Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 239
1418 words | Chapter 239
“Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way
here?” said Dolly, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children;
“with Vronsky! He’s going to Servia.”
“And not alone; he’s taking a squadron out with him at his own
expense,” said Katavasov.
“That’s the right thing for him,” said Levin. “Are volunteers still
going out then?” he added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch.
Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife
getting a live bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white
honeycomb.
“I should think so! You should have seen what was going on at the
station yesterday!” said Katavasov, biting with a juicy sound into a
cucumber.
“Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy’s sake, do explain to me,
Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they
fighting with?” asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a
conversation that had sprung up in Levin’s absence.
“With the Turks,” Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he
extricated the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it
with the knife on a stout aspen leaf.
“But who has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?”
“No one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors’
sufferings and are eager to help them,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“But the prince is not speaking of help,” said Levin, coming to the
assistance of his father-in-law, “but of war. The prince says that
private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the
government.”
“Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!” said Dolly,
waving away a wasp.
“But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,” said Levin.
“Well now, well, what’s your own theory?” Katavasov said to Levin with
a smile, distinctly challenging him to a discussion. “Why have not
private persons the right to do so?”
“Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and
awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can
individually take upon himself the responsibility of beginning wars;
that can only be done by a government, which is called upon to do this,
and is driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both political
science and common sense teach us that in matters of state, and
especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their
personal individual will.”
Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready, and both began
speaking at the same time.
“But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the
government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the
public asserts its will,” said Katavasov.
But evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this answer. His
brows contracted at Katavasov’s words and he said something else.
“You don’t put the matter in its true light. There is no question here
of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian
feeling. Our brothers, one with us in religion and in race, are being
massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor
fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people, feeling is
aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities.
Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men beating a
woman or a child—I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war
had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and
protect the victim.”
“But I should not kill them,” said Levin.
“Yes, you would kill them.”
“I don’t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the
moment, but I can’t say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there
is not, and there cannot be, in the case of the oppression of the
Slavonic peoples.”
“Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. “There are traditions still
extant among the people of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the
yoke of the ‘unclean sons of Hagar.’ The people have heard of the
sufferings of their brethren and have spoken.”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin evasively; “but I don’t see it. I’m one of the
people myself, and I don’t feel it.”
“Here am I too,” said the old prince. “I’ve been staying abroad and
reading the papers, and I must own, up to the time of the Bulgarian
atrocities, I couldn’t make out why it was all the Russians were all of
a sudden so fond of their Slavonic brethren, while I didn’t feel the
slightest affection for them. I was very much upset, thought I was a
monster, or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I
have been here, my mind’s been set at rest. I see that there are people
besides me who’re only interested in Russia, and not in their Slavonic
brethren. Here’s Konstantin too.”
“Personal opinions mean nothing in such a case,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch; “it’s not a matter of personal opinions when all Russia—the
whole people—has expressed its will.”
“But excuse me, I don’t see that. The people don’t know anything about
it, if you come to that,” said the old prince.
“Oh, papa!... how can you say that? And last Sunday in church?” said
Dolly, listening to the conversation. “Please give me a cloth,” she
said to the old man, who was looking at the children with a smile.
“Why, it’s not possible that all....”
“But what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had been told to read
that. He read it. They didn’t understand a word of it. Then they were
told that there was to be a collection for a pious object in church;
well, they pulled out their halfpence and gave them, but what for they
couldn’t say.”
“The people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own destinies is
always in the people, and at such moments as the present that sense
finds utterance,” said Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at
the old bee-keeper.
The handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and thick silvery hair,
stood motionless, holding a cup of honey, looking down from the height
of his tall figure with friendly serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously
understanding nothing of their conversation and not caring to
understand it.
“That’s so, no doubt,” he said, with a significant shake of his head at
Sergey Ivanovitch’s words.
“Here, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and thinks nothing,”
said Levin. “Have you heard about the war, Mihalitch?” he said, turning
to him. “What they read in the church? What do you think about it?
Ought we to fight for the Christians?”
“What should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our Emperor has thought
for us; he thinks for us indeed in all things. It’s clearer for him to
see. Shall I bring a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?” he
said addressing Darya Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had
finished his crust.
“I don’t need to ask,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, “we have seen and are
seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve
a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly
express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go
themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?”
“It means, to my thinking,” said Levin, who was beginning to get warm,
“that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not
hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste,
ne’er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere—to Pogatchev’s
bands, to Khiva, to Servia....”
“I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-do-wells, but
the best representatives of the people!” said Sergey Ivanovitch, with
as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his
fortune. “And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole
people directly expressing their will.”
“That word ‘people’ is so vague,” said Levin. “Parish clerks, teachers,
and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it’s all about.
The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing
their will, haven’t the faintest idea what there is for them to express
their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people’s
will?”
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