War and peace are likely
enough to shape his life for him, whether he belongs to ancient Troy
or to modern Europe; but if it is _his_ story, his and that of his
companions, why do we see them suddenly swept into the background,
among the figures that populate the story of a particular and
memorable war? For that is what happens.
It is now the war, with the generals and the potentates in the
forefront, that is the matter of the story. Alexander and Kutusov,
Napoleon and Murat, become the chief actors, and between them the play
is acted out. In this story the loves and ambitions of the young
generation, which have hitherto been central, are relegated to the
fringe; there are wide tracts in which they do not appear at all.
Again and again Tolstoy forgets them entirely; he has discovered a
fresh idea for the unification of this second book, a theory drummed
into the reader with merciless iteration, desolating many a weary
page. The meaning of the book--and it is extraordinary how Tolstoy's
artistic sense deserts him in expounding it--lies in the relation
between the man of destiny and the forces that he dreams he is
directing; it is a high theme, but Tolstoy cannot leave it to make its
own effect. He, whose power of making a story _tell itself_ is
unsurpassed, is capable of thrusting into his book interminable
chapters of comment and explanation, chapters in the manner of a
controversial pamphlet, lest the argument of his drama should be
missed.
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