He has seen something, for the first time, in what
he now feels to be its true light, and he sees it "as clearly as he saw
the palace, the sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats and the
Stock Exchange. And just as on this northern summer night there was no
restful darkness on the earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from
an invisible source, so in Nekhludoff's soul there was no longer the
restful darkness, ignorance." The chapter is profoundly impressive; it
is one of those chapters which no one but Tolstoi has ever written.
Imagine it transposed to the stage, if that were possible, and the
inevitable disappearance of everything that gives it meaning!
In Tolstoi the story never exists for its own sake, but for the sake of
a very definite moral idea. Even in his later novels Tolstoi is not a
preacher; he gives us an interpretation of life, not a theorising about
life. But, to him, the moral idea is almost everything, and (what is of
more consequence) it gives a great part of its value to his "realism" of
prisons and brothels and police courts. In all forms of art, the point
of view is of more importance than the subject-matter.
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