It was impossible not to look after the affairs of Sergei Ivanovich, of his sister, of all the peasants who came to him for advice and were accustomed to do so - as impossible as to fling down a child one is carrying in one's arms. It was necessary to look after the comfort of his sister-in-law and her children, and of his wife and baby, and it was impossible not to spend with them at least a short time each day.
And all this, together with shooting and his new beekeeping, filled up the whole of Levin's life, which had no meaning at all for him, when he began to think.
But besides knowing thoroughly what he had to do, Levin knew in just the same way how he had to do it all, and what was of more importance than the rest.
He knew he must hire laborers as cheaply as possible; but to hire men under bond, paying them in advance at less than the current rate of wages, was what he must not do, even though it was very profitable. Selling straw to the peasants in times of scarcity of provender was what he might do, even though he felt sorry for them; but the tavern and the pothouse must be put down, though they were a source of income. Felling timber must be punished as severely as possible, but he could not exact forfeits for cattle being driven into his fields; and though it annoyed the keeper and made the peasants not afraid to graze their cattle on his land, he could not keep their cattle as a punishment.
To Piotr, who was paying a moneylender ten per cent a month, he must lend a sum of money to set him free; but he could not let off peasants who did not pay their rent, nor let them fall into arrears. It was impossible to overlook the bailiff's not having mown the meadows and letting the hay spoil; and it was equally impossible to mow eighty dessiatinas where a young copse had been planted. It was impossible to excuse a laborer who had gone home in the busy season because his father was dying, however sorry he might feel for him, and he must subtract from his pay those costly months of idleness, but it was impossible not to allow monthly rations to the old servants who were of absolutely no use.
Levin knew also that when he got home he must first of all go to his wife, who was unwell, and that the peasants who had been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a little longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the pleasure he felt in taking a swarm, he must forego that pleasure, and leave the old man to see to the bees alone, while he talked to the peasants who had come after him to the beehouse.
Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from trying to prove which it was nowadays he avoided all thought or talk about it.
Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse; and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 8, Chapter 11[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 11 The day on which Sergei Ivanovich came to Pokrovskoe was one of Levin's most painful days.
It was the very busiest working time, when all the peasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor, such as is not to be found in any other conditions of life and would be highly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if the results of this intense labor were not so ******.
To reap and bind and cart off the rye and oats; to mow the meadows, turn over the fallows, thresh the seed and sow the winter corn - all this seems so ****** and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all everyone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toil incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living on kvass, onions, and black bread, threshing and carrying the sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in the twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia.
Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and in the closest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt in this busy time that he was infected by this general quickening of energy in the people.
In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the stacks, and, returning home at the time his wife and sister-in-law were getting up, he drank coffee with them and walked to the grange, where a new threshing machine was to be set working to get ready the seed.
All this day Levin, while talking with the bailiff and the peasants, and, at home, with his wife, and Dolly, and her children, and his father-in-law, kept on thinking of one thing, and one thing only - that which at this time engrossed him most outside of the cares of his estate; and in everything he sought a relation to his questioning: `What am I, then? And where am I? And why am I here?'
He was standing in the cool threshing barn, still fragrant with the leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeled aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed through the open door in which the dry bitter chaff dust swirled and played; at the grass of the threshing floor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been brought in from the barn; then at the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in under the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the crevices of the doorway; then at the peasants bustling in the dark, dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.