The Death of Ivan Ilyich — by Leo Tostoy

6

Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying, and was in continual despair.

In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying, but he could not get used to the idea, and, more than that, he simply did not and could not take it in.

All his life the example of a syllogism he had learned in Kiesewetter’s logic27—Caius is a man; men are mortal; therefore Caius is mortal—seemed to him to be correct only in relation to Caius and in no way to himself. There was Caius the man, man in general, and that was quite fair—but he was not Caius and not man in general. He was always quite, quite different from all other beings. He was little Vanya with Mamma, with Papa, with Mitya and Volodya and his toys and the coachman and his nanny and then with Katenka28, with all the joys and sorrows and passions of childhood, youth, and adolescence. Did Caius know the smell of the striped leather ball Vanya loved so much? Did Caius kiss his mother’s hand like him, and did the silk pleats of his mother’s dress rustle like that for Caius? Did Caius clamor for pasties at school? Did Caius ever fall in love like him? Could Caius chair a session like him?

Naturally Caius was mortal, and it was right for him to die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts—for me it is another matter. And it cannot be right for me to die. That would be too terrible.

That was what he felt.

“If I also had to die, like Caius, then I would have known it, my inner voice would have told me so. But there was nothing of the sort inside me. Both I and all my friends—we understood that for us it was nothing like it was for Caius. And now look!” he said to himself. “It can’t be. It can’t be, but it is. How can it be? How can I understand it?”

He could not comprehend it, and tried to drive the thought away as something mendacious, mistaken, morbid, crowding it out with different, acceptable, and healthy thoughts. But the thought was not only a thought, it was like a reality that returned to stand before him.

And he called up other thoughts in turn to take the place of this thought, hoping to find support from them. He tried to return to his old habits of mind, which had screened him in the past from the thought of death. But, strange to say, everything that had screened him in the past, obscuring and abolishing the awareness of death, could not do so any longer. In these days Ivan Ilyich spent most of his time trying to reestablish the old train of thoughts that had once screened him from death. Sometimes he said to himself, “I’ll get back to work; after all, that was my life.” And he went to court, shaking off any doubts; he chatted with his friends and took his place as he always had done, a trifle absentmindedly, casting a thoughtful glance over the crowd and, bracing himself with both emaciated hands on the arms of his chair, inclined his head as usual to his colleague, moving matters along in a whisper—and then, abruptly raising his eyes and seating himself straight, pronounced the familiar words that opened the proceedings. But suddenly the pain in his side, not paying the least attention to the stage reached in the hearing, started its business, sucking away at him. Ivan Ilyich listened to the proceedings, beating off the thought of it but it held its own. It came up and stood right in front of him, and looked at him, and he froze, the light died out of his eyes, and once more he started asking himself, “Surely it can’t be the only truth?” And his colleagues and subordinates watched with regret and surprise as he, such an acute and dazzling judge, got confused and made mistakes. He would shake himself, trying to collect his thoughts and carry the proceedings to a conclusion somehow or other. He drove home in the sad knowledge that his court duties could no longer conceal from him the thing he wanted to conceal—his court duties could not free him from it. And what was worst of all was that it drew his attention to itself, not for him to do something different, but only for him to look it straight in the eyes, look at it and, having nothing else to do, suffer unspeakably.

To save himself from this situation, Ivan Ilyich searched for other consolations, other screens—and other screens were found and for a short time seemed to save him. But soon enough they did not quite fall to pieces so much as wear thin, as though it penetrated everything, and nothing could shield him from its glare.

In these days he went into the drawing room that he had furnished—the drawing room where he fell, and for whose décor (so the venomous absurdity of it struck him) he had sacrificed his life. He knew his illness began with that bruise. Coming into the drawing room he noticed that the lacquered table had been scratched by something and, searching for a cause, found it in the album with the brass openwork cover that was twisted at one corner. He picked up the album, a costly one he had lovingly arranged himself, vexed by the thoughtlessness of his daughter and her friends—one picture torn, others in disarray—and painstakingly put it in order, bending back the brass corner.

Then it occurred to him to move the whole établissement29 with the photograph albums into a different corner where the flowers stood. He called the footman; either his wife or daughter came to help, they disagreed and contradicted each other; he argued and grew cross; but everything was all right, because he was not remembering it—it could not be seen.

But then, as he was moving everything himself, his wife happened to say, “Leave it, the servants can do that; you’ll only do yourself another injury,” and suddenly it flickered through the screen, he caught sight of it. It was only a glimpse; he still hoped it would withdraw from view, but involuntarily he attended to his side—and there it is, the same thing still crouching there, gnawing away. He can no longer forget anything, and it is distinctly staring at him from behind the flowers. What is the point of it all?

“And it’s true that I lost my life climbing up to this curtain, like a man on the barricades. Can that really be true? How terrible and how stupid! It can’t be! It can’t be, and it is.”

He went back to his study to lie down. He was alone with it again. Face-to-face with it, and nothing to do. Just look at it and grow cold.