Where am I? What am I doing? Why?
Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
What have I done? To think I rode the train
with Madame Vronsky and we talked about
our sons. I could not live in conceit and lies.
That is my honor, why I told Karenin everything.
Did a rude mockery toward people cause me
to despise him?
God, his ears sticking out from
his hat and his cracking his knuckles.
I had not known what it felt like to be a woman.
Yes, I bore Seryozha with my husband, the child
whom I could not love completely
I saw fire
in Vronsky’s eyes which caught a flame in mine.
Why could I not love our child enough?
I wanted to
devour Vronsky, nothing to come between us.
What is it to absorb another person? That
we should live only for each other?
How I loved Vronsky’s body. So close
in comfort, the way I curled up into it.
I am a mad woman, driving him away.
He needed a life and I needed a life.
Why did I not have my own life?
