The Craft of Fiction

by Percy Lubbock

  XVI

  It is Anna Karenina; and I turn to it now, not for its beauty andharmony, not because it is one of the most exquisitely toned, shaded,gradated pieces of portraiture in fiction, but because it happens toshow very clearly how an effect may be lost for want of timelyprecaution. Tolstoy undoubtedly damaged a magnificent book by hisrefusal to linger over any kind of pictorial introduction. There isnone 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 achain of particular occasions, acted out, talked out, by the crowd ofpeople concerned. Each of these scenes is outspread before thespectator, who watches the characters and listens to their dialogue;there is next to no generalization of the story at any point. On everypage, I think, certainly on all but a very few of the many hundredpages, the hour and the place are exactly defined. Something ishappening there, or something is being discussed; at any rate it is anepisode singled out for direct vision.

  The plan of the book, in fact, is strictly dramatic; it allows no suchfreedom as Balzac uses, freedom of exposition and retrospect. Tolstoynever draws back from the immediate scene, to picture the manner oflife that his people led or to give a foreshortened impression oftheir history. He unrolls it all as it occurs, illustrating everythingin action. It is an extraordinary feat, considering the amount ofexperience he undertakes to display, with an interweaving of so manylives and fortunes. And it is still more extraordinary, consideringthe nature of the story, which is not really dramatic at all, but apictorial contrast, Anna and her affair on one side of it, Levin andhis on the other. The contrast is gradually extended and deepenedthrough the book; but it leads to no clash between the two, noopposition, no drama. It is an effect of slow and inevitable change,drawn out in minute detail through two lives, with all the others thatcluster round each--exactly the kind of matter that nobody butTolstoy, with his huge hand, would think of trying to treatscenically. Tolstoy so treats it, however, and apparently never feelsany desire to break away from the march of his episodes or to fuse hisswarming detail into a general view. It means that he must write avery long book, with scores and scores of scenes, but he has noobjection to that.

  It is only in its plan, of course, that Anna Karenina is strictlydramatic; its method of execution is much looser, and there indeedTolstoy allows himself as much freedom as he pleases. In the novel ofpure drama the point of view is that of the reader alone, as we saw;there is no "going behind" the characters, no direct revelation oftheir thought. Such consistency is out of the question, however, evenfor Tolstoy, on the great scale of his book; and he never hesitates tolay bare the mind of any of his people, at any moment, if it seems tohelp the force or the lucidity of the scene. And so we speedily growfamiliar with the consciousness of many of them, for Tolstoy's hand isalways as light and quick as it is broad. He catches the passingthought that is in a man's mind as he speaks; and though it may be nomore than a vague doubt or an idle fancy, it is somehow a note of theman himself, a sign of his being, an echo of his inner tone. From Annaand the other figures of the forefront, down to the least of thepopulation of the background, I could almost say to the wonderfullittle red baby that in one of the last chapters is disclosed to Levinby the triumphant nurse--each of them is a centre of vision, each ofthem looks out on a world that is not like the world of the rest, andwe know it. Without any elaborate research Tolstoy expresses thenature of all their experience; he reveals the dull weight of it inone man's life or its vibrating interest in another's; he shows howfor one it stirs and opens, with troubling enlargement, how foranother it remains blank and inert. He does so unconsciously, it mightseem, not seeking to construct the world as it appears to Anna or herhusband or her lover, but simply glancing now and then into their moodof the moment, and indicating what he happens to find there. Yet itis enough, and each of them is soon a human being whose privacy weshare. They are actors moving upon a visible scene, watched from thereader's point of view; but they are also sentient lives, understoodfrom within.

  Here, then, is a mixed method which enables Tolstoy to deal with hisimmense subject on the lines of drama. He can follow its chronologystep by step, at an even pace throughout, without ever interruptingthe rhythm for that shift of the point of view--away from theimmediate scene to a more commanding height--which another writerwould certainly have found to be necessary sooner or later. He cancreate a character in so few words--he can make the manner of a man'sor a woman's thought so quickly intelligible--that even though hisstory is crowded and over-crowded with people he can render them all,so to speak, by the way, give them all their due without any study ofthem outside the passing episode. So he can, at least, in general; forin Anna Karenina, as I said, his method seems to break down veryconspicuously at a certain juncture. But before I come to that, Iwould dwell further upon this peculiar skill of Tolstoy's, thisfacility which explains, I think, the curious flaw in his beautifulnovel. He would appear to have trusted his method too far, trusted itnot only to carry him through the development and the climax of hisstory, but also to constitute his _donnee_, his prime situation in thebeginning. This was to throw too much upon it, and it is criticallyof high interest to see where it failed, and why. The miscalculationsof a great genius are enlightening; here, in Anna Karenina, is onethat calls attention to Tolstoy's characteristic fashion of telling astory, and declares its remarkable qualities.

  The story of Anna, I suggested, is not essentially dramatic. Like thestory of Emma Bovary or of Eugenie Grandet, it is a picture outspread,an impression of life, rather than an action. Anna at first has a lifethat rests on many supports, with her husband and her child and hersocial possessions; it is broadly based and its stability is assured,if she chooses to rely on it. But her husband is a dull and pedanticsoul, and before long she chooses to exchange her assured life foranother that rests on one support only, a romantic passion. Her lifewith Vronsky has no other security, and in process of time it fails.Its gradual failure is her story--the losing battle of a woman who hasthrown away more resources than she could afford. But the point andreason of the book is not in the dramatic question--what will happen,will Anna lose or win? It is in the picture of her gathering anddeepening difficulties, difficulties that arise out of her positionand her mood, difficulties of which the only solution is at last herdeath. And this story, with the contrasted picture of Levin'sdomesticity that completes it, is laid out exactly as Balzac did _not_lay out his story of Eugenie; it is all presented as action, becauseTolstoy's eye was infallibly drawn, whenever he wrote, to the instantaspect of his matter, the play itself. He could not generalize it, andon the whole there was no need for him to do so; for there wasnothing, not the least stir of motive or character, that could not beexpressed in the movement of the play as he handled it. Scene is laidto scene, therefore, as many as he requires; he had no thought ofstinting himself in that respect. And within the limit of the scene hewas always ready to vary his method, to enter the consciousness of anyor all the characters at will, without troubling himself about thepossible confusion of effect which this might entail. He could affordthe liberty, because the main lines of his structure were so simpleand clear; the inconsistencies of his method are dominated by thebroad scenic regularity of his plan.

  Balzac had not the master-hand of Tolstoy in the management of adramatic scene, an episode. When it comes to rendering a piece ofaction Balzac's art is not particularly felicitous, and if we onlybecame acquainted with his people while they are talking and acting, Ithink they might often seem rather heavy and wooden, harsh of speechand gesture. Balzac's _general_ knowledge of them, and his power ofoffering an impression of what he knows--these are so great that hispeople are alive before they begin to act, alive with an energy thatis all-sufficient. Tolstoy's grasp of a human being's whole existence,of everything that goes to make it, is not as capacious as Balzac's;but on the other hand he can create a living scene, exquisitely andeasily expressive, out of anything whatever, the lightest trifle of anincident. If he describes how a child l
ingered at the foot of thestairs, teasing an old servant, or how a peasant-woman stood in adoorway, laughing and calling to the men at work in the farmyard, thething becomes a poetic event; in half a page he makes an unforgettablescene. It suddenly glows and flushes, and its effect in the story isprofound. A passing glimpse of this kind is caught, say, by Anna inher hungry desperation, by Levin as he wanders and speculates; andimmediately their experience is the fuller by an eloquent memory. Thevividness of the small scene becomes a part of them, for us who read;it is something added to our impression of their reality. And so thehalf-page is not a diversion or an interlude; it speeds the story byaugmenting the tone and the value of the lives that we are watching.It happens again and again; that is Tolstoy's way of creating a life,of raising it to its full power by a gradual process of enrichment,till Anna or Levin is at length a complete being, intimatelyunderstood, ready for the climax of the tale.

  But of course it takes time, and it chanced that this deliberationmade a special difficulty in the case of Anna's story. As for Levin,it was easy to give him ample play; he could be left to emerge and toassume his place in the book by leisurely degrees, for it is not untilmuch has passed that his full power is needed. Meanwhile he is afigure in the crowd, a shy and disappointed suitor, unobtrusivelysympathetic, and there are long opportunities of seeing more of him inhis country solitude. Later on, when his fortunes come to the frontwith his marriage, he has shown what he is; he steps fully fashionedinto the drama. With Anna it is very different; her story allows nosuch pause, for a growing knowledge of the manner of woman she may be.She is at once to the front of the book; the situation out of whichthe whole novel develops is made by a particular crisis in her life.She meets and falls in love with Vronsky--that is the crisis fromwhich the rest of her story proceeds; it is the beginning of theaction, the subject of the earliest chapters. And the difficulty liesin this, that she must be represented upon such a critical height ofemotion before there is time, by Tolstoy's method, to create the righteffect for her and to make her impulse really intelligible. For thereader it is all too abrupt, the step by which she abandons her pastand flings herself upon her tragic adventure. It is impossible tomeasure her passion and her resolution, because she herself is stillincompletely rendered. She has appeared in a few charming scenes, afinished and graceful figure, but that is not enough. If she is sosoon to be seen at this pitch of exaltation, it is essential that herlife should be fully shared by the onlooker; but as Tolstoy has toldthe story, Anna is in the midst of her crisis and has passed itbefore it is possible to know her life clearly from within. Alive andbeautiful she is from the very first moment of her appearance;Tolstoy's art is much too sure to miss the right effect, so far as itgoes. And if her story were such that it involved her in no greatadventure at the start--if she could pass from scene to scene, likeLevin, quietly revealing herself--Tolstoy's method would be perfect.But as it is, there is no adequate preparation; Anna is made to act asa deeply stirred and agitated woman before she has the _value_ forsuch emotions. She has not yet become a presence familiar enough, andthere is no means of gauging the force of the storm that is seen toshake her.

  It is a flaw in the book which has often been noticed, and it is aflaw which Tolstoy could hardly have avoided, if he was determined tohold to his scenic plan. Given his reluctance to leave the actuallypresent occasion, from the first page onwards, from the moment Anna'serring brother wakes to his own domestic troubles at the opening ofthe book, there is not room for the due creation of Anna's life. Herturning-point must be reached without delay, it cannot be deferred,for it is there that the development of the book begins. All thatprecedes her union with Vronsky is nothing but the opening stage, thematter that must be displayed before the story can begin to expand.The story, as we have seen, is in the picture of Anna's life _after_her critical choice, so that the first part of the book, the accountof the given situation, cannot extend its limits. If, therefore, thesituation is to be really made and constituted, the space it may covermust be tightly packed; the method should be that which most condensesand concentrates the representation. A great deal is to be expressedat once, all Anna's past and present, the kind of experience that hasmade her and that has brought her to the point she now touches.Without this her action is arbitrary and meaningless; it is vain tosay that she acted thus and thus unless we perfectly understand whatshe was, what she had, what was around her, in the face of herpredicament. Obviously there is no space to lose; and it is enough tolook at Tolstoy's use of it, and then to see how Balzac makes thesituation that _he_ requires--the contrast shows exactly whereTolstoy's method could not help him. His refusal to shape his story,or any considerable part of it, as a pictorial impression, his desireto keep it all in immediate action, prevents him from making the mostof the space at his command; the situation is bound to suffer inconsequence.

  For suppose that Balzac had had to deal with the life of Anna. Hewould certainly have been in no hurry to plunge into the action, hewould have felt that there was much to treat before the scene wasready to open. All the initial episodes of Tolstoy's book, from Anna'sfirst appearance until she drops into Vronsky's arms, Balzac mightwell have ignored entirely. He would have been too busy with hisprodigious summary of the history and household of the Karenins topermit himself a glance in the direction of any particular moment,until the story could unfold from a situation thoroughly prepared. IfTolstoy had followed this course we should have lost some enchantingglimpses, but Balzac would have left not a shadow of uncertainty inthe matter of Anna's disastrous passion. He would have shown preciselyhow she was placed in the conditions of her past, how she was exposedto this new incursion from without, and how it broke up a life whichhad satisfied her till then. He would have started his action in duetime with his whole preliminary effect completely rendered; therewould be no more question of it, no possibility that it would proveinadequate for the sequel. And all this he would have managed, nodoubt, in fewer pages than Tolstoy needs for the beautiful scenes ofhis earlier chapters, scenes which make a perfect impression of Annaand her circle as an onlooker might happen to see them, but which failto give the onlooker the kind of intimacy that is needed. Later on,indeed, her life is penetrated to the depths; but then it is too lateto save the effect of the beginning. To the very end Anna is awonderful woman whose early history has never been fully explained.The facts are clear, of course, and there is nothing impossible aboutthem; but her passion for this man, the grand event of her life, hasto be assumed on the word of the author. All that he really showed,to start with, was a slight, swift love-story, which might have endedas easily as it began.

  The method of the book, in short, does not arise out of the subject;in treating it Tolstoy simply used the method that was congenial tohim, without regarding the story that he had to tell. He began it asthough Anna's break with her past was the climax to which the storywas to mount, whereas it is really the point from which the story setsout for its true climax in her final catastrophe. And so the firstpart of the book is neither one thing nor the other; it is not anindependent drama, for it cannot reach its height through all thenecessary sweep of development; and on the other hand it is not asufficient preparation for the great picture of inevitable disasterwhich is to follow. Tolstoy doubtless counted on his power--and notwithout reason, for it is amazing--to call people into life by meansof a few luminous episodes; he knew he could make a living creature ofAnna by bringing her into view in half a dozen scenes. She descends,accordingly, upon her brother's agitated household like a beneficentangel, she shines resplendent at some social function, she meetsVronsky, she talks to her husband; and Tolstoy is right, she becomes areal and exquisite being forthwith. But he did not see how much morewas needed than a simple personal impression of her, in view of allthat is to come. Not she only, but her world, the world as she seesit, her past as it affects her--this too is demanded, and for this hemakes no provision. It is never really shown how she was placed in herlife, and what it meant to her; and her flare of passion has
consequently no importance, no fateful bigness. There is not enough ofher, as yet, for such a crisis.

  It is not because Vronsky seems an inadequate object of her passion;though it is true that with the figure of Vronsky Tolstoy wascuriously unsuccessful. Vronsky was his one failure--there is surelyno other in all his gallery to match it. The spoilt child of theworld, but a friendly soul, and a romantic and a patient lover--and atype fashioned by conditions that Tolstoy, of course, knew byheart--why should Tolstoy manage to make so little of him? It isunfortunate, for when Anna is stirred by the sight of him and hisall-conquering speciosity, any reader is sure to protest. Tolstoyshould have created Vronsky with a more certain touch before heallowed him to cause such a disturbance. But this is a minor matter,and it would count for little if the figure of Anna were all it shouldbe. Vronsky's importance in the story is his importance to Anna, andher view of him is a part of _her_; and he might be left lightlytreated on his own account, the author might be content to indicatehim rather summarily, so long as Anna had full attention. It returnsupon that again; if Anna's own life were really fashioned, Vronsky'seffect would be _there_, and the independent effect he happens tomake, or to fail to make, on the reader would be an irrelevant affair.Tolstoy's vital failure is not with him, but with her, in the preludeof his book.

  It may be that there is something of the same kind to be seen inanother of his novels, in Resurrection, though Resurrection is morelike a fragment of an epic than a novel. It cannot be said that inthat tremendous book Tolstoy pictured the rending of a man's soul bysudden enlightenment, striking in upon him unexpectedly, against hiswill, and destroying his established life--and that is apparently thesubject in the author's mind. It is the woman, the accidental womanthrough whom the stroke is delivered, who is actually in the middle ofthe book; it is _her_ epic much rather than the man's, and Tolstoy didnot succeed in placing him where he clearly meant him to be. The man'sconversion from the selfishness of his commonplace prosperity is notmuch more than a fact assumed at the beginning of the story. Ithappens, Tolstoy says it happens, and the man's life is changed; andthereafter the sombre epic proceeds. But the unrolling of the storyhas no bearing upon the revolution wrought in the man; that iscomplete, as soon as he flings over his past and follows the convoy ofprisoners into Siberia, and the succession of strange scenes hasnothing more to accomplish in him. The man is the mirror of thescenes, his own drama is finished. And if Tolstoy intended to writethe drama of a soul, all this presentation of the deadly journey intoexile, given with the full force of his genius, is superfluous; hissubject lay further back. But Resurrection, no doubt, _is_ a fragment,a wonderful shifting of scenes that never reached a conclusion; and itis not to be criticized as a book in which Tolstoy tried and failed tocarry out his purpose. I only mention it because it seems toillustrate, like Anna Karenina, his instinctive evasion of the matterthat could not be thrown into straightforward scenic form, the form inwhich his imagination was evidently happiest. His great example,therefore, is complementary to that of Balzac, whose genius looked inthe other direction, who was always drawn to the general picturerather than to the particular scene. And with these two illustriousnames I reach the end of the argument I have tried to follow from bookto book, and it is time to gather up the threads.