"Do you know what verses affected me the most?" asked Viéra Pavlovna, after she had read several times with her husband certain parts of the poem. "These verses are not from the main part of the poem, but oh! my thoughts are greatly drawn to them. When Katya was waiting for the return of her bridegroom, she was very melancholy:—
'Had I only time for worrying
I should die, thou heartless one!
Harvest time, and time is hurrying;
Scores of things must now be done!
'Though it often to the maiden comes
That she suffers and must sigh,
Still the hay-cart heavy laden comes,
Still the sickle burns the rye.
'She must thresh with all her might alas!—
Thresh the grain the morning through;
Spread the flax at gloomy night, alas!
On the meadows wet with dew.'[1]
These verses are not the principal ones in that episode: they are only a preface to the fact how this lovely Katya is dreaming about her life with Vanja; but my thoughts are greatly drawn to them."
"Yes, that is a perfect picture,—one of the very best in the poem. But they do not hold the best place in it, so they must have corresponded very closely to the thoughts which occupied you. What are these thoughts?"
"They are these, Sasha. You and I have often said that the organization of woman is almost higher than that of man, and that therefore woman may force man to take second rank in intellectual life, when the rough force which predominates at the present time shall pass. We both have come to this conclusion by observation of life; you meet more women in life than men who are intellectual by nature. So it seems to us both. You confirmed this by various facts drawn from anatomy and physiology."
"What offensive things you are speaking about man, and you say a great deal more than I do about it, Viérotchka. It
- ↑ Literally: I should be ruined, unconsoling one, had I time to worry. Yes, now 'tis harvest, pressing; it is necessary to finish ten things, however often it happens beyond the young woman's endurance. Under the scythe the grass falls: under the reaping-hook the rye burns. With all her strength and might she has threshed in the morning. The flax, she spreads the flax, till the dark little night, over the dewy meadows.
