>>17867688The surface level themes of this would be one hundred percent unrecognizable and a case of presentism, but the causes of it would have been understandable, especially to a man like Jefferson. When I read Brothers Karamazov for the first time I began to appreciate the intelligence of these great men from history because of their ability to accurately explain the root causes of issues that would come to pass in my time as a result of trends they observed in their own world. The Zosima chapters were sometimes strange but then in a few Dostoyevsky would saliently analyze not only the conditions of Russia, and to a lesser extent the rest of world, but also identify the core human and societal issues that informed them. Jefferson would recognize this on a deeper level, I imagine, but he would not at all understand what they were in application. I do genuinely believe he might attempt suicide as a result of this revelation, though maybe I am wrong on that.