'What particularly impressed Tolstoy’s contemporaries was his seemingly superhuman ability to trace Prince Andrei’s thoughts after he loses the ability to communicate with others. “How does Count Tolstoy know [all] this?” asked the novelist Konstantin Leontiev. “He did not rise from the dead and visit us after his resurrection.” And yet he convinces readers that, yes, it could really be just this way.'

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/06/22/death-and-the-hedgehog-tolstoy-as-philosopher/