Dear Mr. Tolstoy

Dear,
Mr. Tolstoy

I don't think any author shaped me more, outside of the Bible, than you.

I had taken from your work, that the movements of history are inevitable, and that great men are not made, but rather are the mouthpiece of an entire civilization.

Conversely, as Napoleon snuffed his tobacco, I realized I did not want to be him. I did not want to be the mouthpiece of a movement. Rather, I wanted to be the mouthpiece for my own, individual values. Those I have been taught by the Church and Jesus Christ.

I must say, your moment of clarity with regard to finding God, portrayed in Levin in Anna Karenina, is the same I had. The fact that life is meaningless without God, but I could never accept this life were meaningless. Not with all its beauty, and the power of love.

Anna was a flawless character. I find her realistic, and much like a woman who would do those things. I once told my aunt, after getting the book, that Anna was the good guy. I don't think you wrote good or bad guys, but rather just wrote true to life.

The way you get inside of a character's mind---often understanding there isn't much mind to get into with some of them---it is fascinating to me, how you have that insight.
 
When I read Jules Verne, whom perhaps you have read at some point, I don't know... I see the antithetical to our way of thinking. Though your way is not my way. It is just a large, sweeping breath over all things under the heavens. We must explore it in our thought life, whatever is in our power to understand.

Yet, Jules Verne's characters were so in the moment. There was no internal thought life, no real thought at all, yet in them was the knowledge of a certain man's way. Of experiencing, as recently a man told me to read Ned Land and the Dugongs again. So I did. He said it was realistic. And sure enough, Ned Land was realistic.

Yet in that moment, I understood you understood the person who thinks like Jules Verne. In your characters, you express their thoughts--- Somehow you understand them. To a person like me, I might look upon them and think, "Where are their thoughts?" Yet, their thoughts are in their experiences. Wholly in the moment. Drenched in that challenge with the dugong.

It is not a blessing of mine anymore to be so filled with life. For, I am awakened to my genius. A fertile imagination I had at one point, where all I could do is imagine stories and epic confrontations of war. Now, my mind is fertile and filled with the literature of the past. The characters and great understandings of other human beings.

It is not that people cannot think-- It is, as you lay out, they choose not to think. They involve themselves in the moment, like Ned Land, and are so free of thought, yet governed by their whims and emotions. And you understand that, while I have a difficult time understanding it. And perhaps so do you, yet you have found, what is perhaps, a Rosetta Stone for unlocking other minds.