Anna Karenina
efforts that her time should pass as happily and as agreeably as
possible.
If it had not been a characteristic of Levin’s to put the most
favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky’s character would have
presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to himself,
“a fool or a knave,” and everything would have seemed clear. But he
could not say “a fool,” because Sviazhsky was unmistakably clever, and
moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was exceptionally modest over
his culture. There was not a subject he knew nothing of. But he did not
display his knowledge except when he was compelled to do so. Still less
could Levin say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an
honest, good-hearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly,
and perseveringly at his work; he was held in high honor by everyone
about him, and certainly he had never consciously done, and was indeed
incapable of doing, anything base.
Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and looked
at him and his life as at a living enigma.
Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to sound
Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view of life;
but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond
the outer chambers of Sviazhsky’s mind, which were hospitably open to
all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was slightly disconcerted; faint signs
of alarm were visible in his eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would
understand him, and he would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.
Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was particularly
glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from the fact that the sight of this
happy and affectionate couple, so pleased with themselves and everyone
else, and their well-ordered home had always a cheering effect on
Levin, he felt a longing, now that he was so dissatisfied with his own
life, to get at that secret in Sviazhsky that gave him such clearness,
definiteness, and good courage in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at
Sviazhsky’s he should meet the landowners of the neighborhood, and it
was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and take part in
those rural conversations concerning crops, laborers’ wages, and so on,
which, he was aware, are conventionally regarded as something very low,
but which seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of
importance. “It was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom,
and it may not be of importance in England. In both cases the
conditions of agriculture are firmly established; but among us now,
when everything has been turned upside down and is only just taking
shape, the question what form these conditions will take is the one
question of importance in Russia,” thought Levin.
The shooting turned out to be worse than Levin had expected. The marsh
was dry and there were no grouse at all. He walked about the whole day
and only brought back three birds, but to make up for that—he brought
back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent appetite, excellent
spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood which with him always
accompanied violent physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he
seemed to be thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his
family kept coming back to his mind, and the impression of them seemed
to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some question
connected with them.
In the evening at tea, two landowners who had come about some business
connected with a wardship were of the party, and the interesting
conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang up.
Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was obliged
to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting
opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather
short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a
solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but
he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of
embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the
sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put
on, as he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape
of a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite
of the bosom’s being very white, or just because it was very white,
deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably
mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account,
and felt 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 very fact of the
low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had
deceived someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to
explain it was impossible, and for that reason he was continually
blushing, was ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the
pretty sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe
this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.
“You say,” she said, pursuing the subject that had been started, “that
my husband cannot be interested in what’s Russian. It’s quite the
contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but not as he is
here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do, and he
has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you’ve not
been to see our school, have you?”
“I’ve seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn’t it?”
“Yes; that’s Nastia’s work,” she said, indicating her sister.
“You teach in it yourself?” asked Levin, trying to look above the open
neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction he should
see it.
“Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a
first-rate schoolmistress now. And we’ve started gymnastic exercises.”
“No, thank you, I won’t have any more tea,” said Levin, and conscious
of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversation, he
got up, blushing. “I hear a very interesting conversation,” he added,
and walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was sitting
with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sitting
sideways, with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand, while
with the other hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and
let it drop again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black
eyes were looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray
whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks. The
gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Levin that
Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman’s complaints, which would at
once demolish his whole contention, but that in his position he could
not give utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure,
to the landowner’s comic speeches.
The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate
adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his
life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the
old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in
his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the
imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the
resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old
betrothal ring on the little finger.
Chapter 27
“If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going ... such a lot
of trouble wasted ... I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up,
go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch ... to hear _La Belle Hélène_,” said the
landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.
“But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky;
“so there must be something gained.”
“The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor
hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though,
instead of that, you’d never believe it—the drunkenness, the
immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a
sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go
and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a mischief,
and then bring you up before the justice of the peace.”
“But then you make complaints to the justice too,” said Sviazhsky.
“I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking, and
such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret it. At the works, for
instance, they pocketed the advance-money and made off. What did the
justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in order but their
own communal court and their village elder. He’ll flog them in the good
old style! But for that there’d be nothing for it but to give it all up
and run away.”
Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from resenting
it, was apparently amused by it.
“But you see we manage our land without such extreme measures,” said
he, smiling: “Levin and I and this gentleman.”
He indicated the other landowner.
“Yes, the thing’s done at Mihail Petrovitch’s, but ask him how it’s
done. Do you call that a rational system?” said the landowner,
obviously rather proud of the word “rational.”
“My system’s very simple,” said Mihail Petrovitch, “thank God. All my
management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn taxes, and
the peasants come to me, ‘Father, master, help us!’ Well, the peasants
are all one’s neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them a
third, but one says: ‘Remember, lads, I have helped you, and you must
help me when I need it—whether it’s the sowing of the oats, or the
haycutting, or the harvest’; and well, one agrees, so much for each
taxpayer—though there are dishonest ones among them too, it’s true.”
Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,
exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch,
turning again to the gentleman with the gray whiskers.
“Then what do you think?” he asked; “what system is one to adopt
nowadays?”
“Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the crop
or for rent to the peasants; that one can do—only that’s just how the
general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land with
serf-labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the
half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by the
emancipation!”
Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a faint
gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner’s words
absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky. A great deal
more of what the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to show in what
way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very
true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably
spoke his own individual thought—a thing that very rarely happens—and a
thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some
exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up out of the
conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude of
his village, and had considered in every aspect.
“The point is, don’t you see, that progress of every sort is only made
by the use of authority,” he said, evidently wishing to show he was not
without culture. “Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of
Alexander. Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than
anything else—the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by
force. The wooden plough too wasn’t always used. It was introduced
maybe in the days before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by
force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used
various improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing