Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 5
his followers lay in their trying to take music into the sphere of another art, just
as poetry goes wrong when it tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to
do, and as an instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble
certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the pedestal. “These
phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they were positively clinging on
the ladder,” said Levin. The comparison pleased him, but he could not remember
whether he had not used the same phrase before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he said
it he felt confused.
Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest manifestations
only by conjunction with all kinds of art.
The second piece that was performed Levin could not hear. Pestsov, who was
standing beside him, was talking to him almost all the time, condemning the music
for its excessive affected assumption of simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity
of the Pre-Raphaelites in painting. As he went out Levin met many more
acquaintances, with whom he talked of politics, of music, and of common acquaintances.
Among others he met Count Bol, whom he had utterly forgotten to call upon.
“Well, go at once then,” Madame Lvova said, when he told her; “perhaps they’ll
not be at home, and then you can come to the meeting to fetch me. You’ll find me
still there.”
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