Part Three: Chapter 1

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, andinstead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards theend of May to stay in the country with his brother. In hisjudgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had comenow to enjoy such a life at his brother's. Konstantin Levin wasvery glad to have him, especially as he did not expect hisbrother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection andrespect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was uncomfortablewith his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, andit positively annoyed him to see his brother's attitude to thecountry. To Konstantin Levin the country was the background oflife, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To SergeyIvanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on theother a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town,which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. ToKonstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded afield for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be nodoubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good,because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing.Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants ratherpiqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knewand liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants,which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, andfrom every such conversation he would deduce general conclusionsin favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowingthem. Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude to thepeasants. To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partnerin their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and thelove, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant--sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of hispeasant nurse--still as a fellow-worker with him, whilesometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice ofthese men, he was very often, when their common labors called forother qualities, exasperated with the peasant for hiscarelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he hadbeen asked whether he liked or didn't like the peasants,Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what toreply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he likedand did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-heartedman, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too withthe peasants. But like or dislike "the people" as somethingapart he could not, not only because he lived with "the people,"and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also becausehe regarded himself as a part of "the people," did not see anyspecial qualities or failings distinguishing himself and "thepeople," and could not contrast himself with them. Moreover,although he had lived so long in the closest relations with thepeasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser(the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round they wouldcome to ask his advice), he had no definite views of "thepeople," and would have been as much at a loss to answer thequestion whether he knew "the people" as the question whether heliked them. For him to say he knew the peasantry would have beenthe same as to say he knew men. He was continually watching andgetting to know people of all sorts, and among them peasants,whom he regarded as good and interesting people, and he wascontinually observing new points in them, altering his formerviews of them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch itwas quite the contrary. Just as he liked and praised a countrylife in comparison with the life he did not like, so too he likedthe peasantry in contradistinction to the class of men he did notlike, and so too he knew the peasantry as something distinct fromand opposed to men generally. In his methodical brain there weredistinctly formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deducedpartly from that life itself, but chiefly from contrast withother modes of life. He never changed his opinion of thepeasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.

　　In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their viewsof the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of hisbrother, precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideasabout the peasant--his character, his qualities, and his tastes.Konstantin Levin had no definite and unalterable idea on thesubject, and so in their arguments Konstantin was readilyconvicted of contradicting himself.

　　I Sergey Ivanovitch's eyes his younger brother was a capitalfellow, with his heart in the right place (as he expressed it inFrench), but with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too muchinfluenced by the impressions of the moment, and consequentlyfilled with contradictions. With all the condescension of anelder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import ofthings, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with himbecause he got the better of him too easily.

　　Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immenseintellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of theword, and possessed of a special faculty for working for thepublic good. But in the depths of his heart, the older hebecame, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more andmore frequently the thought struck him that this faculty ofworking for the public good, of which he felt himself utterlydevoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something--not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but alack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulsewhich drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerablepaths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knewhis brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and manyother people who worked for the public welfare, were not led byan impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasonedfrom intellectual considerations that it was a right thing totake interest in public affairs, and consequently took interestin them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by observingthat his brother did not take questions affecting the publicwelfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit moreto heart than he did chess problems, or the ingeniousconstruction of a new machine.

　　Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with hisbrother, because in summer in the country Levin was continuallybusy with work on the land, and the long summer day was not longenough for him to get through all he had to do, while SergeyIvanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking aholiday now, that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was soused to intellectual activity that he liked to put into conciseand eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked tohave someone to listen to him. His most usual and naturallistener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendlinessand directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardnessin leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himselfon the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chattinglazily.

　　"You wouldn't believe," he would say to his brother, "what apleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one'sbrain, as empty as a drum!"

　　But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him,especially when he knew that while he was away they would becarting dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, andheaping it all up anyhow; and would not screw the shares in theploughs, but would let them come off and then say that the newploughs were a silly invention, and there was nothing like theold Andreevna plough, and so on.

　　"Come, you've done enough trudging about in the heat," SergeyIvanovitch would say to him.

　　"No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute,"Levin would answer, and he would run off to the fields.