Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [393]
‘You can’t follow without it,’ said Pestsov, addressing Levin, since his interlocutor had left and there was no one else for him to talk to.
During the entr‘acte an argument arose between Levin and Pestsov about the virtues and shortcomings of the Wagnerian trend in music.9 Levin maintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their music wishing to cross over to the sphere of another art, just as poetry is mistaken when it describes facial features, something that should be done by painting, and he gave as an example of such a mistake a sculptor who decided to carve in marble the phantoms of poetic images emerging around the figure of a poet on a pedestal.10 ‘The sculptor gave these phantoms so little of the phantasmic that they’re even holding on to the stairs,’ said Levin. He liked the phrase, but he did not remember whether he might not have used it before, and precisely with Pestsov, and having said it, he became embarrassed.
Pestsov maintained that art is one and that it can reach its highest manifestations only by uniting all its forms.
The second part of the concert Levin could not hear at all. Pestsov stood next to him and spent almost the whole time talking to him, denouncing the piece for its superfluous, cloying, affected simplicity and comparing it with the Pre-Raphaelites in painting. On the way out Levin met still more acquaintances, with whom he talked about politics, music and mutual acquaintances. Among others he met Count Bohl, whom he had completely forgotten to visit.
‘Well, you can go now,’ Natalie said to him when he told her of it. ‘Maybe they won’t receive you, and then you can come and fetch me at the meeting. I’ll still be there.’
VI
‘Perhaps they’re not receiving?’ said Levin, entering the front hall of Countess Bohl’s house.
‘They are. Please come in,’ said the porter, resolutely helping him out of his coat.
‘How annoying,’ thought Levin, sighing as he removed a glove and shaped his hat. ‘Well, why am I going? And what shall I talk about with them?’
Passing through the first drawing room, Levin met Countess Bohl in the doorway. With a preoccupied and stern face, she was ordering a servant to do something. Seeing Levin, she smiled and invited him into the next small drawing room, from which voices came. In this drawing room, in armchairs, sat the countess’s two daughters and a Moscow colonel of Levin’s acquaintance. Levin went up to them and, after the greetings, sat down by the sofa, holding his hat on his knee.
‘How is your wife’s health? Were you at the concert? We couldn’t go. Mama had to be at a panikhida.’11
‘Yes, I heard ... Such a sudden death,’ said Levin.
The countess came in, sat on the sofa and also asked about his wife and the concert.
Levin answered her and repeated the remark about the suddenness of Mme Apraksin’s death.
‘Though she always had weak health.’
‘Did you go to the opera yesterday?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Lucca was very good.’12
‘Yes, very good,’ he said, and as he was totally indifferent to what they thought of him, he began to repeat what he had heard hundreds of times about the singer’s special talent. Countess Bohl pretended to listen. Then, when he had talked enough and fell silent, the colonel, silent up to then, began to speak. The colonel also talked about the opera and the lighting. Finally, having mentioned the planned folle journéecy13 at Tiurin‘s, the colonel started laughing, got up noisily and left. Levin also got up, but noticed from the countess’s face that it was too early for him to leave. Another couple of minutes were called for. He sat down.
But as he kept thinking how stupid it was, he could find nothing to talk about and remained silent.
‘You’re not going to the public meeting? They say it’s very interesting,’ the countess began.
‘No, I promised my belle-sœur I’d come and fetch her,’ said Levin.
Silence ensued. Mother and daughter exchanged glances once more.
‘Well, I suppose now is the time,’ thought Levin, and he got up. The ladies shook hands with him and asked him to convey mille chosescz to his wife.