Autumn XVII. After they’ve seen Paree

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn XVI. Physical work

That a labourer in the fields should stand very much on the level of the beast that toils with him, can be neither desirable nor necessary. He does so, as a matter of fact, and one hears that only the dullest-witted peasant will nowadays consent to the peasant life;  his children, taught to read the newspaper, make what haste they can to the land of promise -- where newspapers are printed... Husbandry has in our time been glorified in eloquence which for the most part is vain, endeavouring, as it does, to prove a falsity -- that the agricultural life is, in itself, favourable to gentle emotions, to sweet thoughtfulness, and to all the human virtues. Agriculture is one of the most exhausting forms of toil, and, in itself, by no means conducive to spiritual development...

...The worst feature of the rustic mind in our day, is not its ignorance or grossness, but its rebellious discontent... The bucolic wants to “better” himself. He is sick of feeding cows and horses; he imagines that, on the pavement of London, he would walk with a manlier tread.

...Most likely it is foolishness to hope for the revival of any bygone social virtue. The husbandman of the future will be, I dare say, a well-paid mechanic, of the engine-driver species; as he goes about his work he will sing the last refrain of the music-hall, and his oft-recurring holidays will be spent in the nearest great town....

Alpha.

Gissing proved an accurate prophet here. He would be even more dismayed than is Wendell Berry (who has made a career of fighting this battle against the decline of rural, agricultural life) to see today’s “agribusiness.” I’ve always wished Berry well, but without any great hope. That rural life suits Mr. Berry, I can see, but I also can’t ignore the degree to which his life draws on the vitality of cities. His audience, and thus his literary income, is largely urban or suburban. But more than that, I suspect much of his intellectual stimulation comes from traveling to cities and conversing with people who live in or are supported by cities.

Perhaps he would be perfectly content in a post-apocalyptic Kentucky, living on corn and moonshine and smoking his now marketless tobacco until pellagra ends him, but I doubt it.

I happened to read the section of The Elegance of the Hedgehog having to do with the character Levin in Anna Karenina today and feel the need to add a quote here as a response to HR's statement about agricultural work not being "conducive to spiritual development."

It is springtime, he goes off with the peasants to mow the fields. In the beginning the task seems too arduous for him. He is about to give up when the old peasant leading the row calls for a rest. Then they begin again with their scythes. Once again Levin is about to collapse from exhaustion, once again the old man raises his scythe. Rest. And then the row moves forward again, forty hands scything swaths and moving steadily toward the river as the sun rises. It is getting hotter and hotter Levis's arms and shoulders are soaked in sweat, but with each successive pause and start, his awkward, painful gestures become more fluid, A welcome breeze suddenly caresses his back. A summer rain. Gradually, his movements are freed from the shackles of his will, and he goes into a light trance which gives his gestures the perfection of conscious, automatic motion, without thought or calculation, and the scythe seems to move of its own accord. Levin delights in the forgetfulness that movement brings, where the pleasure of doing is marvelously foreign to the striving of the will..

Dusting.

Compared with HR’s London or present day Beijing, the air here is crystal clear, but, thanks in part to a steady traffic of trucks and buses on the streets that flank my building, soot and dust slowly gathers on any flattish horizontal surface in my apartment. This is a general problem but a particularly annoying instance of it is to be found on the tops of my books. (Somehow it doesn’t help if they are almost flush with the shelf above. How is this even possible?) Because of the soot, you can’t just blow it all off -- it really needs to be brushed away. And brushing it inside is also a mistake. 

I mention this because I would like to ask Esmerelda to dust my books, but can’t actually bring myself to do so. With a library of this size such a job is not a small task -- else I would already have done it myself. Having this many books is an indulgence, but asking someone else to dust all these books seems to me much worse. I suspect I will either do it myself, a shelf at a time, or just let the dust continue to gather, as it will in any case. What did they do in Gissing’s far smoggier time, one wonders?

Next: Autumn XVIII. Flawless day + The Old Contemptibles.