XVI
It is Anna Karenina; and I turn to it now, not for its beauty and
harmony, not because it is one of the most exquisitely toned, shaded,
gradated pieces of portraiture in fiction, but because it happens to
show very clearly how an effect may be lost for want of timely
precaution. Tolstoy undoubtedly damaged a magnificent book by his
refusal to linger over any kind of pictorial introduction. There is
none in this story, the reader will remember. The whole of the book,
very nearly, is scenic, from the opening page to the last; it is a
chain of particular occasions, acted out, talked out, by the crowd of
people concerned. Each of these scenes is outspread before the
spectator, who watches the characters and listens to their dialogue;
there is next to no generalization of the story at any point. On every
page, I think, certainly on all but a very few of the many hundred
pages, the hour and the place are exactly defined. Something is
happening there, or something is being discussed; at any rate it is an
episode singled out for direct vision.
The plan of the book, in fact, is strictly dramatic; it allows no such
freedom as Balzac uses, freedom of exposition and retrospect. Tolstoy
never draws back from the immediate scene, to picture the manner of
life that his people led or to give a foreshortened impression of
their history.
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