Such consistency is out of the question, however, even
for Tolstoy, on the great scale of his book; and he never hesitates to
lay bare the mind of any of his people, at any moment, if it seems to
help the force or the lucidity of the scene. And so we speedily grow
familiar with the consciousness of many of them, for Tolstoy's hand is
always as light and quick as it is broad. He catches the passing
thought that is in a man's mind as he speaks; and though it may be no
more than a vague doubt or an idle fancy, it is somehow a note of the
man himself, a sign of his being, an echo of his inner tone. From Anna
and the other figures of the forefront, down to the least of the
population of the background, I could almost say to the wonderful
little red baby that in one of the last chapters is disclosed to Levin
by the triumphant nurse--each of them is a centre of vision, each of
them looks out on a world that is not like the world of the rest, and
we know it. Without any elaborate research Tolstoy expresses the
nature of all their experience; he reveals the dull weight of it in
one man's life or its vibrating interest in another's; he shows how
for one it stirs and opens, with troubling enlargement, how for
another it remains blank and inert. He does so unconsciously, it might
seem, not seeking to construct the world as it appears to Anna or her
husband or her lover, but simply glancing now and then into their mood
of the moment, and indicating what he happens to find there.
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