War and Peace, the drama of that ancient alternation, is now the
subject out of which the form of the book is to grow. Not seldom, and
more frequently as the book advances, the story takes this new and
contradictory alignment. The centre shifts from the general play of
life, neither national nor historic, and plants itself in the field of
racial conflict, typified by that "sheep-worry of Europe" which
followed the French Revolution. The young people immediately change
their meaning. They are no longer there for their own sake, guardians
of the torch for their hour. They are re-disposed, partially and
fitfully, in another relation; they are made to figure as creatures of
the Russian scene, at the impact of East and West in the Napoleonic
clash.
It is a mighty antinomy indeed, on a scale adapted to Tolstoy's giant
imagination. With one hand he takes up the largest subject in the
world, the story to which all other human stories are subordinate; and
not content with this, in the other hand he produces the drama of a
great historic collision, for which a scene is set with no less
prodigious a gesture. And there is not a sign in the book to show that
he knew what he was doing; apparently he was quite unconscious that he
was writing two novels at once. Such an oversight is not peculiar to
men of genius, I dare say; the least of us is capable of the feat,
many of us are seen to practise it.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43