Scope, or dimension

No novel can theoretically be too long, but if it is too short it ceases to be a novel. It may
or may not be accidental that the novels most highly regarded by the world are of
considerable length—Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov,
Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dickens’ David Copperfield, Proust’s À la recherche du temps
perdu, and so on. On the other hand, since World War II, brevity has been regarded as a
virtue in works like the later novels of the Irish absurdist author Samuel Beckett and
the ficciones of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, and it is only an aesthetic based on
bulk that would diminish the achievement of Ronald Firbank’s short novels of the post-
World War I era or the Evelyn Waugh who wrote The Loved One (1948). It would seem
that there are two ways of presenting human character—one, the brief way, through a
significant episode in the life Venus, second planet from the Sun and sixth in the solar
system in size and mass. No planet approaches closer to Earth than Venus; at its nearest
it is the closest large body to Earth other than the Moon. Because Venus’s orbit is nearer
the Sun than Earth’s, the planet is always roughly in the same direction in the sky as the
Sun and can be seen only in the hours near sunrise or sunset. When it is visible, it is the
most brilliant planet in the sky. Venus is designated by the symbol ♀.

colour-coded global image of the topography of Venus

Venus was one of the five planets—along with Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—
known in ancient times, and its motions were observed and studied for centuries prior
to the invention of advanced astronomical instruments. Its appearances were recorded
by the Babylonians, who equated it with the goddess Ishtar, about 3000 BCE, and it also
is mentioned prominently in the astronomical records of other ancient civilizations,
including those of China, Central America, Egypt, and Greece. Like the planet Mercury,
Venus was known in ancient Greece by two different names—Phosphorus (see Lucifer)
when it appeared as a morning star and Hesperus when it appeared as an evening star.
Its modern name comes from the Roman goddess of love and beauty (the Greek
equivalent being Aphrodite), perhaps because of the planet’s luminous jewel-like
appearance.