“And that’s how it always is with these beautiful, Schilleresque souls, Till the last moment they dress a man up in peacock’s feathers, till the last moment they hope for the good and not the bad; and though they may have premonitions of the other side of the coin, for the life of them they will not utter a real word beforehand; the thought alone makes them cringe; they wave the truth away with both hands, till the very moment when the man they’ve decked out so finely sticks their noses in it with his own two hands.”
It refers to his sister and mother and their refusal to accept that Luzhin is not the noblest man out there. What confuses me is that it refers to “noses” at the end. Does it mean the noses of his mother and sister? I understand that the antecedent is “beautiful, Schilleresque souls,” but then it only refers to one man, as if there is one man that sticks the noses of all these souls “in it with his own two hands”, which is nonsense.
What do you think?
by Formiddabledrip