From Dr. Zhivago (by Boris Pasternak):
“Are these landlords’ or peasants’ fields? Nikolay Nikolayevich asked Pavel, the publisher’s odd-job man who sat sideways on the box, shoulders hunched and legs crossed to show that driving was not his regular job.
‘These are the masters’.’ Pavel lit his pipe, drew on it and after a long silence jabbed with the end of his whip in another direction: ‘And those are ours! -Get on with you,’ he shouted at the hones, whose tails and haunches he watched like an engine driver’s instrument panel. But the hones were like horses all the world over, the shaft horse pulling with the innate honesty of a simple soul while the off horse arched its neck like a swan and seemed to the uninitiated to be an inveterate idler who thought of nothing but prancing in time to the jangling of its bell.
Nikolay Nikolayevich had with him the proof of Voskoboynikov’s book on the land question; the publisher had asked I the author to revise it in view of the increasingly strict censorship.
‘People are getting pretty rough here,’ he told Pavel. ‘A merchant has had his throat slit and the stud farm of the zemsky has been burned down. What do you think of it all? What are they saying in your village?’
‘What do you expect them to say? The peasants have got out of hand. They’ve been treated too well. That’s no good for the likes of us. Give the peasants rope and God knows we’ll all be at each other’s throats in no time. – Get a move on there!’
This was Yura’s second trip with his uncle to Duplyanka. He thought he knew the way and, every time that the fields ran out on either side with a thin line of forest in front and behind, he, expected the road to turn right and give a fleeting view of the Kologrivov place with its ten-mile stretch of open country, the river gleaming in the distance and the railway beyond it. But each time he was mistaken. Field followed field and was in turn swallowed by forests. The succession of huge views aroused in the travellers a feeling of spaciousness and made them think and dream of the future.
The books which later made Nikolay Nikolayevich famous were still unwritten, but his ideas had already taken shape. Yet he did not know that his hour was close at hand.
Soon he was to take his place among the writers of his time university professors and philosophers of the revolutionary movement as one who, though he shared their preoccupations, had nothing in common with their way of thinking except its terminology. AU of them, without exception, clung to this or that dogma, and were satisfied with words and outward appearances, but he, Father Nikolay, a priest, had been both a Tolstoyan and a revolutionary idealist and was still travelling on. He craved for an idea, inspired yet concrete, that would show a clear path and change the world for the better, an idea as unmistakable even to a child or an ignorant fool as lightning or a roll of thunder. He craved for something new.”
Yura liked being with his uncle. He reminded him of his mother. Like hers, his mind moved with freedom and welcomed the unfamiliar. He had the same aristocratic sense of equality with all living things and the same gift of taking in everything at a glance and of expressing his thoughts as they first came to him and before they had lost their meaning and vitality.”
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