In War and Peace, as it seems to me, the story suffers
twice over for the imperfection of the form. It is damaged, in the
first place, by the importation of another and an irrelevant
story--damaged because it so loses the sharp and clear relief that it
would have if it stood alone. Whether the story was to be the drama of
youth and age, or the drama of war and peace, in either case it would
have been incomparably more impressive if _all_ the great wealth of
the material had been used for its purpose, all brought into one
design. And furthermore, in either case again, the story is
incomplete; neither of them is finished, neither of them is given its
full development, for all the size of the book. But to this point, at
least in relation to one of the two, I shall return directly.
Tolstoy's novel is wasteful of its subject; that is the whole
objection to its loose, unstructural form. Criticism bases its
conclusion upon nothing whatever but the injury done to the story, the
loss of its full potential value. Is there so much that is good in War
and Peace that its inadequate grasp of a great theme is easily
forgotten? It is not only easily forgotten, it is scarcely noticed--on
a first reading of the book; I speak at least for one reader. But with
every return to it the book that _might_ have been is more insistent;
it obtrudes more plainly, each time, interfering with the book that
is.
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