Anna Karenina - Part 3

The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone

home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had

gone home, while those who came from far were gathered into a

group for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin,

unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still

looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for

the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summer

night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughing

all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.

All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness

of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to

be heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in

the marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the

meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from

the haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was

over.

"Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?" he

said to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts

and feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the

thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three

separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old

life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave

him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of

thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live

now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt

clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content,

the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so

miserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the

question how to effect this transition from the old life to the

new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. "Have a wife?

Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy

land? Become a member of a peasant community? Marry a peasant

girl? How am I to set about it?" he asked himself again, and

could not find an answer. "I haven't slept all night, though,

and I can't think it out clearly," he said to himself. "I'll

work it out later. One thing's certain, this night has decided

my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not the

real thing," he told himself. "It's all ever so much simpler and

better..."