I am just finishing Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. My favorite work of fiction has long been War and Peace. I am ever the sucker for Russian romantic literature. Below is an apt excerpt that depicts the scene of two main characters, Levin and Kitty, as they welcome their baby son into the world. The emotional turmoil and thought process Tolstoy captures is remarkable: it’s a fantastic read.
(I should note, however, that despite my identification with Levin’s emotions as the expectant father, Mares’ parallel to Kitty is not as accurate. From her childbirth experiences, Mares contends that it takes too much effort on the part of the mother to scream during labor. In her having bravely endured our births both naturally and calmly, Mares has my utmost respect and admiration. I also get a kick out of how Kitty is multitasking—knitting—in the midst of labor. Women, my Mares in particular, are incredible!)
He [Levin] hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as he put on his dressing-gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he loved her face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it like this. How hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of the distress he had caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with soft curling hair under her night-cap, was radiant with joy and courage.
Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty's character in general, Levin was struck by what was revealed now, when suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She looked at him, smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up her head, and going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed close up to him, breathing her hot breath upon him. She was in pain and was, as it were, complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first minute, from habit, it seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her eyes there was a tenderness that told him that she was far from reproaching hind that she loved him for her sufferings. "If not I, who is to blame for it?" he thought unconsciously, seeking some one responsible for this suffering for him to punish; but there was no one responsible. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could not make it out. It was beyond his understanding.
…
And Levin saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she had brought in in the night and begun working at it again.
…
Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions.
…
"Doctor! what is it? What is it? By God!" [Levin] said, snatching at the doctor's hand as he came up."It's the end," said the doctor. And the doctor's face was so grave as he said it that Levin took THE END as meaning her death.
Beside himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was the face of Lizaveta Petrovna [the midwife]. It was even more frowning and stern. Kitty's face he did not know. In the place where it had been was something that was fearful in its strained distortion and in the sounds that came from it. He fell down with his head on the wooden framework of the bed, feeling that his heart was bursting. The awful scream never paused, it became still more awful, and as though it had reached the utmost limit of terror, suddenly it ceased. Levin could not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt; the scream had ceased and he heard a subdued stir and bustle, and hurried breathing, and her voice, gasping, alive, tender, and blissful, uttered softly, "It's over!"
He lifted his head. With her hands hanging exhausted on the quilt, looking extraordinarily lovely and serene, she looked at him in silence and tried to smile, and could not.
And suddenly, from the mysterious and awful far-away world in which he had been living for the last twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself all in an instant borne back to the old every-day world, glorified though now, by such a radiance of happiness that he could not bear it. The strained chords snapped, sobs and tears of joy which he had never foreseen rose up with such violence that his whole body shook, that for long they prevented him from speaking.
Falling on his knees before the bed, he held his wife's hand before his lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers, responded to his kiss. And meanwhile, there at the foot of the bed, in the deft hands of Lizaveta Petrovna, like a flickering light in a lamp, lay the life of a human creature, which had never existed before, and which would now with the same right, with the same importance to itself, live and create in its own image.
"Alive! alive! And a boy too! Set your mind at rest!" Levin heard Lizaveta Petrovna saying, as she slapped the baby's back with a shaking hand.
…
If Levin had been told before that Kitty was dead, and that he had died with her, and that their children were angels, and that God was standing before him, he would have been surprised at nothing. But now, coming back to the world of reality, he had to make great mental efforts to take in that she was alive and well, and that the creature squalling so desperately was his son. Kitty was alive, her agony was over. And he was unutterably happy. That he understood; he was completely happy in it. But the baby? Whence, why, who was he? ...He could not get used to the idea. It seemed to him something extraneous, superfluous, to which he could not accustom himself.
