Resurrection, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read this summer .txt] 📗

the conditions would allow. Above all things he

was a communist. He wanted, as it seemed to him, nothing for

himself and contented himself with very little, but demanded very

much for the group of his comrades, and could work for it either

physically or mentally day and night, without sleep or food. As a

peasant he had been industrious, observant, clever at his work,

and naturally self-controlled, polite without any effort, and

attentive not only to the wishes but also the opinions of others.

His widowed mother, an illiterate, superstitious, old peasant

woman, was still living, and Nabatoff helped her and went to see

her while he was free. During the time he spent at home he

entered into all the interests of his mother’s life, helped her

in her work, and continued his intercourse with former

playfellows; smoked cheap tobacco with them in so-called “dog’s

feet,” [a kind of cigarette that the peasants smoke, made of a

bit of paper and bent at one end into a hook] took part in their

fist fights, and explained to them how they were all being

deceived by the State, and how they ought to disentangle

themselves out of the deception they were kept in. When he

thought or spoke of what a revolution would do for the people he

always imagined this people from whom he had sprung himself left

in very nearly the same conditions as they were in, only with

sufficient land and without the gentry and without officials. The

revolution, according to him, and in this he differed from

Novodvoroff and Novodvoroff’s follower, Markel Kondratieff,

should not alter the elementary forms of the life of the people,

should not break down the whole edifice, but should only alter

the inner walls of the beautiful, strong, enormous old structure

he loved so dearly. He was also a typical peasant in his views on

religion, never thinking about metaphysical questions, about the

origin of all origin, or the future life. God was to him, as

also to Arago, an hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to

now. He had no business with the origin of the world, whether

Moses or Darwin was right. Darwinism, which seemed so important

to his fellows, was only the same kind of plaything of the mind

as the creation in six days. The question how the world had

originated did not interest him, just because the question how it

would be best to live in this world was ever before him. He never

thought about future life, always bearing in the depth of his

soul the firm and quiet conviction inherited from his

forefathers, and common to all labourers on the land, that just

as in the world of plants and animals nothing ceases to exist,

but continually changes its form, the manure into grain, the

grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog, the caterpillar into

a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also does not perish,

but only undergoes a change. He believed in this, and therefore

always looked death straight in the face, and bravely bore the

sufferings that lead towards it, but did not care and did not

know how to speak about it. He loved work, was always employed in

some practical business, and put his comrades in the way of the

same kind of practical work.

 

The other political prisoner from among the people, Markel

Kondratieff, was a very different kind of man. He began to work

at the age of fifteen, and took to smoking and drinking in order

to stifle a dense sense of being wronged. He first realised he

was wronged one Christmas when they, the factory children, were

invited to a Christmas tree, got up by the employer’s wife, where

he received a farthing whistle, an apple, a gilt walnut and a

fig, while the employer’s children had presents given them which

seemed gifts from fairyland, and had cost more than fifty

roubles, as he afterwards heard.

 

When he was twenty a celebrated revolutionist came to their

factory to work as a working girl, and noticing his superior

qualities began giving books and pamphlets to Kondratieff and to

talk and explain his position to him, and how to remedy it. When

the possibility of freeing himself and others from their

oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the injustice of this

state appeared more cruel and more terrible than before, and he

longed passionately not only for freedom, but also for the

punishment of those who had arranged and who kept up this cruel

injustice. Kondratieff devoted himself with passion to the

acquirement of knowledge. It was not clear to him how knowledge

should bring about the realisation of the social ideal, but he

believed that the knowledge that had shown him the injustice of

the state in which he lived would also abolish that injustice

itself. Besides knowledge would, in his opinion, raise him above

others. Therefore he left off drinking and smoking, and devoted

all his leisure time to study. The revolutionist gave him

lessons, and his thirst for every kind of knowledge, and the

facility with which he took it in, surprised her. In two years he

had mastered algebra, geometry, history—which he was specially

fond of—and made acquaintance with artistic and critical, and

especially socialistic literature. The revolutionist was

arrested, and Kondratieff with her, forbidden books having been

found in their possession, and they were imprisoned and then

exiled to the Vologda Government. There Kondratieff became

acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read a great deal more

revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became still

firmer in his socialistic views. While in exile he became leader

in a large strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory

and the murder of the director. He was again arrested and

condemned to Siberia.

 

His religious views were of the same negative nature as his views

of the existing economic conditions. Having seen the absurdity of

the religion in which he was brought up, and having gained with

great effort, and at first with fear, but later with rapture,

freedom from it, he did not tire of viciously and with venom

ridiculing priests and religious dogmas, as if wishing to revenge

himself for the deception that had been practised on him.

 

He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little,

and, like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles

have been developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick

at any manual labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in

prisons and halting stations, which enabled him to continue his

studies. He was now studying the first volume of Karl Marks’s,

and carefully hid the book in his sack as if it were a great

treasure. He behaved with reserve and indifference to all his

comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly attached,

and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as unanswerable

truths.

 

He had an indefinite contempt for women, whom he looked upon as a

hindrance in all necessary business. But he pitied Maslova and

was gentle with her, for he considered her an example of the way

the lower are exploited by the upper classes. The same reason

made him dislike Nekhludoff, so that he talked little with him,

and never pressed Nekhludoff’s hand, but only held out his own to

be pressed when greeting him.

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EXILES.

 

The stove had burned up and got warm, the tea was made and poured

out into mugs and cups, and milk was added to it; rusks, fresh

rye and wheat bread, hard-boiled eggs, butter, and calf’s head

and feet were placed on the cloth. Everybody moved towards the

part of the shelf beds which took the place of the table and sat

eating and talking. Rintzeva sat on a box pouring out the tea.

The rest crowded round her, only Kryltzoff, who had taken off his

wet cloak and wrapped himself in his dry plaid and lay in his own

place talking to Nekhludoff.

 

After the cold and damp march and the dirt and disorder they had

found here, and after the pains they had taken to get it tidy,

after having drunk hot tea and eaten, they were all in the best

and brightest of spirits.

 

The fact that the tramp of feet, the screams and abuse of the

criminals, reached them through the wall, reminding them of their

surroundings, seemed only to increase the sense of coziness. As

on an island in the midst of the sea, these people felt

themselves for a brief interval not swamped by the degradation

and sufferings which surrounded them; this made their spirits

rise, and excited them. They talked about everything except their

present position and that which awaited them. Then, as it

generally happens among young men, and women especially, if they

are forced to remain together, as these people were, all sorts of

agreements and disagreements and attractions, curiously blended,

had sprung up among them. Almost all of them were in love.

Novodvoroff was in love with the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This

Grabetz was a young, thoughtless girl who had gone in for a

course of study, perfectly indifferent to revolutionary

questions, but succumbing to the influence of the day, she

compromised herself in some way and was exiled. The chief

interest of her life during the time of her trial in prison and

in exile was her success with men, just as it had been when she

was free. Now on the way she comforted herself with the fact that

Novodvoroff had taken a fancy to her, and she fell in love with

him. Vera Doukhova, who was very prone to fall in love herself,

but did not awaken love in others, though she was always hoping

for mutual love, was sometimes drawn to Nabatoff, then to

Novodvoroff. Kryltzoff felt something like love for Mary

Pavlovna. He loved her with a man’s love, but knowing how she

regarded this sort of love, hid his feelings under the guise of

friendship and gratitude for the tenderness with which she

attended to his wants. Nabatoff and Rintzeva were attached to

each other by very complicated ties. Just as Mary Pavlovna was a

perfectly chaste maiden, in the same way Rintzeva was perfectly

chaste as her own husband’s wife. When only a schoolgirl of

sixteen she fell in love with Rintzeff, a student of the

Petersburg University, and married him before he left the

university, when she was only nineteen years old. During his

fourth year at the university her husband had become involved in

the students’ rows, was exiled from Petersburg, and turned

revolutionist. She left the medical courses she was attending,

followed him, and also turned revolutionist. If she had not

considered her husband the cleverest and best of men she would

not have fallen in love with him; and if she had not fallen in

love would not have married; but having fallen in love and

married him whom she thought the best and cleverest of men, she

naturally looked upon life and its aims in the way the best and

cleverest of men looked at them. At first he thought the aim of

life was to learn, and she looked upon study as the aim of life.

He became a revolutionist, and so did she. She could demonstrate

very clearly that the existing state of things could not go on,

and that it was everybody’s duty to fight this state of things

and to try to bring about conditions in which the individual

could develop freely, etc. And she imagined that she really

thought and felt all this, but in reality she only regarded

everything her husband thought as absolute truth, and only sought

for perfect agreement, perfect identification of her own soul

with his which alone could give her