Eyes

Konstantin Levin has come to visit his brother Nikolai.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

“You did not expect to find me like this,” Nikolai says. But the brothers’ eye-to-eye contact immediately establishes “a living connection between living men.”

When I read this passage, I remembered visiting a dying friend. He was nearly unrecognizable. The only way I could see him as himself was to look at his eyes.

Also from this novel
“The turning point of summer” : Theory of dairy farming : Toothache : Anna meta : “Brainless beef!” : “He could not help observing this” : “Official activity” : “All of this together” : “What they had no conception of” : “The back of your head neck”