its absolute necessity, and that the work that had begun by
seeming so great, had grown less and less, till it vanished
into nothing. But now, since his marriage, when he had begun to confine himself more and more to living for himself,
though he experienced no delight at all at the thought of the
work he was doing, he felt a complete conviction of its necessity, saw that it succeeded far better than in old days, and
that it kept on growing more and more.
Now, involuntarily it seemed, he cut more and more
deeply into the soil like a plough, so that he could not be
drawn out without turning aside the furrow.
To live the same family life as his father and forefathers—
that is, in the same condition of culture—and to bring up
his children in the same, was incontestably necessary. It
was as necessary as dining when one was hungry. And to
do this, just as it was necessary to cook dinner, it was necessary to keep the mechanism of agriculture at Pokrovskoe
going so as to yield an income. Just as incontestably as it
was necessary to repay a debt was it necessary to keep the
property in such a condition that his son, when he received
it as a heritage, would say ‘thank you’ to his father as Levin
had said ‘thank you’ to his grandfather for all he built and
planted. And to do this it was necessary to look after the
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land himself, not to let it, and to breed cattle, manure the
fields, and plant timber.
It was impossible not to look after the affairs of Sergey
Ivanovitch, of his sister, of the peasants who came to him
for advice and were accustomed to do so—as impossible as
to fling down a child one is carrying in one’s arms. It was
necessary to look after the comfort of his sister-in-law and
her children, and of his wife and baby, and it was impossible
not to spend with them at least a short time each day.
And all this, together with shooting and his new beekeeping, filled up the whole of Levin’s life, which had no
meaning at all for him, when he began to think.
But besides knowing thoroughly what he had to do,
Levin knew in just the same way how he had to do it all, and
what was more important than the rest.
He knew he must hire laborers as cheaply as possible;
but to hire men under bond, paying them in advance at less
than the current rate of wages, was what he must not do,
even though it was very profitable. Selling straw to the peasants in times of scarcity of provender was what he might do,
even though he felt sorry for them; but the tavern and the
pothouse must be put down, though they were a source of
income. Felling timber must be punished as severely as possible, but he could not exact forfeits for cattle being driven
onto his fields; and though it annoyed the keeper and made
the peasants not afraid to graze their cattle on his land, he
could not keep their cattle as a punishment.
To Pyotr, who was paying a money-lender 10 per cent.
a month, he must lend a sum of money to set him free. But
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he could not let off peasants who did not pay their rent,
nor let them fall into arrears. It was impossible to overlook
the bailiff’s not having mown the meadows and letting the
hay spoil; and it was equally impossible to mow those acres
where a young copse had been planted. It was impossible to
excuse a laborer who had gone home in the busy season because his father was dying, however sorry he might feel for
him, and he must subtract from his pay those costly months
of idleness. But it was impossible not to allow monthly rations to the old servants who were of no use for anything.
Levin knew that when he got home he must first of all go
to his wife, who was unwell, and that the peasants who had
been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a little
longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the pleasure he
felt in taking a swarm, he must forego that pleasure, and
leave the old man to see to the bees alone, while he talked to
the peasants who had come after him to the bee-house.
Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not
know, and far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays
he avoided all thought or talk about it.
Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented
him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought
not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his
soul, determining which of two possible courses of action
was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he
did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of
knowing what he was and what he was living for, and ha1378
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rassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was
afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.
1379
Chapter 11
The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe
was one of Levin’s most painful days. It was the very busiest
working time, when all the peasantry show an extraordinary
intensity of self-sacrifice in labor, such as is never shown in
any other conditions of life, and would be highly esteemed
if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought
highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if
the results of this intense labor were not so simple.
To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow
the meadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow
the winter corn—all this seems so simple and ordinary; but
to succeed in getting through it all everyone in the village,
from the old man to the young child, must toil incessantly
for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living
on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying
the sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three
hours in the twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done
all over Russia.
Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and
in the closest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt in
this busy time that he was infected by this general quickening
of energy in the people.
In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the
rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the stacks,
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and returning home at the time his wife and sister-in-law
were getting up, he drank coffee with them and walked to the
farm, where a new thrashing machine was to be set working
to get ready the seed-corn.
He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with
the leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly
peeled aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed through
the open door in which the dry bitter dust of the thrashing
whirled and played, at the grass of the thrashing floor in the
sunlight and the fresh straw that had been brought in from
the barn, then at the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in under the roof and, fluttering their
wings, settled in the crevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark, dusty barn, and he thought strange
thoughts.
‘Why is it all being done?’ he thought. ‘Why am I standing
here, making them work? What are they all so busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that old Matrona,
my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam
fell on her in the fire)’ he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain, moving painfully with her
bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven, rough floor. ‘Then
she recovered, but today or tomorrow or in ten years she
won’t; they’ll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her
or of that smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skillful,
soft action shakes the ears out of their husks. They’ll bury her
and this piebald horse, and very soon too,’ he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, panting horse that kept walking up
the wheel that turned under him. ‘And they will bury her and
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Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beard full of chaff and his
shirt torn on his white shoulders—they will bury him. He’s
untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and shouting to the
women, and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving
wheel. And what’s more, it’s not them alone—me they’ll bury
too, and nothing will be left. What for?’
He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch
to reckon how much they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to
know this so as to judge by it the task to set for the day.
‘It’ll soon be one, and they’re only beginning the third
sheaf,’ thought Levin. He went up to the man that was feeding the machine, and shouting over the roar of the machine
he told him to put it in more slowly. ‘You put in too much at
a time, Fyodor. Do you see—it gets choked, that’s why it isn’t
getting on. Do it evenly.’
Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face,
shouted something in response, but still went on doing it as
Levin did not want him to.
Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and
began feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants’ dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he went out
of the barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with him, stopping
beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the thrashing floor
for seed.
Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one
in which Levin had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now
