Page 520 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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

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