Carlo Levi Critical Essay | Critical Review by Richard Match

Critical Review by Richard Match

SOURCE: Match, Richard. “The Captive Instant.” New Republic 125 (30 July 1951): 21.

In the following review, Match derides the lack of characterization in The Watch.

On page 68 of The Watch, Carlo Levi (speaking through one of his characters) expresses an opinion about Tolstoy. I quote it here because I think it tells what Levi himself was trying to do in The Watch.

“Tolstoy,” says Levi, “was not a novelist. The huge machines that he used carried him who knows where, but his true value was a different one. … He is the poet of the unique instant, which cannot last nor repeat itself nor change … outside of time, outside of every novel … fixed and intense … beyond story-telling. … He's like the great impressionist painters. And like the impressionists, he doesn't need to tell a story or paint historical pictures. All he needs to do is...
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