chested youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third, in an artillery uniform, was sitting on a box beside them. A fourth was asleep. Entering into conversation with the youth, Katavasov learned that he was a wealthy Moscow merchant who had run through a large fortune before he was two-and-twenty. Katavasov did not like him, because he was unmanly and effeminate and sickly. He was obviously convinced, especially now after drinking, that he was performing a heroic action, and he bragged of it in the most unpleasant way. The second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant impression too upon Katavasov. He was, it seemed, a man who had tried everything. He had been on a railway, had been a land-steward, and had started factories, and he talked, quite without necessity, of all he had done, and used learned expressions quite inappropriately. The third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck Katavasov very favourably. He was a quiet, modest fellow, unmistakably impressed by the knowledge of the officer and the heroic self-sacrifice of the merchant and saying nothing about himself. When Katavasov asked him what had impelled him to go to Servia, he answered modestly— 'Oh, well, everyone's going. The Servians want help, too. I'm sorry for them.' 'Yes, you artillerymen especially are scarce there,' said Katavasov. 'Oh, I wasn't long in the artillery; maybe they'll put me into the infantry or the cavalry.' 'Into the infantry when they need artillery more than anything?' said Katavasov, fancying from the artilleryman's apparent age that he must have reached a fairly high grade. 'I wasn't long in the artillery, I'm a cadet retired,' he said, and he began to explain how he had failed in his examination. All of this together made a disagreeable impression on Katavasov, and when the volunteers got out at a station for a drink, Katavasov would have liked to compare his unfavourable impression in conversation with someone. There was an old man in the carriage, wearing a military overcoat, who had been listening all the while to Katavasov's conversation with the volunteers.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  What have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children here? What's so awful is that all at once my heart's turned, and instead of love and tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him.' 'Darling Dolly, I understand, but don't torture yourself. You are so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.' Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent. 'What's to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought over everything, and I see nothing.' Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to each word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law. 'One thing I would say,' began Anna. 'I am his sister, I know his character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything' (she waved her hand before her forehead), 'that faculty for being completely carried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he cannot comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.' 'No; he understands, he understood!' Dolly broke in. 'But I . . . you are forgetting me . . . does it make it easier for me?' 'Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realise all the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can't tell you how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realise your sufferings, only there is one thing I don't know: I don't know . . . I don't know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you know—whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there is, forgive him!' 'No,' Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her hand once more. 'I know more of the world than you do,' she said. 'I know how men like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their own home and wife are sacred to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw a sort of line that can't be crossed between them and their families. I don't understand it, but it is so.' 'Yes, but he has kissed her . . .

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  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-humouredly, 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 councillor, a modern district council man, 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 honour of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,' said Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But I have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me . . . . ' Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his sentiments were as much changed as towards her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the question in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and so with most justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honourable, and useful existence. 'I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of the difficult position in which she has placed me. And I shall find it,' he said to himself, frowning more and more; 'I'm not the first nor the last.' And to say nothing of historical instances dating from the 'Fair Helen' of Menelaus, recently revived in the memory of all, a whole list of contemporary examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the highest society rose before Alexey Alexendrovitch's imagination. 'Daryalov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram . . . Yes, even Dram, such an honest, capable fellow. . . . Semyonov, Tchagin, Sigonin,' Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. 'Admitting that a certain irrational ridicule falls to the lot of these men, yet I never saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt sympathy for it,' Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though indeed this was not the fact, and he had never felt sympathy for misfortunes of that kind, but the more frequently he had heard of instances of unfaithful wives betraying their husbands, the more highly he had thought of himself. 'It is a misfortune which may befall anyone. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only thing to be done is to make the best of the position.' And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men who had been in the same position that he was in. 'Daryalov fought a duel….' The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a coward, and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not without horror contemplate the idea of a pistol aimed at himself, and had never made use of any weapon in his life. This horror had in his youth set him pondering on duelling, and picturing himself in a position in which he would have to expose his life to danger.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Divorce by our laws,' he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation of our laws, 'is possible, as you are aware, in the following cases . . . Wait a little!' he called to a clerk who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the same, said a few words to him, and sat down again. '. . . In the following cases: physical defect in the married parties, desertion without communication for five years,' he said, crooking a short finger covered with hair, 'adultery' (this word he pronounced with obvious satisfaction), 'subdivided as follows' (he continued to crook his fat fingers, though the three cases and their sub-divisions could obviously not be classified together): 'physical defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the wife.' As by now all his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his fingers and went on: 'This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honour to apply to me in order to learn its application in practice. And therefore, guided by precedents, I must inform you that in practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to the following—there's no physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion? . . . ' Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent. '—May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the married parties and the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely met with in practice,' said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of each weapon, might await his customer's choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said nothing, and therefore the lawyer went on: 'The most usual and simple, the sensible course, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I should not permit myself to express it so, speaking with a man of no education,' he said, 'but I imagine that to you this is comprehensible.' Alexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not immediately comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual consent, and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer promptly came to his assistance. 'People cannot go on living together—here you have a fact. And if both are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a matter of no importance. And at the same time this is the simplest and most certain method.' Alexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan. 'That is out of the question in the present case,' he said. 'Only one alternative is possible: undesigned detection, supported by letters which I have.' At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Thus people talked incessantly of Alexey Alexandrovitch, finding fault with him and laughing at him, while he, blocking up the way of the member of the Imperial Council he had captured, was explaining to him point by point his new financial project, never interrupting his discourse for an instant for fear he should escape. Almost at the same time that his wife left Alexey Alexandrovitch there had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an official— the moment when, his upward career comes to a full stop. This full stop had arrived and everyone perceived it, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself was not yet aware that his career was over. Whether it was due to his feud with Stremov, or his misfortune with his wife, or simply that Alexey Alexandrovitch had reached his destined limits, it had become evident to everyone in the course of that year that his career was at an end. He still filled a position of consequence, he sat on many commissions and committees, but he was a man whose day was over, and from whom nothing was expected. Whatever he said, whatever he proposed, was heard as though it were something long familiar, and the very thing that was not needed. But Alexey Alexandrovitch was not aware of this, and, on the contrary, being cut off from direct participation in governmental activity, he saw more clearly than ever the errors and defects in the action of others, and thought it his duty to point out means for their correction. Shortly after his separation from his wife, he began writing his first note on the new judicial procedure, the first of the endless series of notes he was destined to write in the future. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not merely fail to observe his hopeless position in the official world, he was not merely free from anxiety on this head, he was positively more satisfied than ever with his own activity. 'He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife,' says the Apostle Paul, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, who was now guided in every action by Scripture, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that ever since he had been left without a wife, he had in these very projects of reform been serving the Lord more zealously than before. The unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying to get away from him did not trouble Alexey Alexandrovitch; he gave up his exposition only when the member of the Council, seizing his chance when one of the Imperial family was passing, slipped away from him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'But as I told you then, and have written to you,' he said in a thin, shrill voice, 'I repeat now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their husbands.' He laid special emphasis on the word 'agreeable.' 'I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my honour.' 'But our relations cannot be the same as always,' Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with dismay. When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to make clear her position. 'I cannot be your wife while I . . . ' she began. He laughed a cold and malignant laugh. 'The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both . . . I respect your past and despise your present… that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words.' Anna sighed and bowed her head. 'Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you show,' he went on, getting hot, '—announcing your infidelity to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently—you can see anything reprehensible in performing a wife's duties in relation to your husband.' 'Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?' 'I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you .. . not to see him. That's not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That's all I have to say to you. Now it's time for me to go. I'm not dining at home.' He got up and moved towards the door. Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him. XXIV T HE night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without result for him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I should not have been surprised if you had not cared to meet me. I'm used to everything. You have been ill? Yes, you are changed,' said Anna. Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with hostile eyes. She ascribed this hostility to the awkward position in which Anna, who had once patronised her, must feel with her now, and she felt sorry for her. They talked of Kitty's illness, of the baby, of Stiva, but it was obvious that nothing interested Anna. 'I came to say good-bye,' she said, getting up. 'Oh, when are you going?' But again not answering, Anna turned to Kitty. 'Yes, I am very glad to have seen you,' she said with a smile. 'I have heard so much of you from everyone, even from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him exceedingly,' she said, unmistakably with malicious intent. 'Where is he?' 'He has gone back to the country,' said Kitty, blushing. 'Remember me to him, be sure you do.' 'I'll be sure to!' Kitty said naïvely, looking compassionately into her eyes. 'So good-bye, Dolly.' And kissing Dolly and shaking hands with Kitty, Anna went out hurriedly. 'She's just the same and just as charming! She's very lovely!' said Kitty, when she was alone with her sister. 'But there's something piteous about her. Awfully piteous!' 'Yes, there's something unusual about her today,' said Dolly. 'When I went with her into the hall, I fancied she was almost crying.' XXIX A NNA got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind than when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was added now that sense of mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so distinctly on meeting Kitty. 'Where to? Home?' asked Pyotr. 'Yes, home,' she said, not even thinking now where she was going. 'How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?' she thought, staring at two men who walked by. 'Can one ever tell anyone what one is feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it's a good thing I didn't tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery! She would have concealed it, but her chief feeling would have been delight at my being punished for the happiness she envied me for. Kitty, she would have been even more pleased. How I can see through her! She knows I was more than usually sweet to her husband. And she's jealous and hates me. And she despises me. In her eyes I'm an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me . ..

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The prince was anxious to miss nothing of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that in Russia? And on his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost all Russian forms of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to look at places of interest; the evenings they passed enjoying the national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excesses in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had travelled a great deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of modern facilities of communication was the accessibility of the pleasures of all nations. He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandoline. In Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specially Russian forms of pleasure. Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him, was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by various persons to the prince. They had race-horses, and Russian pancakes and bear-hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be asking—what more, and does the whole Russian spirit consist in just this? In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best French actresses and ballet-dancers and white-seal champagne. Vronsky was used to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of late, or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he experienced a sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a dangerous madman, afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from being with him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky was continually conscious of the necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted. The prince's manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky's surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with indignation.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep. After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and of former shooting-parties, the conversation rested on a topic that interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed his appreciation of this delightful sleeping-place among the fragrant hay, this delightful broken cart (he supposed it to be broken because the shafts had been taken out), of the good-nature of the peasants that had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful shooting-party at Malthus's, where he had stayed the previous summer. Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevitch described what grouse moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting-party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged up at the marsh. 'I don't understand you,' said Levin, sitting up in the hay; 'how is it such people don't disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is all very pleasant, but don't you dislike just that very sumptuousness? All these people, just like our spirit monopolists in old days, get their money in a way that gains them the contempt of everyone. They don't care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains to buy off the contempt they have deserved.' 'Perfectly true!' chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. 'Perfectly! Oblonsky, of course, goes out of bonhomie, but other people say: "Well, Oblonsky stays with them." . . . ' 'Not a bit of it.' Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as he spoke. 'I simply don't consider him more dishonest than any other wealthy merchant or nobleman. They've all made their money alike— by their work and their intelligence.' 'Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and speculate with them?' 'Of course it's work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him and others like him, there would have been no railways.' 'But that's not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession.' 'Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a result—the railways. But of course you think the railways useless.' 'No, that's another question; I am prepared to admit that they're useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labour expended is dishonest.' 'But who is to define what is proportionate?' 'Making profit by dishonest means, by trickery,' said Levin, conscious that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty and dishonesty. 'Such as banking, for instance,' he went on.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the acre,' answered Levin. 'Oh, these farmers!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully. 'Your tone of contempt for us poor townsfolk! . . . But when it comes to business, we do it better than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all out,' he said, 'and the forest is fetching a very good price—so much so that I'm afraid of this fellow's crying off, in fact. You know it's not "timber",' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts. 'And it won't run to more than twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he's giving me at the rate of seventy roubles the acre.' Levin smiled contemptuously. 'I know,' he thought, 'that fashion not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. "Timber, run to so many yards the acre." He says those words without understanding them himself.' 'I wouldn't attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,' said he, 'and if need arose, I should come to you to ask about it. But, you're so positive you know all the lore of the forest. It's difficult. Have you counted the trees?' 'How count the trees?' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still try ing to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. 'Count the sands of the sea, number the stars. Some higher power might do it.' 'Oh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single merchant ever buys a forest without counting the trees, unless they get it given them for nothing, as you're doing now. I know your forest. I go there every year shooting, and your forest's worth a hundred and fifty roubles an acre paid down, while he's giving you sixty by instalments. So that in fact you're making him a present of thirty thousand.' 'Come, don't let your imagination run away with you,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch piteously. 'Why was it none would give it, then?' 'Why, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he's bought them off. I've had to do with all of them; I know them. They're not merchants, you know; they're speculators. He wouldn't look at a bargain that gave him ten, fifteen per cent profit, but holds back to buy a rouble's worth for twenty copecks.' 'Well, enough of it! You're out of temper.' 'Not the least,' said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the house.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'No, I don't . . . yes, I do,' she said, not looking at him, and crimsoning to the roots of her hair. 'But you'll come back here after the races, I suppose?' 'Oh yes!' answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'And here's the glory of Peterhof, Princess Tverskoy,' he added, looking out of window at the elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed extremely high. 'What elegance! Charming! Well, let us be starting too, then.' Princess Tverskoy did not get out of her carriage, but her groom, in high boots, a cape, and black hat, darted out at the entrance. 'I'm going; good-bye!' said Anna, and kissing her son, she went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. 'It was ever so nice of you to come.' Alexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand. 'Well, au revoir, then! You'll come back for some tea; that's de lightful!' she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as soon as she no longer saw him, she was aware of the spot on her hand that his lips had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion. XXVIII W HEN Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the racecourse, Anna was' already sitting in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion where all the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two centres of her existence, and unaided by her external senses she was aware of their nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching a long way off, and she could not help following him in the surging crowd in the midst of which he was moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of his ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her. 'Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul,' she thought; 'as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.' From his glances towards the ladies' pavilion (he was staring straight at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of muslin, ribbons, feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he was looking for her, but she purposely avoided noticing him. 'Alexey Alexandrovitch!' Princess Betsy called to him; 'I'm sure you don't see your wife: here she is.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'And you must know they've three children, no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something from the Academy,' she went on briskly, trying to drown the distress that the queer change in Anna Pavlovna's manner to her had aroused in her. 'Oh, here's Madame Stahl,' said Kitty, indicating an invalid carriage, where, propped on pillows, something in grey and blue was lying under a sunshade. This was Madame Stahl. Behind her stood the gloomy, healthy-looking German workman who pushed the carriage. Close by was standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count, whom Kitty knew by name. Several invalids were lingering near the low carriage, staring at the lady as though she were some curiosity. The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that disconcerting gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Stahl, and addressed her with extreme courtesy and affability in that excellent French that so few speak nowadays. 'I don't know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,' he said, taking off his hat and not putting it on again. 'Prince Alexander Shtcherbatsky,' said Madame Stahl, lifting upon him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty discerned a look of annoyance. 'Delighted! I have taken a great fancy to your daughter.' 'You are still in weak health?' 'Yes; I'm used to it,' said Madame Stahl, and she introduced the prince to the Swedish count. 'You are scarcely changed at all,' the prince said to her. 'It's ten or eleven years since I had the honour of seeing you.' 'Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it. Often one wonders what is the goal of this life? . . . The other side!' she said angrily to Varenka, who had rearranged the rug over her feet not to her satisfaction. 'To do good, probably,' said the prince with a twinkle in his eyes. 'That is not for us to judge,' said Madame Stahl, perceiving the shade of expression on the prince's face. 'So you will send me that book, dear count? I'm very grateful to you,' she said to the young Swede. 'Ah!' cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow colonel standing near, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he walked away with his daughter and the Moscow colonel, who joined them. 'That's our aristocracy, prince!' the Moscow colonel said with ironical intention. He cherished a grudge against Madame Stahl for not making his acquaintance. 'She's just the same,' replied the prince. 'Did you know her before her illness, prince—that's to say before she took to her bed?' 'Yes. She took to her bed before my eyes,' said the prince. 'They say it's ten years since she has stood on her feet.' 'She doesn't stand up because her legs are too short. She's a very bad figure.' 'Papa, it's not possible!' cried Kitty. 'That's what wicked tongues say, my darling.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad collar-straps. In the trap sat the chubby, tightly belted clerk who served Ryabinin as coachman. Ryabinin himself was already in the house, and met the friends in the hall. Ryabinin was a tall, thinnish, middle-aged man, with moustache and a projecting clean-shaven chin, and prominent muddy-looking eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted blue coat, with buttons below the waist at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the ankles and straight over the calf, with big goloshes drawn over them. He rubbed his face with his handkerchief, and wrapping round him his coat, which sat extremely well as it was, he greeted them with a smile, holding out his hand to Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though he wanted to catch something. 'So here you are,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, giving him his hand. 'That's capital.' 'I did not venture to disregard your excellency's commands, though the road was extremely bad. I positively walked the whole way, but I am here at my time. Konstantin Dmitritch, my respects'; he turned to Levin, trying to seize his hand too. But Levin, scowling, made as though he did not notice his hand, and took out the snipe. 'Your honours have been diverting yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be pray?' added Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: 'a great delicacy, I suppose.' And he shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave doubts whether this game was worth the candle. 'Would you like to go into my study?' Levin said in French to Stepan Arkadyevitch, scowling morosely. 'Go into my study; you can talk there.' 'Quite so, where you please,' said Ryabinin with contemptuous dignity, as though wishing to make it felt that others might be in difficulties as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any difficulty about anything. On entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as though seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did not cross himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and with the same dubious air with which he had regarded the snipe, he smiled contemptuously and shook his head disapprovingly, as though by no means willing to allow that this game were worth the candle. 'Well, have you brought the money?' asked Oblonsky. 'Sit down.' 'Oh, don't trouble about the money. I've come to see you to talk it over.' 'What is there to talk over? But do sit down.' 'I don't mind if I do,' said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning his elbows on the back of his chair in a position of the intensest discomfort to himself. 'You must knock it down a bit, prince. It would be too bad. The money is ready conclusively to the last farthing. As to paying the money down, there'll be no hitch there.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow.' 'Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,' said Anna's friend. 'Bad luck to your tongue!' said Princess Myaky suddenly. 'Madame Karenin's a splendid woman. I don't like her husband, but I like her very much.' 'Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man,' said the ambassador's wife. 'My husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.' 'And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,' said Princess Myaky. 'If our husbands didn't talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexy Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper . . . but doesn't it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he's a fool, though only in a whisper, everything's explained, isn't it?' 'How spiteful you are today !' 'Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a fool. And, well, you know one can't say that of oneself.' '"No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit."' The attaché repeated the French saying. 'That's just it, just it,' Princess Myaky turned to him. 'But the point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies. She's so nice, so charming. How can she help it if they're all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?' 'Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it,' Anna's friend said in self-defence. 'If no one follows us about like a shadow, that's no proof that we've any right to blame her.' And having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Myaky got up, and together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group at the table, where the conversation was dealing with the king of Prussia. 'What wicked gossip were you talking over there?' asked Betsy. 'About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey Alexandrovitch,' said the ambassador's wife with a smile, as she sat down at the table. 'Pity we didn't hear it!' said Princess Betsy, glancing towards the door. 'Ah, here you are at last!' she said, turning with a smile to Vronsky, as he came in. Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people from whom one has only just parted. 'Where do I come from?' he said, in answer to a question from the ambassador's wife. 'Well, there's no help for it, I must confess. From the opera bouffe.