we did not know, and were afraid of. I got up early, at dawn, and
immediately set to work of some sort. I mended the carts, made paths
in the garden, dug the flower beds, painted the roof of the house.
When the time came to sow the oats I tried to plough the ground
over again, to harrow and to sow, and I did it all conscientiously,
keeping up with our labourer; I was worn out, the rain and the cold
wind made my face and feet burn for hours afterwards. I dreamed of
ploughed land at night. But field labour did not attract me. I did
not understand farming, and I did not care for it; it was perhaps
because my forefathers had not been tillers of the soil, and the
very blood that flowed in my veins was purely of the city. I loved
nature tenderly; I loved the fields and meadows and kitchen gardens,
but the peasant who turned up the soil with his plough and urged
on his pitiful horse, wet and tattered, with his craning neck, was
to me the expression of coarse, savage, ugly force, and every time
I looked at his uncouth movements I involuntarily began thinking
of the legendary life of the remote past, before men knew the use
of fire. The fierce bull that ran with the peasants' herd, and the
horses, when they dashed about the village, stamping their hoofs,
moved me to fear, and everything rather big, strong, and angry,
whether it was the ram with its horns, the gander, or the yard-dog,
seemed to me the expression of the same coarse, savage force. This
mood was particularly strong in me in bad weather, when heavy clouds
were hanging over the black ploughed land. Above all, when I was
ploughing or sowing, and two or three people stood looking how I
was doing it, I had not the feeling that this work was inevitable
and obligatory, and it seemed to me that I was amusing myself. I
preferred doing something in the yard, and there was nothing I liked
so much as painting the roof.