Read-along

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy, serialised 1875–1877. Two hundred and thirty-nine chapters across eight parts, each with a summary, a short analysis, and three plates — illustrated twice over, once as Wanderers realist oil and once as watercolour over an ink line.

239 chapters · 88 plates in the oil set · 90 in the watercolour

The two lines

The novel runs two stories that barely meet. Tolstoy said the arch was joined so that one cannot see where the keystone is, and the join is invisible in a contents list because neither line announces itself. Each chapter below carries the line it sits on.

  • 91 Anna
  • 92 Levin
  • 52 both
  • 4 Oblonsky alone
  • 12 on the railway

Illustration style

Part One 34 chapters

  1. The Third Morning in the Oblonsky House
    The Third Morning in the Oblonsky House

    Chapter 1 Oblonsky

    Everything is upset at the Oblonskys'

    The novel opens on its premise — 'All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' — and then on a household p…

  2. The blind drawn up
    The blind drawn up

    Chapter 2 Anna

    Oblonsky cannot manage to repent

    Oblonsky is truthful with himself and cannot manage to repent. He is thirty-four, handsome and amorous; Dolly has borne seven children, is a year you…

  3. The coffee, the letters and the damp newspaper
    The coffee, the letters and the damp newspaper

    Chapter 3 Oblonsky

    Coffee, letters, and the children

    Dressed and scented, Oblonsky goes down to coffee and his letters. One is unwelcome: a dealer wants to buy the forest on Dolly's estate, and the sale…

  4. Dolly at the open wardrobe
    Dolly at the open wardrobe

    Chapter 4 Anna

    Dolly refuses to be consoled

    Darya Alexandrovna is in her bedroom among scattered clothes, sorting things to take to her mother's for the tenth time in three days and unable to f…

  5. The sitting of the Board
    The sitting of the Board

    Chapter 5 Both lines

    Levin arrives at the Board

    Oblonsky heads a Government Board in Moscow, a post got through his brother-in-law Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin, though a hundred other relations wou…

  6. The question he cannot answer
    The question he cannot answer

    Chapter 6 Levin

    Why Levin came to Moscow

    The reason Levin blushed: he has come to Moscow solely to propose to Kitty. The Levins and Shcherbatskys are old Moscow families, and as a student Le…

  7. Levin comes into his brother's study
    Levin comes into his brother's study

    Chapter 7 Levin

    The professor and the soul

    Levin is staying at his half-brother Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev's house, and goes to his study meaning to ask his advice. Koznyshev is not alone: a pr…

  8. The Zemstvo question
    The Zemstvo question

    Chapter 8 Levin

    News of brother Nicholas

    With the professor gone, Koznyshev asks after the farming out of politeness and after the Zemstvo out of real interest. Levin admits he has resigned,…

  9. The skating lake at four o'clock
    The skating lake at four o'clock

    Chapter 9 Levin

    Skating at the Zoological Gardens

    At four Levin gets out of a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, where the birches stand weighed down with snow, and finds Kitty on the skating la…

  10. The buffet at the Angleterre
    The buffet at the Angleterre

    Chapter 10 Levin

    Oysters, and news of a rival

    At the Angleterre, Oblonsky is greeted on all sides, jokes with the painted Frenchwoman at the counter — whom Levin avoids as he would a dirty place…

  11. One of your rivals
    One of your rivals

    Chapter 11 Both lines

    Oblonsky names the rival

    Oblonsky tells Levin he has a rival: Count Vronsky, one of the gilded youth of Petersburg, rich, handsome, an aide-de-camp to the Emperor, and by Obl…

  12. You see, I was right
    You see, I was right

    Chapter 12 Both lines

    Kitty's two suitors

    Kitty is eighteen and in her first season, more successful than either of her sisters, with two serious suitors — Levin, then Vronsky. The old Prince…

  13. One of her best days
    One of her best days

    Chapter 13 Both lines

    Levin proposes and is refused

    Between dinner and the evening party Kitty feels something like a young man's nerves before a battle, knowing this is the night the two men meet. Loo…

  14. Thank Heaven she has refused him
    Thank Heaven she has refused him

    Chapter 14 Both lines

    Vronsky arrives; the table-turning quarrel

    The Princess comes in, sees at once that Kitty has refused him, and brightens. Countess Nordston arrives and resumes her favourite amusement, baiting…

  15. The Face That Will Not Go
    The Face That Will Not Go

    Chapter 15 Both lines

    The Prince and Princess quarrel

    Kitty tells her mother about the proposal and is pleased to have had one, yet lies awake pursued by Levin's face as he stood listening to her father.…

  16. The Cadet Corps
    The Cadet Corps

    Chapter 16 Both lines

    Vronsky has never known family life

    Vronsky has never known family life: his father he barely remembers, his mother was a brilliant Society woman with many known love affairs, and he wa…

  17. On the Steps of the Portico
    On the Steps of the Portico

    Chapter 17 Both lines

    Waiting at the railway station

    At eleven next morning Vronsky drives to the Petersburg railway station to meet his mother and finds Oblonsky on the portico steps, waiting for his s…

  18. The Look in the Carriage Doorway
    The Look in the Carriage Doorway

    Chapter 18 Anna

    Anna arrives; a watchman is crushed

    Anna appears, stepping out of the compartment as Vronsky waits to enter it. He looks twice, not for her beauty but for the tenderness in her face and…

  19. The button off Grisha's jacket
    The button off Grisha's jacket

    Chapter 19 Anna

    Anna hears Dolly out

    Dolly is giving Grisha a French lesson and pulling a loose button off his jacket when Anna arrives, dreading the set phrases of Christian consolation…

  20. Kitty in the doorway
    Kitty in the doorway

    Chapter 20 Both lines

    Kitty falls in love with Anna

    Anna stays in all day, receiving nobody, and sends Stiva a note — 'Come. God is merciful.' At dinner Dolly addresses him familiarly again; the estran…

  21. The curtains must be changed
    The curtains must be changed

    Chapter 21 Both lines

    Vronsky calls but will not enter

    Dolly comes out for tea, and from a quarrel about moving Anna downstairs and changing the curtains, Anna reads first uncertainty and then the fact of…

  22. The mirror on the landing
    The mirror on the landing

    Chapter 22 Both lines

    Anna in black velvet

    Kitty and her mother climb the lighted staircase past powdered footmen in red liveries. It is one of Kitty's happy days: nothing pinches, nothing sli…

  23. Vis-à-vis in the Last Quadrille
    Vis-à-vis in the Last Quadrille

    Chapter 23 Both lines

    Kitty watches the mazurka

    The quadrille passes pleasantly; Kitty waits for the mazurka, which she believes will settle everything, and refuses five partners for it. Then, vis-…

  24. Reading the Address by the Lamp-post
    Reading the Address by the Lamp-post

    Chapter 24 Both lines

    Levin goes to brother Nicholas

    Walking away from the Shcherbatskys', Levin concludes that Kitty was bound to choose Vronsky and that he himself is a man of no account, wanted by no…

  25. The Bundle of Iron Rods in the Corner
    The Bundle of Iron Rods in the Corner

    Chapter 25 Levin

    The Locksmiths' Association, and vodka

    Nicholas points to a bundle of iron rods: the beginning of a Locksmiths' Association at Vozdrema in the Kazan Government, where products, profits and…

  26. The Study, and the Dumb-bells
    Ignat and the Sledge at the Station

    Chapter 26 Levin

    Home to Pokrovsk, and Pava's calf

    Levin leaves Moscow next morning and the oppression lifts the moment he steps off the train and sees his one-eyed coachman Ignat, the sledge with its…

  27. The whole house heated for one man
    The whole house heated for one man

    Chapter 27 Levin

    Levin alone in the old house

    Levin lives alone in the large old-fashioned house and heats all of it, knowing it foolish, because it is the world where his father and mother lived…

  28. The morning's packing
    The morning's packing

    Chapter 28 Both lines

    Anna leaves Moscow a day early

    The morning after the ball Anna telegraphs her husband that she is leaving Moscow that evening. Kitty sends word that she has a headache and does not…

  29. The sleeping compartment, reading-lamp lit
    The sleeping compartment, reading-lamp lit

    Chapter 29 Anna

    The English novel on the train

    In the dim sleeping compartment beside her maid Annushka, Anna is relieved it is over and that tomorrow she will see Serezha and Alexis Alexandrovich…

  30. The platform in the blustering storm
    The platform in the blustering storm

    Chapter 30 Anna

    Vronsky on the snowbound platform

    On the platform, in a blustering storm that covers everything on one side with snow, Anna is taking her fill of air when a man in a military overcoat…

  31. The Young Man Who Refused to Be a Street Lamp
    The Young Man Who Refused to Be a Street Lamp

    Chapter 31 Anna

    Vronsky sees the husband's ears

    Vronsky does not sleep either, sitting with his eyes straight ahead, looking at a nervous young Law Court official as at a street lamp until the man…

  32. Mama! Mama!
    Mama! Mama!

    Chapter 32 Anna

    Serezha, and Lydia Ivanovna's enemies

    Serezha runs down the stairs past his governess calling 'Mama! Mama!' Like his father he produces in Anna something close to disappointment — her fan…

  33. Exactly at Five
    Exactly at Five

    Chapter 33 Anna

    Karenin returns without haste or rest

    Karenin returns from the Ministry at four without time to see his wife, and enters the drawing-room exactly at five, in white tie with two stars, eve…

  34. The Hired Brougham on the Morskaya
    The Hired Brougham on the Morskaya

    Chapter 34 Anna

    Petritsky, the Baroness, and the set

    Vronsky comes home to the Morskaya flat he lent to Petritsky — a lieutenant in debt, tipsy every evening, often under arrest, popular with everyone —…

Part Two 35 chapters

  1. The Large Gold Watch
    The Celebrity Spreads His Pearls

    Chapter 1 Levin

    The specialist sounds Kitty

    Toward the end of winter the Shcherbatskys hold a consultation about Kitty, who is ill and growing worse. A celebrated specialist is sent for and ins…

  2. Chapter 2 Both lines

    The old Prince makes Kitty cry

    Dolly comes straight from her own troubles — a daughter born at the end of winter, Lily ill with what she fears is scarlet fever — to hear Kitty's fa…

  3. Chapter 3 Levin

    The sisters in the pink snuggery

    In Kitty's pink snuggery with its vieux saxe figures, which the sisters decorated together the year before, Dolly goes straight to the point: he is n…

  4. Chapter 4 Anna

    Anna's three Petersburg circles

    Anna's Petersburg runs in three sets: her husband's official circle, which she now knows as well as a provincial town knows itself and cannot find in…

  5. Chapter 5 Anna

    The tale of Wenden's wife

    Vronsky entertains Betsy with the story he has been living for three days. Two young men who had lunched not wisely but too well chased a pretty woma…

  6. Chapter 6 Anna

    Princess Myagkaya defends Anna

    Betsy leaves before the last act to receive at her house on the Great Morskaya, where the company settles into two circles — one round the samovar, o…

  7. Chapter 7 Both lines

    Anna tells Vronsky it must stop

    Anna arrives at Betsy's and the room talks about marriages founded on reason, love as a scarlet fever one must get over, and whether love can be inoc…

  8. Chapter 8 Anna

    Karenin drafts a speech

    Karenin saw nothing improper in the conversation at the little table, but noticed that others did, and therefore thinks it improper and resolves to s…

  9. Chapter 9 Anna

    The armour of lies

    Anna comes in playing with the tassels of her hood, her face glowing like a conflagration on a dark night, and is astonished at her own capacity for…

  10. Chapter 10 Anna

    An impenetrable wall of merry perplexity

    A new life begins for Karenin and his wife, in which nothing particular happens. Anna goes into Society as before, visits Princess Betsy often, and m…

  11. Chapter 11 Anna

    The murderer and the body

    What had been Vronsky's sole desire for nearly a year and Anna's dreadful bewitching dream has come to pass. He stands over her pale and trembling, b…

  12. Chapter 12 Levin

    Levin waits out the spring

    Levin had told himself the refusal would fade as being ploughed in physics had faded, but three months on it hurts as it did at first, and he is furt…

  13. Chapter 13 Levin

    Levin sows a row himself

    In high boots and a cloth coat Levin goes out to the farm. The calves are fine — Pava's three-month-old is the size of a yearling — but the racks are…

  14. Chapter 14 Levin

    Oblonsky comes to shoot

    A bell at the gate makes Levin hope, and then be ashamed of not hoping, that it is Nicholas; it is Oblonsky, muddy on nose and eyebrow, come for thre…

  15. Chapter 15 Levin

    Snipe at dusk, and Kitty's illness

    They take their stands by a stream among young aspens, Levin at a forked birch with old grey Laska at his heels. In the silence he can hear the grass…

  16. Chapter 16 Both lines

    Ryabinin buys the forest

    Driving home Levin presses for particulars, and is privately pleased by them — there is still hope, and she who made him suffer is suffering — but cu…

  17. Chapter 17 Both lines

    Levin on aristocracy and treasury-bills

    Oblonsky comes upstairs with his pockets full of treasury-bills, in the best of spirits and wanting to dispel Levin's temper, which the news that Kit…

  18. Chapter 18 Anna

    The regiment, the mother, the mare

    Vronsky's inner life is wholly taken up by his passion while his outer life runs on its old rails. The regiment is fond of him and proud that a man o…

  19. Chapter 19 Anna

    Beefsteak and Yashvin before the race

    On the day of the Krasnoe Selo races Vronsky comes early to the mess-room for his beefsteak, at the regulation eleven-and-a-half stone and avoiding s…

  20. Chapter 20 Anna

    Two letters under the mattress

    Vronsky's quarters are half a Finnish peasant cottage, where Petritsky is still asleep after four bottles a head and Volkov spent the night on the ro…

  21. Chapter 21 Anna

    Frou-Frou in her box

    At the temporary stable the English trainer advises him not to go in, and he goes in. Passing Makhotin's Gladiator's box he turns away as one avoids…

  22. Chapter 22 Anna

    Anna tells him she is pregnant

    The rain stops and Vronsky, glad of it because it means Anna will be at home, leaves the calèche before the bridge and comes through the garden. On t…

  23. Chapter 23 Anna

    The word she cannot say

    Whenever Vronsky raises her position, the real Anna withdraws and another woman appears whom he fears and does not like. Told to confess and leave, s…

  24. Chapter 24 Anna

    Late to the paddock

    Too preoccupied to read his own watch, Vronsky drives the five miles to Bryansky's, stays five minutes, and gallops back to find the second race alre…

  25. Chapter 25 Anna

    Frou-Frou's back is broken

    Seventeen officers over four versts and nine obstacles: the brook, the five-foot barrier called the Devil in front of the Imperial Pavilion, a dry di…

  26. Chapter 26 Anna

    Karenin seals the compartment

    Outwardly nothing has changed; Karenin is merely busier and rather colder, and has never returned to the subject since the night of Betsy's party. Hi…

  27. Chapter 27 Anna

    Nightingales are not fed on fables

    Pinning a last bow before the mirror, Anna hears wheels and sees a black hat and her husband's familiar ears. Dreading that he means to stay the nigh…

  28. Chapter 28 Anna

    Karenin talks to smother thought

    Anna, in the Grand Stand beside Betsy, feels her husband approaching before she sees him, and watches him bow to the great and joke with the ladies,…

  29. Chapter 29 Anna

    Anna confesses in the carriage

    When Vronsky falls Anna cries out, which in the general horror passes unremarked; but then she loses self-control and flutters like a captive bird. K…

  30. Chapter 30 Levin

    The watering-place, and Varenka

    At the little German watering-place Society crystallises as water does into snow, each newcomer settling at once into a preordained place; 'Fürst Shc…

  31. Chapter 31 Levin

    Nicholas shakes his stick

    A wet morning fills the covered gallery. Kitty walks with her mother and the Moscow Colonel, keeping to one side to avoid Nicholas Levin, while Varen…

  32. Chapter 32 Levin

    Varenka's history, and the Italian song

    The Princess learns Varenka's history. Madame Stahl, divorced and sickly, lost her first baby at birth; her relations, fearing the news would kill he…

  33. Chapter 33 Both lines

    Kitty's plans, and the Petrovs

    Through Varenka and Madame Stahl a new world opens to Kitty: a spiritual life, revealed by a lofty mystical religion quite unlike the Slavonic texts…

  34. Chapter 34 Levin

    The old Prince deflates Madame Stahl

    The old Prince returns from Carlsbad, Baden and Kissingen, thinner but in the brightest of spirits, and takes Kitty to the Springs. Where the Princes…

  35. Chapter 35 Levin

    Kitty turns on herself

    The Prince spreads his good humour over the household, sets coffee under a chestnut tree, distributes the caskets and paper-knives he cannot resist b…

Part Three 32 chapters

  1. Chapter 1 Levin

    Two brothers and the peasants

    Koznyshev comes to stay in the country instead of going abroad, and Levin, glad of him, is not at ease with him. For Levin the country is where one l…

  2. Chapter 2 Levin

    The turning-point of summer

    Agatha Mikhaylovna sprains her wrist carrying pickled mushrooms to the cellar, and the new young Zemstvo doctor, delighted to meet the celebrated Koz…

  3. Chapter 3 Levin

    The Zemstvo argument by the river

    By the river Koznyshev presses his brother about the Zemstvo: money is spent on salaries, and there are no schools, no medical assistance, no midwive…

  4. Chapter 4 Levin

    Levin takes up a scythe

    The personal matter on Levin's mind is mowing: a year ago he took a scythe to calm his temper and liked it so much he mowed the whole meadow before t…

  5. Chapter 5 Levin

    The old man's kvas

    After breakfast Levin mows between a humorous erect old man, whose scythe seems to whizz through the grass of its own accord, and young Mishka, marri…

  6. Chapter 6 Levin

    Arbeitskur, and a letter from Oblonsky

    Mashkin Heights are mown and the men go home in high spirits; from the hilltop Levin can no longer see them through the mist but hears their voices a…

  7. Chapter 7 Oblonsky

    Dolly's household at Ergushovo

    Oblonsky has gone to Petersburg to remind the Ministry of his existence, taking all the money in the house and filling his time with races and countr…

  8. Chapter 8 Oblonsky

    Taking six children to Communion

    Oblonsky writes asking forgiveness and promising to come, and does not. On the Sunday before St Peter's Day Dolly takes all six children to Communion…

  9. Chapter 9 Levin

    Levin arrives among the children

    Driving home with her freshly bathed children, Dolly sees Levin on the road and is more than usually glad, since no one understands the dignity of he…

  10. Chapter 10 Both lines

    Dolly puts Kitty's case

    Dolly asks why he is angry with Kitty, and learns for the first time that he proposed and was refused — Kitty told nobody. She puts the case he canno…

  11. Chapter 11 Levin

    Eleven stacks, or thirty-two loads

    In mid-July the Elder from Levin's sister's village, fifteen miles off, reports that the hay is made and that he has already apportioned it and stack…

  12. Chapter 12 Levin

    Levin sees Kitty in the coach

    The women follow the carts with rakes on their shoulders, one starts a song, and fifty voices take it up; the thundercloud of merriment passes over L…

  13. Chapter 13 Anna

    Karenin considers the duel

    Karenin's one weakness is that he cannot bear a woman or a child weeping; his secretaries warn petitioners not to cry if they want their case heard.…

  14. Chapter 14 Anna

    The golden bridge, written in French

    Home in Petersburg, Karenin orders that no one be admitted, lights six candles, cracks his fingers and writes to his wife in French, in the plural yo…

  15. Chapter 15 Anna

    Anna asks to keep her son

    Anna wakes and cannot understand how she came to say what she said in the carriage. She saw Vronsky that evening and told him nothing, and when she a…

  16. Chapter 16 Anna

    The letter, and the packet of notes

    The house is being packed — trunks in the hall, newspapers on the floor, string sent for twice — when Karenin's messenger arrives with a thick envelo…

  17. Chapter 17 Anna

    A note left with Betsy

    Betsy's croquet party belongs to a newer, higher and hostile circle, Les sept merveilles du monde, and includes old Stremov, Karenin's official enemy…

  18. Chapter 18 Anna

    Sappho Stolz and Lisa Merkalova

    The guests arrive: Sappho Stolz, fair-haired and black-eyed, her hair built up until her head matches her much-exposed bust, with Vaska at her heels…

  19. Chapter 19 Anna

    Vronsky does his accounts

    Vronsky hates disorder, having once been humiliated by a refused loan in the Cadet Corps, and five or six times a year shuts himself up to clear his…

  20. Chapter 20 Anna

    Serpukhovskoy's offer and warning

    Vronsky's advantage is a code that settles everything inside a small circle: the card-sharper must be paid and the tailor need not; one may not lie t…

  21. Chapter 21 Anna

    A load strapped to the back

    Petritsky fetches Vronsky to the C.O.'s house, where the band is playing and Serpukhovskoy is being toasted. Three years have added whiskers and the…

  22. Chapter 22 Anna

    Anna and Vronsky in Vrede's garden

    Vronsky takes Yashvin's hired carriage to avoid being recognised, and on the way is more conscious of his own body than ever — the ache in his strong…

  23. Chapter 23 Anna

    Karenin sets his one condition

    At Monday's Committee of the Second of July, Karenin speaks without notes, fixing his eyes on a harmless old man opposite, and raises a storm: his op…

  24. Chapter 24 Levin

    The leak Levin would not look for

    The night on the haycock has spoiled the farm for Levin. Despite a splendid harvest he has never met so many failures or so much hostility, and he no…

  25. Chapter 25 Levin

    The prosperous peasant's yard

    Driving to the Surovsky district, Levin stops to feed his horses at a well-to-do peasant's house — a clean new yard, a handsome young woman in golosh…

  26. Chapter 26 Levin

    Sviyazhsky, the riddle

    Sviyazhsky, Marshal of the Nobility, is a riddle to Levin: an extreme Liberal who despises the gentry and wears a cockade and red band, thinks Russia…

  27. Chapter 27 Levin

    The landowners argue about Emancipation

    The grey-moustached landowner argues that Russia has been ruined by the Emancipation: his land yielded ninefold under serfdom and yields threefold no…

  28. Chapter 28 Levin

    The hens, and the schools

    In the study, among newspapers laid out like mats round the lamp, Sviyazhsky is delighted to report that Frederick was not after all the chief agent…

  29. Chapter 29 Levin

    Three partnerships on the land

    Levin has to alter the machine while it is running. The steward agrees warmly that everything done till now was foolish and goes silent at the propos…

  30. Chapter 30 Levin

    The book, and the bloodless revolution

    By the end of September the timber is carted and the butter money divided; all that remains before going abroad is to sell the wheat and finish the b…

  31. Chapter 31 Levin

    Nicholas arrives at Pokrovsk

    The cough in the hall is Nicholas, now a skeleton covered with skin, smiling meekly and jerking his long neck as he unwinds his scarf. Levin's disapp…

  32. Chapter 32 Levin

    The brothers quarrel and part

    Nicholas's meekness lasts one night. By morning he is cavilling at everything, and Levin, who knows that speaking straight from the heart would reduc…

Part Four 23 chapters

  1. Chapter 1 Anna

    The Prince, and a look in the mirror

    The Karenins live in the same house, meet daily and are wholly estranged; he dines out, Vronsky never calls, and Anna meets him elsewhere with her hu…

  2. Chapter 2 Anna

    The dream of the peasant

    A note from Anna is waiting: she is ill and unhappy, cannot go out, and cannot go on without seeing him — come this evening, her husband will be at t…

  3. Chapter 3 Anna

    The demon, and the child quickens

    Under the lamp Anna questions him about the week, and jealousy — which they call the demon — takes hold: Lisa has reported the Athenian party and Thé…

  4. Chapter 4 Anna

    Karenin takes the letter-case

    Karenin sits through two acts of the Italian Opera, sees whom he needs to see, checks the coat-stand for a military coat on his return, and paces til…

  5. Chapter 5 Anna

    The lawyer catches moths

    In the famous lawyer's crowded waiting-room Karenin, a connoisseur of writing-table accessories, is told to wait and is obliged to send in his card.…

  6. Chapter 6 Anna

    Stremov undoes the August victory

    Karenin's victory of the seventeenth of August undoes him. The committee investigates the subject races from six points of view and returns answers b…

  7. Chapter 7 Both lines

    Oblonsky plans his dinner

    Sunday: Oblonsky takes the dancer Masha Chibisova her promised coral necklace, kisses her behind the scenes and arranges supper after the ballet; the…

  8. Chapter 8 Anna

    Oblonsky begs Karenin to wait

    Karenin spends the morning coaching a deputation from a subject race who naïvely believe their business is to explain their needs and ask for help, a…

  9. Chapter 9 Both lines

    Levin and Kitty meet again

    Oblonsky arrives to find the drawing-room frozen — Turovtsyn stranded among the clever ones, the old Prince sharpening a remark for Karenin, Kitty wa…

  10. Chapter 10 Both lines

    Classics, nihilism, and women's rights

    Over the soup Pestsov reopens the argument: what does higher development consist of, when the Rhine has been Frenchified though the Germans stand no…

  11. Chapter 11 Levin

    The two who hear nothing

    Everybody joins the general talk except Kitty and Levin. The subjects that should grip them — the influence of nations, the rights and education of w…

  12. Chapter 12 Anna

    Karenin says he hates her

    With the ladies gone, Pestsov puts the inequality plainly: a wife's infidelity and a husband's are punished unequally by law and opinion. Karenin ans…

  13. Chapter 13 Levin

    The initial letters in chalk

    Levin stays with the men rather than make his attentions obvious, talking about the village commune and Pestsov's 'chorus principle' with no interest…

  14. Chapter 14 Levin

    Fourteen hours until morning

    Alone, Levin dreads the fourteen hours till morning and attaches himself to anyone who will have him. Oblonsky goes off to the ballet; Dolly congratu…

  15. Chapter 15 Levin

    Loaves in the baker's window

    Levin walks the empty streets, cannot swallow a piece of roll, and finds the Shcherbatskys' door still locked. Without food for a day or sleep for tw…

  16. Chapter 16 Levin

    The diary, and the confessions

    The Princess breaks the silence with cards, the betrothal and the trousseau; Levin proposes the wedding for tomorrow and is told he seems quite mad.…

  17. Chapter 17 Anna

    Two telegrams, and a forgiveness

    Two telegrams reach Karenin: Stremov has taken the appointment he wanted, and Anna is dying and begs his forgiveness. He assumes deception, re-reads…

  18. Chapter 18 Anna

    Vronsky puts the revolver to his chest

    Vronsky stands on the porch unable to remember where he should go. The roles have exchanged: the deceived husband he had thought a ridiculous obstacl…

  19. Chapter 19 Anna

    Betsy on the carpet outside

    Two months on, Karenin's mistake — never having considered that she might recover — is plain, and so is the discovery he made at her bedside: that th…

  20. Chapter 20 Anna

    Why did I not die?

    Karenin returns to his wife, who has been crying, and repeats his gratitude for her confidence, calling her 'thou' in Russian, which always irritates…

  21. Chapter 21 Anna

    Oblonsky arrives with a proposal

    Oblonsky, fresh from buying oysters at Eliseyev's, meets Betsy in the doorway, kisses her hand above the glove where the pulse beats, and learns that…

  22. Chapter 22 Anna

    Karenin gives up his son

    Oblonsky enters the study with an unaccustomed timidity he refuses to recognise as conscience. Karenin, pacing, hands him an unfinished letter: he se…

  23. Chapter 23 Anna

    Anna refuses the divorce

    The bullet missed Vronsky's heart but he lies days between life and death, and his first words to Varya are an order: it went off accidentally, tell…

Part Five 33 chapters

  1. Chapter 1 Levin

    Confession before the wedding

    The Princess, reckoning that Prince Shcherbatsky's old aunt may die and put the family in mourning, agrees to a wedding before Advent and divides the…

  2. Chapter 2 Both lines

    The bachelors' dinner, and a doubt

    Barred by custom from seeing his bride, Levin dines with three bachelors: his brother, Chirikov his best man, and Katavasov the natural scientist, wh…

  3. Chapter 3 Levin

    The bridegroom has no shirt

    A crowd, mostly women, presses round the lit church and peers between the window bars while twenty carriages are ranged along the street by mounted p…

  4. Chapter 4 Levin

    The rings and the candles

    Everyone says Kitty has grown plainer; Levin thinks her prettier than ever, because under the Paris dress the look of innocent truthfulness is unchan…

  5. Chapter 5 Both lines

    What the guests are saying

    All Moscow has come, and beneath the service runs an unflagging low conversation started mostly by the men. Mrs Korsunskaya objects to Marie's lilac…

  6. Chapter 6 Levin

    Kiss your wife

    A verger spreads pink silk before the lectern, and neither Levin nor Kitty can think about who steps on it first, nor hear the dispute behind them ab…

  7. Chapter 7 Anna

    The palazzo, and Golenishchev

    Three months of Venice, Rome and Naples have brought Anna and Vronsky to a small Italian town where they have taken a palazzo. In the hotel entrance…

  8. Chapter 8 Anna

    Unpardonably happy, and bored

    Anna is unpardonably happy. Her husband's grief is too terrible to dwell on and has bought her too much joy for repentance; remembering it she feels…

  9. Chapter 9 Anna

    News of the painter Mikhaylov

    The neglected palazzo — stucco ceilings, frescoes, yellow damask, sombre halls of pictures — keeps alive Vronsky's pleasant delusion that he is not a…

  10. Chapter 10 Anna

    The grease spot on the sketch

    The cards arrive while Mikhaylov is quarrelling with his wife about the landlady and the rent, and he locks himself behind the partition, where he wo…

  11. Chapter 11 Anna

    Pilate's Admonition, seen by strangers

    Mikhaylov reads his visitors at a glance: Golenishchev's face he has already filed with the falsely important ones, and the other two are wealthy Rus…

  12. Chapter 12 Anna

    The two boys angling

    Tired of Golenishchev's cleverness, Vronsky crosses to a smaller canvas and both he and Anna exclaim at once. It is a three-year-old study of two boy…

  13. Chapter 13 Anna

    Two portraits of the same woman

    Mikhaylov sells the picture and paints Anna's portrait, and after the fifth sitting it astonishes everyone by finding her sweetest spiritual expressi…

  14. Chapter 14 Levin

    The boat seen from the bank

    Three months married, Levin is happy in an entirely unexpected way — like a man who has admired a boat's smooth motion from the bank and now must kee…

  15. Chapter 15 Levin

    The nape of his red neck

    Back from Moscow, Levin writes in the study while Kitty embroiders in her dark lilac dress on the old leather sofa. His book, once his salvation from…

  16. Chapter 16 Levin

    Mary Nikolavna's second letter

    Upstairs Kitty sits at the new samovar with Dolly's letter, having made Agatha Mikhaylovna sit down to a cup of tea — from which Levin reads the end…

  17. Chapter 17 Levin

    The hotel, and the hand on the blanket

    The provincial hotel is one of the improved kind that has degenerated into a dirty pothouse whose pretensions make it worse than an honest old inn —…

  18. Chapter 18 Levin

    Kitty makes the sickroom habitable

    Levin cannot look at his brother calmly; he smells the air, sees the dirt, hears the groans, and it never occurs to him to wonder how the limbs are l…

  19. Chapter 19 Levin

    Revealed unto babes

    'Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' Levin knows he is cleverer than his wife and Agatha Mikhay…

  20. Chapter 20 Levin

    Death

    The one chapter Tolstoy titled: Death. Nicholas receives the sacrament and prays with a look of entreaty that frightens Levin, who knows the return t…

  21. Chapter 21 Anna

    Karenin alone in the house

    Having understood that all anyone wants of him is to leave his wife in peace, Karenin consents to everything and can decide nothing. Only when the En…

  22. Chapter 22 Anna

    Lydia Ivanovna forces the door

    Countess Lydia Ivanovna forces her way in — 'J'ai forcé la consigne!' — and finds him with his head on his hands. He tells her he is broken and can f…

  23. Chapter 23 Anna

    The Countess in love again

    Lydia Ivanovna was married as an ecstatic girl to a jovial profligate who left her after two months and has met her ever since with venomous irony. S…

  24. Chapter 24 Anna

    The Birthday Reception

    At the Birthday Reception the talk in the doorway is all of Karenin: the Order of Alexander Nevsky, how he has aged, how he will not release a button…

  25. Chapter 25 Anna

    The letter refusing Anna her son

    In Lydia Ivanovna's boudoir, full of old china and portraits, Karenin opens a New Testament while she changes her dress. Over tea she hands him Anna'…

  26. Chapter 26 Anna

    Serezha and the hall-porter

    The day before his birthday Serezha comes in rosy from a walk and hangs on the hall-porter Kapitonich's shoulder-strap for news: the bandaged officia…

  27. Chapter 27 Anna

    Enoch, who did not die

    Serezha does not believe in death, and one of his favourite occupations is watching for his mother on walks: every graceful dark-haired woman might b…

  28. Chapter 28 Anna

    Vronsky tests Petersburg Society

    In Petersburg they take the best hotel, Vronsky on the first floor and Anna upstairs with the baby and the nurse. He tells his brother he regards the…

  29. Chapter 29 Anna

    Anna rings her own door

    Anna came back to Russia to see her son and finds she cannot: she may not go to the house, the old nurse has left the household, and two days go by i…

  30. Chapter 30 Anna

    Ten minutes in the nursery

    Vasily Lukich opens the door, hears the voices, closes it again, and gives them ten minutes, coughing and wiping his eyes. Below, the servants know t…

  31. Chapter 31 Anna

    The photographs on the table

    Back at the hotel Anna sits in her bonnet before a bronze clock and puts off the maid, the coffee, everything. The Italian nurse brings the baby, plu…

  32. Chapter 32 Anna

    Anna insists on the opera

    Anna returns not alone but with her old maiden aunt, Princess Oblonskaya, chattering about shopping, with a strained glitter in her eyes and the nerv…

  33. Chapter 33 Anna

    The Kartasovs leave their box

    Vronsky is angry for the first time and cannot say why: to appear at the opera dressed like that with Princess Barbara is to admit being a fallen wom…

Part Six 32 chapters

  1. Chapter 1 Levin

    The Shcherbatsky element at Pokrovsk

    Dolly and her children spend the summer at Pokrovsk, her own house being dilapidated, and Oblonsky stays in Moscow regretting that his duties prevent…

  2. Chapter 2 Both lines

    Jam on the balcony

    On the balcony the women sew little shirts and knit swaddling bands while the raspberry jam is boiled without water — Kitty's method, which Agatha Mi…

  3. Chapter 3 Levin

    Telling off the daisy petals

    Walking ahead of the others on the dusty road, Kitty leans on her husband's arm and is glad of him alone; he listens less to her words than to her vo…

  4. Chapter 4 Levin

    Koznyshev makes up his mind

    Varenka among the children in her white kerchief looks very attractive, and Koznyshev, putting an enormous wood mushroom into her basket, meets her e…

  5. Chapter 5 Levin

    The white boletus and the birch

    Ten paces away, Koznyshev has the sentences ready — his ideal formed young, met for the first time in her, his hand offered. Varenka, kneeling to def…

  6. Chapter 6 Levin

    Veslovsky arrives in a Scotch bonnet

    Everyone talks with peculiar animation about extraneous topics; Koznyshev and Varenka feel like pupils who have failed an examination, and Levin and…

  7. Chapter 7 Both lines

    Levin's jealousy at supper

    At supper Oblonsky reports that Veslovsky has visited Anna and that he himself will spend July there; Veslovsky says one feels oneself in a family in…

  8. Chapter 8 Levin

    Setting out for the marshes

    Laska is in the cart before anyone, disapproving of the delay. Veslovsky emerges in new thigh-boots, a new cartridge-belt smelling of leather, the Sc…

  9. Chapter 9 Levin

    The trap driven into the bog

    The plan is twenty versts to Gvozdevo, shooting there in the evening and the big marshes tomorrow. Levin says the two little marshes on the way would…

  10. Chapter 10 Levin

    Levin shoots badly all day

    They reach the marsh too soon and too hot. Levin divides it — the sedge, the hummocks, the alder grove, the bay where he once shot seventeen — and Ob…

  11. Chapter 11 Levin

    Justice in the negative sense

    At the hut Veslovsky is being pulled out of his slime-covered boots by a soldier and reporting that the peasants fed him, gave him vodka, and would t…

  12. Chapter 12 Levin

    Laska at dawn

    Levin wakes at dawn, cannot rouse either companion, and goes out alone past the sleeping coachmen and drowsing horses. His old hostess shows him the…

  13. Chapter 13 Levin

    Nineteen birds, and nothing to eat

    The sportsman's saying holds: he comes back at ten after thirty versts with nineteen birds and a duck at his girdle, and counts them twice, pleased b…

  14. Chapter 14 Both lines

    Something impure by the samovar

    Levin calls on Veslovsky, walks the garden and stables with him, does gymnastics on the parallel bars, and comes in to find him at the samovar tellin…

  15. Chapter 15 Levin

    Veslovsky is sent to the station

    Levin finds Dolly punishing Masha in a corner for something done among the raspberry canes, and puts his question hand on heart: was there something…

  16. Chapter 16 Both lines

    Dolly thinks in the carriage

    Dolly goes to Anna, taking Levin's horses because he will not let her hire and because he knows what twenty roubles mean to her. Four hours alone in…

  17. Chapter 17 Both lines

    The riding party on the road

    A curly-headed old peasant with bast round his head gives directions to Vozdvizhensk and lingers to talk; then the party itself comes down the road —…

  18. Chapter 18 Anna

    Anna says she is happy

    Anna, noting that Dolly looks thinner and worse and that her own looks have improved, says she is ashamed to confess it but is unforgivably happy — a…

  19. Chapter 19 Both lines

    The nursery and the little court

    Alone, Dolly prices the room with a housewife's eye: French wall-papers, a carpet over the whole floor, spring and overlay mattresses, silk pillow-sl…

  20. Chapter 20 Both lines

    Vronsky shows off the hospital

    On the verandah Princess Barbara, embroidering a chair-cover for the Count, explains that she stays out of duty until the divorce, lists half a dozen…

  21. Chapter 21 Anna

    Vronsky asks Dolly for help

    Vronsky sends the others to the stud farm and keeps Dolly back. Alone, mopping his balding head, he says he knows she is Anna's friend and asks for h…

  22. Chapter 22 Both lines

    Dinner, and a quarrel underneath

    Dolly, already in her best dress, has it brushed and adds clean cuffs and a bow; Anna appears in a third extremely simple dress. At dinner Dolly, who…

  23. Chapter 23 Both lines

    Anna will have no more children

    Anna comes to Dolly's room in her nightgown, having promised all day to talk, and finds she has nothing to say. She asks about Kitty, is told nobody…

  24. Chapter 24 Both lines

    Morphia, and two beings she loves

    Pressed about the divorce, Anna says she does not want to speak of it, claims to be cheerful, dismisses Veslovsky as a boy entirely in her hands — th…

  25. Chapter 25 Anna

    Vronsky leaves without explaining

    Summer and part of autumn pass with no step taken toward a divorce, and the longer the two are alone the clearer it becomes that they cannot hold out…

  26. Chapter 26 Levin

    The eighty-rouble uniform

    Levin has been a month in Moscow for the confinement when Koznyshev asks him to the Kashin elections; he wavers until Kitty, without telling him, ord…

  27. Chapter 27 Levin

    O sancta simplicitas

    On the sixth day the halls are full of noblemen come from the Crimea, Petersburg and abroad, grouped by party, breaking off their talk when a strange…

  28. Chapter 28 Levin

    The vote on Flerov, and Snetkov's tears

    The dispute is over the words 'against whom legal proceedings were taken'. A landowner with a dyed moustache strikes his ring on the table demanding…

  29. Chapter 29 Both lines

    We guard the fire

    In the crowded smoking room the leaders direct the impending battle while the rank and file eat and pace. Levin, who will not join his own set becaus…

  30. Chapter 30 Both lines

    Levin votes on the wrong side

    Sviyazhsky walks Levin into the group and the meeting with Vronsky can no longer be avoided; Levin blushes scarlet and turns away, then spends the co…

  31. Chapter 31 Both lines

    Dinner at Vronsky's, and a letter

    The new Marshal and the victors dine at Vronsky's. He had come to the elections out of dullness, to proclaim his right to freedom to Anna, to repay S…

  32. Chapter 32 Anna

    Anna agrees to ask for the divorce

    Anna had resolved to bear the parting calmly and was undone before he left by the cold look that asserted his right to freedom. Alone, she reasons th…

Part Seven 31 chapters

  1. Chapter 1 Both lines

    Waiting in Moscow

    Two months in Moscow, and the calculated date has long passed with no sign; the doctor, the midwife, Dolly, the Princess and above all Levin are anxi…

  2. Chapter 2 Levin

    Money going like a drunkard's glasses

    Kitty sends Levin to call on the Bols — five minutes, the weather, then leave — and he says he would rather go without dinner for two days than pay a…

  3. Chapter 3 Levin

    Metrov, and the jubilee meeting

    Katavasov introduces Levin to the celebrated Metrov, who is interested in his book. Levin explains, feeling his way, that the Russian labourer's view…

  4. Chapter 4 Levin

    Lvov on bringing up children

    Lvov, married to Kitty's sister Nataly, left the diplomatic service for the Moscow Court Ministry so as to educate his boys, and has become Levin's c…

  5. Chapter 5 Levin

    King Lear on the Heath

    At the matinée there are two new works in the new style: a King Lear on the Heath fantasia and a quartet in memory of Bach. Levin plants himself behi…

  6. Chapter 6 Levin

    The call on the Countess Bol

    At the Countess Bol's the hall-porter takes his coat before he can escape. He sits with his hat in his hand among the daughters and a Moscow Colonel…

  7. Chapter 7 Both lines

    Levin at the club

    At the club the old atmosphere of repose, ease and propriety closes round Levin from the first bow of the porter, who knows his relatives and has to…

  8. Chapter 8 Both lines

    The Temple of Idleness

    Walking his son-in-law through the Temple of Idleness, the old Prince explains shlyupiks — eggs cracked soft by too much rolling — and tells how the…

  9. Chapter 9 Both lines

    The portrait behind the screen

    The club calm lasts as far as the courtyard gate; in the jolting, ill-lit street Levin begins to wonder what Kitty would say. Oblonsky talks him past…

  10. Chapter 10 Both lines

    Anna talks to Levin

    Anna greets Levin with the ease of a woman of good society, speaks of Kitty as a lovely flower, and has him comfortable within a minute. They talk of…

  11. Chapter 11 Both lines

    Kitty weeps until three

    Out in the frost Levin calls her a wonderful, sweet, pathetic woman — extraordinary not for her intellect but her sincerity — and Oblonsky tells him…

  12. Chapter 12 Both lines

    The weapon she must not use twice

    Anna, who had involuntarily done everything to make Levin love her — as she now does with every young man she meets — forgets him the moment he is ou…

  13. Chapter 13 Levin

    Kitty's labour begins

    There are no conditions a man cannot get used to, especially when everyone around him lives the same way: three months ago Levin could not have belie…

  14. Chapter 14 Levin

    Waiting on the doctor

    The doctor is not up. His footman cleans lamp-glasses; the chemist's dispenser seals and wraps the opium bottle at his own pace until Levin snatches…

  15. Chapter 15 Levin

    Twenty-two hours, and a new voice

    Levin is listening to the doctor's story about a quack magnetizer when a scream comes unlike anything he has heard; the doctor tilts his head and smi…

  16. Chapter 16 Levin

    Levin looks for paternal feeling

    By ten the Prince, Koznyshev and Oblonsky are talking about yesterday's club dinner, and Levin, feeling a hundred years older and as if standing on a…

  17. Chapter 17 Anna

    Oblonsky goes after a soft post

    Oblonsky's affairs are bad: the forest money is spent, the merchant will advance no more since Dolly has at last claimed a right to her own property…

  18. Chapter 18 Anna

    Oblonsky puts Anna's case

    At Anna's name Karenin's face empties of animation. Oblonsky appeals to him not as a statesman but as a kind man and a Christian: her position is lit…

  19. Chapter 19 Anna

    Serezha, and the game of railways

    Korney announces Sergey Alexeyich, and Oblonsky takes a moment to realise it is Serezha. Karenin asks him not to mention the mother: the boy was so i…

  20. Chapter 20 Anna

    Petersburg makes Oblonsky younger

    Petersburg refreshes Oblonsky after the mustiness of Moscow, where his wife's reproaches, the children's education and his debts begin to weigh. Here…

  21. Chapter 21 Anna

    Under the Wing, read aloud

    After dinner and brandy at Bartnyansky's, Oblonsky arrives at Lydia Ivanovna's, where the blinds are down and the lamp lit. Landau — pale, long-haire…

  22. Chapter 22 Anna

    Let the questioner go out

    Oblonsky, who enjoys complications in spheres he knows, is dazed by this one and feels a heaviness in his head: Mary Sanina glad her child is dead, a…

  23. Chapter 23 Anna

    The quarrel traced backwards

    Tolstoy observes that a household can move only on complete division or loving accord, and that many families stay for years in ruts they hate becaus…

  24. Chapter 24 Anna

    Respect in the empty place

    Anna meets Vronsky meekly; he sees the trunks and says 'Ah, that's right!' as one speaks to a child who has stopped being capricious, and she masters…

  25. Chapter 25 Anna

    The telegram, and the coffee cup

    Anna packs, indifferent whether they leave Monday or Tuesday. Vronsky comes in dressed, saying he will go to maman for the money through Egorov and b…

  26. Chapter 26 Anna

    The shadow on the cornice

    For the first time they are at enmity a whole day, which Anna reads as complete estrangement. She invents the cruel words he might have said — go bac…

  27. Chapter 27 Anna

    The face in the mirror

    Alone at the window, Anna feels the dark room and the nightmare merge into icy horror and rings for the servant rather than wait. Told the Count has…

  28. Chapter 28 Both lines

    The drive to Dolly's

    The drizzle has cleared and everything shines in the May sunshine at three o'clock. Rocking along behind the pair of greys, Anna sees her position di…

  29. Chapter 29 Both lines

    Dirty ice-creams, and a telegram

    Anna leaves the Oblonskys' worse than she came, affronted by the meeting with Kitty. Driving home, she decides Dolly would have enjoyed her misfortun…

  30. Chapter 30 Both lines

    The zest is gone

    In the carriage the impressions keep coming: a party driving out of town with a dog, a nearly dead-drunk workman led off by a policeman, a shop-assis…

  31. Chapter 31 Anna

    The little red handbag

    Anna boards the 8.02 and takes a corner of an empty compartment. A grimy misshapen peasant in a cap stoops over the carriage wheels outside her windo…

Part Eight 19 chapters

  1. Chapter 1 Levin

    Koznyshev's book is not reviewed

    Nearly two months later, in the middle of a hot summer, Koznyshev is only now leaving Moscow. His book, six years' work — An Attempt to Review the Fo…

  2. Chapter 2 Both lines

    Seeing the Volunteers off

    At the station Koznyshev and Katavasov find Volunteers arriving on four izvoshchiks, met by ladies with nosegays. A Princess who comes to every send-…

  3. Chapter 3 Levin

    Katavasov talks to the Volunteers

    The train is met at Tsaritsyno by a choir singing Slavsya. Koznyshev, long familiar with the type, ignores the Volunteers; Katavasov moves to the sec…

  4. Chapter 4 Both lines

    The Countess tells the story

    At the provincial capital Koznyshev is beckoned in by the old Countess Vronskaya, who is travelling with her son as far as Kursk. She tells the story…

  5. Chapter 5 Both lines

    Vronsky's toothache

    In the slanting shadow of a pile of sacks Vronsky walks up and down like an animal in a cage, turning every twenty paces. Koznyshev, who sees in him…

  6. Chapter 6 Levin

    Arriving dusty at Pokrovsk

    Not knowing when he could leave, Koznyshev sent no telegram, so nobody meets them; he and Katavasov arrive at the Pokrovsk porch toward noon in a hir…

  7. Chapter 7 Levin

    Kitty on her husband's unbelief

    The nurse drives out the flies and a bumble-bee, waves a birch branch over mother and child, and wishes God would send rain. Kitty rocks, wanting to…

  8. Chapter 8 Levin

    A muslin garment in the frost

    Since watching Nicholas die, Levin has been less horrified by death than by life without knowing where it came from or what it is for. The terms that…

  9. Chapter 9 Levin

    The philosophers, and the hidden cord

    Having got nothing from the materialists, Levin reads and re-reads Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer. Their thoughts seem fruit…

  10. Chapter 10 Levin

    Living without knowing why

    Asking what he is and why he lives drives Levin to despair; leaving off the question, he acts unfalteringly. Back in the country in June he is taken…

  11. Chapter 11 Levin

    Theodore speaks of Daddy Plato

    Koznyshev arrives on one of Levin's most distressing days, in the busiest season, when for three or four weeks every peasant works three times as har…

  12. Chapter 12 Levin

    Levin lies down in the wood

    Striding along the high-road, Levin attends less to his thoughts than to a condition of soul he has never known. Theodore's words act as an electric…

  13. Chapter 13 Levin

    The children and the raspberries

    Levin remembers Dolly's children left alone cooking raspberries over a candle and pouring jets of milk into each other's mouths, and their mother exp…

  14. Chapter 14 Levin

    Back among the beehives

    The coachman drives up to fetch Levin: his brother and another gentleman have come. Taking the reins, Levin expects everything to be different now —…

  15. Chapter 15 Both lines

    The Slavonic question over honey

    Dolly tells Levin that Koznyshev travelled with Vronsky, who is going to Serbia and taking a squadron at his own expense. The old Prince asks whom th…

  16. Chapter 16 Levin

    Levin is beaten and unconvinced

    Koznyshev shifts ground: the national spirit cannot be gauged arithmetically, but it is felt in the air, and the most divergent parties of the intell…

  17. Chapter 17 Levin

    The oak falls in the storm

    The Prince and Koznyshev take the trap; the others hurry home on foot as the cloud comes on, its black fore part rushing like sooty smoke. The childr…

  18. Chapter 18 Levin

    Mitya knows his own people

    All day Levin takes part in the talk only with the external side of his mind, aware of the fullness of his heart. Too wet to walk, the company stays…

  19. Chapter 19 Levin

    A firm blue vault

    Leaving the nursery, Levin stops on the verandah. Rain drips from the limes, and at every flash of lightning the Milky Way and a familiar triangular…