This little essay is loaded. The bit about labor as solace, work as rest, especially jumped out. What is it about labor that is so redeeming? My father viewed the sweat of hard work as a sort of baptism, a cleansing. Sweat as the holiest of holy water. Your seeking peace from farm work recalls that terrific scene in Anna Karenina when Levin, a count, joins the peasants in harvesting hay. “The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own.”
A body at work may be a body full of consciousness. It seems so. But why?
This little essay is loaded. The bit about labor as solace, work as rest, especially jumped out. What is it about labor that is so redeeming? My father viewed the sweat of hard work as a sort of baptism, a cleansing. Sweat as the holiest of holy water. Your seeking peace from farm work recalls that terrific scene in Anna Karenina when Levin, a count, joins the peasants in harvesting hay. “The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own.”
A body at work may be a body full of consciousness. It seems so. But why?