Death of Ivan Ilyich

I was in the local library the other day and I saw a book I had never heard of by Leo Tolstoy. Being quite a short paperback, a novella, I thought I'd try it. Well, it's an amazing book! It is brilliantly written for starters. Then it deals with a vital subject that few books tackle - death. Finally, it actually deals to some extent with sin and salvation. I understand that it was the first book Tolstoy wrote after his "conversion". I hadn't realised that at all when I picked the book up so that has doubled the impact on me. It's great when something comes out of the blue like that. I also like it when someone like Tolstoy who is supposed to be brilliant turns out to be just that. Check it out. You can find it online here or buy it here.

Tolstoy on death

This is from the novella The death of Ivan Ilyich

And suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect. "Vermiform appendix! Kidney!" he said to himself. "It's not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and ... death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone but me that I'm dying, and that it's only a question of weeks, days ... it may happen this moment. There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going there! Where?" A chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing of his heart.

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

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. ... 

"If I had to die like Caius I would have known it was so. An inner voice would have told me so, but there was nothing of the sort in me and I and all my friends felt that our case was quite different from that of Caius. and now here it is!" he said to himself. "It can't be. It's impossible! But here it is. How is this? How is one to understand it?"

He could not understand it, and tried to drive this false, incorrect, morbid thought away and to replace it by other proper and healthy thoughts. But that thought, and not the thought only but the reality itself, seemed to come and confront him. ... He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with *It*: face to face with *It*. And nothing could be done with *It* except to look at it and shudder.