Chapter 2 〇Two farming

I have just looked at Holbein's peasants for a long time with deep melancholy, and then I wandered in the fields, contemplating country life and the fate of the peasants.It is a deplorable thing that the farmer spends his strength and his time cultivating a land that is not so easily taken from its rich treasures, and that at the end of the day the only reward and benefit of such hard labor is a loaf of the darkest and roughest bread. sad thing.These riches that cover the land, these crops, these fruits, these animals that are well fed in the lush pastures, are the property of the few and the instruments of the toil and servitude of the many.The man of leisure generally does not love the fields, the pastures, the sights of nature, the healthy animals which can be exchanged for money for his squandering.He went to the country for a short stay to get a change of air and recuperate his body before returning to the big city to enjoy the fruits of his slave's labor.

On the other hand, the farmers are too tired, too miserable, and too worried about the future to enjoy the beauty of the country and the taste of pastoral life.In his opinion, golden fields, beautiful pastures, and fat cattle also represent bags of gold coins. He can only have a tiny part of it, and he can't make ends meet, but he still has to fill these damned money bags every year, to go Satisfying his master, and gaining power, live frugally, and live miserably in his master's domain. However, nature is always young, beautiful and generous.It pours poetry and beauty into all the animals and plants that develop freely in its arms.It holds the secret of happiness, and no one can take it away from it.The happiest man is perhaps the man who has mastered the art of labor, who supports himself, and who derives comfort and freedom from the exercise of his intellect; he has time to live his life using his heart and mind, knowing his own business, and loving the cause of God.The artist also enjoys this joy when he contemplates and reproduces the beauty of nature; but the artist with integrity and kindness will disturb his joy when he sees the suffering of the people who multiply in this paradise on earth.Under the eye of God, spirit, heart, and arm work together, so that there is a divine harmony between the goodness of God and the joy of human hearts, and here may be happiness.Thus the allegorist, instead of painting a horrible and hateful Grim Reaper walking in a furrow with a whip in his hand, can paint beside the farmer a radiant angel, sowing the blessed corn in full handfuls on the steaming in the ditch.

For a farmer, the dream of living a sweet, free, poetic, industrious, and simple life is not so difficult to realize, and it should not be regarded as a fantasy.Oh, happy the peasant if he knew his happiness!Virgil's melancholy, tender words are an exclamation of regret; like all exclamations of regret, it is a prophecy.Someday the farmer will also be an artist who can at least feel beauty if not express it (which doesn't matter then).Can it be thought that, in him, this mystical intuition for poetry is in a state of instinct and vague phantasy?In those who today enjoy the privilege of a little comfort, and whose spiritual and intellectual development is not entirely suppressed by undue misfortune, pure happiness, which can be felt and appreciated, is in a primitive state; The voice of the poet has burst from the chest of pain and fatigue, so why do some people say that the work of the arms and the work of the heart are mutually exclusive?This exclusion is doubtless the general result of overwork and extreme poverty; but we cannot say that when men work temperately and productively there are only bad workers and bad poets in the world.A true poet is one who can absorb noble sentiments from poetic sentiments, even though he has never written a line of poetry in his life.

As I pondered in this way, I did not realize that my confidence in the educability of man had been strengthened in me by the influence of the wild.I walked to the edge of a field where farmers were busy preparing for the upcoming sowing work.The fields are vast, as Holbein painted them.The scenery is also open, the dark brown wide land is inlaid with green wide lines, and it is slightly reddish in this autumn approaching season; Just as shiny.It was a sunny and warm day, and the land was freshly plowed with plows, giving off a slight moisture.High up in the field was an old man, whose broad shoulders and serious face reminded Holbein of old peasants, but whose clothes showed no poverty; , a plow drawn by two silent oxen.They are the real masters on the ranch, with light yellow fur, tall, slightly thin, and long horns that curve downward.This pair of old toilers, by long-standing habit, became brothers, as they were called in the country; and without one end, the other would refuse to work with a new partner, and would die of melancholy.People who are not familiar with the countryside will regard the friendship of the cow with its companions as a kind of fable.Invite them to the barn, a poor bony, exhausted beast, wagging its tail, slapping its thin belly restlessly, snorting with terror and contempt at the feed placed before it, with eyes always averted At the door, pawing at the empty space beside it, sniffing at the yokes and chains of its mates, and calling its mates with miserable moos.The cattleman will say: This will cost two cows; its brother is dead, and this one will not work again.It's best to fatten him up and kill him; but he won't eat, and he'll starve to death in no time.

The old farmer worked calmly, silently, and without wasting any effort.The tame ox is as easy as he is; and by his continual, single-minded work, and by the discipline and endurance of his physical strength, he plows as fast as his son; In a harder and more rocky field, driving four less robust cattle. But then what caught my attention was a landscape of real beauty, a majestic subject for a painter.On the other side of the cultivated land in Yimapingchuan, there was a young man with a ruddy face driving an excellent plow: four pairs of young and strong animals, dark fur with black spots, shining like fire, with short heads Coarse, curly, buffalo-like, with large fierce eyes, jerky movements, fidgeting about work, resentful of yokes and goads, trembling with rage when submitting to newly imposed restraints.This is the so-called new bull.It was the work of a strong man whose strength, youth, and eight untamed animals had just begun to clear a land that had not long been abandoned for pasture, and which was riddled with centuries-old roots. competent.

A six or seven-year-old boy, as beautiful as an angel, wearing a blouse with a piece of lambskin on his shoulders, just like Little John the Baptist in the paintings of Renaissance painters[Note], he walked along a furrow parallel to the plow. Walk forward and poke the cows in both sides with a long, light, not too sharp goad.The haughty animal trembled under the child's little hand, making the yoke and brow straps rattle, and the shaft tremble violently.Whenever a root got in the way of the coulter, the farmer called out the name of each cow in a forceful voice, more to calm them than to encourage them; The broad cleft hooves dug holes.If the young man can't control the four cows in front with shouts and goads, and let the children control the other four, then the cows will drive through obliquely with the plow.The poor boy yelled too, trying to make his voice seem ghastly, but soft as his angelic face.The sights, the men, the children, the bulls under the yoke, all have a masculine beauty and a graceful beauty; however fierce the struggle for the land may be, there is an air of softness and tranquility over all things.When the obstacle was overcome and the cattle resumed their steady and dignified pace, the farmer's feigned violence was only a display of energy and a waste of vitality. At this moment, he immediately recovered the tranquility of his simple heart, and threw his loving father at his child. a satisfied glance; the child returned the smile.Then, the young father sang a solemn and melancholy tune with his majestic voice. Only a vigorous farmer can sing it.The origin of this tune is believed to be sacred, and it may have been influenced by mystery in the past. It is still believed to have the effect of keeping the cattle motivated, calming their dissatisfaction, and resolving their boredom from long hours of work.It is not enough to know how to drive them, to plow a straight furrow, to lighten their labor by lifting the coulter or inserting it just right into the soil, and these are not enough. If you can't sing to your cattle, you are by no means a perfect farmer; It is a special science that requires taste and special skill.

[Note] The Baptist John was a common painting theme in the Renaissance period. Michelangelo's "Holy Family" and Raphael's "Seated Madonna" and "Virgin with Veil" are the most famous works . To tell the truth, this tune is nothing more than a recitative that can be interrupted and continued at will.Its irregular form and unmusical intonation make it impossible to write down.But it is still a beautiful piece of music, which is in such harmony with the work it accompanies, the gait of the cattle, the tranquility of the country, and the simplicity of the singer, that no genius not familiar with farming could compose it, except The clever and capable farmers of the local area cannot be sung by any other singer.At a time of the year when there is no other work or activity in the country except farming, this soft but powerful tune blows like a breeze; its specific tune has a certain resemblance to the breeze.The last note of each phrase draws out and trembles, with unbelievable force of luck, and raises a quarter-tone, which is regularly irrational[Note].This style of singing does not conform to the norms, but its charm is indescribable. Once you are used to this kind of music, you can't imagine that there are other songs that can rise here and now without destroying the harmony of the surroundings.

【Note】Our music theory today only allows raising half a scale, so George Sand said that the peasant's tune is unreasonable; Thus, a completely different picture unfolded before my eyes than in Holbein's engraving, although the scene is the same.Instead of a sad-faced old man, replaced by a vigorous young man; The child of the child; instead of hopeless pictures and ruined ideas, there are exuberant ones and happy thoughts. At this moment, the old French quatrain you sweated and Virgil's, if the peasant knew his happiness, came to my mind at the same time.Seeing such a handsome pair of man and child, in a poetic environment, combining elegance and strength to complete a majestic and great work, I really feel deep sympathy, mixed with involuntary regret.How happy the farmer is!Yes, needless to say I am happy in his place, if my arms suddenly become strong, and my breast strong, to thus enrich nature and sing her words; while my The eye still sees, and my mind still comprehends the harmony of colors and sounds, the delicacy of tone and the grace of outline, in a word, the mysterious beauty of things!Above all my heart can still commune with the divine affection which governs immortal and sublime creations.

But alas!The man never knew the secret of beauty, and the child never will!Never do I think so: they are no better than the beasts they drive, and they have no revelations to soothe their hearts, to relieve their fatigues, to relieve their cares!I saw the stamp of God on their noble brows, and they were born kings of the land than those who bought it with money and owned it.They feel it too, and the proof is this: whoever wills them uprooted will not go unpunished, they love the soil that their sweat has watered, and the true peasant dies away from the field where he was born, and goes to arms and armor Yu homesickness.But this man lacks a part of the non-material enjoyment that I have, which should belong to him, to the creator of the vast temple that can only be contained by the vast sky.He lacks awareness of his own emotions.Those who condemned him to slavery while he was still in his mother's womb could not deprive him of the ability to imagine, but they deprived him of the ability to think.

Even if he is not perfect, and doomed to remain a child forever, he is still more beautiful than a man whose learning has stifled his emotions.Do not override him, you who think you have an imprescriptible legal right over him, for this dreadful mistake you have made proves that your wits have killed your hearts, that you are the most powerful of men. Deficient and most blind man!I love the simplicity of his soul more than the false luster of yours; and if I were to describe his life, I would take great pleasure in emphasizing the soft and charming aspects, while your talent paints his baseness. , that's where your social maxims drove him there with severity and contempt.

I know this young man and this beautiful kid, and I know their stories because they have a story and everyone has a story.A man who understands his own life story becomes interested in it. Although Germain was a farmer and a common peasant, he understood his duty and his love.He told me plainly and clearly, and I listened with relish.I watched him plow the field for a long time, and thought to myself, why not write his story down, even though this story is as simple, straight and unadorned as the furrows he plowed. Next year, the furrow will be filled again and covered by a new one.Most people leave traces in the field of life in this way, and then disappear again.A bit of dirt would have wiped it off, and the furrows we dug were next to each other like tombs in a cemetery.Are the farmer's furrows not as good as the idler's furrows?Even if these people, by strange behavior or some absurd behavior, have gained a little reputation in the world, left a name. Let us, then, if we can, rescue from the void of oblivion the furrows of the clever farmer Germain.He'll never know, and he'll never be upset; but I'll have fun trying.