ideas. This is a defect of several of the most notable types in War and Peace and in Anna Karenin; for example, Prince Andrei, Pierre Besoukhov, Levine, and others. The fault was less grave, however, in these earlier books; for the characters, by force of their circumstances and their age, were nearer to the author’s actual state of mind. But in Resurrection the author places in the body of an epicurean of thirty-five the disembodied soul of an old man of seventy. I will not say that the moral crisis through which Nekhludov is supposed to pass is absolutely untrue and impossible; nor even that it could not be brought about so suddenly.[1] But there is nothing in the temperament, the character, the previous life of the man as Tolstoy depicts him, to announce or explain this crisis; and once it has commenced nothing interrupts it. Tolstoy has, it is true, with profound observation, represented the impure alloy which at the outset is mingled with the thoughts of sacrifice; the tears of self-pity and admiration; and, later, the horror and repugnance which seize upon Nekhludov when he is brought face to face with reality. But his resolution never flinches. This crisis has nothing in common with his previous crises, violent
- ↑ “Men carry in them the germ of all the human qualities, and they manifest now one, now another, so that they often appear to be not themselves; that is, themselves as they habitually appear. Among some these changes are more rare; among others more rapid. To the second class of men belongs Nekhludov. Under the influence of various physical or moral causes sudden and complete changes are incessantly being produced within him.” (Resurrection.)
