Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 1
matchboxes, ladies’ dresses, beer, restaurants– everything testified to sympathy with
the Slavonic peoples.
From much of what was spoken and written on the subject, Sergey Ivanovitch differed
on various points. He saw that the Slavonic question had become one of those
fashionable distractions which succeed one another in providing society with an object
and an occupation. He saw, too, that a great many people were taking up the
subject from motives of self-interest and self-advertisement. He recognized that the
newspapers published a great deal that was superfluous and exaggerated, with the
sole aim of attracting attention and outbidding one another. He saw that in this general
movement those who thrust themselves most forward and shouted the loudest
were men who had failed and were smarting under a sense of injury–generals without
armies, ministers not in the ministry, journalists not on any paper, party leaders
without followers. He saw that there was a great deal in it that was frivolous and
absurd. But he saw and recognized an unmistakable growing enthusiasm, uniting
all classes, with which it was impossible not to sympathize. The massacre of men
who were fellow Christians, and of the same Slavonic race, excited sympathy for the
sufferers and indignation against the oppressors. And the heroism of the Servians
and Montenegrins struggling for a great cause begot in the whole people a longing
to help their brothers not in word but in deed.
But in this there was another aspect that rejoiced Sergey Ivanovitch. That was the
manifestation of public opinion. The public had definitely expressed its desire. The
soul of the people had, as Sergey Ivanovitch said, found expression. And the more
he worked in this cause, the more incontestable it seemed to him that it was a cause
destined to assume vast dimensions, to create an epoch.
He threw himself heart and soul into the service of this great cause, and forgot
to think about his book. His whole time now was engrossed by it, so that he could
scarcely manage to answer all the letters and appeals addressed to him. He worked
the whole spring and part of the summer, and it was only in July that he prepared to
go away to his brother’s in the country.
He was going both to rest for a fortnight, and in the very heart of the people, in
the farthest wilds of the country, to enjoy the sight of that uplifting of the spirit of
the people, of which, like all residents in the capital and big towns, he was fully
persuaded. Katavasov had long been meaning to carry out his promise to stay with
Levin, and so he was going with him.
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