As soon as that
happens the curve of time is apparent, the story is told. But it must
be _made_ apparent in the book; the shape of the story must give the
reason for telling it, the purpose of the author in chronicling his
facts.
Can we feel that Tolstoy has so represented the image of time, the
part that time plays in his book? The problem was twofold; there was
first of all the steady progression, the accumulation of the years,
to be portrayed, and then the rise and fall of their curve. It is the
double effect of time--its uninterrupted lapse, and the cycle of which
the chosen stretch is a segment. I cannot think there is much doubt
about the answer to my question. Tolstoy has achieved one aspect of
his handful of years with rare and exquisite art, he has troubled
himself very little about the other. Time that evenly and silently
slips away, while the men and women talk and act and forget it--time
that is read in their faces, in their gestures, in the changing
texture of their thought, while they only themselves awake to the
discovery that it is passing when the best of it has gone--time in
this aspect is present in War and Peace more manifestly, perhaps, than
in any other novel that could be named, unless it were another novel
of Tolstoy's. In so far as it is a matter of the _length_ of his
fifteen years, they are there in the story with their whole effect.
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