The Death of Ivan Ilych (The Art of the Novella)

his life and his family, his social and professional ambitions—each of them might be false. He tried to defend it all to himself, and suddenly the weakness of what he was defending became palpable to him. There was nothing, nothing to defend. But if this is so, he said to himself, and I’m leaving the world knowing I’ve ruined everything I was given

How it happened is impossible to say—because it happened step by step, imperceptibly—but in the third month of Ivan Ilych’s illness his wife, and daughter, and his son also, the servants, his acquaintances, his doctors, and, most of all, he himself, came to realize that all the interest other people had in him was based solely on the fact that he w

From then on Ivan Ilych would sometimes call for Gerasim and have him hold his legs up on his shoulders, and he liked talking with him. Gerasim did this easily and willingly, and with a kindness that moved Ivan Ilych. Health, strength, vitality in all other people offended him; but somehow Gerasim’s strength and vitality were not burdensome, they w

“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

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What to Gaius was the striped leather ball that little Vanya had loved so much? What did Gaius have to do with him kissing his mother’s hand, and had Gaius ever heard the silken rustle of his mother’s dress? Had he rioted over the pirogies at the law school? Had this Gaius ever fallen in love? And could Gaius ever preside over a courtroom the way h

And so, trying to save himself from this state, Ivan Ilych looked for consolation, for other screens to block It out, and there were other screens that for a short time spared him, but they would always not so much collapse as prove transparent, as though It shone through everything and nothing could obscure It.

The example of syllogistic reasoning he had read in Kiezewetter’s Logic—“Gaius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Gaius is mortal”—had always seemed to him true only in relation to Gaius, not to himself. That it was true of this man Gaius, and of men in general, made absolute sense; but he was no Gaius and was not some man in general.

And what was worst of all was that It was demanding his attention not to get him to do anything, but just so that he would look at It, look It right in the face, look at It and, without doing a thing, suffer inexpressible torment.