Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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but the end of all his thoughts was the same--
death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time
presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death,
which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and
from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was
not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in
himself too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow, if not
tomorrow, in thirty years, wasnt it all the same! And what was
this inevitable death--he did not know, had never thought about
it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to
think about it.
"I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must
all end; I had forgotten--death."
He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his
knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he
pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it
became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality,
looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact--that death
will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning,
and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but
it was so.
"But I am alive still. Now whats to be done? whats to be
done?" he said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up
cautiously and went to the looking-glass, and began looking at
his face and hair. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples.
He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He
bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But
Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of lungs, had
had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how
they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only
waited till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling
pillows at each other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that
even their awe of Fyodor Bogdanitch could not check the
effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and happiness. "And now
that bent, hollow chest...and I, not knowing what will become of
me, or wherefore..."
"K...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why
dont you go to sleep?" his brothers voice called to him.
"Oh, I dont know, Im not sleepy."
"I have had a good sleep, Im not in a sweat now. Just see, feel
my shirt; its not wet, is it?"
Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle,
but for a long while he could not sleep. The question how to
live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a
new, insoluble question presented itself--death.
"Why, hes dying--yes, hell die in the spring, and how help
him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? Id even
forgotten that it was at all."
Chapter 32
Levin had long before made the observation that when one is
uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable
and meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable
from their touchiness and irritability. He felt that this was
how it would be with his brother. And his brother Nikolays
gentleness did in fact not last out for long. The very next
morning he began to be irritable, and seemed doing his best to
find fault with his brother, attacking him on his tenderest
points.
Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He
felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had
spoken, as it is called, from the heart--that is to say, had
said only just what they were thinking and feeling--they would
simply have looked into each others faces, and Konstantin could
only have said, "Youre dying, youre dying!" and Nikolay could
only have answered, "I know Im dying, but Im afraid, Im
afraid, Im afraid!" And they could have said nothing more, if
they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that
was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been
trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though,
as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do
it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say
what
Anna Karenina page 202 Anna Karenina page 204
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