ABSTRACT
It was a beautiful July day, one of those days that come only when the weather has been settled for some time. The sky is clear from earliest morning; the sunrise does not blaze like a fire but spreads a gentle blush. The sun is not ignescent or scorching hot as it is during a sultry drought, nor is it a murky crimson as before a storm, but it is bright and affably radiant—peacefully arising beneath a long narrow cloud, freshly gleaming through it and submerged in its lilac mist. The delicate upper border of the long line of clouds gleams like a serpent; the gleam is like the gleam of forged silver ... But then again the playful beams pour forth—cheerfully and majestically, as if flying up, radiating a more powerful light. Toward midday a mass of round high clouds usually appears, golden-gray, with delicate white borders. They are almost motionless, like islands washed by an endlessly flowing river that spills over them in deeply transparent streams of flat blue; further toward the horizon, they begin to merge and cluster and the blue between them can no longer be seen, while they are themselves just like the azure of the sky: they are all imbued through and through with light and warmth. The color of the horizon is light, a pale lilac; in a whole day it does not change and is the same all around; it does not darken anywhere, there is no thickening thunderstorm; perhaps here and there a barely noticeable rain drizzles from pale blue columns that stretch downward. Toward evening these clouds disappear; the last of them, blackish and vague like smoke, settle in pinkish puffs before the setting sun; in the place where it has descended just as peacefully as it arose in the sky, the crimson glow lingers for a short time above the darkening earth and twinkling softly, like a cautiously carried candle, the evening star glows. On such days the tints are all subdued, bright but not dazzling; everything somehow bears the stamp of a touching humility. On such days the heat is sometimes very strong, sometimes even "steams" across the sloping fields; but the wind blows away and disperses the accumulated heat and swirling dust—a sure sign of constant weather—moves high white columns along the road through the plowed fields. The scent of absinthe, cut rye, and buckwheat is in the pure, dry air; even an hour before nightfall you can feel no dampness. It is this kind of weather the fanner wants for harvesting his grain ...
