But to Tolstoy's fable space is essential, with the sense
of the continuity of life, within and without the circle of the book.
He never seems even to know that there can be any difficulty in
providing it; while he writes, it is there.
He is helped, one might imagine, by the simple immensity of his
Russian landscape, filled with the suggestion of distances and
unending levels. The Russian novelist who counts on this effect has
it ready to his hand. If he is to render an impression of space that
widens and widens, a hint is enough; the mere association of his
picture with the thought of those illimitable plains might alone
enlarge it to the utmost of his need. The imagination of distance is
everywhere, not only in a free prospect, where sight is lost, but on
any river-bank, where the course of the stream lies across a
continent, or on the edge of a wood, whence the forest stretches round
the curve of the globe. To isolate a patch of that huge field and to
cut it off from the encompassing air might indeed seem to be the
greater difficulty; how can the eye be held to a point when the very
name of Russia is extent without measure? At our end of Europe, where
space is more precious, life is divided and specialized and
differentiated, but over there such economies are unnecessary; there
is no need to define one's own world and to live within it when there
is a single world large enough for all.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56