Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE
Chapter 1
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 fellowworker
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
223