Leo Tolstoy

by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)

  On receiving Sviyazhsky’s letter with an invitation for hunting, Levin had thought of that at once, but in spite of it he had decided that Sviyazhsky’s designs on him were only his own absolutely unfounded surmise, and therefore he would go all the same. Besides, in the depths of his soul he wanted to test himself, to measure himself against this girl again. The Sviyazhskys’ domestic life was also pleasant in the highest degree, and Sviyazhsky himself, the best type of zemstvo activist that Levin had ever known, had always greatly interested him.

  Sviyazhsky was one of those people, always astonishing to Levin, whose reasoning, very consistent though never independent, goes by itself, and whose life, extremely well defined and firm in its orientation, goes by itself, quite independent of and almost always contrary to their reasoning. Sviyazhsky was an extremely liberal man. He despised the nobility and considered all noblemen secret adherents of serfdom, who did not express themselves only out of timorousness. He considered Russia a lost country, something like Turkey, and the government of Russia so bad that he never allowed himself any serious criticism of its actions, but at the same time he served the state and was an exemplary marshal of nobility, and when he travelled he always wore a peaked cap with a red band and a cockade. He held that life was humanly possible only abroad, where he went to live at every opportunity, and along with that, in Russia he conducted a very complex and improved form of farming, followed everything with extreme interest and knew everything that was going on. He considered the Russian muzhik as occupying a transitional step of development between ape and man, and yet at zemstvo elections he was most willing to shake hands with muzhiks and listen to their opinions. He believed in neither God nor devil, but was very concerned about questions of improving the life of the clergy and the shrinking number of parishes, taking particular trouble over keeping up the church in his village.

  In the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates of complete freedom for women, and especially of their right to work, but he lived with his wife in such a way that everyone admired the harmony of their childless family life; and he arranged his wife’s existence so that she did not and could not do anything but concern herself, together with her husband, with how better and more gaily to pass the time.

  If it had not been in Levin’s nature to explain people to himself from the best side, Sviyazhsky’s character would have presented no difficulty or problem for him; he would have said ‘fool’ or ‘trash’ to himself, and everything would have been clear. But he could not say ‘fool’ because Sviyazhsky was unquestionably not only a very intelligent but a very educated man and bore his education with extraordinary simplicity. There was no subject he did not know, but he showed his knowledge only when forced to. Still less could Levin say that he was trash, because Sviyazhsky was unquestionably an honest, kind, intelligent man, who cheerfully, energetically, ceaselessly did things highly appreciated by all around him and most certainly never consciously did or could do anything bad.

  Levin tried but failed to understand and always looked on him and on his life as a living riddle.

  He and Levin were friends, and therefore Levin allowed himself to probe Sviyazhsky, to try to get at the very foundations of his view of life; but it was always in vain. Each time Levin tried to penetrate further than the doors to the reception rooms of Sviyazhsky’s mind, which were open to everyone, he noticed that Sviyazhsky became slightly embarrassed; his eyes showed a barely noticeable fear, as if he was afraid that Levin would understand him, and he gave a good–natured and cheerful rebuff.

  Now, after his disappointment with farming, Levin found it especially pleasant to visit Sviyazhsky. Apart from the fact that the mere sight of these happy doves in their comfortable nest, so pleased with themselves and with everyone, had a cheering effect on him, he now wanted, since he felt so displeased with his own life, to get at the secret in Sviyazhsky which gave him such clarity, certainty and cheerfulness in life. Besides that, Levin knew that at Sviyazhsky’s he would meet neighbouring landowners, and he was now especially interested in talking, in listening to those very farmers’ conversations about crops, hiring help, and the like, which he knew were normally regarded as something low, but were now the only thing he found important. ‘This may not have been important under serfdom, or may not be important in England. In both cases the conditions themselves are defined; but with us now, when all this has been overturned and is just beginning to settle, the question of how these conditions ought to be settled is the only important question in Russia,’ thought Levin.

  The hunting turned out worse than Levin had expected. The marsh had dried up and there were no snipe. He walked all day and brought back only three, but to make up for it he brought back, as always with hunting, an excellent appetite, excellent spirits, and that aroused state of mind which with him always accompanied strong physical movement. And while it would seem that he was not thinking of anything as he hunted, he again kept recalling the old man and his family, and it was as if this impression called not only for attention to itself, but for the resolution of something connected with it.

  That evening over tea, in the company of two landowners who had come on some matter of custody, the interesting conversation that Levin had been hoping for sprang up.

  Levin was sitting beside the hostess at the tea table and had to carry on a conversation with her and the sister–in–law, who sat facing him. The hostess was a short, round–faced, fair–haired woman, all beaming with smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to probe for the answer to that important riddle which her husband represented for him; but he did not have full freedom of thought, because he felt painfully awkward. He felt painfully awkward because the sister–in–law sat facing him in a special dress, put on for his sake, as it seemed to him, cut in a special trapezoidal shape on her white bosom. This rectangular neckline, despite the fact that her bosom was very white, or precisely because of it, deprived Levin of his freedom of thought. He fancied, probably mistakenly, that this neckline had been made on his account, and considered that he had no right to look at it and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the neckline having been made at all. It seemed to Levin that he was deceiving someone, that he had to explain something, but that it was quite impossible to explain it, and therefore he blushed constantly, felt restless and awkward. His awkwardness also communicated itself to the pretty sister–in–law. But the hostess seemed not to notice it and purposely tried to draw her into the conversation.

  ‘You say,’ the hostess continued the conversation they had begun, ‘that my husband cannot interest himself in things Russian. On the contrary, he may be cheerful abroad, but never so much as here. Here he feels in his element. There’s so much to be done, and he has the gift of being interested in everything. Ah, you haven’t been to our school?’

  ‘I’ve seen it… That little vine–covered house?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Nastya’s doing,’ she said, pointing to her sister.

  ‘Do you teach in it yourself?’ asked Levin, trying to look past the neckline, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction, he would see nothing else.

  ‘Yes, I have taught and still do, but we have a wonderful young woman for a teacher. And we’ve introduced gymnastics.’

  ‘No, thank you, I won’t have more tea,’ said Levin, and, feeling that he was being discourteous, but unable to continue the conversation any longer, he stood up, blushing. ‘I hear a very interesting conversation,’ he added and went to the other end of the table, where the host sat with the two landowners. Sviyazhsky was sitting sideways to the table, leaning his elbow on it and twirling a cup with one hand, while with the other he gathered his beard in his fist, put it to his nose as if sniffing it, and let it go again. His shining dark eyes looked straight at the excited landowner with the grey moustache, and he was obviously finding what he said amusing. The landowner was complaining about the peasantry. It was clear to Levin that Sviyazhsky had an answer to the landowner’s c
omplaints that would immediately destroy the whole meaning of what he said, but that from his position he was unable to give this answer, and therefore listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner’s comic speech.

  The landowner with the grey moustache was obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom, an old countryman and passionate farmer. Levin saw tokens of it in his clothes – the old–fashioned, shabby frock coat, to which the landowner was obviously unaccustomed – and in his intelligent, scowling eyes, his well–turned Russian speech, his peremptory tone, obviously acquired through long experience, and the resolute movements of his big, handsome, sunburnt hands with a single old engagement ring on the ring–finger.

  XXVII

  ‘If only I wasn’t sorry to drop what’s been started… so much work has gone into it … I’d wave my hand at it all, sell it and go like Nikolai Ivanych … to hear Hélène,’[22] the landowner said, a pleasant smile lighting up his intelligent old face.

  ‘Yes, but you don’t drop it,’ said Nikolai Ivanovich Sviyazhsky, ‘which means it adds up to something.’

  ‘All it adds up to is that I live at home, don’t buy anything, don’t rent anything. And one keeps hoping the peasantry will see reason. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe it – the drunkenness, the depravity! Everybody’s separate, not a horse, not a cow left. He may be starving to death, but hire him to work and he’ll do his best to muck it up, and then go and complain to the justice of the peace.’[23]

  ‘But you’ll complain to the justice of the peace as well,’ said Sviyazhsky.

  ‘I’ll complain? Not for anything in the world! There’d be so much talk, I’d be sorry I ever did! Look at that mill – they took the down–payment and left. And the justice of the peace? He acquitted them. It’s all held together by the communal court and the headman. That one will give him a good old–fashioned whipping. If it wasn’t for that – drop everything! Flee to the ends of the world!’

  Obviously, the landowner was teasing Sviyazhsky, but Sviyazhsky not only did not get angry, but clearly found it amusing.

  ‘Yes, and yet we carry on our farming without these measures,’ he said, smiling, ‘me, Levin, him.’

  He pointed to the other landowner.

  ‘Yes, things are going well for Mikhail Petrovich, but ask him how! Is it rational farming?’ the landowner said, obviously flaunting the word ‘rational’.

  ‘My farming is simple,’ said Mikhail Petrovich. ‘Thank God. My method is just to make sure that the cash to pay the autumn taxes is there. The muzhiks come: Father, dear, help us out! Well, they’re all neighbours, these muzhiks, I feel sorry for them. So I give them enough to pay the first third, only I say: Remember, boys, I helped you, so you help me when there’s a need – sowing oats, making hay, harvesting –well, and I talk them into so much work for each tax paid. There’s some of them are shameless, it’s true.’ Levin, who had long known these patriarchal ways, exchanged glances with Sviyazhsky and interrupted Mikhail Petrovich, addressing the landowner with the grey moustache again.

  ‘Then what do you think?’ he asked. ‘How should farming be done now?’

  ‘Why, the same way Mikhail Petrovich does it: either let the land for half the crop, or rent it to the muzhiks. It can be done, but that way the common wealth of the state is ruined. Where with serf labour and good management my land produced ninefold, it will produce threefold when let for half the crop. The emancipation[24] has ruined Russia!’

  Sviyazhsky glanced at Levin with smiling eyes and even gave him a barely noticeable mocking sign, but Levin did not find the landowner’s words ridiculous – he understood them better than he did Sviyazhsky. And much of what the landowner went on to say, proving why Russia had been ruined by the emancipation, seemed to him very true, new and irrefutable. The landowner was obviously voicing his own thought, which happens rarely, and this thought had not been arrived at by a desire to somehow occupy an idle mind, but had grown out of the conditions of his own life, had been hatched out in his country solitude and considered on all sides.

  ‘The point, kindly note, is that all progress is achieved by authority alone,’ he said, apparently wishing to show that he was no stranger to education. ‘Take the reforms of Peter, Catherine, Alexander.[25] Take European history. The more so with progress in agricultural methods. Take the potato – even it was introduced here by force. The wooden plough hasn’t always been in use either. It was probably introduced before the tsars, and also introduced by force. Now, in our time, under serfdom, we landowners carried on our farming with improvements. Drying kilns, winnowers, the carting of dung, and all the tools – we introduced everything by our authority, and the muzhiks first resisted and then imitated us. Now, sirs, with the abolition of serfdom, our authority has been taken away, and our farming, where it was brought to a high level, is bound to sink to the most savage, primitive condition. That’s how I understand it.’

  ‘But why so? If it’s rational, you can carry it on with hired help,’ said Sviyazhsky.

  ‘There’s no authority. Who will I carry it on with, may I ask?’

  ‘There it is – the work force, the chief element in farming,’ thought Levin.

  ‘With paid workers.’

  ‘Workers don’t want to do good work or to do good work with tools. Our worker knows one thing only – how to get drunk as a pig, and while drunk to break everything you give him. He’ll overwater the horses, snap good harness, dismount a wheel with a tyre and sell it for drink, put a pintle into the thresher so as to break it. He loathes the sight of things that aren’t to his liking. That causes the whole level of the farming to sink. Plots are abandoned, overgrown with wormwood or given up to muzhiks, and where millions of bushels used to be produced, now it’s a few hundred thousand – the common wealth is diminished. If the same thing was done, only with calculation …’

  And he began developing his own plan of liberation, which would have eliminated these inconveniences.

  That did not interest Levin, but when he finished, Levin went back to his first proposition and said, addressing Sviyazhsky and trying to provoke him to voice his serious opinion:

  ‘That the level of farming is sinking and that, given our relation to the workers, it is impossible to engage in rational farming profitably, is perfectly correct,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t find it so,’ Sviyazhsky retorted, seriously now. ‘I only see that we don’t know how to go about farming and that, on the contrary, the level of farming we carried on under serfdom was in fact not too high but too low. We have neither machines, nor good working stock, nor real management, nor do we know how to count. Ask any farm owner – he won’t know what’s profitable for him and what isn’t.’

  ‘Italian bookkeeping,’ the landowner said ironically. ‘No matter how you count, once they break everything, there won’t be any profit.’

  ‘Why break? A worthless thresher, that Russian treadle of yours, they will break, but not my steam thresher. A Russian horse – what’s that breed? the Tosscan, good for tossing cans at – they’ll spoil for you, but introduce Percherons, or at least our Bitiugs,[26] and they won’t spoil them. And so with everything. We must raise our farming higher.’

  ‘If only we could, Nikolai Ivanych! It’s all very well for you, but I have a son at the university, the younger ones are in boarding school –I can’t go buying Percherons.’

  ‘That’s what banks are for.’

  ‘So that the last thing I have falls under the hammer? No, thank you!’

  ‘I don’t agree that the level of farming must and can be raised higher,’ said Levin. ‘I’m engaged in it, and I have the means, and I’ve been unable to do anything. I don’t know what use the banks are. With me, at least, whatever I’ve spent money on in farming has all been a loss – the livestock were a loss, the machinery a loss.’

  ‘That’s true,’ the landowner with the grey moustache confirmed, even laughing with pleasure.