Volume 9, Number 4 · September 14, 1967
Tolstoy the Great
By Helen Muchnic
Tolstoy and the Novel
by John Bayley
Viking, 316 pp., $6.95
'Les chefs-d'oeuvre sont bête,' wrote Flaubert, 'ils ont la mine tranquille comme les productions mêmes de la nature, comme les grands animaux et les montagnes.' He was not, but might have been, thinking of War and Peace, that vast, silent work, unfathomable and simple, provoking endless questions through the sheer majesty of its being. Tolstoy's simplicity is baffling. 'overpowering,' says Mr. Bayley, 'disconcerting,' because it comes from 'his casual assumption that the world is as he sees it and as he says it is.' Like other nineteenth century Russian writers he is 'impressive' because he 'means what he says,' but he stands apart from all others and from most Western writers in his identity with life, which is so complete as to make us forget he is an artist. It is that effect in his novels which Mr. Bayley calls 'the transparent statement of existence.' This transparency is the peculiar mark of his greatness: he does not wish to puzzle or impress; he is not a virtuoso performer but a creator; his work is not a riddle to be solved but a realm to be explored. He is the center of it, but his egocentricity is of a special kind. Goethe, for example, says Mr. Bayley, 'cared for nothing but himself. Tolstoy was nothing but himself.'
Review, 1997 words
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