 | A Morning of a Landed Proprietor — Chapter 10By Leo Tolstoy (1852) |
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| A Morning of a Landed Proprietor — Chapter 10By Leo Tolstoy (1852) |
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Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It is necessary that men should understand things as they are, should call them by their right names, and should know that an army is an instrument for killing, and that the enrollment and management of an army -- the very things which Kings, Emperors, and Presidents occupy themselves with so self-confidently -- is a preparation for murder." (From: "'Thou Shalt Not Kill'," by Leo Tolstoy, August 8,....)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
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Chapter 10
Just then the head of a peasant woman carrying linen on a yoke flashed by the window, and a minute later Davydka's mother entered the hut. She was a tall woman of about fifty years, and was well preserved and active. Her pockmarked and wrinkled face was not handsome, but her straight, firm nose, her compressed thin lips, and her keen gray eyes expressed intelligence and energy. The angularity of her shoulders, the flatness of her bosom, the bony state of her hands, and the well- developed muscles on her black bare feet witnessed to the fact that she had long ceased to be a woman, and was only a laborer.
She entered boldly into the room, closed the door, pulled down her skirt, and angrily looked at her son. Nekhlyudov wanted to tell her something, but she turned away from him, and began to make the signs of the cross before a black wooden image that peered out from behind the loom. Having finished her devotion, she straightened out her dirty checkered kerchief in which her head was wrapped, and made a low obeisance before the master.
" A pleasant Lord's Day to your Grace," she said. " May God preserve you, our father — ! "
When Davydka saw his mother he evidently became embarrassed, bent his back a little, and lowered his neck even more.
" Thank you, Arina," answered Nekhlyudov. " I have just been speaking with your son about your farm."
Anna, or, as the peasants had called her when she was still a maiden, Arishka-Burlak,^ supported her chin with the fist of her right hand, which, in its turn, was resting on the palm of her left hand ; and, without hearing what the master had still to say, began to speak in such a penetrating and loud voice that the whole hut was filled with sound, and in the street it might have appeared that several women were speaking at the same time.
" What use, father, is there of speaking to him ? He can't even speak like a man. There he stands, block- head," she continued, contemptuously pointing with her head to Davydka's wretched, massive figure. " My farm, your Grace ? We are mendicants ; there are no people in your whole village more wretched : we have neither of our own, nor anything for the manorial dues — a shame ! He has brought us to all this. I bore him, raised, and fed him, and with anticipation waited for him to grow up. Here he is: the grain is bursting, but there is no more work in him than in this rotten log. All he knows how to do is to lie on the oven, or to stand and scratch his stupid head," she said, mocking him. " If you, father, could threaten him somehow ! I beg you : punish him for the Lord's sake ; send him to the army, and make an end of it. I have lost my patience with him, I tell you."
"How is it you are not ashamed, Davydka, to bring your mother to such a state ? " said Nekhlyudov, reproachfully turning to the peasant.
Davydka did not budge.
" It would be different if he were a sickly man," Arina continued, with the same vivacity and gestures, " but you look at him, he is fatter than a mill pig. He is a good- looking chap, fit enough to work ! But no, he lies like a lubber all day on the oven. My eyes get tired looking when he undertakes to do something ; when he rises, or moves, or anything," she said, drawling her words and awkwardly turning her angular shoulders from side to side. " Now, for example, to-day the old man has gone for brushwood into the forest, and he has told him to dig holes ; but no, not he, he has not had the spade in his hands — " She grew silent for a moment. "He has undone me, abandoned woman ! " she suddenly whined, waving her hands, and walking up to her son with a threatening gesture. " Your smooth, good-for-nothing snout, the Lord forgive me ! "
She turned away contemptuously and in despair from him, spit out, and again turned to the master, continuing to wave her hands, with the same animation and with tears in her eyes :
" I am all alone, benefactor. My old man is sick and old, and there is little good in him, and I am all sole alone. It is enough to make a stone burst. It would be easier if I just could die ; that would be the end. He has worn me out, that rascal ! Our father ! I have no more strength ! My daughter-in-law died from work, and I shall, too."
1 Biu'lak is a laborer towing boats up the Volga.
From : Wikisource.org
Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "...the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence." (From: "A Letter to a Hindu: The Subjection of India- Its....)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "If, in former times, Governments were necessary to defend their people from other people's attacks, now, on the contrary, Governments artificially disturb the peace that exists between the nations, and provoke enmity among them." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
Leo Wiener was an American historian, linguist, author and translator. Wiener was born in Białystok (then in the Russian Empire), of Polish-Jewish origin. His father was Zalmen (Solomon) Wiener, and his mother was Frejda Rabinowicz. He studied at the University of Warsaw in 1880, and then at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Wiener later declared, "Having 'for many years been a member of the Unitarian Church,' and having 'preached absolute amalgamation with the Gentile surroundings', [I] 'never allied with the Jewish Church or with Jews as such." Wiener left Europe with the plan of founding a vegetarian commune in British Honduras (now Belize). He sailed steerage to New Orleans. On his arrival, in 1880, he had no money. After travel and work around the US, he went to Kansas City, Missouri, and became a lecturer in the department of Germanic and Romance languages at the University of Kansas. He was a polyglot, and was reputed to speak thirty languages... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Chapter 10
