Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [451]
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When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely; recently he had even lived much more firmly and definitely than before.
Returning to the country in the middle of June, he also returned to his usual occupations. Farming, relations with the muzhiks and his neighbours, running the household, his sister’s and brother’s affairs, which were in his hands, relations with his wife and family, cares about the baby, the new interest in bees he had acquired that last spring, took up all his time.
These things occupied him, not because he justified them to himself by some general views as he had done formerly; on the contrary, now, disappointed by the failure of his earlier undertakings for the general good, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, too occupied with his thoughts and the very quantity of things that piled upon him from all sides, he completely abandoned all considerations of the common good, and these things occupied him only because it seemed to him that he had to do what he was doing - that he could not do otherwise.
Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much better than before and that it was expanding more and more.
Now, as if against his will, he cut deeper and deeper into the soil, like a plough, so that he could no longer get out without turning over the furrow.
For the family to live as their fathers and grandfathers had been accustomed to live - that is, in the same cultural conditions and with the same upbringing of children - was undoubtedly necessary. It was as necessary as dinner when one was hungry; and just as for that it was necessary to prepare dinner, so it was necessary to run the farming mechanism of Pokrovskoe in such a way as to produce income. As undoubtedly as it was necessary to pay debts, it was also necessary to maintain the family land in such condition that when his son inherited it he would thank his father, as Levin had thanked his grandfather for everything he had built and planted. And for that it was necessary not to lease the land, but to do the farming personally, to keep cattle, to manure the fields, to plant trees.
It was as impossible not to take care of Sergei Ivanovich’s affairs, the affairs of his sister and of all the muzhiks who came for advice and were accustomed to do so, as it was impossible to drop a baby one is already holding in one’s arms. It was necessary to see to the comfort of his invited sister-in-law and her children, and of his wife and baby, and it was impossible not to spend at least a small part of the day with them.
All that, together with hunting and the new interest in bees, filled that entire life of Levin’s which had no meaning for him when he thought.
But besides the fact that Levin firmly knew what he had to do, he knew just as well how he had to do it all and which matter was more important than another.
He knew that he had to hire workers as cheaply as possible, but that he should not put them in bondage by paying them in advance at a cheaper rate than they were worth, though it was very profitable. He could sell the muzhiks straw when there was a shortage, though he felt sorry for them;