subtlety

The most memorable scene in Anna Karenina is set at Prokovskoye. Levin, dark and melancholy, is trying to forget Kitty. 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 rest. Then they begin again with their scythes. Rest, and the row moves forward again, forty hands scything swathes and moving steadily towards the river as the sun rises. Hotter, arms and shoulders are soaked in sweat, but with each successive pause and start, the awkward painful gestures become more fluid. A welcome breeze suddenly caresses their backs: a summer rain. Gradually, Levin's movements are freed from the shackles of his will, and he goes off 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 marvellously foreign to the striving of the will.

This is eminently true of many happy moments in life. Freed from demands of decisions and intention, adrift on some inner sea, or a "city of subtlety and brown-colored life", we observe our various moments as if they belonged to someone else, and yet we admire their involuntary excellence.

(Photo taken in Yogyakarta, October 2008)