Hello from the Land of Insomnia.

Not that you asked, but Levin needs to open up a can of whup-ass on Count Vronsky.

That is all. On to Chapter 17, and 3:30…

UPDATE: This passage is what I fell asleep last night, finally, thinking about. It’s from the restaurant dinner in Chapter 11 with the merrily dissolute Oblonsky and the upright and a bit too earnest Levin. Oblonsky is asking his advice on how to handle his mistress and his wife, given that she’s leaving him after having discovered his dalliance with the governess:

“Oh, you moralist!” [Oblonsky says] But just consider, here are two women: one insists only on her rights, and her rights are your love, which you cannot give her; and the other sacrifices herself and demands nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act? It is a terrible tragedy.”

“If you want me to say what I think of it, I can only tell you that I don’t believe in the tragedy. And the reasons is this: I think love, both kinds of love, which you remember Plato defines in his ‘Symposium’ — both kinds of love serve as a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For such love there can be no tragedy. ‘Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good-bye,’ and that’s the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, because there everything is clear and pure, because …” Here Levin recollecting his own sins and the inner struggle he ahd lived through added unexpectedly, “However, maybe you are right. It may very well be. But I don’t know, I really don’t know.”

“Well, you see you are very consistent,” said Oblonsky. “It is both a virtue and a fault in you. You have a consistent character yourself and you wish all the facts of life to be consistent, but they never are. For instance, you despise public service because you want work always to correspond to its aims, and that never happens. You also want the activity of each separate man to have an aim, and love and family life always to coincide — and that doesn’t happen either. All the variety, charm and beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

Levin sighed and did not answer. He was thinking of his own affairs and not listening to Oblonsky.

Here’s what I was thinking about as I fell asleep: They are both right. At least it seems so to me. About 60 percent of me is a Levin-like moralist. The rest is an Oblonskian aesthete. These two natures are always at war with each other. I affirm both, simultaneously. This is why Christopher Hitchens’s observation that life as it is actually requires the keeping of two sets of books. Yep.