Page 1094 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

The sight of other people, their remarks, his own
reminiscences, everything was for him a source of agony.
Those about him felt this, and instinctively did not allow
themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes

before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of
suffering and desire to be rid of it.
There was evidently coming over him that revulsion
that would make him look upon death as the goal of his
desires, as happiness. Hitherto each individual desire,
aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue,
thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving
pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering
received relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused
fresh suffering. And so all desires were merged in one—
the desire to be rid of all his sufferings and their source,
the body. But he had no words to express this desire of
deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit
asked for the satisfaction of desires which could not now
be satisfied. ‘Turn me over on the other side,’ he would
say, and immediately after he would ask to be turned back
again as before. ‘Give me some broth. Take away the
broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?’ And
directly they began to talk ho would close his eyes, and
would show weariness, indifference, and loathing.

1093 of 1759