Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy [books to read in your 30s .txt] 📗

before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went on with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of his attention had passed to something else, and that consequently he looked at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work had been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without this work his life would be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were necessary for him that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking up his manuscript, reading through what he had written, he found with pleasure that the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas seemed to him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct to him when he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was writing now a new chapter on the causes of the present disastrous condition of agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to this result was the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon Russia, especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of speculation⁠—all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that in a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would arise only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into agriculture, when it had come under regular, or at least definite, conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase proportionally, and especially in such a way that other sources of wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain stage of agriculture there should be means of communication corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land, railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs, were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress; and that just as the one-sided and premature development of one organ in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the general development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of communication, manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing into the background the chief question calling for settlement⁠—the question of the organization of agriculture.

While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. “He’s jealous,” she thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He’s jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr the cook,” she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling of possession strange to herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him from his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d turn round⁠ ⁠… I’ll will him to!” and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence of her gaze.

“Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was looking at him and smiling, he looked round.

“Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up.

“He looked round,” she thought.

“It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him, and trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.

“How happy we are alone together!⁠—I am, that is,” he said, going up to her with a radiant smile of happiness.

“I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.”

“And what were you thinking about?”

“I? I was thinking.⁠ ⁠… No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break off,” she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little holes now, do you see?”

She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.

“No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and watching the tiny scissors moving round.

“Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the back of your head.”

“Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural, too good,” he said, kissing her hand.

“I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems to me.”

“And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her head round.

“A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!”

Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.

“Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma.

“They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.”

“Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or else I shall read your letters without you.”

Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. “It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought. “It’ll soon be three months, and I’m doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after things. Either I am loath to