The mysterious and lovely Kitty herself, meanwhile, could not possibly love such an unattractive man, as he considered himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary, undistinguished man. Moreover, his previous relationship with Kitty—that of an adult and child, emanating from his friendship with her brother—seemed to him yet one more obstacle to love. He supposed that an unattractive, good man, as he considered himself to be, could be loved as a friend, but in order to be loved with the kind of love he had for Kitty, a man needed to be handsome, but most importantly, exceptional.
He had heard that women often love unattractive, ordinary men, but because of his own experience he did not believe it, since he himself could only love beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.
But having spent two months alone in the country, he came to the conclusion that this was not one of those infatuations he had experienced in his early youth, that these feelings were not giving him a moment’s peace, that he could not live without resolving the question as to whether or not she would become his wife, that his despair was only a product of his imagination, and that he had no proof that he would be refused. So he had now come to Moscow with the firm intention of proposing and getting married if accepted. Or … he could not imagine what would happen to him if he were to be refused.
7
AFTER arriving in Moscow on the morning train, Levin went to stay with his elder maternal half-brother Koznyshev and, after a change of clothes, he went into his study, intending to tell him straight away the reason for his visit, and to ask his advice: but his brother was not alone. Sitting in his study was a famous professor of philosophy who had come expressly from Kharkov* to clear up a misunderstanding which had arisen between them on an extremely important philosophical question. The professor was conducting a heated polemic with the materialists, and Sergey Koznyshev had been following this polemic with interest. After reading the professor’s latest article, he had written him a letter stating his objections, in which he reproached the professor for making too many concessions to the materialists. And the professor had come straight away so they could iron out their differences. They were discussing a fashionable topic: is there a boundary between psychological and physiological phenomena* in human activity, and, if so, where does it lie?
Sergey Ivanovich greeted his brother with the kindly but cold smile he usually bestowed on everyone and, after introducing him to the professor, carried on the conversation.
The sallow, bespectacled little man with the narrow forehead broke off the conversation for a moment to say hello, then carried on talking, not paying any attention to Levin. Levin sat down to wait for the professor to go, but soon became interested in the subject of the conversation.
Levin had come across the journal articles they were discussing and read them, interested in them as a development of the principles of natural science familiar from his university studies as a natural scientist, but he had never allied all these scholarly conclusions about the origins of man as an animal, and about reflexes, biology, and sociology with those questions about what life and death meant for him personally, which lately had been coming into his mind with increasing frequency.
As he listened to his brother’s conversation with the professor, he noticed that they aligned scientific questions with emotional ones and came close on several occasions to broaching these questions, but as soon as they approached what seemed to him to be the nub of the matter, they each time instantly veered off swiftly and immersed themselves again in the sphere of subtle distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions, and references to authorities, and he found it difficult to understand what they were talking about.
‘I cannot allow,’ said Sergey Ivanovich with his usual clarity and precision of expression and elegant articulation; ‘I cannot on any account agree with Keiss that my perception of the external world derives entirely from impressions. The most fundamental concept of being has not been received by me via the senses, as there is no special organ to transmit this concept.’
‘Yes, but Wurst, and Knaust, and Pripasov* will reply by saying that your consciousness of being is a product of a combination of every sensation, that this consciousness of being is the result of sensations. Wurst even says straight out that once there is no sensation, there can be no concept of being.’
‘I would say the opposite,’ began Sergey Ivanovich …
But at this point it again seemed to Levin that, having come close to the most important thing, they were meandering off again, so he decided to pose the professor a question.
‘Therefore, if my feelings are destroyed, if my body dies, there can be no further existence of any kind?’ he asked.
The professor glanced with irritation and almost mental pain at the strange person posing the question, who looked more like a barge-hauler than a philosopher, then transferred his gaze to Sergey Ivanovich as if to ask: what is there to say? But Sergey Ivanovich, who was not nearly as assertive and as one-sided as the professor, and was sufficiently broad-minded to be able to answer the professor and also understand the simple and natural point of view from which the question had emerged, smiled and said:
‘We do not yet have the right to answer that question …’
‘We do not have the data,’ confirmed the professor, before continuing with his arguments. ‘No,’ he said; ‘I should like to point out that if, as Pripasov directly states, sensation is based on impressions, then we must draw a clear distinction between these two concepts.’
Levin stopped listening, and waited for the professor to go.
8
WHEN the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovich turned to his brother:
‘I’m very glad you’ve come. Are you here for long? How is the estate?’
Levin knew that his elder brother had little interest in the estate and was only making a concession in asking him about it, so he only responded about the sale of wheat and about money.
Levin had wanted to tell his brother of his intention to marry and ask his advice, and had even firmly resolved to do so; but when he saw his brother and listened to his conversation with the professor, and when he heard the unconsciously patronizing tone with which his brother asked him how the estate was prospering (their mother’s property had not been divided, and Levin managed both parts), Levin felt he could not, for some reason, launch into a discussion with his brother about his decision to marry. He felt his brother would not look at it in the way he would have wished.
‘Well, what is going on at your zemstvo?’ asked Sergey Ivanovich, who was very interested in the zemstvo and attached great significance to it.
‘I really don’t know …’
‘How can that be? Aren’t you a member of the board?’
‘No, not any longer; I stepped down,’ Konstantin Levin replied. ‘And I don’t go to meetings any more.’
‘A pity!’ said Sergey Ivanovich, frowning.
Levin started to tell him what had been going on at the meetings in his district by way of justification.
‘Oh, it’s always like that!’ interrupted Sergey Ivanovich. ‘We Russians are always like that. Maybe it’s one of our good points, this ability to see our faults, but we overdo it—we console ourselves with irony, which is always ready to come tripping off our tongues. All I will say to you is that if another European nation was given the same rights as our zemstvo institutions, the Germans and the English would have secured freedom with them, but we just laugh.’