Since I find this question very important, let me please completely clear it up. All the more so because I didn't understand if the opinion you described in your quote above was your final opinion. If so, I strongly want to explain you the episode better.Originally Posted by rockzmom
No, the "friend" (I actually don't think we should call that man Gurov's friend) is not trying to tell Gurov, in his own way, to forget about Anna. Not at all. He simply doesn't hear Gurov. I don't mean that he doesn't hear him physically, that he's deaf. No, but he just in no way can perceive Gurov's words. He's completely merged into banality of life, when a person lives like an animal, and only drinks, eats, plays cards, spends evenings in clubs, visits formal dinner parties, and actually has forgotten how to think and feel long ago. A conversation with him about love, or something else like poetry, history, literature is just impossible. Gurov is surrounded with such people in his life. Actually, he himself recently was almost like that. But he is younger than that acquaintance, and a story happened in his life that woke him up. Actually, not only Gurov, and not only in the XIXth century, but also we, nowadays can be surrounded with people in a varying degree like this Gurov's acquaintance.
In fact, Gurov was trying to talk to that man about Anna because he has nobody to talk about her! And at once, that's the only subject he'd like to talk about.