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

All the preoccupations of childhood and youth dissipated from him without leaving a trace; he was given to lust, and to vanity—even, toward the end of school, to liberalism—but was protected by a strong inborn sense of moderation.

Bear Ye My Burden Society.

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.

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

The thought of such suffering in someone he’d known so well, first as a carefree little boy, then in school, and later as an adult and colleague, suddenly filled Pyotr Ivanovich with horror, despite even this woman’s affectation, as well as his own, which it was unpleasant to notice. All at once he couldn’t shake the image of that forehead, the nos

He openly admitted that, at the end of the day, whatever sadness came to his life, the one pleasure that shone like a candle burning brightly above all else was whist: to sit down with good players, not novices but real partners and opponents, and especially to play four-handed (five-handed is annoying, because you have to sit a round out, though o

comme il faut,

Apart from the curiosity it gave them about the changes in office it might occasion, the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance awoke as ever in each of them a familiar gladness: it’s he who’s dead, not me.

Everyone sees what a hard time he is having, and they tell him, “We can stop, if you’re tired. You need to rest up.” Rest up? No, he’s not tired in the least, they’ll finish the rubber. Everyone is gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych feels that he has cast upon them a gloom he cannot get to dissipate. They eat supper and go their separate ways, and Ivan