Laudator Temporis Acti

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), The Long Exile and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911), pp. 130-131 = Stories from Botany, III (The Bird Cherry Tree, tr. Nathan Haskell Dole):

A bird cherry had taken root on the path through the hazelnut grove, and was beginning to choke off the hazel bushes.

For some time I queried whether to cut it or not to cut it; I felt sorry to do so. This bird cherry did not grow in a clump, but in a tree more than five inches in diameter, and twenty-eight feet high, full of branches, bushy, and wholly covered with bright, white, fragrant blossoms. The perfume from it was wafted a long distance.

I certainly should not have cut it down, but one of the workmen — I had given him orders before to cut down every bird cherry — began to fell it in my absence. When I came he had already cut halfway into it, and the sap was dripping down under the ax as he let it fall into the gash.

"There's no help for it," I said to myself; "evidently it is its fate."

So I myself took the ax, and began to help the peasant cut it down.

It is delightful to work at all sorts of work; it is delightful even to cut wood. It is delightful to sink the ax deep in the wood, with a slanting stroke, and then to cut it in straight, and thus to advance deeper and deeper into the tree.

I entirely forgot about the bird cherry tree, and thought only about getting it cut down as quickly as possible.

When I got out of breath, I laid down the ax, and the peasant and I leaned against the tree, and tried to push it over. We pushed hard; the tree shook its foliage and sprinkled us with drops of dew, and strewed all around the white, fragrant petals of its blossoms.

At this instant something shrieked; there was a sharp, crackling sound in the center of the tree, and the tree began to fall.

It broke off near the gash, and, slowly wavering, toppled over on the grass, with all its leaves and blossoms. The branches and blossoms trembled for a moment after it fell, and then grew motionless.

"Ekh! what a splendid piece!" said the peasant; "it's a real shame!"

As for me, I felt so sorry that I hastened off to look after other work.

I think that this story comes from Tolstoy's children's book Novaia Azbuka (1875).

Ilya Repin (1844-1930), Leo Tolstoy in the Forest

Labels: arboricide