I’ll reconsider Levin. I do need to go back to the book. I’m working with the perceptions of my 19-year old self. What did she know?

I’m also going to pull out Elif’s book again. I’ll get back to you.

Re epiphanies … maybe you should get yourself a muzhik and a barn. I don’t know what there is to get about Levin, esp if you read him as a sanitised version of Lev T himself. He’s got the idealism, romanticism, pigheadedness, disillusionment (with romantic love), grandiosity, megalomania, hypersensitivity, even the thoughts of suicide. And they’re just his good points.

About A’s fidelity, I meant her fidelity to life, to love, to the ideal, to not settling for life with her unloving husband, to gobbling up life, to not being a good girl. I once read Emma Bovary described as a “small town extremist.” Anna is like her big sister, a Petersburg extremist. This is also why I see her as being linked with Levin. Both of them have this struggle with conformity.

Perhaps you will elaborate on this idea for me a bit? I’m not quite sure what you mean.

I surely need to read Anna again. It’s actually been years.

I’m afraid I don’t fully get Levin because I’m still pre-epiphany, myself. Endlessly, hopelessly, annoyingly, loudly pre-epiphany…