Anna Karenina - Part 3

The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek

horse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the

load, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join

the women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers' dance.

Ivan drove off to the road and fell into line with the other

loaded carts. The peasant women, with their rakes on their

shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing,

merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild untrained

female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a

verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half

a hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine,

singing in unison.

The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt

as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of

merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock

on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the

wagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed

to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry song

with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious of

this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in the

expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had

to lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with their

singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling

of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his

alienation from this world, came over Levin.

Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling

with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely,

and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted

him goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of

having any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any

recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was

drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God gave the day, God

gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated

to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the labor?

What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations--

beside the point.

Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy

of the men who led this life; but today for the first time,

especially under the influence of what he had seen in the

attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented

itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to

exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life

he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful

life.