 | Scenes from Common Life — Chapter 1 : The WillowBy Leo Tolstoy (1888) |
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| Scenes from Common Life — Chapter 1 : The WillowBy Leo Tolstoy (1888) |
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Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "People who take part in Government, or work under its direction, may deceive themselves or their sympathizers by making a show of struggling; but those against whom they struggle (the Government) know quite well, by the strength of the resistance experienced, that these people are not really pulling, but are only pretending to." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
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Chapter 1
One Easter a peasant went to see whether the frost was out of the ground.
He went to his vegetable garden and poked into the ground with a stake. The soil was soft.
The peasant went into the forest. In the woods the catkins on a young willow were already beginning to swell. And the peasant said to himself :
" Let me plant young willows around my garden ; they will grow and make a hedge."
He took his ax, cut down a dozen young sprouts, trimmed down the butts into points, and planted them in the ground.
All the willow sticks put forth sprouts and green foliage above ; and below, underground, they sent out similar sprouts in place of roots, and some of them took hold of the earth and strengthened themselves ; but others did not take hold of the earth with their roots, and these died and toppled over.
When autumn came, the peasant was delighted with his willows ; six of them had taken root. The next spring some sheep girdled four of them, and thus only two were left.
The following spring, sheep girdled these also. One died away entirely, but the other took new lease of life, sent down deeper roots, and became a tree. Every spring the bees hummed on in the branches. Oftentimes they would swarm there, and the peasants would gather them into hives.
Peasants and their wives often came to lunch and nap under the tree, and their children climbed up its trunk and broke off its twigs.
. The peasant the one who had set out the slip had died long ago, and still the willow grew.
His eldest son twice trimmed off its branches and used them for fuel.
And still the willow grew. They cut the branches all round and made a cone of it, and when spring came, it still again put forth new branches, though they were small, but twice as many as before, like the mane of a colt.
And the eldest son ceased to be master of the house, and the village was removed to another place, but still the willow grew in the bare field.
Other peasants came and cut it down, and still it grew. The lightning struck the tree ; it sent out fresh branches from the sides, and still it grew and bloomed.
One peasant wanted to cut it down to a block, and actually felled it ; but it was badly rotted. The tree fell over and held only by one side, but still it kept growing, and every year the bees flew to it to gather pollen from its flowers.
Once, early in the spring, the children gathered to- gether to tend the horses under the tree.
They thought that it was rather cold, and they began to make a fire, and they collected stubble, mugwort, and twigs. One boy climbed the willow and broke off branches. They piled all their tinder in the hollow of the willow and set it on fire.
The willow began to hiss ; the sap in its wood boiled, the smoke poured forth, and then it began to blaze ; all the inside turned black. The young sprouts crumpled up ; the blossoms wilted.
The children drove their horses home. The burned willow remained alone in the field. A black crow flew up to it, perched on it, and cried :
" So the old poker is dead ; it was time long ago ! "
From : Wikisource.org
Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "People who take part in Government, or work under its direction, may deceive themselves or their sympathizers by making a show of struggling; but those against whom they struggle (the Government) know quite well, by the strength of the resistance experienced, that these people are not really pulling, but are only pretending to." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
• "Only by recognizing the land as just such an article of common possession as the sun and air will you be able, without bias and justly, to establish the ownership of land among all men, according to any of the existing projects or according to some new project composed or chosen by you in common." (From: "To the Working People," by Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya P....)
Nathan Haskell Dole (August 31, 1852 – May 9, 1935) was an American editor, translator, and author. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Harvard University in 1874. He was a writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. He translated many works of Leo Tolstoy, and books of other Russians; novels of the Spaniard Armando Palacio Valdés (1886–90); a variety of works from the French and Italian. Nathan Haskell Dole was born August 31, 1852, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the second son of his father Reverend Nathan Dole (1811–1855) and mother Caroline (Fletcher) Dole. Dole grew up in the Fletcher homestead, a strict Puritan home, in Norridgewock, Maine, where his grandmother lived and where his mother moved with her two boys after his father died of tuberculosis. Sophie May wrote her Prudy Books in Norridgewock, which probably showed the sort of life Nathan and his older brother Charles Fletcher Dole (1845... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Chapter 1
