Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 28
Chapter 28
LEVIN was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was stirred as he
had never been before by the idea that the dissatisfaction he was feeling with his
system of managing his land was not an exceptional case, but the general condition
of things in Russia; that the organization of some relation of the laborers to the soil in
which they would work, as with the peasant he had met half-way to the Sviazhskys’,
was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And it seemed to him that
the problem could be solved, and that he ought to try and solve it.
After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole of the next
day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to see an interesting ruin
in the crown forest, Levin went, before going to bed, into his host’s study to get the
books on the labor question that Sviazhsky had offered him. Sviazhsky’s study was
a huge room, surrounded by bookcases and with two tables in it–one a massive writing
table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered
with recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages, ranged like the
rays of a star round the lamp. On the writing table was a stand of drawers marked
with gold lettering, and full of papers of various sorts.
Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.
“What are you looking at there?” he said to Levin, who was standing at the round
table looking through the reviews.
“Oh, yes, there’s a very interesting article here,” said Sviazhsky of the review
Levin was holding in his hand. “It appears,” he went on, with eager interest, “that
Friedrich was not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland.
It is proved...”
And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very important,
and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed at the moment by his
ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as he heard Sviazhsky: “What
is there inside of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?”
When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: “Well, and what then?”
But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to
be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why it was
interesting to him.
“Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,” said Levin, sighing.
“He’s a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true.”
“Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of
them!” said Sviazhsky.
“Whose marshal you are.”
“Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction,” said Sviazhsky, laughing.
“I’ll tell you what interests me very much,” said Levin. “He’s right that our system,
that’s to say of rational farming, doesn’t answer, that the only thing that answers
is the money-lender system, like that meek-looking gentleman’s, or else the
very simplest.... Whose fault is it?”
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