Part Seven: Chapter 5

by Leo Tolstoy

　　At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things wereperformed. One was a fantasia, King Lear; the other was aquartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and inthe new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them.After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood againsta column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiouslyas possible. He tried not to let his attention be distracted,and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in awhite tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoymentof music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with stringscarefully tied over their ears, and all these people eitherthinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of thingsexcept the music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseursor talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floorstraight before him, listening.

　　But the more he listened to the fantasia of Ring Lear the furtherhe felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, asit were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musicalexpression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly,breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but thewhims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnectedsounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, thoughsometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterlyunexpected and not led up to by anything. Gaiety and grief anddespair and tenderness and triumph followed one another withoutany connection, like the emotions of a madman. And thoseemotions, like a madman's, sprang up quite unexpectedly.

　　During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf manwatching people dancing, and was in a state of completebewilderment when the fantasia was over, and felt a greatweariness from the fruitless strain on his attention. Loudapplause resounded on all sides. Everyone got up, moved about,and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his ownperplexity from the impressions of others, Levin began to walkabout, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-knownmusical amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.

　　"Marvelous!" Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. "How areyou, Konstantin Dmitrievitch? Particularly sculpturesque andplastic, so to say, and richly colored is that passage where youfeel Cordelia's approach, where woman, das ewig Weibliche, entersinto conflict with fate. Isn't it?"

　　"You mean...what has Cordelia to do with it?" Levin askedtimidly, forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to representKing Lear.

　　"Cordelia comes in...see here!" said Pestsov, tapping his fingeron the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand andpassing it to Levin.

　　Only then Levin recollected the title of the fantasia, and madehaste to read in the Russian translation the lines fromShakespeare that were printed on the back of the program.

　　"You can't follow it without that," said Pestsov, addressingLevin, as the person he had been speaking to had gone away, andhe had no one to talk to.

　　In the entr'acte Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument uponthe merits and defects of music of the Wagner school. Levinmaintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers layin their trying to take music into the sphere of another art,just as poetry goes wrong when it tries to paint a face as theart of painting ought to do, and as an instance of this mistakehe cited the sculptor who carved in marble certain poeticphantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the pedestal."These phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they werepositively clinging on the ladder," said Levin. The comparisonpleased him, but he could not remember whether he had not usedthe same phrase before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he said it hefelt confused.

　　Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain itshighest manifestations only by conjunction with all kinds of art.

　　The second piece that was performed Levin could not hear.Pestsov, who was standing beside him, was talking to him almostall the time, condemning the music for its excessive affectedassumption of simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity ofthe Pre-Raphaelites in painting. As he went out Levin met manymore acquaintances, with whom he talked of politics, of music,and of common acquaintances. Among others he met Count Bol, whomhe had utterly forgotten to call upon.

　　"Well, go at once then," Madame Lvova said, when he told her;"perhaps they'll not be at home, and then you can come to themeeting to fetch me. You'll find me still there."