t genius are enlightening; here, in Anna Karenina, is one
that calls attention to Tolstoy's characteristic fashion of telling a
story, and declares its remarkable qualities.

The story of Anna, I suggested, is not essentially dramatic. Like the
story 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 life
that rests on many supports, with her husband and her child and her
social possessions; it is broadly based and its stability is assured,
if she chooses to rely on it. But her husband is a dull and pedantic
soul, and before long she chooses to exchange her assured life for
another that rests on one support only, a romantic passion. Her life
with 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 has
thrown away more resources than she could afford. But the point and
reason 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 and
deepening difficulties, difficulties that arise out of her position
and her mood, difficulties of which the only solution is at last her
death. And this story, with the contrasted picture of Levin's
domesticity that completes it, is laid out exactly as Balzac did _not_
lay out his story of Eugenie; it is all presented as action, because
Tolstoy's eye was infallibly drawn, whenever he wrote, to the instant
aspect of his matter, the play itself. He could not generalize it, and
on the whole there was no need for him to do so; for there was
nothing, not the least stir of motive or character, that could not be
expressed in the movement of the play as he handled it. Scene is laid
to scene, therefore, as many as he requires; he had no thought of
stinting himself in that respect. And within the limit of the scene he
was always ready to vary his method, to enter the consciousness of any
or all the characters at will, without troubling himself about the
possible confusion of effect which this might entail. He could afford
the liberty, because the main lines of his structure were so simple
and clear; the inconsistencies of his method are dominated by the
broad scenic regularity of his plan.

Balzac had not the master-hand of Tolstoy in the management of a
dramatic scene, an episode. When it comes to rendering a piece of
action Balzac's art is not particularly felicitous, and if