Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy
at ease with his stepbrother in the country. To Constantine the country was the place where one lived — that is to say, where one rejoiced, suffered, and laboured; but to Koznyshev the country was, on the one hand, a place of rest from work, and, on the other, a useful antidote to depravity, an antidote to which he resorted with pleasure and with a consciousness of its utility. To Constantine the country seemed a good place because it was the scene of unquestionably useful labour; to Koznyshev it seemed good because one could and should do nothing there. Besides this, Koznyshev’s attitude toward the peasants jarred on Constantine. Koznyshev was wont to say that he knew and loved the common people: he often conversed with peasants, and was able to do it well, frankly, and without affectation, deducing from every such conversation data in the peasants’ favour and proofs of his own knowledge of the people. Constantine regarded the peasants as the chief partners in a common undertaking, and despite his respect and the feeling of a blood-tie — probably, as he said, sucked in with the milk of his peasant nurse — he as partner in their common undertaking, though often filled with admiration for the strength, meekness, and justice of these people, was very often (when the business required other qualities) exasperated with them for their carelessness, untidiness, drunkenness, and untruthfulness. Had Constantine been asked whether he liked the peasants, he would not have known what to answer. He both liked and disliked them, just as he liked and disliked all human beings. With his natural kind heart he of course liked human beings more than he disliked them, and naturally the peasants were included; but he could not like or dislike the people as if they were something apart, because he not only lived among them, his interests closely bound up with theirs, but he considered himself one of the people and could not find in himself any special qualities or defects which placed him in contrast with them. Moreover, though he had lived in very close relations with the peasants, as their master, mediator, and above all as their adviser (the peasants trusted him, and would often come thirty miles to consult him), he had no definite opinion concerning them. Had he been asked whether he knew the people, he would have been just as much at a loss for a reply as he was for a reply to the question whether he liked them. To say that he knew the peasants was tantamount to saying that he knew human beings. He continually observed and learnt to know all sorts of human beings, among them human beings of the peasant class, whom he considered interesting, constantly discovering in them new traits and altering his opinions accordingly. Koznyshev, on the other hand, just as he praised country life as a contrast to the life he disliked, liked the peasants as a contrast to the class he disliked, and regarded them as a contrast to humanity in general. His methodical mind had formed definite views on the life of the people, founded partly on that life itself, but chiefly on its contrast. He never altered his opinions about the people nor his sympathetic attitude toward them. In the disputes which took place between the brothers when discussing the peasants, Koznyshev was always victorious, just because he had definite views about them, their character, attributes, and tastes; while Constantine had no definite and fixed views, and was often guilty of self-contradiction when arguing on that subject.
Koznyshev thought his younger brother a splendid fellow, with his heart in the right place, but with a mind which, though rather quick, was swayed by the impression of the moment and was therefore full of contradictions. With an elder brother’s condescension he sometimes explained to him the meaning of things, but could find no pleasure in discussion, because he could gain too easy a victory.
Constantine considered his brother to be a man of great intellect, noble in the highest sense of the word, and gifted with the power of working for the general welfare. But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare — a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute — was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart — the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone. The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed that Koznyshev and many other social workers were not led to this love for the common good by their hearts, but because they had reasoned out in their minds that it was a good thing to do that kind of work, and took to it accordingly. What further strengthened this conviction, was noticing that his brother did not take the question of the general welfare, or of the immortality of the soul, any more to heart than a game of chess.
Another thing which made Constantine Levin feel his brother’s presence inconvenient was that in the country, especially during the summer, while Levin was always busy with the farm and the long summer days were too short for doing all that had to be done, Koznyshev was resting. But even though he was resting from mental labours and was not writing, he was so used to mental activity that he liked expressing his thoughts in an elegant, concise style, and liked having a listener. His most usual and natural listener was his brother; and therefore, despite their friendly relations, Constantine felt uncomfortable at leaving him alone. Koznyshev loved to lie basking in the sunshine, talking lazily.
‘You can’t imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain — you might send a ball rolling through it!’
But it wearied Constantine to sit listening to him, particularly because he knew that during his absence the manure was being carted into the field, and it was impossible to guess where they would throw it if he were not there to see. The ploughshares too would not be screwed up properly, or taken out; and then he would be told that these ploughs were a silly invention: ‘How can they be compared to our old Russian plough?’ and so on.
‘Haven’t you walked about enough in this heat?’ said Koznyshev.
‘No; I must just look in at the counting-house for a moment,’ answered Levin, and off he ran to the fields.
Chapter 2
AT the beginning of June Levin’s old nurse and housekeeper, Agatha Mikhaylovna, happened to slip as she was carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms which she had just pickled, and sprained her wrist. A talkative young medical man who had only just qualified and been appointed doctor for the Zemstvo district arrived, examined the hand, said it was not sprained, and enjoyed a talk with the celebrated Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev. He told him all the gossip of the district to show off his enlightened views and complained of the unsatisfactory conditions prevailing there. Koznyshev listened attentively, asked questions, and, enlivened by the presence of a new listener, became quite chatty, made some pointed and weighty remarks respectfully appreciated by the young doctor, and reached that state of animation his brother so well knew, which generally followed a brilliant and lively conversation. After the doctor’s departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing-rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such, a stupid occupation. Constantine, who was obliged to go to the cornfields and meadows, offered to give his brother a lift in his trap.
It was just the time of year, the turning-point of summer, when the result of that year’s harvest becomes assured, when the autumn sowings have to be considered, and when the hay harvest is close at hand; when the grey-green rye waves its formed but as yet not swollen ears lightly in the wind; when the green oats, with irregular clumps of yellow grass interspersed, stand unevenly on late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat spreads out and hides the ground; when the fallow land, trodden as hard as a stone by the cattle, is half-ploughed, with here and there long strips omitted as too hard for the plough; when the smell of dried heaps of manure in the fields mingles with the honied perfume of the grasses; and waiting for the scythe, the lowland meadows lie smooth as a lake by the river’s banks, showing here and there black heaps of weeded sorrel stalks. It was the time of that short pause before the labour, yearly renewed, of getting in the harvest, which always demands all the peasants’ strength for its accomplishment. The promise of the harvest was splendid, the weather clear and hot, and the short night dewy.
The brothers had to pass through the forest on their way to the meadows. Koznyshev was all the while filled with admiration for the beauty of the thickly-leaved forest, and kept pointing out to his brother the old lime trees, looking so