t towards a language that can frame rationally what he knows intuitively to be true, and of Tolstoy's autobiographical intent in the character of Levin.In a conversation with the painter Kramskoy that occurred around 1875, Tolstoy remarked in answer to Kramskoy's question what one is to believe, "Look, the sky's cleared. It is pale blue. One has to believe that the pale blue up there is a solid vault." Tolstoy's phrasing occurs almost verbatim in Part XIV, Chapter XIII, when Levin thinks to himself while lying on his back and looking up at a cloudless sky, "Don't I know that that is infinite space, and not a rounded vault? But however I may screw my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot help seeing it round and limited, and despite my knowledge of it as limitless space I am indubitably right when I see a firm blue vault." The precise wording is key in both quotations -- both Levin's and Tolstoy's experience of the sky is a synthesis of reason (or, more precisely, a belief necessitated by rationality) and experience. That the sky is a blue vault in this second encounter (presumably a naive vision of a Christian heaven "in the clouds") is not experienced directly -- just as the Kierkegaardian hero must take a leap of faith and through an effort of will believe in something which is not apparent to the senses, Levin must integrate experience and reason in order to see the sky as a vault. For both Tolstoy and Kierkegaard, God never descends to Earth to demand through experience alone that men believe, and thus Oblonsky can live amorally in a world of variety and charm without retribution. Levin's first encounter with the vastness of blue sky occurs in Part III, Chapter XII, before he has fully understood the necessity of relating experience to his own internal belief. At the edge of perception comes a mystic change to remind Levin of his duty to reason. Abandoning his dream of marrying a peasant girl (which for Levin would have been disaster b...
