At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were

performed. One was a fantasia, _King Lear;_ the other was a

quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in

the new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them.

After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against

a column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously

as possible. He tried not to let his attention be distracted,

and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a

white tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment

of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings

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carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either

thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things

except the music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs

or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor

straight before him, listening.

But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further

he felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as

it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical

expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly,

breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the

whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected

sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though

sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly

unexpected and not led up to by anything. Gaiety and grief and

despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without

any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those

emotions, like a madman's, sprang up quite unexpectedly.

During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf man

watching people dancing, and was in a state of complete

bewilderment when the fantasia was over, and felt a great

weariness from the fruitless strain on his attention. Loud

applause resounded on all sides. Everyone got up, moved about,

and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his own

perplexity from the impressions of others, Levin began to walk

about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-known

musical amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.

"Marvelous!" Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. "How are

you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch? Particularly sculpturesque and

plastic, so to say, and richly colored is that passage where you

feel Cordelia's approach, where woman, _das ewig Weibliche,_

enters into conflict with fate. Isn't it?"

"You mean...what has Cordelia to do with it?" Levin asked

timidly, forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to represent

King Lear.

"Cordelia comes in...see here!" said Pestsov, tapping his finger

on the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand and

passing it to Levin.




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