Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and

instead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the

end of May to stay in the country with his brother. In his

judgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had come

now to enjoy such a life at his brother's. Konstantin Levin was

very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his

brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and

respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was uncomfortable

with his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, and

it positively annoyed him to see his brother's attitude to the

country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the background of

life, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To Sergey

Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the

other a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town,

which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To

Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a

field for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be no

doubt. 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 rather

piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew

and liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants,

which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and

from every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions

in favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing

them. Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude to the

peasants. To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner

in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the

love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant--

sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his

peasant nurse--still as a fellow-worker with him, while

sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of

these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for

other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his

carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had

been asked whether he liked or didn't like the peasants,

Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to

reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked

and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted

man, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with

the peasants. But like or dislike "the people" as something

apart he could not, not only because he lived with "the people,"

and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because

he regarded himself as a part of "the people," did not see any

special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and "the

people," and could not contrast himself with them. Moreover,

although he had lived so long in the closest relations with the

peasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser

(the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round they would

come to ask his advice), he had no definite views of "the

people," and would have been as much at a loss to answer the

question whether he knew "the people" as the question whether he

liked them. For him to say he knew the peasantry would have been

the same as to say he knew men. He was continually watching and

getting to know people of all sorts, and among them peasants,

whom he regarded as good and interesting people, and he was

continually observing new points in them, altering his former

views of them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it

was quite the contrary. Just as he liked and praised a country

life in comparison with the life he did not like, so too he liked

the peasantry in contradistinction to the class of men he did not

like, and so too he knew the peasantry as something distinct from

and opposed to men generally. In his methodical brain there were

distinctly formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced

partly from that life itself, but chiefly from contrast with

other modes of life. He never changed his opinion of the

peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.

In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views

of the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his

brother, precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas

about the peasant--his character, his qualities, and his tastes.

Konstantin Levin had no definite and unalterable idea on the

subject, and so in their arguments Konstantin was readily

convicted of contradicting himself.

In Sergey Ivanovitch's eyes his younger brother was a capital

fellow, _with his heart in the right place_ (as he expressed it in

French), but with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much

influenced by the impressions of the moment, and consequently

filled with contradictions. With all the condescension of an

elder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of

things, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with him

because he got the better of him too easily.

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense

intellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of the

word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the

public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he

became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and

more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of

working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly

devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something

--not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a

lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse

which drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerable

paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew

his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many

other people who worked for the public welfare, were not led by

an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned

from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to

take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest

in them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by observing

that his brother did not take questions affecting the public

welfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more

to heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious

construction of a new machine.

Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his

brother, because in summer in the country Levin was continually

busy with work on the land, and the long summer day was not long

enough for him to get through all he had to do, while Sergey

Ivanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking a

holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was so

used to intellectual activity that he liked to put into concise

and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to

have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural

listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness

and directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness

in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself

on the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting

lazily.

"You wouldn't believe," he would say to his brother, "what a

pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's

brain, 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 be

carting dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, and

heaping it all up anyhow; and would not screw the shares in the

ploughs, but would let them come off and then say that the new

ploughs were a silly invention, and there was nothing like the

old Andreevna plough, and so on.

"Come, you've done enough trudging about in the heat," Sergey

Ivanovitch 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.




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