Longing

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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 The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  through the mind as the hand is laid upon it in the dark, and the feeling of the garments or draperies which may hang about the room is not understood till the look correlative to the feeling has in each case been resuscitated. Smells notoriously have the power of recalling the other experiences in whose company they were wont to be felt, perhaps long years ago; and the voluminous emotional character assumed by the images which suddenly pour into the mind at such a time forms one of the staple topics of popular psychologic wonder— "Lost and gone and lost and gone! A breath, a whisper—some divine farewell— Desolate sweetness—far and far away." We cannot hear the din of a railroad train or the yell of its whistle, without thinking of its long, jointed appearance and its headlong speed, nor catch a familiar voice in a crowd without recalling, with the name of the speaker, also his face. But the most notorious and important case of the mental combination of auditory with optical impressions originally experienced together is furnished by language. The child is offered a new and delicious fruit and is at the same time told that it is called a 'fig.' Or looking out of the window he exclaims, "What a funny horse!" and is told that it is a 'piebald' horse. When learning his letters, the sound of each is repeated to him whilst its shape is before his eye. Thenceforward, long as he may live, he will never see a fig, a piebald horse, or a letter of the alphabet without the name which he first heard in conjunction with each clinging to it in his mind; and inversely he will never hear the name without the faint arousal of the image of the object.[463] THE RAPIDITY OF ASSOCIATION. Reading exemplifies this kind of cohesion even more beautifully. It is an uninterrupted and protracted recall of sounds by sights which have always been coupled with them in the past. I find that I can name six hundred letters in two minutes on a printed page. Five distinct acts of association between sight and sound (not to speak of all the other processes concerned) must then have occurred in each second in my mind. In reading entire words the speed is much more rapid. Valentin relates in his Physiology that the reading of a single page of the proof, containing 2629 letters, took him 1 minute and 32 seconds. In this experiment each letter was understood in 1/28 of a second, but owing to the integration of letters into entire words, forming each a single aggregate impression directly associated with a single acoustic image, we need not suppose as many as 28 separate associations in a sound. The figures, however, suffice to show with what extreme rapidity an actual sensation recalls its customary associates. Both in fact seem to our ordinary attention to come into the mind at once. The time-measuring psychologists of recent days have tried

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  who that has once noticed the identity can fail to have it arrest his attention again? When watching for the distant clock to strike, our mind is so filled with its image that at every moment we think we hear the longed-for dreaded sound. So of an awaited footstep. Every stir in the wood is for the hunter his game; for the fugitive his pursuers. Every bonnet in the street is momentarily taken by the lover to enshroud the head of his idol. The image in the mind is the attention; the preperception , as Mr. Lewes calls it, is half of the perception of the looked-for thing.[367] [image file=Image00043.jpg] It is for this reason that men have no eyes but for those aspects of things which they have already been taught to discern. Any one of us can notice a phenomenon after it has once been pointed out, which not one in ten thousand could ever have discovered for himself. Even in poetry and the arts, some one has to come and tell us what aspects we may single out, and what effects we may admire, before our æsthetic nature can 'dilate' to its full extent and never 'with the wrong emotion.' In kindergarten instruction one of the exercises is to make the children see how many features they can point out in such an object as a flower or a stuffed bird. They readily name the features they know already, such as leaves, tail, bill, feet. But they may look for hours without distinguishing nostrils, claws, scales, etc., until their attention is called to these details; thereafter, however, they see them every time. In short, the only things which we commonly see are those which we preperceive , and the only things which we preperceive are those which have been labelled for us, and the labels stamped into our mind. If we lost our stock of labels we should be intellectually lost in the midst of the world. Organic adjustment, then, and ideational preparation or preperception are concerned in all attentive acts. An interesting theory is defended by no less authorities than Professors Bain[368] and Ribot,[369] and still more ably advocated by Mr. N. Lange,[370] who will have it that the ideational preparation itself is a consequence of muscular adjustment, so that the latter may be called the essence of the attentive process throughout. This at least is what the theory of these authors practically amounts to, though the former two do not state it in just these terms. The proof consists in the exhibition of cases of intellectual attention which organic adjustment accompanies, or of objects in thinking which we have to execute a movement. Thus Lange says that when he tries to imagine a certain colored circle, he finds himself first making with his eyes the movement to which the circle corresponds, and then imagining the color, etc., as a consequence of the movement. "Let my reader," he adds, "close his eyes and think of an

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  called, is a portion of consciousness that admits imaginary division into like parts which are related to one another in sequence or coexistence. A feeling proper is either made up of like parts that occupy time, or it is made up of like parts that occupy space, or both. In any case, a feeling proper is an aggregate of related like parts, while a relational feeling is undecomposable. And this is exactly the contrast between the two which must result if, as we have inferred, feelings are composed of units of feelings, or shocks." [230] M. Paulhan (Revue Philosophique, XX. 455-6), after speaking of the faint mental images of objects and emotions, says: "We find other vaguer states still, upon which attention seldom rests, except in persons who by nature or profession are addicted to internal observation. It is even difficult to name them precisely, for they are little known and not classed; but we may cite as an example of them that peculiar impression which we feel when, strongly preoccupied by a certain subject, we nevertheless are engaged with, and have our attention almost completely absorbed by, matters quite disconnected therewithal. We do not then exactly think of the object of our preoccupation; we do not represent it in a clear manner; and yet our mind is not as it would be without this preoccupation. Its object, absent from consciousness, is nevertheless represented there by a peculiar unmistakable impression, which often persists long and is a strong feeling, although so obscure for our intelligence." "A mental sign of the kind is the unfavorable disposition left in our mind towards an individual by painful incidents erewhile experienced and now perhaps forgotten. The sign remains, but is not understood; its definite meaning is lost." (P. 458.) [231] Mozart describes thus his manner of composing: First bits and crumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in his mind; then the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and more, "and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting or a handsome human being; in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as a succession—the way it must come later—but all at once, as it were. It is a rare feast! All the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong dream. But the best of all is the hearing of it all at once ." [232] Mental Physiology, § 236. Dr. Carpenter's explanation differs materially from that given in the text. [233] Cf. also S. Stricker: Vorlesungen über allg. u. exp. Pathologie (1879), pp. 462-3, 501, 547; Romanes: Origin of Human Faculty, p. 82. It is so hard to make one's self clear that I may advert to a

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  that our psychological vocabulary is wholly inadequate to name the differences that exist, even such strong differences as these. But namelessness is compatible with existence. There are innumerable consciousnesses of emptiness, no one of which taken in itself has a name, but all different from each other. The ordinary way is to assume that they are all emptinesses of consciousness, and so the same state. But the feeling of an absence is toto cœlo other than the absence of a feeling. It is an intense feeling. The rhythm of a lost word may be there without a sound to clothe it; or the evanescent sense of something which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fitfully, without growing more distinct. Every one must know the tantalizing effect of the blank rhythm of some forgotten verse, restlessly dancing in one's mind, striving to be filled out with words. Again, what is the strange difference between an experience tasted for the first time and the same experience recognized as familiar, as having been enjoyed before, though we cannot name it or say where or when? A tune, an odor, a flavor sometimes carry this inarticulate feeling of their familiarity so deep into our consciousness that we are fairly shaken by its mysterious emotional power. But strong and characteristic as this psychosis is—it probably is due to the submaximal excitement of wide-spreading associational brain-tracts—the only name we have for all its shadings is 'sense of familiarity.' When we read such phrases as 'naught but,' 'either one or the other,' 'a is b , but,' although it is, nevertheless,' 'it is an excluded middle, there is no tertium quid ,' and a host of other verbal skeletons of logical relation, is it true that there is nothing more in our minds than the words themselves as they pass? What then is the meaning of the words which we think we understand as we read? What makes that meaning different in one phrase from what it is in the other? 'Who?' 'When?' 'Where?' Is the difference of felt meaning in these interrogatives nothing more than their difference of sound? And is it not (just like the difference of sound itself) known and understood in an affection of consciousness correlative to it, though so impalpable to direct examination? Is not the same true of such negatives as 'no,' 'never,' 'not yet'? The truth is that large tracts of human speech are nothing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we nevertheless have an acutely discriminate sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts; we can hold them still and look at them as long as we like. These bare images of logical movement, on the contrary, are psychic transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in flight. Their function is to lead from one set of images to another. As they pass, we feel both

• From Story of O (1954)

  tasted the previous night before nor her choice of partner the previous evening had the least influence on her decision the following afternoon, which was always determined by a drawing. At three in the afternoon, beneath the copper beech where the garden chairs were grouped about a round, white-marble table, Anne-Marie would bring out the token box. Each girl would take a token. Whoever drew the lowest number was then taken to the music room and arranged on the dais as O had been that first day. She then had to point to (save for O, who was exempted until her departure) Anne-Marie's right or left hand, in each of which she was holding a white or black ball. If she chose black, she was flogged; white, she was not. Anne-Marie never resorted to chicanery, even if chance condemned or spared the same girl several days in a row. Thus the torture of little Yvonne, who sobbed and cried out for her lover, was repeated four days running. Her thighs, like her breasts crisscrossed with a green network of veins, spread to reveal a pink flesh which was pierced by the thick iron ring, which had finally been inserted, and the spectacle was all the more striking because Yvonne was completely shaved. "But why?" O wanted to know, "and why the ring if you are already wearing a disk on your collar?" "He says I'm more naked when I'm shaved. The ring, I think the ring is to fasten me with." Yvonne's green eyes and her tiny triangular face reminded O of Jacqueline every time she looked at her. What if Jacqueline were to go to Roissy? Sooner or later, Jacqueline would end up here, would here be strapped on her back on this platform. "I won't," O would say, "I don't want to and I won't lift a finger to get her there. As it is, I've already said too much. Jacqueline's not the sort to be flogged and marked." But how admirably suited to blows and irons was little Yvonne how lovely it was to hear her moans and sighs, how lovely too to witness her body soaked with perspiration, and what a pleasure to wrest the moans and the sweat from her. For on two occasions Anne-Marie had handed O the thonged whip - both times the victim had been Yvonne - and told her to use it. The first time, for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne's first scream, O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started in again and Yvonne's cries had echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed with a terrible feeling of pleasure, a feeling so intense that she had caught herself laughing in spite of herself, and she had found it almost impossible to restrain herself from striking Yvonne as hard as she could. Afterward she had remained next to Yvonne

• From Story of O (1954)

  She rang. Pierre chained her hands above her head, to the chain of the bed. When she was thus bound, her lover kissed her again, standing beside her on the bed. Again he told her that he loved her, then he got down off the bed and nodded for Pierre. He watched her struggle, so fruitlessly; he listened to her moans swell and become cries. When her tears flowed, he sent Pierre away. She still found the strength to tell him again that she loved him. Then he kissed her drenched face, her gasping mouth, undid her bonds, laid her down, and left. To say that O began to await her lover the minute he left her is a vast understatement: she was henceforth nothing but vigil and night. During the day she was like a painted countenance, whose skin is soft and mouth is meek and - this was the only time she abided by the rule - whose eyes were constantly lowered. She made and tended the fire, poured and offered the coffee and liqueurs, lighted the cigarettes, she arranged the flowers and folded the newspapers like a young girl in her parents' living room, so limpid with her open neck and leather collar, her tight bodice and prisoner's bracelets, that all it took for the men whom she was serving was to order her to remain by their sides while they were violating another girl to make them want to violate her as well; which doubtless explains why she was treated worse than before. Had she sinned? Or had her lover left her so that the very people to whom he had loaned her would feel freer to dispose of her? In any case, the fact remains that on the second day following his departure as, at nightfall, she had just undressed and was looking in the bathroom mirror at the almost vanished

• From Story of O (1954)

  welts made by Pierre's riding crop on the front of her thighs, Pierre entered. There were still two hours before dinner. He told her that she would not dine in the common room and said to get ready, pointing to the Turkish toilet in the corner, over which she had to squat, as Jeanne had warned her she would in the presence of Pierre. All the while she remained there he stood contemplating her, she could see him in the mirrors, and see herself, and was incapable of holding back the water which escaped from her body. He waited then until she had bathed and powdered herself. She was going to get her mules and red cape when he stopped her and added, fastening her hands behind her back, that there was no need to, but that she should wait a moment for him. She sat down on a corner of the bed. Outside it was storming, a tempest of cold rain and wind, and the poplar tree near the window swayed back and forth beneath the gusts. From time to time a pale wet leaf would splatter against the windowpanes. It was as dark as in the middle of the night, although the hour of seven had not yet struck, for autumn was well advanced and the days were growing shorter. When Pierre returned, he was carrying the same blindfold with which he had blindfolded her the first evening. He also had a long chain, which made a clanking noise, a chain similar to the one fastened to the wall. O had the impression that he couldn't make up his mind whether to put the blindfold or the chain on her first. She was gazing out at the rain, not caring what they wanted from her, thinking only that René had said he would come back, that there were still five days and five nights to go, and that she had no idea where he was or whether he was alone and, if he was not alone, who he was with. But he would come back. Pierre had laid the chain on the bed and, without interrupting O's daydream, had covered her eyes with the blindfold of black velvet. It was slightly rounded below the sockets of her eyes, and fitted the cheekbones perfectly, making it impossible to get the slightest peek or even to raise the eyelids. Blessed darkness like unto her own night, never had O greeted it with such joy, blessed chains that bore her away from herself.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Listening, O told herself that perhaps it would also be too late for him to escape becoming enamored of her, for she had no intention of being quickly tamed, and by the time she was he might have learned to love her a little. For all her inner resistance, and the timid refusal she had dared to display, had one object and one object alone: she wanted to exist for Sir Stephen in however modest a way, in the same way she existed for René, and wanted him to feel something more than desire for her. Not that she was in love, but because she clearly saw that René loved Sir Stephen in that passionate way boys love their elders, and she sensed that he was ready, if need be, to sacrifice her to any and all of Sir Stephen's whims, in an effort to satisfy him. She knew with an infallible intuition that that René would follow Sir Stephen's example and emulate his attitude, and that if Sir Stephen were to show contempt for her René would be contaminated by it, no matter how much he loved her, contaminated in a way he had never been, or had dreamed of being, by the opinions and example of the men at Roissy. This was because at Roissy, with regard to her, he was the master, and the opinions of all the men there to whom he gave her derived from and depended on his own. Here he was not the master any longer. On the contrary, Sir Stephen was René's master, without René's being fully aware of it, which is to say that René admired him and wanted to emulate him, to compete with him, and why he had given O to him: this time it was apparent that she had been given with no strings attached. René would probably go on loving her insofar as Sir Stephen deemed that she was worth the trouble and would love her himself. Till then, it was clear that Sir Stephen would be her master and, regardless of what René might think, her only master, in the precise relationship of master to slave. She did not expect any pity from him; but could she not hope to wrest some slight feeling of love from him?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  These two ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in imitation of some imitation, les sept merveilles du monde. These ladies belonged to a circle which, though of the highest society, was utterly hostile to that in which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of the most influential people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of Liza Merkalov, was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in the political world. From all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the hints in Princess Tverskoy's note referred to her refusal. But now Anna was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky. Anna arrived at Princess Tverskoy's earlier than the other guests. At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky's footman, with side-whiskers combed out like a kammer-yunker, went in too. He stopped at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Anna recognised him, and only then recalled that Vronsky had told her the day before that he would not come. Most likely he was sending a note to say so. As she took off her outer garment in the hall she heard the footman, pronouncing his 'r' s' even like a kammer-yunker, say, 'From the count for the princess,' and hand the note. She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go herself to see him. But neither the first nor the second nor the third course was possible. Already she heard bells ringing to announce her arrival ahead of her, and Princess Tverskoy's footman was standing at the open door waiting for her to go forward into the inner rooms. 'The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately. Would you be pleased to walk into the garden?' announced another footman in another room. The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as at home—worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any step, impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among outsiders, in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But she was wearing a dress that she knew suited her. She was not alone; all around was that luxurious setting of idleness that she was used to, and she felt less wretched than at home. She was not forced to think what she was to do. Everything would be done of itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown that struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled to her just as she always did. Princess Tverskoy was walking with Tushkevitch and a young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in the provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable princess.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't,' said Levin, thinking of Kitty. Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing. Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing tart, that he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about them. But now Levin was longing to find out what was tormenting him so, yet he had not the courage to begin. 'Come, tell me how things are going with you,' said Levin, bethinking himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself. Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes sparkled merrily. 'You don't admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has had one's rations of bread—to your mind it's a crime; but I don't count life as life without love,' he said, taking Levin's question in his own way. 'What am I to do? I'm made that way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much pleasure .. .' 'What! is there something new, then?' queried Levin. 'Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian's women . . . Women, such as one sees in dreams . . . Well, these women are sometimes to be met in reality . . . and these women are terrible. Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.' 'Well, then, it would be better not to study it. 'No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.' Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and understand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women. XV T HE place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch-tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were free. Grey old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite him and pricked up her ears.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said, and again she was revolted at the thought; but she could not help admitting that there was a grain of brutal truth in the words. 'Is it far now, Mihail?' Darya Alexandrovna asked the counting-house clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that were frightening her. 'From this village, they say, it's five miles.' The carriage drove along the village street and on to a bridge. On the bridge was a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaves on their shoulders, gaily and noisily chattering. They stood still on the bridge, staring inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces turned to Darya Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of their enjoyment of life. 'They're all living, they're all enjoying life,' Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed the peasant women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs of the old carriage, 'while I, let out, as it were from prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and my sister Natalia and Varenka and Anna, whom I am going to see—all, but not I. 'And they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I have, anyway, a husband I love—not as I should like to love him, still I do love him, while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame? She wants to live. God has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the same. Even to this day I don't feel sure I did right in listening to her at that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought then to have cast off my husband and have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and have been loved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I don't respect him. He's necessary to me,' she thought about her husband, 'and I put up with him. Is that any better?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'You know, Kitty's coming here, and is going to spend the summer with me.' 'Really,' he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation, he said: 'Then I'll send you two cows, shall I ? If you insist on a bill you shall pay me five roubles a month; but it's really too bad of you.' 'No, thank you. We can manage very well now.' 'Oh, well then, I'll have a look at your cows, and if you'll allow me, I'll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their food.' And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on. He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort. 'Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after it?' Darya Alexandrovna responded, without interest. She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged, thanks to Marya Filimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin's knowledge of farming. General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all seemed to her a far simpler matter: all that was needed, as Marya Filimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen slops to the laundry-maid's cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was most important, she wanted to talk about Kitty. X ' K ITTY writes to me that there's nothing she longs for so much as quiet and solitude,' Dolly said after the silence that had followed. 'And how is she—better?' Levin asked in agitation. 'Thank God, she's quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.' 'Oh, I'm very glad!' said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face. 'Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitritch,' said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, 'why is it you are angry with Kitty?' 'I? I'm not angry with her,' said Levin. 'Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them when you were in Moscow?' 'Darya Alexandrovna,' he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, 'I wonder really that with your kind heart you don't feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know . . .

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came, the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of action was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was utterably unable to do that. As long as the teacher was explaining to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and to understand that the short and familiar word 'suddenly' is an adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had disappointed the teacher. He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book. 'Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?' he asked, all of a sudden. 'You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on which one has to do one's work.' Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not think what he said, he felt it from the tone in which it was said. 'But why have they all agreed to speak just in the same manner always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he keep me off; why doesn't he love me?' he asked himself mournfully, and could not think of an answer. XXVII A FTER the lesson with the grammar teacher came his father's lesson. While waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the table playing with a penknife, and fell to dreaming. Among Seryozha's favourite occupations was searching for his mother during his walks. He did not believe in death generally, and in her death in particular, in spite of what Lidia Ivanovna had told him and his father had confirmed, and it was just because of that, and after he had been told she was dead, that he had begun looking for her when out for a walk. Every woman of full, graceful figure with dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman such a feeling of tenderness was stirred within him that his breath failed him, and tears came into his eyes.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And he was on the tiptoe of expectation that she would come up to him, would lift her veil. All her face would be visible, she would smile, she would hug him, he would sniff her fragrance, feel the softness of her arms, and cry with happiness, just as he had one evening lain on her lap while she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white, ring-covered fingers. Later, when he accidentally learned from his old nurse that his mother was not dead, and his father and Lidia Ivanovna had explained to him that she was dead to him because she was wicked (which he could not possibly believe, because he loved her), he went on seeking her and expecting her in the same way. That day in the public gardens there had been a lady in a lilac veil, whom he had watched with a throbbing heart, believing it to be her as she came towards them along the path. The lady had not come up to them, but had disappeared somewhere. That day, more intensely than ever, Seryozha felt a rush of love for her, and now, waiting for his father, he forgot everything, and cut all round the edge of the table with his penknife, staring straight before him with sparkling eyes and dreaming of her. 'Here is your papa!' said Vassily Lukitch, rousing him. Seryozha jumped up and went up to his father, and kissing his hand, looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy at receiving the Alexander Nevsky. 'Did you have a nice walk?' said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sitting down in his easy-chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him and opening it. Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more than once told Seryozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture history thorough ly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the lesson, and Seryozha observed this. 'Yes, it was very nice indeed, papa,! said Seryozha, sitting sideways on his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. 'I saw Nadinka' (Nadinka was a niece of Lidia Ivanovna's who was being brought up in her house). 'She told me you'd been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?' 'First of all, don't rock your chair, please,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'And secondly, it's not the reward that's precious, but the work itself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Princess, will you allow it?' And Vronsky stood up, looking about for a little table. Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for suffering of which she was herself the cause. 'If you can forgive me, forgive me,' said her eyes, 'I am so happy.' 'I hate them all, and you, and myself,' his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old prince came in, and after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin. 'Ah!' he began joyously. 'Been here long, my boy? I didn't even know you were in the town. Very glad to see you.' The old prince embraced Levin, and talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who had risen, and was serenely waiting till the prince should turn to him. Kitty felt how distasteful her father's warmth was to Levin after what had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to Vronsky's bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why one could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed. 'Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitritch,' said Countess Nordston; 'we want to try an experiment.' 'What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,' said the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his suggestion. 'There's some sense in that, anyway.' Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and, with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of the great ball that was to come off next week. 'I hope you will be there?' he said to Kitty. As soon as the old prince turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the last impression he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky's inquiry about the ball. XV A T the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her conversation with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt for Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had received an offer. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin's face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father, and glancing at her and at Vronsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She did not hear his words and made no answer. Noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonitch went out to her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was pleased to want. 'From Prince Skorodumov for Sergey Alexeitch,' she said. 'His honour's not up yet,' said the porter, looking at her attentively. Anna had not anticipated that the absolutely unchanged hall of the house where she had lived for nine years would so greatly affect her. Memories sweet and painful rose one after another in her heart, and for a moment she forgot what she was here for. 'Would you kindly wait?' said Kapitonitch, taking off her fur cloak. As he took off the cloak, Kapitonitch glanced at her face, recognised her, and made her a low bow in silence. 'Please walk in, your excellency,' he said to her. She tried to say something, but her voice refused to utter any sound; with a guilty and imploring glance at the old man she went with light, swift steps up the stairs. Bent double, and his goloshes catching in the steps, Kapitonitch ran after her, trying to overtake her. 'The tutor's there; maybe he's not dressed. I'll let him know.' Anna still mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what the old man was saying. 'This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse it's not being tidy. His honour's in the old parlour now,' the hall-porter said, panting. 'Excuse me, wait a little, your excellency; I'll just see,' he said, and overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared behind it. Anna stood still waiting. 'He's only just awake,' said the hall-porter, coming out. And at the very instant the porter said this, Anna caught the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes. 'Let me in; go away!' she said, and went in through the high doorway. On the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the boy. His little body bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and deliciously rolled back again. 'Seryozha!' she whispered, going noiselessly up to him. When she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from the four year old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she left him!

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying straight towards him; the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came the red flash and the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though trying to keep up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant, and fell with a heavy splash on the slushy ground. 'Can I have missed it?' shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, who could not see for the smoke. 'Here it is!' said Levin, pointing to Laska, who with one ear raised, wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as though she would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. 'Well, I'm glad you were successful,' said Levin, who, at the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in shooting the snipe. 'It was a bad shot from the right barrel,' responded Stepan Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. 'Sh . . . it's flying!' The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying, flew straight at the very heads of the sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and like swallows the snipe turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from sight. The stand-shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevitch shot two more birds and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low down in the west behind the birch-trees, and high up in the east twinkled the red lights of Arcturus. Over his head Levin made out the stars of the Great Bear and lost them again. The snipe had ceased flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch, should be above it, and the stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the car of the Great Bear with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky, yet still he waited. 'Isn't it time to go home?' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  When the peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this world, came over Levin. Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him good-humouredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancour against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labour. God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated to labour, and that labour was its own reward. For whom the labour? What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations—beside the point. Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy of the men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and social delightful life. The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone home, while those who came from far were gathered into a group for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summer night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughing all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter. All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from the haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was over. 'Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?' he said to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live now.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel of toys she had chosen the day before in a toy-shop with such love and sorrow. XXXI I NTENSELY as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while understand why she was there. 'Yes, it's all over, and I am again alone,' she said to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think. The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, 'Presently.' A footman offered her coffee. 'Later on,' she said. The Italian nurse, after taking the baby out in her best, came in with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed little baby, on seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her could not be called love in comparison with what she felt for Seryozha. Everything in this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did not go deep to her heart. On her first child, though the child of an unloved father, had been concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction. Her baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been concentrated on her first child.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'How can you be dull at a ball?' 'Why should not I be dull at a ball?' inquired Anna. Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow. 'Because you always look nicer than anyone.' Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said— 'In the first place it's never so; and secondly, if it were, what difference would it make to me?' 'Are you coming to this ball?' asked Kitty. 'I imagine it won't be possible to avoid going. Here, take it,' she said to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her white, slender-tipped finger. 'I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a ball.' 'Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it's a pleasure to you. . . . Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy enough without that,' she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha had been playing with. 'I imagine you at the ball in lilac.' 'And why in lilac precisely?' asked Anna, smiling. 'Now, children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to tea,' she said, tearing the children from her, and sending them off to the dining-room. 'I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal of this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.' 'How do you know? Yes.' 'Oh! what a happy time you are at,' pursued Anna. 'I remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is. . . . Who has not been through it?' Kitty smiled without speaking. 'But how did she go through it? How I should like to know all her love-story!' thought Kitty, recalling the unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband. 'I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you, I liked him so much,' Anna continued. 'I met Vronsky at the railway station.' 'Oh, was he there?' asked Kitty, blushing. 'What was it Stiva told you?' 'Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad . . . I travelled yesterday with Vronsky's mother,' she went on; 'and his mother talked without a pause of him, he's her favourite. I know mothers are partial, but . . . ' 'What did his mother tell you?'