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 fruitful while he is refuting materialism, but each time he follows the long definitions of spirit, will, freedom and substance he seems to understand something, and the moment he returns to real life the edifice falls like a house of cards. Reading Schopenhauer he substitutes love for will, and is comforted for two days until that too proves a muslin garment without warmth. Koznyshev recommends Homyakov, whose teaching that divine truth is given not to isolated man but to a community united by love strikes him; but a Roman Catholic and then a Greek Orthodox history of the Church, each infallible and each repudiating the other, disenchant him. All spring he is not himself. Without knowing what he is and why he is here it is impossible to live, and he cannot know. He is a bubble that separates, holds a while and bursts — the clearest of the explanations and a cruel mockery by a wicked Power. There is one escape, and this happy family man hides a cord and fears to carry a gun. He goes on living.

The philosophers are dismissed by a repeated test rather than an argument: build the structure, walk back into ordinary life, watch it fall. Placing Levin's hidden cord four chapters after Anna's death is the novel's boldest structural stroke — the same despair, reached from happiness, and the flat last sentence supplies the only difference that matters.