Part 8. Chapter 8

Ever since, by his beloved brother's deathbed, Levin had first glanced into the questions of life and death in the light of these new convictions, as he called them, which had during the period from his twentieth to his thirty-fourth year imperceptibly replaced his childish and youthful beliefs—he had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was. Depuis, par le lit de mort de son frère bien-aimé, Levin avait d'abord jeté un coup d'œil sur les questions de vie et de mort à la lumière de ces nouvelles convictions, comme il les appelait, qui avaient, de sa vingtième à sa trente-quatrième année, imperceptiblement remplacé sa croyances enfantines et juvéniles - il avait été frappé d'horreur, non pas tant de la mort que de la vie, sans aucune connaissance d'où, et pourquoi, et comment, et de quoi il s'agissait. The physical organization, its decay, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were the words which usurped the place of his old belief. L'organisation physique, sa décomposition, l'indestructibilité de la matière, la loi de la conservation de l'énergie, l'évolution, sont les mots qui ont usurpé la place de sa vieille croyance. These words and the ideas associated with them were very well for intellectual purposes. Ces mots et les idées qui leur étaient associées étaient très bien à des fins intellectuelles. But for life they yielded nothing, and Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.

From that moment, though he did not distinctly face it, and still went on living as before, Levin had never lost this sense of terror at his lack of knowledge.

He vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new convictions were not merely lack of knowledge, but that they were part of a whole order of ideas, in which no knowledge of what he needed was possible.

At first, marriage, with the new joys and duties bound up with it, had completely crowded out these thoughts. Au début, le mariage, avec les joies et les devoirs nouveaux qui lui étaient liés, avait complètement évincé ces pensées. But of late, while he was staying in Moscow after his wife's confinement, with nothing to do, the question that clamored for solution had more and more often, more and more insistently, haunted Levin's mind. The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept?" And in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer.

He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and tool shops.

Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution.

What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions too. Were these people sincere? Ar šie žmonės buvo nuoširdūs? he asked himself, or were they playing a part? or was it that they understood the answers science gave to these problems in some different, clearer sense than he did? ou est-ce qu'ils ont compris les réponses que la science a données à ces problèmes dans un sens différent et plus clair que lui? And he assiduously studied both these men's opinions and the books which treated of these scientific explanations. One fact he had found out since these questions had engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong in supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young days at college, that religion had outlived its day, and that it was now practically non-existent. Un fait qu'il avait découvert depuis que ces questions avaient absorbé son esprit, était qu'il avait tout à fait tort de supposer, d'après les souvenirs du cercle de ses jeunes jours à l'université, que la religion avait survécu à son jour, et qu'elle était maintenant pratiquement non -existant. All the people nearest to him who were good in their lives were believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife believed as simply as he had believed in his earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian people, all the working people for whose life he felt the deepest respect, believed.

Another fact of which he became convinced, after reading many scientific books, was that the men who shared his views had no other construction to put on them, and that they gave no explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live without answering, but simply ignored their existence and attempted to explain other questions of no possible interest to him, such as the evolution of organisms, the materialistic theory of consciousness, and so forth. Un autre fait dont il fut convaincu, après avoir lu de nombreux livres scientifiques, était que les hommes qui partageaient ses vues n'avaient pas d'autre construction à leur donner, et qu'ils ne donnaient aucune explication des questions qu'il estimait ne pas pouvoir vivre sans y répondre, mais simplement ignoré leur existence et tenté d'expliquer d'autres questions sans intérêt possible pour lui, telles que l'évolution des organismes, la théorie matérialiste de la conscience, etc.

Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. Mais ce moment était passé, et il ne pouvait pas faire entrer son état d'esprit à ce moment dans le reste de sa vie.

He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments. Il ne pouvait admettre qu'il s'était trompé alors, car sa condition spirituelle lui était alors précieuse, et admettre que c'était une preuve de faiblesse aurait été profaner ces moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this condition. Il était misérablement divisé contre lui-même et mit toutes ses forces spirituelles au maximum pour échapper à cette condition.