Page 1079 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 19

‘Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes.’ So Levin thought
about his wife as he talked to her that evening.
Levin thought of the text, not because he considered
himself ‘wise and prudent.’ He did not so consider
himself, but he could not help knowing that he had more
intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he could
not help knowing that when he thought of death, he
thought with all the force of his intellect. He knew too
that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he had
read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a
hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna
knew about it. Different as those two women were,
Agafea Mihalovna and Katya, as his brother Nikolay had
called her, and as Levin particularly liked to call her now,
they were quite alike in this. Both knew, without a shade
of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what was death,
and though neither of them could have answered, and
would even not have understood the questions that
presented themselves to Levin, both had no doubt of the
significance of this event, and were precisely alike in their

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