Three Key Quotes

The sec­re­tary had come in, famil­iarly def­er­en­tial, and with that cer­tain mod­est aware­ness, com­mon to all sec­re­taries, of supe­ri­or­ity to their supe­ri­ors in their knowl­edge of affairs, came over to Oblon­sky with some papers and, in the form of a ques­tion, began explain­ing some dif­fi­culty. Oblon­sky did not let him fin­ish, but ami­ably placed his hand on his sleeve:
“No, do it the way I told you to,” he said, soft­en­ing the remark with a smile, and briefly explain­ing his view of the mat­ter handed the papers back and said: “So do it that way, please.”
The embar­rassed sec­re­tary went off.
AK Pg 21

And Levin left the room, only remem­ber­ing when he was already at the door that he had for­got­ten to say good-bye to Oblonsky’s col­leagues.
AK Pg 22

Noth­ing would have seemed sim­pler than for him, a man thirty-two years old, of good fam­ily and rich rather than poor, to pro­pose to Princess Shcherbatsky; in all like­li­hood he would instantly have been acknowl­edged as a first-rate match. But Levin was in love, and because of this it seemed to him that Kitty was such per­fec­tion in every way, a being far above every­thing else on earth, while he was a lowly, earthy crea­ture, that it was absolutely unthink­able for oth­ers and her­self to regard him as wor­thy of her.

AK Pg 23

“Oh, for a girl in any case there’s noth­ing so awful about it. All girls take pride in being pro­posed to.”
“All girls, yes, but not her.”
Oblon­sky smiled. He under­stood this feel­ing of Levin’s very well, he knew that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two kinds: one kind was—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls had every human frailty and were very com­mon­place girls; the other kind was—she alone, with no frail­ties at all and far beyond all mankind.
“Wait a sec­ond, you must have some of this sauce,” he said, keep­ing Levin’s hand from push­ing the sauce away.
Levin obe­di­ently helped him­self to the sauce, but did not give Oblon­sky a chance to eat.
“No, now you listen—listen!” he said. “You can under­stand that for me this is a ques­tion of life or death. I’ve never spo­ken about it to any­one. And I can’t speak about it to any­one as I can with you. You and I, after all, are com­pletely dif­fer­ent from each other in every way: dif­fer­ent tasts, opin­ions, every­thing; but I know you’re fond of me and under­stand me, and because of that I’m ter­ri­bly fond of you. But for God’s sake you must be absolutely frank!”
AK P 39

Here it is. Let’s say you’re mar­ried, you love your wife, but you’re attracted by another woman.”
“Excuse me, but I absolutely can­not under­stand that—exactly as I couldn’t under­stand how after eat­ing my fill here I could go past a bak­ery and steal a roll.”
Oblonsky’s eyes glis­tened more than usual.
“And why not? A roll some­times has a smell you just can’t resist. ‘What bliss it is, when I have con­quered My own earth­bound desires But even if I fail, at least, I’ve had me that much plea­sure!’”
“….Don’t steal rolls.”
Oblon­sky burst out laugh­ing. “Ah, the moral­ist! But you can under­stand, there are two women: one of them insists only on her rights and those rights are your love, which you can’t give her, while the other sac­ri­fices every­thing for you and demands noth­ing. What should you do? How should you act? It’s a dread­ful tragedy.”Onion domes of Moscow
“If you want my real opin­ion about this, I must tell you I don’t believe in the tragedy of it, and this is why: in my opin­ion, love—both kinds of love, which you remem­ber Plato defines in his Symposium—both these kinds serve as a touch­stone for peo­ple. Some peo­ple under­stand only one kind, oth­ers the other. It’s futilre for those who under­stand non-Platonic love to talk about tragedy. In love like that there can be no tragedy. ‘Thank you kindly for the plea­sure, good-by!’—that’s your whole tragedy. And there can’t be any tragedy in Pla­tonic love because in such love every­thing is clear and pure, because—”
Just at this moment Levin recalled his own sins, and the inner strug­gle he was under­go­ing: he added unex­pect­edly: “Though per­haps you may be right. It’s very possible…But I don’t know, I really don’t know.”
AK Pg 42–44

Now she was afraid that Vron­sky might limit him­self to a mere flir­ta­tion. She saw that her daugh­ter was already in love with him, but con­soled her­self with the thought that he was an hon­or­able man and would not do that. But at the same time, with man­ners as free as they were, she knew how easy it was to turn a young girl’s head, and what a light view men gen­er­ally take of us such a mis­deed. The week before Kitty had told her mother of a con­ver­sa­tion she had with Vron­sky dur­ing a mazurka. This con­ver­sa­tion calmed the Princess to some extent; but she could not feel entirely at ease. Vron­sky had told Kitty that both he and his brother were so used to doing what­ever their mother wanted that they would never decide on any­thing impor­tant at all with­out con­sult­ing her. “I’m look­ing for­ward with spe­cial plea­sure now to Mama’s arrival from Peters­burg,” he had said.
Kitty had reported this with­out attach­ing any spe­cial mean­ing to it. But her mother under­stood it dif­fer­ently. She knew the old lady was expected from one day to the next, she knew she would be happy over her son’s choice, and it seemed strange to her that for fear of hurt­ing his mother he did not make a pro­posal; but she so much wanted the mar­riage itself, and, above all, longed for relief from her anx­i­ety, that she believed it. Painful as it as for her now to wit­ness the unhap­pi­ness of her old­est daugh­ter Dolly, who was prepar­ing to leave her hus­band, the Princess’s anx­i­ety about her youngest daughter’s fate, now about to be decided, absorbed all her emo­tions. Levin’s arrival that day had given her an addi­tional cause for alarm. She was afraid that Kitty, who had seemed to have some feel­ing for Levin at one point, might refuse Vron­sky out of an exces­sive sense of honor, and that Levin’s arrival would con­fuse and delay things just as they were about to be con­cluded.
….No, with eyes like that she couldn’t tell a lie, thought her mother, smil­ing at her excite­ment and hap­pi­ness. The Princess was smil­ing at how enor­mous and impor­tant the poor girl must think what was going on in her own soul.
AK Pg 47–48

She was a dried-up, sal­low, ner­vous, sickly woman with glit­ter­ing black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affec­tion for her, like the affec­tion all mar­ried women have for unmar­ried girls, was expressed in her desire to marry Kitty off in accor­dance with her own ideal of hap­pi­ness, which was being mar­ried to Vron­sky. She had always dis­liked Levin, whom she had often met there at the begin­ning of the win­ter. Her con­stant and favorite reac­tion when­ever she met him con­sisted of mak­ing fun of him.
“I love it when from the height of his majesty he looks down at me: either he cuts short his intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion because I’m stu­pid, or else he patron­izes me. That’s what I adore—he patron­izes me! I’m sim­ply delighted that he can’t bear me,” she would say about him.
She was right; Levin actu­ally couldn’t bear her; he despised her because of just the thing she prided her­self on and regarded as a merit—her ner­vous­ness, and her refined con­tempt for and aloof­ness from every­thing coarse and com­mon.
Between Levin and Count­ess Nord­ston a rela­tion­ship had grown up that is seen quite fre­quently in soci­ety, when two peo­ple out­wardly remain­ing on friendly terms despise one another to such a point that they can­not treat the other seri­ously and can­not even be offended by each other.
Count­ess Nord­ston pounced on Levin instantly.
“Ah, Levin! You’ve come back to our depraved Baby­lon,” she said, hold­ing out her tiny yel­low hand to him and recall­ing some­thing he had once said at the begin­ning of the win­ter, about Moscow being Baby­lon. “Is it that Baby­lon has reformed or that you’ve been spoiled?” she added with a sneer, look­ing at Kitty.
“I’m extremely flat­tered, Count­ess, at your remem­ber­ing my remark,” Levin retorted; he had had time to recover his self-possession and imme­di­ately entered into their rela­tion­ship of mali­cious ban­ter. “It obvi­ously had a pow­er­ful effect on you.”
AK Pg 51–52

Rightly or wrongly Levin could not help stay­ing on now; he had to dis­cover the sort of man she loved.
There are peo­ple who on meet­ing a suc­cess­ful rival are instantly ready to dis­re­gard every­thing good about him and see noth­ing but the bad; there are oth­ers, on the con­trary, who want more than any­thing else to dis­cover those qual­i­ties that have enabled their lucky rival to win out over them, and with an aching pain in their heart look for noth­ing but the best in him. Levin was one of the lat­ter.
AK Pg 53

When the party was over Kitty reported her con­ver­sa­tion with Levin to her mother; in spite of all her com­pas­sion the thought that she had been pro­posed to delighted her. She had no doubt of her hav­ing behaved prop­erly, but for a long time she could not fall asleep. There was one impres­sion that pur­sued her relentlessly—Levin’s face, his eye­brows knit together and the mourn­ful look in his kind eyes as he stood lis­ten­ing to her father and glanc­ing at her and at Vron­sky. And she began to feel so sorry for him that tears came to her eyes. But then at once she thought of the one she had taken instead. She vividly imag­ined that res­olute, vir­ile face, that noble seren­ity, and the kind­ness he always showed every­one in every­thing; she recalled the love for her­self of the one she she loved, and joy filled her heart once again as she lay back on the pil­low with a smile of hap­pi­ness. Such a pity, such a pity, she said to her­self; but what can I do? It’s not my fault. But an inner voice said some­thing else. Whether she regret­ted hav­ing lured Levin on, or hav­ing resued him, she had no idea. But her hap­pi­ness was poi­soned by doubts. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy! She repeated to her­self until she fell asleep.Portrait Leo Tol­stoy, circa 1880 to 1886
All this time one of the fre­quently repeated scenes between the par­ents about their favorite daugh­ter was going on down­stairs, in the Prince’s lit­tle study.
“What? This is what!” the Prince shouted, fling­ing his arms out and then instantly wrap­ping his squirrel-lined dress­ing gown around him. “That you have no pride, no dig­nity, you dis­grace your daugh­ter, you ruin her by all this vile, idi­otic match­mak­ing!”
“But please, for God’s sake, Prince, what is it I’ve done?” said the Princess, on the verge of tears.
Con­tented and sat­is­fied after her con­ver­sa­tion with Kitty, she had come to say good night to the Prince as usual, and thought she had no inten­tion of telling him about Levin’s pro­posal and Kitty’s refusal, she hinted to him that she thought the Vron­sky sit­u­a­tion was com­pletely set­tled and would be decided the moment his mother arrived. At these words the Prince exploded there and then and began shout­ing out all sorts of inde­cent words.
“What have you done? First of all this: you’ve been entic­ing a suitor, and all Moscow is going to talk about it, and rightly so. If you’re going to give evening par­ties invite every­one, and not only hand-picked suit­ors. Invite all the whippersnappers”—as the Prince called the young men of Moscow—“get in a pianist, and let them dance around, not the way you did it tonight—suitors and pair­ing every­one off! It’s hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble, for me to see that sort of thing, and now you’ve had your way and turned the child’s head. Levin is a thou­sand times the bet­ter man. As for that Peters­burg fop, they make them on a machine, they’re all accord­ing to the same pat­tern, and all trash! And even if he were a Prince of the Blood, Kitty doesn’t need him!” Red Square Moscow
“But what did I do?”
“Just this—“ the Prince cried out furi­ously.
“I know that if I were to lis­ten to you,” the Princess inter­rupted, “we’d never get Kitty mar­ried off! If that’s so we’ll have to go to the coun­try.”
“That would be bet­ter.”
“Just a moment—you think I’m ensar­ing them, but it’s not so in the least: a young man, a very fine young man, has fallen in love, and I think she—“
“So you think! And what if she falls in love too, while he has about as much idea of mar­ry­ing her as I? Oh, if only I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes!—‘ah, spir­i­tu­al­ism, ah, Nice, ah, the ball—!’” And at each word the Prince, pre­tend­ing to imi­tate his wife, gave a curt­sey. “And what if we really ruin lit­tle Kitty, and she really does take it into her head to—“
“But why do you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it; women don’t have eyes for that, but we do. I see a man whose inten­tions are serious—Levin; then I see a popin­jay like that popin­jay, whose only thought is his own amuse­ment.”
“Oh well, once you get some­thing into your head—“
“And you’ll remem­ber it, but then it’ll be too late, just as it was with poor lit­tle Dolly.”
“All right then, very well, let’s not talk about it,” the Princess stopped him, at the thought of the unfor­tu­nate Dolly.
“Splen­did, good night!”
And mak­ing the sign of the cross over each other as they kissed, but each one feel­ing that they were cling to their sep­a­rate opin­ions, they sep­a­rate for the night.
At first the Princess had been firmly con­vinced that that evening had set­tled Kitty’s future, and that there could be no doubt about Vronsky’s inten­tions; but what her hus­band said upset her. When she reached her own room, ter­ri­fied at the uncer­tainty of the future, she repeated to her­self sev­eral times, just as Kitty had: Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!
AK Pg 57–59 Tro­phy for What They Said

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