"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going...such a lot of trouble wasted...I'd turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch...to hear La Belle1 Helene," said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting2 up his shrewd old face.
"But you see you don't throw it up," said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; "so there must be something gained."
"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you'd never believe it--the drunkenness, the immorality3! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer5, he'll do his best to do you a mischief6, and then bring you up before the justice of the peace."
"But then you make complaints to the justice too," said Sviazhsky.
"I lodge7 complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking, and such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret it. At the works, for instance, they pocketed the advance-money and made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted8 them. Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal9 court and their village elder. He'll flog them in the good old style! But for that there'd be nothing for it but to give it all up and run away."
Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from resenting it, was apparently10 amused by it.
"But you see we manage our land without such extreme measures," said he, smiling: "Levin and I and this gentleman."
He indicated the other landowner.
"Yes, the thing's done at Mihail Petrovitch's, but ask him how it's done. Do you call that a rational system?" said the landowner, obviously rather proud of the word "rational."
"My system's very simple," said Mihail Petrovitch, "thank God. All my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn taxes, and the peasants come to me, 'Father, master, help us!' Well, the peasants are all one's neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them a third, but one says: 'Remember, lads, I have helped you, and you must help me when I need it--whether it's the sowing of the oats, or the haycutting, or the harvest'; and well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer--though there are dishonest ones among them too, it's true."
Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods, exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch, turning again to the gentleman with the gray whiskers.
"Then what do you think?" he asked; "what system is one to adopt nowadays?"
"Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do--only that's just how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land with serf-labor4 and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by the emancipation12!"
Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a faint gesture of irony13 to him; but Levin did not think the landowner's words absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky. A great deal more of what the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to show in what way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably spoke14 his own individual thought--a thing that very rarely happens--and a thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude15 of his village, and had considered in every aspect.
"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is only made by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to show he was not without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander. Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than anything else--the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by force. The wooden plough too wasn't always used. It was introduced maybe in the days before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used various improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing machines, and carting manure16 and all the modern implements17--all that we brought into use by our authority, and the peasants opposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now by the abolition18 of serfdom we have been deprived of our authority; and so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is bound to sink to the most savage19 primitive20 condition. That's how I see it."
"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up the same system with hired labor," said Sviazhsky.
"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work the system, allow me to ask?"
"There it is--the labor force--the chief element in agriculture," thought Levin.
"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with good implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig, and when he's drunk he ruins everything you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much water, cuts good harness, barters22 the tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as to break it. He loathes23 the sight of anything that's not after his fashion. And that's how it is the whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of cultivation24, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants, and where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the same thing had been done, but with care that..."
And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by means of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.
This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin went back to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying to draw him into expressing his serious opinion:-
"That the standard of culture is falling, and that with our present relations to the peasants there is no possibility of famling on a rational system to yield a profit--that's perfectly25 true," said he.
"I don't believe it," Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; "all I see is that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that our system of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision26; we don't even know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won't be able to tell you what crop's profitable, and what's not."
"Italian bookkeeping," said the gentleman of the gray whiskers ironically. "You may keep your books as you like, but if they spoil everything for you, there won't be any profit."
"Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine, or your Russian presser, they will break, but my steam press they don't break. A wretched Russian nag11 they'll ruin, but keep good dray-horses--they won't ruin them. And so it is all round. We must raise our farming to a higher level."
"Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay Ivanovitch! It's all very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the university, lads to be educated at the high school--how am I going to buy these dray-horses?"
"Well, that's what the land banks are for."
"To get what's left me sold by auction27? No, thank you."
"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level of agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to it, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don't know to whom they're any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I've spent money on in the way of husbandry, it has been a loss: stock--a loss, machinery--a loss."
"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed in, positively28 laughing with satisfaction.
"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a rational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at a loss. Come, tell us how does your land do--does it pay?" said Levin, and at once in Sviazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting29 expression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate30 beyond the outer chambers31 of Sviazhsky's mind.
Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good faith. Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they had that summer invited a Gemman expert in bookkeeping from Moscow, who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated the management of their property, and found that it was costing them a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the precise sum, but it appeared that the Gemman had worked it out to the fraction of a farthing.
The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and marshal was likely to be making.
"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky. "That merely proves either that I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my capital for the increase of my rents."
"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it, but with us all the land is deteriorating32 from the labor put into it--in other words they're working it out; so there's no question of rent."
"How no rent? It's a law."
"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but simply muddles33 us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?..."
"Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or raspberries." He turned to his wife. "Extraordinarily34 late the raspberries are lasting35 this year."
And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning.
Having lost his antagonist36, Levin continued the conversation with the gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty arises from the fact that we don't find out the peculiarities37 and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think independently and in isolation38, was slow in taking in any other person's idea, and particularly partial to his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking39 peasant is fed on good soup and has a fixed40 allowance of cubic feet of air.
"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the question, "that it's impossible to find some relation to the laborer in which the labor would become productive?"
"That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we've no power over them," answered the landowner.
"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviazhsky. Having eaten some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the discussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have been defined and studied," he said. "The relic41 of barbarism, the primitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been abolished--there remains42 nothing but free labor, and its fomms are fixed and ready made, and must be adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers--you can't get out of those forms."
"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."
"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all probability."
"That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Why shouldn't we seek them for ourselves?"
"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for constructing railways. They are ready, invented."
"But if they don't do for us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.
And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of Sviazhsky.
"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the secret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse me, do you know all that's been done in Europe on the question of the organization of labor?"
"No, very little."
"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enormous literature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement...the Mulhausen experiment? That's a fact by now, as you're probably aware."
"I have some idea of it, but very vague."
"No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as I do. I'm not a professor of sociology, of course, but it interested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to study it."
"But what conclusion have they come to?"
"Excuse me..."
The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking Levin in his inconvenient43 habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.
收听单词发音 |
1
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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laborer
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| n.劳动者，劳工 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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acquitted
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| 宣判…无罪( acquit的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（自己）作出某种表现 | |
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communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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nag
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| v.(对…)不停地唠叨；n.爱唠叨的人 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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manure
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| n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥 | |
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implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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barters
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| n.物物交换，易货( barter的名词复数 )v.作物物交换，以货换货( barter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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loathes
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的第三人称单数 )；极不喜欢 | |
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cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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deteriorating
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| 恶化，变坏( deteriorate的现在分词 ) | |
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muddles
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| v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的第三人称单数 )；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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stinking
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| adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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