Friday, December 30, 2011
Epilogue, Part Two
Dreadful. The whole of Part Two should have been cut, or at the very least whittled way down to a third and published separately. This is not to say I don't think Tolstoy makes some fascinating and important points about free will, freedom, power, history, politicians, and so on, but this part is rather as if Michelangelo, as a final touch to the Pieta, were to have stuck a Bible on a stick onto the Madonna's head.
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To me, the whole epilogue was a big "you probably didn't get what I was trying to say in the novel itself, so here, let me explain to you why historians are all flimflam artists. And then I'll explain it again, and again, and again, because I'm not quite sure how stupid you are." If the epilogue had been a prologue, I would never have made it into the novel itself. And that would have been a loss.
ReplyDeleteAmy, you said it!
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