Anna Karenina — Chapter 228 in French
By Leo Tolstoy
Ces idées le tourmentaient tantôt plus, tantôt moins, mais ne l’abandonnaient jamais. These thoughts tormented him with varying intensity, but he could not free himself from them. Il lisait et pensait, et plus il lisait et pensait, plus il se sentait loin du but. He read and meditated; but the more he read and meditated, the end desired seemed to grow more and more remote.
Les derniers temps, à Moscou et à la campagne, se convainquant qu’il ne trouverait pas de réponses chez les matérialistes, il s’était mis à lire et relire Platon, Spinosa, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, et les philosophes qui n’expliquent pas la vie au point de vue matériel. During the latter part of his stay in Moscow, and after he reached the country, he became convinced of the uselessness of seeking in materialism an answer to his doubts; and he read over the philosophers whose explanations of life were opposed to materialism,—Plato and Spinoza, and Kant and Schelling, and Hegel and Schopenhauer.
Ces pensées lui paraissaient fertiles quand il lisait ou inventait des objections contre d’autres doctrines, surtout contre les doctrines matérialistes, mais dès qu’il lisait ou inventait les solutions des questions, alors il se produisait toujours la même chose : suivant la définition admise des termes vagues comme l’esprit, la volonté, la liberté, la substance, tombant dans ce piège des mots que lui posaient les philosophes ou qu’il se posait lui-même, il commençait à comprendre quelque chose. These thoughts seemed to him fruitful while he was reading, or was contrasting their doctrines with those of others, especially with those of a materialistic tendency; but just as soon as he attempted, independently, to apply these guides to some doubtful point, he fell back into the same perplexities as before. Mais il suffisait d’oublier la marche artificielle de la pensée et, de la vie, retourner à ce qui le satisfaisait quand il suivait une certaine pensée, pour que soudain toute cette construction artificielle s’écroulât comme un château de cartes ; il apparaissait clairement que tout n’était basé que sur des mots entremêlés, sans lien avec ce quelque chose de plus important dans la vie que la raison. The terms "mind," "will", "freedom," "essence," had a certain meaning to his intellect as long as he followed the clew established by the deductions of these philosophers, and allowed himself to be caught in the snare of their subtle distinctions; but when practical life asserted its point of view, this artistic structure fell, like a house built of cards; and it became evident that the edifice was built only of beautiful words, having no more connection than logic with the serious side of life.
Un moment, en lisant Schopenhauer, il remplaça son mot la volonté par l’amour, et cette nouvelle philosophie, pour deux jours, tant qu’il ne s’en écartait pas, le consola. Once, as he was reading Schopenhauer, he substituted the term "love" for that which this philosopher calls "will," and this new philosophy consoled him for a few days while he clung to it. Mais elle croula aussi quand il la regarda de la vie. C’était aussi un vêtement de mousseline qui ne réchauffait pas. But it also proved unsatisfactory when he regarded it from the standpoint of practical life; then it seemed to be the thin muslin without warmth as a dress.