Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 3
Chapter 3
LEVIN had on this visit to town seen a great deal of his old friend at the university,
Professor Katavasov, whom he had not seen since his marriage. He liked in
Katavasov the clearness and simplicity of his conception of life. Levin thought that
the clearness of Katavasov’s conception of life was due to the poverty of his nature;
Katavasov thought that the disconnectedness of Levin’s ideas was due to his lack
of intellectual discipline; but Levin enjoyed Katavasov’s clearness, and Katavasov
enjoyed the abundance of Levin’s untrained ideas, and they liked to meet and to
discuss.
Levin had read Katavasov some parts of his book, and he had liked them. On
the previous day Katavasov had met Levin at a public lecture and told him that the
celebrated Metrov, whose article Levin had so much liked, was in Moscow, that he
had been much interested by what Katavasov had told him about Levin’s work, and
that he was coming to see him tomorrow at eleven, and would be very glad to make
Levin’s acquaintance.
“You’re positively a reformed character, I’m glad to see,” said Katavasov, meeting
Levin in the little drawing room. “I heard the bell and thought: Impossible that it can
be he at the exact time!... Well, what do you say to the Montenegrins now? They’re
a race of warriors.”
“Why, what’s happened?” asked Levin.
Katavasov in a few words told him the last piece of news from the war, and going
into his study, introduced Levin to a short, thick-set man of pleasant appearance.
This was Metrov. The conversation touched for a brief space on politics and on how
recent events were looked at in the higher spheres in Petersburg. Metrov repeated a
saying that had reached him through a most trustworthy source, reported as having
been uttered on this subject by the Tsar and one of the ministers. Katavasov had
heard also on excellent authority that the Tsar had said something quite different.
Levin tried to imagine circumstances in which both sayings might have been uttered,
and the conversation on that topic dropped.
“Yes, here he’s written almost a book on the natural conditions of the laborer in
relation to the land,” said Katavasov; “I’m not a specialist, but I, as a natural science
man, was pleased at his not taking mankind as something outside biological
laws; but, on the contrary, seeing his dependence on his surroundings, and in that
dependence seeking the laws of his development.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Metrov.
“What I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but studying the chief
instrument of agriculture, the laborer,” said Levin, reddening, “I could not help coming
to quite unexpected results.”
And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to expound his views.
He knew Metrov had written an article against the generally accepted theory of political
economy, but to what extent he could reckon on his sympathy with his own
new views he did not know and could not guess from the clever and serene face of
the learned man.
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