Tolstoy, with his power of making an eloquent event
out of nothing at all, needs no dramatic apparatus to set off the
effect of the irruption. Two people, an elderly man of the world and a
scheming hostess, are talking together, the room fills, a young man
enters; or in another sociable assembly there is a shriek and a rush,
and the children of the house charge into the circle; that is quite
enough for Tolstoy, his drama of youth and age opens immediately with
the right impression. The story is in movement without delay; there
are a few glimpses of this kind, and then the scene is ready, the
action may go forward; everything is attuned for the effect it is to
make.
And at the other end of the book, after many hundreds of pages, the
story is brought to a full close in an episode which gathers up all
the threads and winds them together. The youths and maidens are now
the parents of another riotous brood. Not one of them has ended where
he or she expected to end, but their lives have taken a certain shape,
and it is unmistakable that this shape is final. Nothing more will
happen to them which an onlooker cannot easily foretell. They have
settled down upon their lines, and very comfortable and very estimable
lines on the whole, and there may be many years of prosperity before
them; but they no longer possess the future that was sparkling with
possibility a few years ago.
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