Readers of the Garden of Eden narrative in the Book of Genesis might easily conclude that the natural human state is one of leisure, compared to which work is nothing but a curse. Upon expulsion from the garden, Eve is told that she will labor and bear children in sorrow, and Adam that he will endure painful toil to have food to eat.
George Clausen, The Mowers, 1892.
Source: The Collection: Art & Archaeology in Lincolnshire (Usher Gallery)
Yet there is a deeper meaning to work in Genesis that is brought to light nowhere more effectively than in one of the greatest of all novels, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Here we are treated to the scene of Levin mowing hay with the peasants, an activity that his intellectual brother regards as a waste of time. Why labor when others will do it for you?
Despite his brother’s reservations, Levin wants to do this work, and he has been counting on it for months. As he takes it up, or perhaps is taken up by it, he forgets himself and loses all sense of time. In the midst of the mowing, he is totally immersed, totally present, as though he were glimpsing eternity. In the work, he experiences tremendous joy.
It is not what Levin and the peasants are hoping to accomplish but the work itself that is life-giving. It begins to feel to Levin as though “it wasn’t his arms swinging the scythe but the scythe itself bringing along his body, which was fully aware of itself and full of life, and as if by magic, without him thinking about it, correct and precise work performed itself.”
A key part of the scene is an unnamed old man, a peasant, who lacks Levin’s wealth, power, and education. Yet the old man is the master of the work. He knows just how long to keep going before taking a break, and when he does, he offers Levin a most refreshing beverage, warm water from the stream with bits of greenery floating in it.
The old man is a living embodiment of work at is best. He adapts to changing terrain effortlessly. He is supremely attentive, observing what is ahead, picking a stalk of sorrel and offering it to Levin, “examining a quail’s nest after the hen had flown out right from under the scythe,” or “showing Levin a viper and then flinging it aside.”
Over the course of a single day, the old man shows Levin not only how to work, but also how to see and how to live. He teaches him to notice and dwell on what is truly most noteworthy, seemingly ordinary things that most of us look right past, but which reveal the beauty, wonder, and what is most worth loving in life.
Mowing, Levin is in a timeless state in which there is no becoming or passing away but only being, only living, totally engrossed in the moment. He thinks he has been mowing for only half an hour or so, but it is almost dinner time. The old man points out a distant line of little boys and girls, bringing food and drink to the mowers.
The old man has next to nothing to offer, but he invites Levin to join him in his modest repast. He takes some of the bread the children have brought, crushes it in his cup, adds water, breaks up more bread, then pauses to offer a prayer. Then he offers the cup to Levin, saying “Here you go, master, have some.”
It is delicious, and Levin resolves not to go home for dinner. Instead, he will remain with the peasant, exchanging stories about their domestic affairs. Before long, he feels closer to the old man than to his brother, and he cannot help but smile at the affection he feels for him. It is a vision of true communion.
Then Levin dozes off. When he awakens, he does not recognize the place, “so much had everything changed.” The point, I think, is that Levin himself has changed, and changed in a way that enables him to see what is really there, what has really been there all along, but which he never noticed or savored before.
Instead of feeling cheated because his land is not prospering as he thinks it should, he has not yet married the woman of his dreams, or he has not been able to get down on paper his thoughts about the meaning of farming and the meaning of life, he feels a profound sense of gratitude for having witnessed life’s true bounty.
Levin has much that the peasants and the old man lack. Yet they have work and, at least the wiser among them, the capacity to immerse themselves in it. They, at least the wiser among them, have the capacity to live fully in the moment. Unlike Levin’s intellectual but not so wise brother, they find joy in labor. Work can be Edenic, and Levin too is blessed.
