her, but she continues to cast a spell over the reader, even as she fascinates her victims.
There exists a mysterious Indian poison, the curare, once dear to the vivisectionist, and which possesses the terrible power of dissociating the sensory nerves and the motor nerves. The scientist who curarises a dog can torture him with impunity, for the dog feels the pain but cannot stir a muscle to express his sensations. I often think of this weird poison and of the methods of the physiologist when I read the novels of Tolstoy, and when I observe this complete severance and dissociation of the artist and the moralist. I think of him as the anatomist of the soul, who, unlike the professor of anatomy of Rembrandt, is dissecting living bodies and bleeding hearts, whilst all the time he himself remains unmoved, serene, partial, and absorbed in his creations.
It is by virtue of that artistic detachment, that absolute truthfulness and sincerity, as well as by virtue of this power of universal sympathy, it is as the supreme anatomist of the soul, that Tolstoy occupies his unique position in world literature. It is those qualities which place "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" above any novels that have ever been written.
