Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker today, quoting
the late Clive James's description of …
" … an adaptation of 'War and Peace': 'Dead ground is
the territory you can’t judge the extent of until you approach it:
seen from a distance, it is unseen. Almost uniquely amongst
imagined countries, Tolstoy’s psychological landscape is
without dead ground— the entire vista of human experience is
lit up with an equal, shadowless intensity, so that separateness
and clarity continue even to the horizon.' "