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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 uncomfort-
able, 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