It is now a single form, and let us judge the effect of it
while we may. At best we shall have no more time than we certainly
require.
III
A great and brilliant novel, a well-known novel, and at the same time
a large and crowded and unmanageable novel--such will be the book to
consider first. It must be one that is universally admitted to be a
work of genius, signal and conspicuous; I wish to examine its form, I
do not wish to argue its merit; it must be a book which it is
superfluous to praise, but which it will never seem too late to praise
again. It must also be well known, and this narrows the category; the
novel of whose surpassing value every one is convinced may easily fall
outside it; our novel must be one that is not only commended, but
habitually read. And since we are concerned with the difficulty of
controlling the form of a novel, let it be an evident case of the
difficulty, an extreme case on a large scale, where the question
cannot be disguised--a novel of ample scope, covering wide spaces and
many years, long and populous and eventful. The category is reduced
indeed; perhaps it contains one novel only, War and Peace.
Of War and Peace it has never been suggested, I suppose, that Tolstoy
here produced a model of perfect form. It is a panoramic vision of
people and places, a huge expanse in which armies are marshalled; can
one expect of such a book that it should be neatly composed? It is
crowded with life, at whatever point we face it; intensely vivid,
inexhaustibly stirring, the broad impression is made by the big
prodigality of Tolstoy's invention.
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