Three Key Quotes

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In Moscow, for the first time, after the course and lux­u­ri­ous life of Peters­burg, [Vron­sky] expe­ri­enced the delight of friend­ship with a sweet, inno­cent soci­ety girl who was in love with him. It never even entered his head that there might be any­thing wrong about his rela­tions with Kitty. At balls he danced chiefly with her; he went call­ing on the fam­ily. He talked the usual soci­ety talk with her; all sorts of non­sense, but non­sense that he invol­un­tar­ily put a spe­cial mean­ing into for her. In spite of his say­ing noth­ing to her that he might not have said in pub­lic, he felt that she was grow­ing more and more depen­dent on him, and the more he felt this the pleas­an­ter it was for him, and the more ten­der his own feel­ing grew for her. He did not know that his behav­ior toward Kitty had a cer­tain name; that he was lead­ing a young girl into temp­ta­tion with no inten­tion of mar­ry­ing her, and that this seduc­tion was one of the evil actions habit­ual among bril­liant young men like him­self. He thought him­self the first to dis­cover this plea­sure, and he enjoyed his dis­cov­ery.
….But as Vron­sky left the Shcherbatsky’s that evening, though he did not even sus­pect what her par­ents were say­ing, he had the feel­ing that the secret spir­i­tual bond that existed between him and Kitty had been strength­ened that evening with such force that he had to do some­thing about it. But he had no notion what could or should be done.
That’s what’s so delight­ful about it, he thought, as he left the Shcherb­taskys’, tak­ing with him as always an agree­able sen­sa­tion of purity and fresh­ness, partly due to his not hav­ing smoked the whole evening, together with a novel feel­ing of ten­der­ness at her love for him—the delight­ful thing is that noth­ing was said by her or by me, but we under­stood each other so well, in the invis­i­ble con­ver­sa­tion of looks and over­tones, that tonight it was clearer than ever that she told me she loves me. And so sweetly, so sim­ply, above all so trust­ingly! I myself feel bet­ter, purer. I feel that I have a heart and that there’s a great deal of good in me. Those sweet lov­ing eyes! When she said, “and very much…”
But then what? Well, nothing…It’s all right for me, and it’s all right for her. And he began think­ing of how he might fin­ish his evening.
AK P 59–60

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Vron­sky, stand­ing side by side with Oblon­sky, [who has just told him that Levin has pro­posed to Kitty and was declined], watch­ing the cars and the peo­ple com­ing out, had for­got­ten his mother com­pletely. What he had just heard about Kitty had excited him and made him happy. He squared his chest uncon­sciously; his eyes shone. He felt like a con­queror.
“Count­ess Vron­sky is in this com­part­ment,” said the smart­look­ing con­duc­tor, com­ing up to him.
The conductor’s words aroused him and made him think of his mother and their forth­com­ing meet­ing. At heart he had no respect for his mother, and with­out admit­ting it to him­self did not love her, but in accor­dance with the ideas of the cir­cle he lived in and because of his upbring­ing, he could not imag­ine any other rela­tion­ship with his mother but one of the most respect­ful obe­di­ence, and the more respect­ful and obe­di­ent he was in appear­ance the less he respected and loved her at heart. P 63–64

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Kitty came in directly after din­ner. She knew Anna, though not at all well, and was com­ing to her sister’s now full of fears as to how she would be received by this Peters­burg soci­ety woman whose praises were being sung by every­body. But Anna liked her—Kitty saw that at once. Anna plainly admired her beauty and youth, and Kitty could not even recover her poise before she fell not only under Anna’s influ­ence, but infat­u­ated with her, in the way young girls are capa­ble of falling in love with older mar­ried women. Anna was not at all like a soci­ety woman, or like the mother of an eight-year-old son, but would rather have resem­bled a twenty-year-old girl in the sup­ple­ness of her move­ments, her fresh­ness, and the vivac­ity that played about her face and kept break­ing through in a smile or a look, if it had not been for the grave and occa­sion­ally sad expres­sion in her eyes, which struck Kitty and attracted her. Kitty felt that Anna was com­pletely sim­ple and hid noth­ing, but that she had within her another, higher world of inter­ests, com­plex and poet­i­cal, that were beyond Kitty’s reach.
….Next week, it’s going to be a splen­did one. One of those balls that are always gay.”
“And are there any that are always gay?” said Anna with ten­der irony.
“It’s strange, but there are. It’s always gay at the Bor­ishchevs’, at the Nikitins’ too, while at the Meshkovs’ it’s always bor­ing. Surely you’ve noticed it?”
“No, my dear, for me there are no such balls ay longer where it’s always gay,” said Anna, and in her eyes Kitty saw that spe­cial world that was closed to her. “For me there are only balls which are less dif­fi­cult and bor­ing…”
“But how can a ball be bor­ing for you?”
“But why shouldn’t it be bor­ing for me at a ball? asked Anna.
Kitty noticed that Anna knew what the answer to this would be.
“Because you’re always pret­tier than any­one else.”
Anna had a capac­ity for blush­ing. She blushed and said: “In the first place, that’s never so; sec­ondly, even if that were to be so what use would it be to me?”
“Are you going to this ball?” asked Kitty.
“I think it’ll be impos­si­ble not to. Here, take it,” she said to Tanya, who was pulling of a loosely fit­ting ring from her white, slen­der, taper­ing fin­ger.
AK P 75

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“But what did his mother tell you?”
“Oh, such a lot! I know he’s her favorite, but even so it’s obvi­ous how chival­rous he is…For instance, she told me he wanted to give up his entire for­tune to his brother, and that as a child he did some­thing else that was very unusual, he saved a woman from drown­ing. I n one word—a hero,” said Anna, smil­ing and think­ing about the two hun­dred rubles [Vron­sky] had given away at the sta­tion.
But she said noth­ing about the two hun­dred rubles. For some rea­son she found it unpleas­ant to think of. She felt there was some­thing about it that con­cerned her, the sort of thing it shouldn’t have been. [In fact, Vron­sky was so cher­i­ta­ble out of pride in their mutual attrac­tion]
AK P 78

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Dolly came out of her room for the grownups’ tea. Oblon­sky did not come out; doubt­less he had left his wife’s room by the back door.
“I’m afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” remarked Dolly to Anna. “I’d like to move you down­stairs, we can be closer to each other.”
“Oh really, please don’t worry about me,” Anna replied, scru­ti­niz­ing Dolly’s face to see whether or not there had been a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
“There’ll be too much light for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.
“I assure you I always sleep like a dor­mouse any­where.”
“What’s all this?” Oblosnky asked his wife as he came out of his study.
By his tone both Kitty and Anna knew at once that there had been a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
“I want to move Anna down­stairs, only the cur­tains have to be changed. No one else can do it, I’ll have to myself,” Dolly answered, turn­ing to him.
Heaven only knows whether they’re com­pletely rec­on­ciled, Anna thought when she heard Dolly’s tone, chilly and com­posed.
AK Pg 78

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Kitty had been see­ing Anna every day, was in love with her, and invari­ably imag­ined her in lilac. But now, when she saw her in black, she felt she had never real­ized her full charm before. She saw her now as some­thing com­pletely new and unex­pected. Now she real­ized that Anna could never be in lilac, and that her charm con­sisted of just that—she always stood out from her dress; it was never con­spic­u­ous. The black dress with its rich lace was also unno­tice­able on her: it was merely a frame, what was vis­i­ble was only her­self, sim­ple, nat­ural, ele­gant, and at the same time gay and full of life.
She her­self very erect as usual; she was talk­ing to the host, with her head turned toward him slightly, when Kitty came over to the group.
“No, I shan’t be the one to throw the first stone,” she was say­ing in answer to some­thing he had said. “Although I don’t under­stand it,” she went on, shrug­ging her shoul­ders; then with a ten­der pro­tect­ing smile she turned at once to Kitty. Tak­ing in her dress with a swift fem­i­nine glance, she made a motion with her head, scarcely per­cep­ti­ble but under­stood by Kitty, in approval of her dress and her beauty.
AK Pg 83

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Why is she so annoyed with him, thought Kitty, who had noticed Anna’s inten­tional dis­re­gard of Vrosnky’s bow. Vron­sky came over to Kitty: he reminded her that he had the first quadrille and regreted not haing had the plea­sure of see­ing her for such a long time. Kitty, full of admi­ra­tion, watched Anna waltzhing while she lis­tened to him. She was expect­ing him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not: she glanced at him in sur­prise. He flushed and hur­riedly asked her to waltz, but he had no sooner put his arm around her slen­der waist and taken the first step when the music sud­denly stopped. Kitty looked at his face, which was so close to her, and for a long time after­ward, for sev­eral years, that look full of love that she gave him then and that he did not respond to, cut her to the heart in an agony of shame.
AK Pg 84

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But as she was danc­ing the final quadrille with one of the bor­ing young men it was impos­si­ble to refuse, she hap­pened to find her­self fac­ing Vron­sky and Anna. She had not been together with Anna since the very begin­ning; now she sud­denly saw her again, this time in a new and unex­pected light. She saw in her the ela­tion with suc­cess she knew so well. She saw that Anna was drunk with the wine of the rap­ture she had aroused. Kitty knew this feel­ing and knew its signs, and she saw them in Anna—the quiv­er­ing light flash­ing in her eyes, the smile of hap­pi­ness and ela­tion that curled her lips invol­un­tar­ily, and the grace­ful pre­ci­sion, accu­racy and light­ness of her move­ments. Tolstoy’s Par­lor Room
But who is it? Kitty asked her­self: everyone—or just one? With­out giv­ing any help to the dis­tressed young man she was danc­ing with, who had lost the thread of the con­ver­sa­tion and couldn’t pick it up again, and seem­ingly under the spell of the merry, resound­ing, peremp­tory cries of Kor­sun­sky, who first ordered every­one to form a grand rond, then a chaîne, she kept watch­ing, and her heart sank more and more.
Every time Vron­sky spoke to Anna a joy­ous light flared up in her eyes, and a smile of plea­sure curved her red lips. She seemed to be mak­ing an effort to hide these signs of joy, but they passed over her face of their own accord. Kitty looked at him in hor­ror: But what’s hap­pen­ing to him? What Kitty saw so clearly in the mir­ror of Anna’s face she saw in him too. What had become of his unchange­ably calm, firm man­ner, and the calm non­cha­lance of his expres­sion? No—now, when­ever he spoke to her he bowed his head a lit­tle as though he wanted to fall down in front of her; in his eyes there was noth­ing but an expres­sion of sub­mis­sion and ter­ror. “I don’t wish to offen­sive,” that expres­sion seemed to keep say­ing, “but I want to save myself and I don’t know how.” There was a look on his face Kitty had never seen before. Smolensk Krem­lin
They were talk­ing about peo­ple they both knew, and car­ry­ing on the most triv­ial con­ver­sa­tion, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they said was deci­sive for their fate and hers. What was strange was that even though they really were speak­ing about how ridicu­lous Ivan Ivanovich was with his French accent, or whether a bet­ter match might be found for the Elet­sky girl, nev­er­the­less these words meant some­thing to them, which they felt just as Kitty did. The entire ball, the entire world—everything was over­laid by a mist in Kitty’s heart. Only the strict school of train­ing she had gone through propped her up and forced her to do what was required of her, that is, dance, answer ques­tions, talk, and even smile. But before the mazurka began, when chairs were already being set out for it and sev­eral cou­ples had moved from the small to the large ball­room, a moment of despair and ter­ror laid hold of her. She had refused five men who had asked for the mazurka, and now she was not in it. There was not even a hope of her being asked, just because she had had too great a suc­cess and it could never have entered anyone’s head that she had not already been asked. She ought to have told her mother she was feel­ing ill and then gone home, but she lacked the strength. She felt shat­tered.
She went off to the far end of the small draw­ing room and sank into an easy chair. Her airy skirts stood out like a cloud from her slen­der fig­ure; one thin, bare, del­i­cate girl­ish arm dropped nerve­lessly and was lost in the pink folds of her tunic; the other held a fan with which, with rapid, short strokes, she fanned her glow­ing face. But though she looked like a but­ter­fly that had just set­tled on a blade of grass and was about to flut­ter off at any moment and spread its rain­bow wings, her heart was crushed by a fright­ful despair.
But I may be wrong, per­haps it wasn’t that way. And again she recalled every­thing she had seen.
“Kitty, what does this mean?” said Count­ess Norston, com­ing over on the car­pet to her sound­lessly. “I don’t under­stand.”
Kitty’s lower lip quiv­ered; she got up quickly.
“Kitty aren’t you danc­ing the mazurka?”
“No—no,” said Kitty, her voice tremu­lous with tears.
“He asked for the mazurka in front of me,” said Count­ess Norston, know­ing Kitty would under­stand who “he” and “she” were. “She said, ‘aren’t you danc­ing with Princess Shcherbatsky?’”
“Oh! It’s all the same to me!” Kitty replied.
No one but her­self under­stood her posi­tion, no one knew that she had refused a man whom she may have loved, and refused him because she had trusted another. Pg. 85–86. 

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