We have barely gotten out of the Early Bronze Age and already we have watched a number of civilizations come and go, sometimes in a grim and bloody fashion. Like Constantin Levin in Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, we are made all too aware of the bubble-like quality of our own existence.
In infinite time, in the infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble-organism separates itself, and that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is – me.’1Tolstoy 2002, 788
For Levin, the fear of death filled him with such despair that the only way he could find relief was to not think about the subject at all. It was therefore the source of greatest torment for Levin when his brother entered his home on death’s door and he was forced to watch as the man slowly succumbed to his disease. But Levin also watched his young wife nurse the ailing man and treat the indignity of death with utmost grace and compassion.
…he felt even less capable than before of understanding the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared still more horrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife’s nearness, the feeling did not drive him to despair: in spite of death, he felt the necessity to live and to love.2Tolstoy 2002, 505
Levin was nevertheless tormented by the meaninglessness of it all. (He didn’t carry a gun for fear he might shoot himself with it.) A professed atheist, he was well versed in the latest theories of mechanism and force. But he found nothing in the works of the philosophers that could make sense of it all. One day, while working on the threshing floor, one of the workers, an old man, made an offhanded comment to Levin about how one landowner treated his workers well and another treated them badly. The old man continued,
Well, that’s how it is – people are different. One man just lives for his own needs, take Mityukha even, just stuffs his belly, but Fokanych – he’s an upright old man. He lives for the soul. He remembers God.3Tolstoy 2002, 794
Struck by the force of the idea that a man might sacrifice himself for another, Levin immediately left the threshing floor and started for home. It was a sultry summer evening and the road was long. Stepping into the cool of the forest, Levin walked until he found an unmowed meadow. Lying on his back in the grass he watched a bug walk across a blade of grass before extending its wings and flying away.
And I looked out for miracles, I was sorry that I’d never seen a miracle that would convince me. And here it is, the only possible miracle, ever existing, surrounding me on all sides, and I never noticed it!4Tolstoy 2002, 795
But of course, Levin was thinking of sacrifice.
Someday hence, if an archaeologist finds the bones of Levin, it may be discovered that Levin was an old man when he died, that he had arthritis, and that he had a healed bone fracture; a historian may add flesh to the bones, but neither are likely to find any trace of Levin’s bug.