Granted, I haven't read "War and Peace," and of course it's probably better in the original Russian, but that snippet of dialogue, while serviceable and quick to make its point, doesn't seem too "fantastic" to me.
Here's the last couple pages' worth of D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love." I don't usually think of Lawrence as a master of dialogue, but this is, I think, a fantastic ending to a fantastic book, easily one of my Top 10 of all-time (I think I put it in my Top 10 when I made that Top 50 list, I know it'd be this, Sons and Lovers or Lady Chatterley's Lover from him...Sons and Lovers is great and Lady Chatterley's Lover is more important, but I think Women in Love is his best cover to cover work.)
In fact, the ONLY strike I'd have against the 2011 BBC miniseries for this story would be that it leaves this last exchange out, and ends with Gerald's death, more or less...and I've never understood why. Why cut out the reaction by both Ursula and Birkin, their conflicting reactions towards Gerald and towards one another here is arguably the major premise of the book summed up...and it was a bold premise in 1920 and remains an important one to think about in 2011, or 2014.
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Birkin went home again to Gerald. He went into the room, and sat down on the bed. Dead, dead and cold!
Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay
Would stop a hole to keep the wind away.
There was no response from that which had been Gerald. Strange, congealed, icy substance—no more. No more!
Terribly weary, Birkin went away, about the day's business. He did it all quietly, without bother. To rant, to rave, to be tragic, to make situations—it was all too late. Best be quiet, and bear one's soul in patience and in fullness.
But when he went in again, at evening, to look at Gerald between the candles, because of his heart's hunger, suddenly his heart contracted, his own candle all but fell from his hand, as, with a strange whimpering cry, the tears broke out. He sat down in a chair, shaken by a sudden access. Ursula who had followed him, recoiled aghast from him, as he sat with sunken head and body convulsively shaken, making a strange, horrible sound of tears.
'I didn't want it to be like this—I didn't want it to be like this,' he cried to himself. Ursula could but think of the Kaiser's: 'Ich habe as nicht gewollt.' She looked almost with horror on Birkin.
Suddenly he was silent. But he sat with his head dropped, to hide his face. Then furtively he wiped his face with his fingers. Then suddenly he lifted his head, and looked straight at Ursula, with dark, almost vengeful eyes.
'He should have loved me,' he said. 'I offered him.'
She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered:
'What difference would it have made!'
'It would!' he said. 'It would.'
He forgot her, and turned to look at Gerald. With head oddly lifted, like a man who draws his head back from an insult, half haughtily, he watched the cold, mute, material face. It had a bluish cast. It sent a shaft like ice through the heart of the living man. Cold, mute, material! Birkin remembered how once Gerald had clutched his hand, with a warm, momentaneous grip of final love. For one second—then let go again, let go for ever. If he had kept true to that clasp, death would not have mattered. Those who die, and dying still can love, still believe, do not die. They live still in the beloved. Gerald might still have been living in the spirit with Birkin, even after death. He might have lived with his friend, a further life.
But now he was dead, like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice. Birkin looked at the pale fingers, the inert mass. He remembered a dead stallion he had seen: a dead mass of maleness, repugnant. He remembered also the beautiful face of one whom he had loved, and who had died still having the faith to yield to the mystery. That dead face was beautiful, no one could call it cold, mute, material. No one could remember it without gaining faith in the mystery, without the soul's warming with new, deep life-trust.
And Gerald! The denier! He left the heart cold, frozen, hardly able to beat. Gerald's father had looked wistful, to break the heart: but not this last terrible look of cold, mute Matter. Birkin watched and watched.
Ursula stood aside watching the living man stare at the frozen face of the dead man. Both faces were unmoved and unmoving. The candle-flames flickered in the frozen air, in the intense silence.
'Haven't you seen enough?' she said.
He got up.
'It's a bitter thing to me,' he said.
'What—that he's dead?' she said.
His eyes just met hers. He did not answer.
'You've got me,' she said.
He smiled and kissed her.
'If I die,' he said, 'you'll know I haven't left you.'
'And me?' she cried.
'And you won't have left me,' he said. 'We shan't have any need to despair, in death.'
She took hold of his hand.
'But need you despair over Gerald?' she said.
'Yes,' he answered.
They went away. Gerald was taken to England, to be buried. Birkin and Ursula accompanied the body, along with one of Gerald's brothers. It was the Crich brothers and sisters who insisted on the burial in England. Birkin wanted to leave the dead man in the Alps, near the snow. But the family was strident, loudly insistent.
Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of herself. Ursula stayed at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. They were both very quiet.
'Did you need Gerald?' she asked one evening.
'Yes,' he said.
'Aren't I enough for you?' she asked.
'No,' he said. 'You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.'
'Why aren't I enough?' she said. 'You are enough for me. I don't want anybody else but you. Why isn't it the same with you?'
'Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,' he said.
'I don't believe it,' she said. 'It's an obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.'
'Well—' he said.
'You can't have two kinds of love. Why should you!'
It seems as if I can't,' he said. 'Yet I wanted it.'
'You can't have it, because it's false, impossible,' she said.
'I don't believe that,' he answered.
Maybe I'm being over sensitive...
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