He unrolls it all as it occurs, illustrating everything
in action. It is an extraordinary feat, considering the amount of
experience he undertakes to display, with an interweaving of so many
lives and fortunes. And it is still more extraordinary, considering
the nature of the story, which is not really dramatic at all, but a
pictorial contrast, Anna and her affair on one side of it, Levin and
his on the other. The contrast is gradually extended and deepened
through the book; but it leads to no clash between the two, no
opposition, no drama. It is an effect of slow and inevitable change,
drawn out in minute detail through two lives, with all the others that
cluster round each--exactly the kind of matter that nobody but
Tolstoy, with his huge hand, would think of trying to treat
scenically. Tolstoy so treats it, however, and apparently never feels
any desire to break away from the march of his episodes or to fuse his
swarming detail into a general view. It means that he must write a
very long book, with scores and scores of scenes, but he has no
objection to that.
It is only in its plan, of course, that Anna Karenina is strictly
dramatic; its method of execution is much looser, and there indeed
Tolstoy allows himself as much freedom as he pleases. In the novel of
pure drama the point of view is that of the reader alone, as we saw;
there is no "going behind" the characters, no direct revelation of
their thought.
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