Masterpieces are dumb.” wrote Flaubert. “They have a tranquil aspect like the very products of nature, like large animals and mountains.” He might have been thinking of War and Peace, that vast, silent work, unfathomable and simple, provoking endless questions through the majesty of its being. Tolstoy’s simplicity is “overpowering,” says the critic Bayley, “disconcerting,” because it comes from “his casual assumption that the world is as he sees it.” Like other nineteenth century Russian writers he is “impressive” because he “means what he says.” But he stands apart from all other and from most Western writers in his identity with life, which is so complete as to make us forget he is an artist. He is the center of his work, but his egocentricity is of a special kind. Goethe, for example, says Bayley, “cared nothing but himself. Tolstoy was nothing but himself.”
For all his varied modes of writing and the multiplicity in his fiction, Tolstoy and his work are of a piece. The famous “conversion” of his middle years, movingly recounted in his Confession, was a culmination of his early spiritual life, not a departure from it. The apparently fundamental changes that led from epic narrative to dogmatic parable, from a joyous, buoyant attitude toward life to pessimism and cynicism, from War and Peace to The Kreutzer Sonata, came from the same restless, impressionable depths of an independent spirit yearning to get at the truth of its experience. “Truth is my hero,” wrote Tolstoy in his youth, reporting the fighting in Sebastopol. Truth remained his hero—his own, not others’ truth. Others were awed by Napoleon, believed that a single man could change the destinies of nations, adhered to meaningless rituals, formed their tastes on established cannons of art. Tolstoy reversed all preconceptions, and in every reversal he overthrew the “system”, the “machine,” the externally ordained belief, the conventional behavior in favor of unsystematic, impulsive life, of inward motivation and the solutions of independent thought.
In his work the artificial and the genuine are always exhibited in dramatic opposition: the supposedly great Napoleon and the truly great, unregarded little Captain Tushin, or Nicholas Rostov’s actual experience in battle and his later account of it. The simple is always pitted against the elaborate. Knowledge gained from observation against assertions of borrowed faiths. Tolstoy’s magical simplicity is a product of these tensions; his work is a record of the questions he put to himself and of the answers he found in his search. The greatest characters of his fiction exemplify this search, and their happiness depends on the measure of their answers. Tolstoy wanted happiness, but only hard-won happiness, that emotional fulfilment and intellectual clarity which could only as the prize of all-consuming effort. He scorned lesser satisfactions.
Which of the following best characterizes the author’s attitude toward Tolstoy?
本篇文章都在赞扬托尔斯泰，歌颂他的作品的伟大，第一段中提到托尔斯泰作品的“impressive”，称 托尔斯泰是一个“artist”。第二段，作者指出托尔斯泰的作品和他本人都是一个整体等，都可以看出作者对 托尔斯泰是真心推崇。
Which of the following best paraphrases Flaubert’s statement quoted in the 1st paragraph?
福楼拜名言的意思主要强调伟大的作品都是无言的，就像自然中的山川河流一样，不会过多解释自 己，只是让人们自己去感受。区别D项，伟大的作品并不是反映宁静和秩序的作品，而是他们本省就是沉 默不言，但是可以引发人们无限思考的作品。
The author quotes from Bayley (Para. 1) to show that ________.
托尔斯泰确实用写作反映他所看到的生活。根据第一段最后一句，Bayley也指出，托尔斯泰确实把 自己放在他的作品的中心，但是他和其他作家相比，却是另外一种方式，比如歌德的作品就是只关心自 己，而托尔斯泰则是从写作反映自己。Bayley对托尔斯泰的评价是正面的，其反映现实的方式和自己息息相 关，但不是以自我为中心。
The author states that Tolstoy’s conversion represented ________.
根据第二段第二句话“The famous ‘conversion’ of his middle years, movingly recounted in his Confession, was a culmination of his early spiritual life...”可知，Confession中著名对话是托尔斯泰早期精神生活的集中反 映。
It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following is true, of War and Peace?
根据第二段“The apparently fundamental changes that led from epic narrative to dogmatic parable...from War and Peace to The Kreutzer Sonata...”可知，托尔斯泰的作品中间经过很多的改变，从史诗性的叙述到教 条寓言，从《战争与和平》到《克莱采奏鸣曲》，因此可知，《战争与和平》是改变前的作品，是早期作 品。