Anna Karenina — Chapter 229 in French
By Leo Tolstoy
Au contraire, quand il cessait de s’interroger, il paraissait savoir ce qu’il était, pourquoi il vivait, parce qu’il agissait, vivait résolument et d’une façon précise. Même les derniers temps il vivait d’une vie beaucoup plus intense et plus réglée qu’auparavant. When Levin puzzled over what he was, and why he was born, he found no answer, and fell into despair; but when he ceased to ask himself these questions, he seemed to know what he was and why he was alive, for the very reason that he resolutely and definitely lived and worked; even during the more recent months he had lived far more strenuously and resolutely than ever before.
Au commencement de juin, dès son retour à la campagne, il reprit ses occupations habituelles. Toward the end of June he returned to the country and resumed his ordinary work at Pokrovskoye. L’exploitation du domaine, ses relations avec les paysans et les voisins, les affaires de sa soeur et de son frère, qui étaient entre ses mains, ses rapports avec sa femme et ses parents, les soucis de l’enfant, une nouvelle passion pour les abeilles, qui l’entraînait depuis ce printemps, occupaient tout son temps. The superintendence of the estates of his brother and sister, his relations with his neighbors and his muzhiks, his family cares, his new enterprise in bee-culture, which he had taken up this year, occupied all his time. Il s’adonnait à ces occupations non qu’il les justifiât comme autrefois par des considérations générales ; au contraire, maintenant, désenchanté d’un côté, par l’insuccès de ses anciennes entreprises en vue de l’utilité générale, trop absorbé de l’autre par ses idées et le grand nombre des obligations qui l’accablaient de toutes parts, il avait abandonné complètement ses considérations sur l’utilité générale et il s’adonnait à toutes ces occupations uniquement parce qu’il ne pouvait faire autrement. These interests occupied him, not because he carried them on with a view to their universal application, as he had done before, but, on the contrary, because being now on the one hand disillusionized by the lack of success in his former undertakings for the common good, on the other being too much engrossed by his own thoughts and the very multitude of affairs calling for his attention, he entirely relinquished all his attempts of cooperative advantage and he occupied himself with his affairs, simply because it seemed to him that he was irresistibly impelled to do what he did, and could not do otherwise.
Autrefois (cela avait commencé presque dans l’enfance et avait augmenté sans cesse jusqu’à l’âge mûr), quand il essayait de faire quelque chose qui fût un bien pour tous, pour l’humanité, pour la Russie, pour tout le village, il remarquait que la pensée lui en était agréable, mais que l’acte même était toujours bizarre. Il n’avait jamais la certitude que l’acte fût vraiment nécessaire, et son utilité qui lui apparaissait d’abord si grande, diminuait peu à peu et se réduisait à zéro. Formerly—almost from childhood till he reached manhood—when he began to do anything that would be good for all, for humanity, for Russia, he saw that the thought of it gave him, in advance, a pleasing sense of joy; but the action in itself never realized his hopes, nor had he full conviction that the work was necessary, and the activity itself which seemed at first so important kept growing smaller and smaller, and came to naught.
Depuis son mariage, il vivait d’une façon beaucoup plus égoïste, et s’il n’éprouvait plus aucune joie à la pensée de son activité, par contre il la sentait nécessaire, il constatait que tout allait bien mieux et devenait de plus en plus parfait. But now that since his marriage he had become more and more restricted by life for its own sake, though he had no pleasure at the thought of his activity, he felt a conviction that his work was indispensable, and saw that the results gained were far more satisfactory than before.