If a novel could really be as
large as life, Tolstoy could easily fill it; his great masterful reach
never seems near its limit; he is always ready to annex another and
yet another tract of life, he is only restrained by the mere necessity
of bringing a novel somewhere to an end. And then, too, this mighty
command of spaces and masses is only half his power. He spreads
further than any one else, but he also touches the detail of the
scene, the single episode, the fine shade of character, with exquisite
lightness and precision. Nobody surpasses, in some ways nobody
approaches, the easy authority with which he handles the matter
immediately before him at the moment, a roomful of people, the
brilliance of youth, spring sunshine in a forest, a boy on a horse;
whatever his shifting panorama brings into view, he makes of it an
image of beauty and truth that is final, complete, unqualified. Before
the profusion of War and Peace the question of its general form is
scarcely raised. It is enough that such a world should have been
pictured; it is idle to look for proportion and design in a book that
contains a world.
But for this very reason, that there is so much in the book to
distract attention from its form, it is particularly interesting to
ask how it is made. The doubt, the obvious perplexity, is a challenge
to the exploring eye. It may well be that effective composition on
such a scale is impossible, but it is not so easy to say exactly where
Tolstoy fails.
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