Despair

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.

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky could not but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky felt his elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he had lost her for ever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul, and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her for ever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins' house like one distraught, and did not know what to do. 'A sledge, sir?' asked the porter. 'Yes, a sledge.' On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky without undressing, lay down flat on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories, and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine he had poured out for the patient and spilt over the spoon, then the midwife's white hands, then the queer posture of Alexey Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed. 'To sleep! To forget!' he said to himself with the serene confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once—it was as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leapt up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a panic on to his knees.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,' Kitty said to herself. Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began to press her to do so. 'Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna,' said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under the sleeve of his dress coat, 'I've such an idea for a cotillion ! Un bijou!' And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their host smiled approvingly. 'No, I am not going to stay,' answered Anna, smiling, but in spite of her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her resolute tone that she would not stay. 'No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I have all the winter in Petersburg,' said Anna, looking round at Vror-sky, who stood near her. 'I must rest a little before my journey.' 'Are you certainly going tomorrow then?' asked Vronsky. 'Yes, I suppose so,' answered Anna, as it were wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it. Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home. XXIV 'Y ES , there is something in me hateful, repulsive,' thought Levin, as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. 'And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.' And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening. 'Yes, she was bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody.' And he recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. 'Isn't he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and came here.' Levin walked up to a lamp-post, read his brother's address, which was in his pocket-book, and called a sledge.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what cupboards there were either would not close at all, or burst open whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and pans; there was no copper in the washhouse, nor even an ironing-board in the maids' room. Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of view, fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in despair. She exerted herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness of the position, and was every instant suppressing the tears that started into her eyes. The bailiff, a retired quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had taken a fancy to and had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome and respectful appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for Darya Alexandrovna's woes. He said respectfully, 'nothing can be done, the peasants are such a wretched lot,' and did nothing to help her. The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys' household, as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and useful person, Marya Filimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that everything would come round (it was her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had immediately made friends with the bailiff's wife, and on the very first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of the position. Very soon Marya Filimonovna had established her club, so to say, under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of the bailiff's wife, the village elder, and the counting-house clerk, that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in a week's time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended, a kitchenmaid was found—a crony of the village elder's—hens were bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of flat-irons in the maids' room. 'Just see, now, and you were quite in despair,' said Marya Filimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up a bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya Alexandrovna began to realise, if only in part, her expectations, if not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the country. Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up and said— 'She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your power, only let me be here . . . though I am at your disposal. I . . . ' Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky's tears, felt a rush of that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people's sufferings, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound of Anna's voice saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing-gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation. 'For Alexey— I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn't it?)—Alexey would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive. . . . But why doesn't he come? He's so good, he doesn't know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it's better in fact. He'll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse.' 'Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!' said the midwife, trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'Oh, what nonsense!' Anna went on, not seeing her husband. 'No, give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won't forgive me, because you don't know him. No one knows him. I'm the only one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know— Seryozha has just the same eyes—and I can't bear to see them because of it. Has Seryozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not forget. Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep with him.' All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to her face. She had seen her husband. 'No, no!' she began.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Yes; but you might find it easier to get into relations, which are after all essential, with anyone prepared to see you. But that's as you like. I was very glad to hear of your intention. There have been so many attacks made on the volunteers, and a man like you raises them in public estimation.' 'My use as a man,' said Vronsky, 'is that life's worth nothing to me. And that I've enough bodily energy to cut my way into their ranks, and to trample on them or fall—I know that. I'm glad there's something to give my life for, for it's not simply useless but loathsome to me. Anyone's welcome to it.' And his jaw twitched impatiently from the incessant gnawing toothache, that prevented him from even speaking with a natural expression. 'You will become another man, I predict,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, feeling touched. 'To deliver one's brother-men from bondage is an aim worth death and life. God grant you success outwardly—and inwardly peace,' he added, and he held out his hand. Vronsky warmly pressed his outstretched hand. 'Yes, as a weapon I may be of some use. But as a man, I'm a wreck,' he jerked out. He could hardly speak for the throbbing ache in his strong teeth, that were like rows of ivory in his mouth. He was silent, and his eyes rested on the wheels of the tender, slowly and smoothly rolling along the rails. And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish, made him for an instant forget his toothache. As he glanced at the tender and the rails, under the influence of the conversation with a friend he had not met since his mis fortune, he suddenly recalled her— that is, what was left of her when he had run like one distraught into the cloak-room of the railway station—on the table, shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the blood-stained body so lately full of life; the head unhurt dropping back with its weight of hair, and the curling tresses about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red, half-opened mouth, the strange, fixed expression, piteous on the lips and awful in the still open eyes, that seemed to utter that fearful phrase—that he would be sorry for it—that she had said when they were quarrelling. And he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time, at a railway-station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last moment.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Yes, and I can telegraph, too.' And she wrote a telegram. 'I absolutely must talk to you; come at once.' After sending off the telegram, she went to dress. When she was dressed and in her hat, she glanced again into the eyes of the plump, comfortable-looking Annushka. There was unmistakable sympathy in those good-natured little grey eyes. 'Annushka, dear, what am I to do?' said Anna, sobbing and sinking helplessly into a chair. 'Why fret yourself so, Anna Arkadyevna? Why, there's nothing out of the way. You drive out a little, and it'll cheer you up,' said the maid. 'Yes, I'm going,' said Anna, rousing herself and getting up. 'And if there's a telegram while I'm away, send it on to Darya Alexandrovna's . . . but no, I shall be back myself.' 'Yes, I mustn't think, I must do something, drive somewhere, and, most of all, get out of this house,' she said, feeling with terror the strange turmoil going on in her own heart, and she made haste to go out and get into the carriage. 'Where to?' asked Pyotr before getting on to the box. 'To Znamenka, the Oblonskys'.' XXVIII I T was bright and sunny. A fine rain had been falling all the morning, and now it had not long cleared up. The iron roofs, the flags of the roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass and the tinplate of the carriages—all glistened brightly in the May sunshine. It was three o'clock, and the very liveliest time in the streets. As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the greys trotted swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, and she saw her position quite differently from how it had seemed at home. Now the thought of death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear to her, and death itself no longer seemed so inevitable. Now she blamed herself for the humiliation to which she had lowered herself. 'I entreat him to forgive me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for? Can't I live without him?' And leaving unanswered the question how she was going to live without him, she fell to reading the signs on the shops. 'Office and warehouse. Dental surgeon. Yes, I'll tell Dolly all about it. She doesn't like Vronsky. I shall be sick and ashamed, but I'll tell her. She loves me, and I'll follow her advice. I won't give in to him; I won't let him train me as he pleases. Filippov, bun-shop.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She gave up everything. But experience, time, have shown that her position is unbearable, impossible.' 'The life of Anna Arkadyevna can have no interest for me,' Alexey Alexandrovitch put in, lifting his eyebrows. 'Allow me to disbelieve that,' Stepan Arkadyevitch replied gently. 'Her position is intolerable for her, and of no benefit to anyone whatever. She has deserved it, you will say. She knows that and asks you for nothing; she says plainly that she dare not ask you. But I, all of us, her relatives, all who love her, beg you, entreat you. Why should she suffer? Who is any the better for it?' 'Excuse me, you seem to put me in the position of the guilty party,' observed Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'Oh no, oh no, not at all! please understand me,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, touching his hand again, as though feeling sure this physical contact would soften his brother-in-law. 'All I say is this: her position is intolerable, and it might be alleviated by you, and you will lose nothing by it. I will arrange it all for you, so that you'll not notice it. You did promise it, you know.' 'The promise' was given before. And I had supposed that the question of my son had settled the matter. Besides, I had hoped that Anna Arkadyevna had enough generosity . . .' Alexey Alexandrovitch articulated with difficulty, his lips twitching and his face white. 'She leaves it all to your generosity. She begs, she implores one thing of you—to extricate her from the impossible position in which she is placed. She does not ask for her son now. Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are a good man. Put yourself in her position for a minute. The question of divorce for her in her position is a question of life and death. If you had not promised it once, she would have reconciled herself to her position, she would have gone on living in the country. But you promised it, and she wrote to you, and moved to Moscow. And here she's been for six months in Moscow, where every chance meeting cuts her to the heart, every day expecting an answer. Why, it's like keeping a condemned criminal for six months with the rope round his neck, promising him perhaps death, perhaps mercy. Have pity on her, and I will undertake to arrange everything. Vos scrupules …' 'I am not talking about that, about that. . .' Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted with disgust. 'But, perhaps, I promised what I had no right to promise.' 'So you go back from your promise.' 'I have never refused to do all that is possible, but I want time to consider how much of what I promised is possible.' 'No, Alexey Alexandrovitch!' cried Oblonsky, jumping up, 'I won't believe that!

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. 'Lord, forgive me all!' she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something was working at the iron above her. And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched for ever. Anna Karenina PART VIII I A LMOST two months had passed. The hot summer was half over, but Sergey Ivanovitch was only just preparing to leave Moscow. Sergey Ivanovitch's life had not been uneventful during this time. A year ago he had finished his book the fruit of six years' labour, 'Sketch of a Survey of the Principles and Forms of Government in Europe and Russia.' Several sections of this book and its introduction had appeared in periodical publications, and other parts had been read by Sergey Ivanovitch to persons of his circle, so that the leading ideas of the work could not be completely novel to the public. But still Sergey Ivanovitch had expected that on its appearance his book would be sure to make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in the scientific world. After the most conscientious revision the book had last year been published, and had been distributed among the booksellers. Though he asked no one about it, reluctantly and with feigned indifference answered his friends' inquiries as to how the book was going, end did not even inquire of the booksellers how the book was selling, Sergey Ivanovitch was all on the alert, with strained attention, watching for the first impression his book would make in the world and in literature. But a week passed, a second, a third, and in society no impression whatever could be detected. His friends who were specialists and savants, occasionally—unmistakably from politeness—alluded to it. The rest of his acquaintances, not interested in a book on a learned subject, did not talk of it at all. And society generally—just now especially absorbed in other things—was absolutely indifferent. In the press, too, for a whole month there was not a word about his book. Sergey Ivanovitch had calculated to a nicety the time necessary for writing a review, but a month passed, and a second, and still there was silence. Only in the Northern Beetle, in a comic article on the singer Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a contemptuous allusion to Koznishev's book, suggesting that the book had been long ago seen through by everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule. At last in the third month, a critical article appeared in a serious review.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue. He stood up facing her. 'I see that she is happy,' he repeated, and the doubt whether she were happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna's mind. 'But can it last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is cast,' he said, passing from Russian to French, 'and we are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children. But the law and all the conditions of our position are such that thousands of complications arise which she does not see and does not want to see. And that one can well understand. But I can't help seeing them. My daughter is by law not my daughter, but Karenin's. I cannot bear this falsity!' he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry towards Darya Alexandrovna. She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on— 'One day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a Karenin; he will not be the heir of my name nor of my property, and however happy we may be in our home life and however many children we have, there will be no real tie between us. They will be Karenins. You can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of all this. Now look at another side. I am happy, happy in her love, but I must have occupation. I have found occupation, and am proud of what I am doing and consider it nobler than the pursuits of my former companions at court and in the army. And most certainly I would not change the work I am doing for theirs. I am working here, settled in my own place, and I am happy and contented, and we need nothing more to make us happy. I love my work here. Ce n'est pas un pis-aller, on the contrary…' Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations with Anna. 'Well, I will go on,' he said, collecting himself. 'The great thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,—and this I have not.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Your sorrow is a great one, but you ought to find consolation.' 'I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!' said Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming eyes. 'My position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot find within me strength to support me.' 'You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I beseech you to believe in my friendship,' she said, with a sigh. 'Our support is love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light,' she said, with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. 'He will be your support and your succour.' Although there was in these words a flavour of that sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervour which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear this now. 'I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand nothing.' 'Dear friend,' repeated Lidia Ivanovna. 'It's not the loss of what I have not now, it's not that!' pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can't help it, I can't help it.' 'Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I was moved to ecstacy, and every one else too, but He, working within your heart,' said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes rapturously, 'and so you cannot be ashamed of your act.' Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands, he cracked his fingers. 'One must know all the facts,' he said in his thin voice. 'A man's strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about household matters arising (he emphasised the word arising) from my new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts. . . . These pin-pricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I have not the strength to bear it. At dinner . . . yesterday, I was almost getting up from the dinner-table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is not all . . .' Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill that had been brought to him, but his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush of self-pity. 'I understand, dear friend,' said Lidia Ivanovna. 'I understand it all. Succour and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come only to aid you if I can.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Turning her eyes in the direction Pyotr had turned to look, she saw a factory-hand almost dead-drunk, with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. 'Come, he's found a quicker way,' she thought. 'Count Vronsky and I did not find that happiness either, though we expected so much from it.' And now for the first time Anna turned that glaring light in which she was seeing everything on to her relations with him, which she had hitherto avoided thinking about. 'What was it he sought in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity.' She remembered his words, the expression of his face that recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of their connection. And everything now confirmed this. 'Yes, there was the triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but the chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now that's over. There's nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of, but to be ashamed of. He has taken from me all he could, and now I am no use to him. He is weary of me and is trying not to be dishonourable in his behaviour to me. He let that out yesterday—he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn his ships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the English say. That fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very much pleased with himself,' she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk, riding on a riding-school horse. 'Yes, there's not the same flavour about me for him now. If I go away from him, at the bottom of his heart he will be glad.' This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in the piercing light, which revealed to her now the meaning of life and human relations. 'My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is waning and waning, and that's why we're drifting apart.' She went on musing. 'And there's no help for it. He is everything for me, and I want him more and more to give himself up to me entirely. And he wants more and more to get away from me. We walked to meet each other up to the time of our love, and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions. And there's no altering that. He tells me I'm insanely jealous, and I have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it's not true. I'm not jealous, but I'm unsatisfied.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall see how to be happy.' 'No, I've done with it all. It's time I was dead.' 'Well, that's a good one!' said Shtcherbatsky, laughing, 'why, I'm only just getting ready to begin.' 'Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be dead.' Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength. Anna Karenina PART IV I T HE Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch's house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it. The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary, painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She had not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly believed that something would very soon turn up now. Vronsky, against his own will or wishes, following her lead, hoped too that something, apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties. In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky was of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with such grand personages—that was how he came to be put in charge of the prince. But he felt his duties very irksome.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But he was not aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was one of the means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which became more terrible the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife's behaviour, the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any man who should question him on that subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch's face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife's health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife's behaviour, and he actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all. Alexey Alexandrovitch's permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and the Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer there, close to Anna, and constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna Arkadyevna's, and in conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of Anna's close intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion, and from that time began to avoid Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not want to see, and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances on his wife; he did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far from the camp of Vronsky's regiment. He did not allow himself to think about it, and he did not think about it; but all the same, though he never admitted it to himself, and had no proofs, nor even suspicious evidence, in the bottom of his heart he knew beyond all doubt that he was a deceived husband, and he was profoundly miserable about it. How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey Alexandrovitch had looked at other men's faithless wives and other deceived husbands and asked himself: 'How can people descend to that? how is it they don't put an end to such a hideous position?' But now, when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking of putting an end to the position that he would not recognise it at all, would not recognise it just because it was too awful, too unnatural. Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been at their country villa.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes. Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of the doctor's words that inhaling iodine worked wonders. 'Is Katya not here?' he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly assented to the doctor's words. 'No; so I can say it. . . . It was for her sake I went through that farce. She's so sweet; but you and I can't deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,' he said, and, squeezing the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it. At eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in their room, when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was pale, and her lips were quivering. 'He is dying!' she whispered. 'I'm afraid he will die this minute.' Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low. 'How do you feel?' Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence. 'I feel I'm setting off,' Nikolay said with difficulty, but with extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their reaching his brother's face. 'Katya, go away!' he added. Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out. 'I'm setting off,' he said again. 'Why do you think so?' said Levin, so as to say something. 'Because I'm setting off,' he repeated, as though he had a liking for the phrase. 'It's the end.' Marya Nikolaevna went up to him. 'You had better lie down; you'd be easier,' she said. 'I shall lie down soon enough,' he pronounced slowly, 'when I'm dead,' he said sarcastically, wrathfully. 'Well, you can lay me down if you like.' Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his mental efforts to go along with him he saw by the expression of that calm, stern face that for the dying man all was growing clearer and clearer that was still as dark as ever for Levin. 'Yes, yes, so,' the dying man articulated slowly at intervals.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin clutched at his head and ran out of the room. 'It's nothing, it's nothing, it's all right,' Dolly called after him. But they might say what they liked, he knew now that all was over. He stood in the next room, his head leaning against the doorpost, and heard shrieks, howls such as he had never heard before, and he knew that what had been Kitty was uttering these shrieks. He had long ago ceased to wish for the child. By now he loathed this child. He did not even wish for her life now, all he longed for was the end of this awful anguish. 'Doctor! What is it? What is it? By God!' he said, snatching at the doctor's hand as he came up. 'It's the end,' said the doctor. And the doctor's face was so grave as he said it that Levin took the end as meaning her death. Beside himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. It was even more frowning and stern. Kitty's face he did not know. In the place where it had been was something that was fearful in its strained distortion and in the sounds that came from it. He fell down with his head on the wooden framework of the bed, feeling that his heart was bursting. The awful scream never paused, it became still more awful, and as though it had reached the utmost limit of terror, suddenly it ceased. Levin could not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt; the scream had ceased and he heard a subdued stir and bustle, and hurried breathing, and her voice, gasping, alive, tender, and blissful, uttered softly, 'It's over!' He lifted his head. With her hands hanging exhausted on the quilt, looking extraordinarily lovely and serene, she looked at him in silence and tried to smile, and could not. And suddenly, from the mysterious and awful far-away world in which he had been living for the last twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself all in an instant borne back to the old everyday world, glorified though now, by such a radiance of happiness that he could not bear it. The strained chords snapped, sobs and tears of joy which he had never foreseen rose up with such violence that his whole body shook, that for long they prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees before the bed, he held his wife's hand before his lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers, responded to his kiss. And meanwhile, there at the foot of the bed, in the deft hands of Lizaveta Petrovna, like a flickering light in a lamp, lay the life of a human creature, which had never existed before, and which would now with the same right, with the same importance to itself, live and create in its own image. 'Alive! alive!

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  ' 'I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had loved me . . . ' 'Anna! How does the question of my love come in?' 'Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am! . . .' she said, looking at him with an expression of terror. He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her. And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the country. Anna Karenina PART VI I D ARYA A LEXANDROVNA spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at her sister Kitty Levin's. The house on her own estate was quite in ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys, with all their children and their governess, the old princess too came to stay that summer with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to watch over her inexperienced daughter in her interesting condition. Moreover Varenka, Kitty's friend abroad, kept her promise to come to Kitty when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these were friends or relations of Levin's wife. And though he liked them all, he rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was smothered by this influx of the 'Shtcherbatsky element', as he called it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin stamp, so that the Levin spirit was utterly obliterated. In the Levins' house, so long deserted, there were now so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate table.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'But how is he now?' 'It was a blessing from Providence for us—this Servian war. I'm old, and I don't understand the rights and wrongs of it, but it's come as a providential blessing to him. Of course for me, as his mother, it's terrible; and what's worse, they say ce n'est pas tres bien vu à Pétersbourg. But it can't be helped! It was the one thing that could rouse him. Yashvin—a friend of his—he had lost all he had at cards and he was going to Servia. He came to see him and persuaded him to go. Now it's an interest for him. Do please talk to him a little. I want to distract his mind. He's so low-spirited. And as bad luck would have it, he has toothache too. But he'll be delighted to see you. Please do talk to him; he's walking up and down on that side.' Sergey Ivanovitch said he would be very glad to, and crossed over to the other side of the station. V I N the slanting evening shadows cast by the baggage piled up on the platform, Vronsky in his long overcoat and slouch hat, with his hands in his pockets, strode up and down, like a wild beast in a cage, turning sharply after twenty paces. Sergey Ivanovitch fancied, as he approached him, that Vronsky saw him but was pretending not to see. This did not affect Sergey Ivanovitch in the slightest. He was above all personal considerations with Vronsky. At that moment Sergey Ivanovitch looked upon Vronsky as a man taking an important part in a great cause, and Koznishev thought it his duty to encourage him and express his approval. He went up to him. Vronsky stood still, looked intently at him, recognised him, and going a few steps forward to meet him, shook hands with him very warmly. 'Possibly you didn't wish to see me,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, 'but couldn't I be of use to you?' 'There's no one I should less dislike seeing than you,' said Vronsky. 'Excuse me; and there's nothing in life for me to like.' 'I quite understand, and I merely meant to offer you my services,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, scanning Vronsky's face, full of unmistakable suffering. 'Wouldn't it be of use to you to have a letter to Ristitch—to Milan?' 'Oh no! ' Vronsky said, seeming to understand him with difficulty. 'If you don't mind, let's walk on. It's so stuffy among the carriages. A letter? No, thank you; to meet death one needs no letters of introduction. Nor for the Turks . . .' he said, with a smile that was merely of the lips. His eyes still kept their look of angry suffering.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  What are they all so busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam fell on her in the fire)' he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain, moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven, rough floor. 'Then she recovered, but today or tomorrow or in ten years she won't; they'll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skilful, soft action shakes the ears out of their husks. They'll bury her and this piebald horse, and very soon too,' he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, panting horse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. 'And they will bury her and Fyodor the thresher with his curly beard full of chaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders—they will bury him. He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and shouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving wheel. And what's more, it's not them alone—me they'll bury too, and nothing will be left. What for?' He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch to reckon how much they threshed in an hour. He wanted to know this so as to judge by it the task to set for the day. 'It'll soon be one, and they're only beginning the third sheaf,' thought Levin. He went up to the man that was feeding the machine, and shouting over the roar of the machine he told him to put it in more slowly. 'You put in too much at a time, Fyodor. Do you see—it gets choked, that's why it isn't getting on. Do it evenly.' Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shouted something in response, but still went on doing it as Levin did not want him to. Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants' dinner-hour, which was not long in coming, he went out of the barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the threshing-floor for seed. Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in which Levin had once allotted land to his co-operative association. Now it had been let to a former house-porter. Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village, would not take the land for the coming year. 'It's a high rent; it wouldn't pay Platon, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,' answered the peasant, picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt. 'But how does Kirillov make it pay?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  ' he was beginning, but he checked himself. 'I must ask what it is you want of me?' 'What I can want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing,' she said, understanding all he had not uttered. 'But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.' She turned towards the door. 'Stop! st—op!' said Vronsky, with no change in the gloomy lines of his brows, though he held her by the hand. 'What is it all about! I said that we must put off going for three days, and on that you told me I was lying, that I was not an honourable man.' 'Yes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having sacrificed everything for me,' she said, recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, 'that he's worse than a dishonourable man—he's a heartless man.' 'Oh, there are limits to endurance!' he cried, and hastily let go her hand. 'He hates me, that's clear,' she thought, and in silence, without looking round, she walked with faltering steps out of the room. 'He loves another woman, that's even clearer,' she said to herself as she went into her own room. 'I want love, and there is none. So, then, all is over.' She repeated the words she had said, 'and it must be ended.' 'But how?' she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair before the looking-glass. Thoughts of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had brought her up, to Dolly, or simply alone abroad, and of what he was doing now alone in his study; whether this was the final quarrel, or whether reconciliation were still possible; and of what all her old friends at Petersburg would say of her now; and of how Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other ideas of what would happen now after the rupture, came into her head; but she did not give herself up to them with all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it. Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of her illness after her confinement, and the feeling which never left her at that time. 'Why didn't I die!' and the words and the feeling of that time came back to her. And all at once she knew what was in her soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone solved all. 'Yes, to die! . . . And the shame and disgrace of Alexey Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it will all be saved by death. To die! and he will feel remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my account.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them. 'But didn't he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man? Haven't I despaired for nothing many times already?' she said to herself afterwards. All that day, except for the visit to Wilson's which occupied two hours, Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him that she had a headache, she said to herself, 'If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I'm to do! . . .' In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then everything was over. And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory, in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him. Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. 'How could I say such cruel things to her?' he would say. 'How could I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more.