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 account
of the given situation, cannot extend its limits. If, therefore, the
situation is to be really made and constituted, the space it may cover
must be tightly packed; the method should be that which most condenses
and concentrates the representation. A great deal is to be expressed
at once, all Anna's past and present, the kind of experience that has
made her and that has brought her to the point she now touches.
Without this her action is arbitrary and meaningless; it is vain to
say that she acted thus and thus unless we perfectly understand what
she was, what she had, what was around her, in the face of her
predicament. Obviously there is no space to lose; and it is enough to
look at Tolstoy's use of it, and then to see how Balzac makes the
situation that _he_ requires--the contrast shows exactly where
Tolstoy's method could not help him. His refusal to shape his story,
or any considerable part of it, as a pictorial impression, his desire
to keep it all in immediate action, prevents him from making the most
of the space at his command; the situation is bound to suffer in
consequence.

For suppose that Balzac had had to deal with the life of Anna. He
would certainly have been in no hurry to plunge into the action, he
would have felt that there was much to treat before the scene was
ready to open. All the initial episodes of Tolstoy's book, from Anna's
first appearance until she drops into Vronsky's arms, Balzac might
well have ignored entirely. He would have been too busy with his
prodigious summary of the history and household of the Karenins to
permit himself a glance in the direction of any particular moment,
until the story could unfold from a situation thoroughly prepared. If
Tolstoy had followed this course we should have lost some enchanting
glimpses, but Balzac would have left not a shadow of uncertainty in
the matter of Anna's disastrous passion. He would have shown precisely
how she was placed in the conditions of her past, how she was exposed
to this new incursion from without, and how it broke up a life which
had satisfied her till then. He would have started his action in due
time with his whole preliminary effect completely rendered; there
would be no more question of it, no possibility that it would prove
inadequate for the sequel. And all this he would have managed, no