Anna Karenina

The handsome old man with streaks of grey in his black beard and thick silver hair stood motionless, holding a bowl of honey, looking down gently and calmly from his height upon the masters, obviously neither understanding nor wishing to understand anything.

‘That’s quite so,’ he said to Sergei Ivanovich’s words, shaking his head significantly.

‘There, just ask him. He doesn’t know or think anything,’ said Levin. ‘Have you heard about the war, Mikhailych?’ He turned to him. ‘What they read about in church? What do you think? Should we go to war for the Christians?’

‘What’s there for us to think? Alesander Nikolaich, the emperor, has thought on us, and he’ll think on us in everything. He knows better ... Shall I bring more bread? For the lad?’ he asked Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to Grisha, who was finishing the crust.

‘I have no need to ask,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘We have seen and still see how hundreds and hundreds of people, abandoning everything to serve a just cause, come from all ends of Russia and directly and clearly state their thought and aim. They bring their kopecks or go themselves and directly say why. What does that mean?’

‘In my opinion,’ said Levin, beginning to get excited, ‘it means that, among eighty million people, there are always to be found, not hundreds like now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost their social position, reckless people, who are always ready - to join Pugachev’s band, to go to Khiva, to Serbia ...’¹⁰

‘I tell you, they are not hundreds and not reckless people, but the best representatives of the nation!’ said Sergei Ivanovich, with such irritation as if he were defending his last possession. ‘And the donations? Here the whole people directly expresses its will.’

‘This word “people” is so vague,’ said Levin. ‘District clerks, teachers, and maybe one muzhik in a thousand know what it’s about. And the remaining eighty million, like Mikhailych, not only don’t express their will, but don’t have the slightest notion what they should express their will about. What right then do we have to say it’s the will of the people?’

XVI

Experienced in dialectics, Sergei Ivanovich, without objecting, at once shifted the conversation to a different area.

‘Yes, if you want to learn the spirit of the people in an arithmetical way, that is certainly very difficult to achieve. Voting has not been introduced among us, and it cannot be introduced, because it does not express the will of the people. But there are other ways of doing it. It is felt in the air, it is felt in the heart. Not to mention those undercurrents that have stirred up the stagnant sea of the people and are clear to any unprejudiced person. Look at society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse parties in the world of the intelligentsia, so hostile before, have merged into one. All discord has ended, all social organs are saying one and the same thing, everyone has felt the elemental power that has caught them up and is carrying them in one direction.’

‘It’s the newspapers that all say the same thing,’ said the prince. ‘That’s true. And it’s so much the same that it’s like frogs before a thunderstorm. You can’t hear anything on account of them.’

‘Frogs or no frogs, I don’t publish the newspapers and don’t want to defend them. I’m talking about the one-mindedness of the world of the intelligentsia,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, turning to his brother.

Levin was about to reply, but the old prince interrupted him.

‘Well, about this one-mindedness something else might be said,’ he observed. ‘There’s this dear son-in-law of mine, Stepan Arkadyich, you know him. He’s now getting a post as member of the committee of the commission and whatever else, I don’t remember. Only there’s nothing to do there - what, Dolly, it’s not a secret! - and the salary’s eight thousand. Try asking him whether his work is useful and he’ll prove to you that it’s very much needed. And he’s a truthful man. But then it’s impossible not to believe in the usefulness of eight thousand.’

‘Yes, he asked me to tell Darya Alexandrovna that he got the post,’ Sergei Ivanovich said with displeasure, thinking that the prince had spoken beside the point.

‘And it’s the same with the one-mindedness of the newspapers. It’s been explained to me: as soon as there’s a war, their income doubles. How can they not think that the destiny of the people and the Slavs ... and all the rest of it?’

‘There are many newspapers I don’t like, but that is unfair,’ said Sergei Ivanovich.

‘I would make just one condition,’ the prince went on. ‘Alphonse Karr put it splendidly before the war with Prussia.¹¹ “You think war is necessary? Fine. Send anyone who preaches war to a special front-line legion - into the assault, into the attack, ahead of everyone!” ’

‘The editors would be a fine sight,’ Katavasov said with a loud laugh, picturing to himself the editors he knew in this select legion.

‘Why, they’d run away,’ said Dolly, ‘they’d just be a hindrance.’