The Death of Ivan Ilych

position was far from normal. To save money that summer he filed for a leave of absence and went with Praskovya Fedorovna to stay with her brother in the country. In the country with no professional life, Ivan Ilych felt for the first time not just ennui but a deep, intolerable melancholy, an existential boredom that convinced him life was impossib

“We all die in our time. Why I should begrudge you a little sweat?” Of course what he was saying was that his sweat represented no burden, because it was spent on a dying man, just as he hoped that someone would sweat a little for him when his time came. Apart from the lying, or maybe on account of it, the greatest of Ivan Ilych’s torments was that

There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: “You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.” But dying was also dreadful. The Torzhók peddler woman, in

He would call the footman, either his daughter or his wife might come to help; but everything would be all right, because he wasn’t thinking about It; It was nowhere to be seen. But whenever he moved things by himself his wife would say, “Calm down, let people help you, you’ll hurt yourself again,” and all at once It would shine through his screens

Ivan Ilych walked away, went into his room, laid down and began to think: a kidney, a wandering kidney. He thought back on everything the doctors had told him, how it had come loose, and how it now wandered. By the strength of his imagination he tried to catch that kidney and hold it still, to give it strength; so little was needed, it seemed to hi