Page 1658 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

booksellers how the book was selling, Sergey Ivanovitch
was all on the alert, with strained attention, watching for
the first impression his book would make in the world and
in literature.

But a week passed, a second, a third, and in society no
impression whatever could be detected. His friends who
were specialists and savants, occasionally—unmistakably
from politeness—alluded to it. The rest of his
acquaintances, not interested in a book on a learned
subject, did not talk of it at all. And society generally—just
now especially absorbed in other things—was absolutely
indifferent. In the press, too, for a whole month there was
not a word about his book.
Sergey Ivanovitch had calculated to a nicety the time
necessary for writing a review, but a month passed, and a
second, and still there was silence.
Only in the Northern Beetle, in a comic article on the
singer Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a
contemptuous allusion to Koznishev’s book, suggesting
that the book had been long ago seen through by
everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule.
At last in the third month a critical article appeared in a
serious review. Sergey Ivanovitch knew the author of the
article. He had met him once at Golubtsov’s.

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