Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [466]
‘Don’t I know that the stars don’t move?’ he asked himself, looking at a bright planet that had already changed its position over the topmost branch of a birch. ‘Yet, looking at the movement of the stars, I cannot picture to myself the turning of the earth, and I’m right in saying that the stars move.
‘And would the astronomers be able to understand or calculate anything, if they took into account all the various complex movements of the earth? All their astonishing conclusions about the distances, weights, movements and disturbances of the heavenly bodies are based solely on the visible movement of the luminaries around the fixed earth, on that very movement which is now before me, which has been that way for millions of people throughout the ages, and has been and will always be the same and can always be verified. And just as the conclusions of astronomers that were not based on observations of the visible sky in relation to the same meridian and the same horizon would be idle and lame, so my conclusions would be idle and lame if they were not based on that understanding of the good which always has been and will be the same for everyone, and which is revealed to me by Christianity and can always be verified in my soul. And I don’t have the right or possibility of resolving the question of other beliefs and their attitude to the Deity.’
‘Ah, you haven’t gone?’ the voice of Kitty suddenly said. She was walking the same way towards the drawing room. ‘What, are you upset about something?’ she said, studying his face attentively by the light of the stars.
But she would still have been unable to see his face if lightning, again hiding the stars, had not lit it up. By its light she made out his face and, seeing that he was calm and joyful, she smiled at him.
‘She understands,’ he thought. ‘She knows what I’m thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I’ll tell her.’ But just as he was about to begin speaking, she also started to speak.
‘Listen, Kostya, do me a favour,’ she said. ‘Go to the corner room and see how they’ve arranged everything for Sergei Ivanovich. I’m embarrassed to. Did they put in the new washstand?’
‘Very well, I’ll make sure,’ said Levin, getting up and kissing her.
‘No, I won’t tell her,’ he thought, as she walked on ahead of him. ‘It’s a secret that’s necessary and important for me alone and inexpressible in words.
‘This new feeling hasn’t changed me, hasn’t made me happy or suddenly enlightened, as I dreamed - just like the feeling for my son. Nor was there any surprise. And faith or not faith - I don’t know what it is - but this feeling has entered into me just as imperceptibly through suffering and has firmly lodged itself in my soul.
‘I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray - but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!’
The End
Notes
The following notes are indebted to the commentaries in the twenty-two-volume edition of Tolstoy’s works published by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura (Volumes VIII and IX, Moscow, 1981-2) and to Vladimir Nabokov’s notes to Part One of Anna Karenina, in Lectures on Russian Literature (London and New York, 1981). Biblical quotations, unless otherwise specified,