Page 605 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

fell into three separate trains of thought. One was the
renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education.
This renunciation gave him satisfaction, and was easy and
simple. Another series of thoughts and mental images

related to the life he longed to live now. The simplicity,
the purity, the sanity of this life he felt clearly, and he was
convinced he would find in it the content, the peace, and
the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably
conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the
question how to effect this transition from the old life to
the new. And there nothing took clear shape for him.
‘Have a wife? Have work and the necessity of work?
Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land? Become a member of a
peasant community? Marry a peasant girl? How am I to set
about it?’ he asked himself again, and could not find an
answer. ‘I haven’t slept all night, though, and I can’t think
it out clearly,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ll work it out later.
One thing’s certain, this night has decided my fate. All my
old dreams of home life were absurd, not the real thing,’
he told himself. ‘It’s all ever so much simpler and better..’
‘How beautiful!’ he thought, looking at the strange, as
it were, mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudless
resting right over his head in the middle of the sky. ‘How
exquisite it all is in this exquisite night! And when was

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