so you're going that way? Tolstoy hardly ever used metaphors, just functional comparisons. There should be a term for the completely unannounced metaphor, the stealth metaphor--no "is" or "like" but just a thing described, which may seem to us to relate. Ripley's Percieve It Or Not. Tolstoy expressed a mistrustful view of the power of music in The Kreutzer Sonata, all mixed in with a bunch of crazed misogyny. But his stuff is similar to music in that it's hard to pin down why it's good. Seems to have to do with his feel for how time passes. Will we get to see "song"?