Known Unknowns

In the disagreements that occurred between the brothers during their discussions of the peasantry, Sergei Ivanovich always defeated his brother, precisely because Sergei Ivanovich had definite notions about the peasantry, their character, properties and tastes; whereas Konstantin Levin had no definite and unchanging notions, so that in these arguments Konstantin was always caught contradicting himself.

It's somewhat odd (or maybe it isn't; maybe this happens to most people who read the book), but as I read Anna Karenina, I find myself less and less interested in Anna's story - I think because it's an old story (or perhaps, to be more precise, it's a story which has been retold many times up to the present day), one which I feel familiar with. Levin, on the other hand, I find a fascinating character, possibly because he's the one I feel the most parallels with. He's supposed to be fairly representative of Tolstoy himself, according to the introduction of the edition that I have.

Yay?

I've never held many passionate thoughts or opinions. I don't mean to say I don't care about things, what I mean is that a lot of the ideas I have I'm willing to question or doubt, depending on whatever perspective I'm faced with or what I feel at any given time of any given day. I can argue something passionately one day and then say something completely opposite the next day. I think people who talk to me a lot find this intensely irritating at times. Is this intellectual, is it an expression of the knowledge that I know nothing, that there are no absolutes in life? Or is it human hypocrisy, is it just the natural tendency of people to say one thing when examining a situation in an objective, academic fashion and then act differently when their own desires come into play? Or some combination?

See, even now I'm unable to find a definitive answer.

I notice, when I'm in conversations, that I tend to ramble all over the place, that I'll mention something to try to illustrate a point and it sets me off on some other tangent, and by the time I finish that I've forgotten what the original point I was trying to make was. I had an acting teacher tell me that that, and my vocal patterns, were symptoms of a restless mind, that my brain's moving so quickly and so (to everyone else's mind) randomly that my mouth struggles to keep pace. I can focus on subjects and on single arguments - to write a thesis paper, for example - but when given the chance to do otherwise my mind tends to work in a far less structured manner. I don't feel that I'm particularly creative or inventive, I just have such wide-ranging interests and knowledge that they all compete to be shown off.

That makes me sound like an insufferable ass, and I suppose that's how I come across sometimes.

I also find it interesting that Tolstoy's style is far more polemical than his Western counterparts; where they had begun to move towards a more disinterested commentary on the characters in their novels (to give you an idea of where Western fiction was at this time, Middlemarch was written around the same time, 5-6 years earlier), Tolstoy's perspective and his beliefs are fairly easy to detect in the tone he adopts towards various characters and lifestyles. He certainly doesn't seem to have much sympathy for Anna, which makes the decision to center the book around her even more interesting, especially when many of the "secondary" characters are as if not more realized.