The Death of Ivan Ilych ......................................................................................................................................1

Leo Tolstoy..............................................................................................................................................1

During an interval in the Melvinski trial in the large building of the Law Courts the members and public

prosecutor met in Ivan Egorovich Shebek's private room, where the conversation turned on the celebrated

Krasovski case. Fedor Vasilievich warmly maintained that it was not subject to their jurisdiction, Ivan

Egorovich maintained the contrary, while Peter Ivanovich, not having entered into the discussion at the start,

took no part in it but looked through the *Gazette* which had just been handed in.

"Here, read it yourself," replied Peter Ivanovich, handing Fedor Vasilievich the paper still damp from the

press. Surrounded by a black border were the words: "Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, with profound sorrow,

informs relatives and friends of the demise of her beloved husband Ivan Ilych Golovin, Member of the Court

of Justice, which occurred on February the 4th of this year 1882. the funeral will take place on Friday at one

Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them all. He had been ill for some

weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but there had been

conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his appointment, and that either Vinnikov or

Shtabel would succeed Alexeev. So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of

the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves

"I shall be sure to get Shtabel's place or Vinnikov's," thought Fedor Vasilievich. "I was promised that long

ago, and the promotion means an extra eight hundred rubles a year for me besides the allowance."

"Now I must apply for my brotherinlaw's transfer from Kaluga," thought Peter Ivanovich. "My wife will

be very glad, and then she won't be able to say that I never do anything for her relations."

"I thought he would never leave his bed again," said Peter Ivanovich aloud. "It's very sad."

"The doctors couldn't say at least they could, but each of them said something different. When last I saw

"You see, he never can forgive my living on the other side of the river," said Peter Ivanovich, smiling at

Shebek. Then, still talking of the distances between different parts of the city, they returned to the Court.

Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from Ivan Ilych's death, the

mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling

Each one thought or felt, "Well, he's dead but I'm alive!" But the more intimate of Ivan Ilych's acquaintances,

his socalled friends, could not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfil the very tiresome

demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow.

Fedor Vasilievich and Peter Ivanovich had been his nearest acquaintances. Peter Ivanovich had studied law

Having told his wife at dinnertime of Ivan Ilych's death, and of his conjecture that it might be possible to get

her brother transferred to their circuit, Peter Ivanovich sacrificed his usual nap, put on his evening clothes and

At the entrance stood a carriage and two cabs. Leaning against the wall in the hall downstairs near the

cloakstand was a coffinlid covered with cloth of gold, ornamented with gold cord and tassels, that had been

polished up with metal powder. Two ladies in black were taking off their fur cloaks. Peter Ivanovich

recognized one of them as Ivan Ilych's sister, but the other was a stranger to him. His colleague Schwartz was

just coming downstairs, but on seeing Peter Ivanovich enter he stopped and winked at him, as if to say: "Ivan

Schwartz's face with his Piccadilly whiskers, and his slim figure in evening dress, had as usual an air of

elegant solemnity which contrasted with the playfulness of his character and had a special piquancy here, or

Peter Ivanovich allowed the ladies to precede him and slowly followed them upstairs. Schwartz did not come

down but remained where he was, and Peter Ivanovich understood that he wanted to arrange where they

should play bridge that evening. The ladies went upstairs to the widow's room, and Schwartz with seriously

compressed lips but a playful looking his eyes, indicated by a twist of his eyebrows the room to the right

Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do.

All he knew was that at such times it is always safe to cross oneself. But he was not quite sure whether one

should make obseisances while doing so. He therefore adopted a middle course. On entering the room he

began crossing himself and made a slight movement resembling a bow. At the same time, as far as the motion

of his head and arm allowed, he surveyed the room. Two young men apparently nephews, one of whom

was a highschool pupil were leaving the room, crossing themselves as they did so. An old woman was

standing motionless, and a lady with strangely arched eyebrows was saying something to her in a whisper. A

vigorous, resolute Church Reader, in a frock coat, was reading something in a loud voice with an expression

that precluded any contradiction. The butler's assistant, Gerasim, stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovich,

was strewing something on the floor. Noticing this, Peter Ivanovich was immediately aware of a faint odour

The last time he had called on Ivan Ilych, Peter Ivanovich had seen Gerasim in the study. Ivan Ilych had been

Peter Ivanovich continued to make the sign of the cross slightly inclining his head in an intermediate

direction between the coffin, the Reader, and the icons on the table in a corner of the room. Afterwards, when

it seemed to him that this movement of his arm in crossing himself had gone on too long, he stopped and

The dead man lay, as dead men always lie, in a specially heavy way, his rigid limbs sunk in the soft cushions

of the coffin, with the head forever bowed on the pillow. His yellow waxen brow with bald patches over his

sunken temples was thrust up in the way peculiar to the dead, the protruding nose seeming to press on the

upper lip. He was much changed and grown even thinner since Peter Ivanovich had last seen him, but, as is

always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more dignified than when he was alive.

the expression on the face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly.

Besides this there was in that expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed to Peter

Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him. He felt a certain discomfort and so he hurriedly

crossed himself once more and turned and went out of the door too hurriedly and too regardless of

Schwartz was waiting for him in the adjoining room with legs spread wide apart and both hands toying with

his tophat behind his back. The mere sight of that playful, wellgroomed, and elegant figure refreshed Peter

Ivanovich. He felt that Schwartz was above all these happenings and would not surrender to any depressing

influences. His very look said that this incident of a church service for Ivan Ilych could not be a sufficient

reason for infringing the order of the session in other words, that it would certainly not prevent his

unwrapping a new pack of cards and shuffling them that evening while a footman placed fresh candles on the

table: in fact, that there was no reason for supposing that this incident would hinder their spending the

evening agreeably. Indeed he said this in a whisper as Peter Ivanovich passed him, proposing that they should

meet for a game at Fedor Vasilievich's. But apparently Peter Ivanovich was not destined to play bridge that

evening. Praskovya Fedorovna (a short, fat woman who despite all efforts to the contrary had continued to

broaden steadily from her shoulders downwards and who had the same extraordinarily arched eyebrows as

the lady who had been standing by the coffin), dressed all in black, her head covered with lace, came out of

her own room with some other ladies, conducted them to the room where the dead body lay, and said: "The

Schwartz, making an indefinite bow, stood still, evidently neither accepting nor declining this invitation.

Praskovya Fedorovna recognizing Peter Ivanovich, sighed, went close up to him, took his hand, and said: "I

know you were a true friend to Ivan Ilych..." and looked at him awaiting some suitable response. And Peter

Ivanovich knew that, just as it had been the right thing to cross himself in that room, so what he had to do

here was to press her hand, sigh, and say, "Believe me..." So he did all this and as he did it felt that the

"Come with me. I want to speak to you before it begins," said the widow. "Give me your arm."

Peter Ivanovich gave her his arm and they went to the inner rooms, passing Schwartz who winked at Peter

"That does for our bridge! Don's object if we find another player. Perhaps you can cut in when you do

Peter Ivanovich sighed still more deeply and despondently, and Praskovya Fedorovna pressed his arm

gratefully. When they reached the drawingroom, upholstered in pink cretonne and lighted by a dim lamp,

they sat down at the table she on a sofa and Peter Ivanovich on a low pouffe, the springs of which yielded

spasmodically under his weight. Praskovya Fedorovna had been on the point of warning him to take another

seat, but felt that such a warning was out of keeping with her present condition and so changed her mind. As

he sat down on the pouffe Peter Ivanovich recalled how Ivan Ilych had arranged this room and had consulted

him regarding this pink cretonne with green leaves. The whole room was full of furniture and knickknacks,

and on her way to the sofa the lace of the widow's black shawl caught on the edge of the table. Peter

Ivanovich rose to detach it, and the springs of the pouffe, relieved of his weight, rose also and gave him a

push. The widow began detaching her shawl herself, and Peter Ivanovich again sat down, suppressing the

rebellious springs of the pouffe under him. But the widow had not quite freed herself and Peter Ivanovich got

up again, and again the pouffe rebelled and even creaked. When this was all over she took out a clean

cambric handkerchief and began to weep. The episode with the shawl and the struggle with the pouffe had

cooled Peter Ivanovich's emotions and he sat there with a sullen look on his face. This awkward situation was

interrupted by Sokolov, Ivan Ilych's butler, who came to report that the plot in the cemetery that Praskovya

Fedorovna had chosen would cost tow hundred rubles. She stopped weeping and, looking at Peter Ivanovich

with the air of a victim, remarked in French that it was very hard for her. Peter Ivanovich made a silent

"Please smoke," she said in a magnanimous yet crushed voice, and turned to discuss with Sokolov the price

Peter Ivanovich while lighting his cigarette heard her inquiring very circumstantially into the prices of

different plots in the cemetery and finally decide which she would take. when that was done she gave

"I look after everything myself," she told Peter Ivanovich, shifting the albums that lay on the table; and

noticing that the table was endangered by his cigaretteash, she immediately passed him an ashtray, saying

as she did so: "I consider it an affectation to say that my grief prevents my attending to practical affairs. On

the contrary, if anything can I won't say console me, but distract me, it is seeing to everything

concerning him." She again took out her handkerchief as if preparing to cry, but suddenly, as if mastering her

feeling, she shook herself and began to speak calmly. "But there is something I want to talk to you about."

Peter Ivanovich bowed, keeping control of the springs of the pouffe, which immediately began quivering

"Oh, terribly! He screamed unceasingly, not for minutes but for hours. for the last three days he screamed

incessantly. It was unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore it; you could hear him three rooms off. Oh,

"Yes," she whispered. "To the last moment. He took leave of us a quarter of an hour before he died, and

The thought of the suffering of this man he had known so intimately, first as a merry little boy, then as a

schoolmate, and later as a grownup colleague, suddenly struck Peter Ivanovich with horror, despite an

unpleasant consciousness of his own and this woman's dissimulation. He again saw that brow, and that nose

"Three days of frightful suffering and the death! Why, that might suddenly, at any time, happen to me," he

thought, and for a moment felt terrified. But he did not himself know how the customary reflection at

once occurred to him that this had happened to Ivan Ilych and not to him, and that it should not and could not

happen to him, and that to think that it could would be yielding to depressing which he ought not to do, as

Schwartz's expression plainly showed. After which reflection Peter Ivanovich felt reassured, and began to ask

with interest about the details of Ivan Ilych's death, as though death was an accident natural to Ivan Ilych but

After many details of the really dreadful physical sufferings Ivan Ilych had endured (which details he learnt

only from the effect those sufferings had produced on Praskovya Fedorovna's nerves) the widow apparently

"Oh, Peter Ivanovich, how hard it is! How terribly, terribly hard!" and she again began to weep.

Peter Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to finish blowing her nose. When she had don so he said, "Believe

me..." and she again began talking and brought out what was evidently her chief concern with him

namely, to question him as to how she could obtain a grant of money from the government on the occasion of

her husband's death. She made it appear that she was asking Peter Ivanovich's advice about her pension, but

he soon saw that she already knew about that to the minutest detail, more even than he did himself. She knew

how much could be got out of the government in consequence of her husband's death, but wanted to find out

whether she could not possibly extract something more. Peter Ivanovich tried to think of some means of

doing so, but after reflecting for a while and, out of propriety, condemning the government for its

niggardliness, he said he thought that nothing more could be got. Then she sighed and evidently began to

devise means of getting rid of her visitor. Noticing this, he put out his cigarette, rose, pressed her hand, and

In the diningroom where the clock stood that Ivan Ilych had liked so much and had bought at an antique

shop, Peter Ivanovich met a priest and a few acquaintances who had come to attend the service, and he

recognized Ivan Ilych's daughter, a handsome young woman. She was in black and her slim figure appeared

slimmer than ever. She had a gloomy, determined, almost angry expression, and bowed to Peter Ivanovich as

though he were in some way to blame. Behind her, with the same offended look, stood a wealthy young man,

and examining magistrate, whom Peter Ivanovich also knew and who was her fiance, as he had heard. He

bowed mournfully to them and was about to pass into the deathchamber, when from under the stairs

appeared the figure of Ivan Ilych's schoolboy son, who was extremely like his father. He seemed a little Ivan

Ilych, such as Peter Ivanovich remembered when they studied law together. His tearstained eyes had in

them the look that is seen in the eyes of boys of thirteen or fourteen who are not pureminded. When he saw

Peter Ivanovich he scowled morosely and shamefacedly. Peter Ivanovich nodded to him and entered the

deathchamber. The service began: candles, groans, incense, tears, and sobs. Peter Ivanovich stood looking

gloomily down at his feet. He did not look once at the dead man, did not yield to any depressing influence,

and was one of the first to leave the room. There was no one in the anteroom, but Gerasim darted out of the

dead man's room, rummaged with his strong hands among the fur coats to find Peter Ivanovich's and helped

"Well, friend Gerasim," said Peter Ivanovich, so as to say something. "It's a sad affair, isn't it?"

"It's God will. We shall all come to it some day," said Gerasim, displaying his teeth the even white teeth

of a healthy peasant and, like a man in the thick of urgent work, he briskly opened the front door, called

the coachman, helped Peter Ivanovich into the sledge, and sprang back to the porch as if in readiness for what

Peter Ivanovich found the fresh air particularly pleasant after the smell of incense, the dead body, and

He accordingly drove there and found them just finishing the first rubber, so that it was quite convenient for

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

He had been a member of the Court of Justice, and died at the age of fortyfive. His father had been an

official who after serving in various ministries and departments in Petersburg had made the sort of career

which brings men to positions from which by reason of their long service they cannot be dismissed, though

they are obviously unfit to hold any responsible position, and for whom therefore posts are specially created,

which though fictitious carry salaries of from six to ten thousand rubles that are not fictitious, and in receipt

Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous member of various superfluous institutions, Ilya Epimovich

He had three sons, of whom Ivan Ilych was the second. The eldest son was following in his father's footsteps

only in another department, and was already approaching that stage in the service at which a similar sinecure

would be reached. the third son was a failure. He had ruined his prospects in a number of positions and was

not serving in the railway department. His father and brothers, and still more their wives, not merely disliked

meeting him, but avoided remembering his existence unless compelled to do so. His sister had married Baron

Greff, a Petersburg official of her father's type. Ivan Ilych was *le phenix de la famille* as people said. He

was neither as cold and formal as his elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between

them an intelligent polished, lively and agreeable man. He had studied with his younger brother at the

School of Law, but the latter had failed to complete the course and was expelled when he was in the fifth

class. Ivan Ilych finished the course well. Even when he was at the School of Law he was just what he

remained for the rest of his life: a capable, cheerful, goodnatured, and sociable man, though strict in the

fulfillment of what he considered to be his duty: and he considered his duty to be what was so considered by

those in authority. Neither as a boy nor as a man was he a toady, but from early youth was by nature attracted

to people of high station as a fly is drawn to the light, assimilating their ways and views of life and

establishing friendly relations with them. All the enthusiasms of childhood and youth passed without leaving

much trace on him; he succumbed to sensuality, to vanity, and latterly among the highest classes to

liberalism, but always within limits which his instinct unfailingly indicated to him as correct.

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted

with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good

position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to

Having graduated from the School of Law and qualified for the tenth rank of the civil service, and having

received money from his father for his equipment, Ivan Ilych ordered himself clothes at Scharmer's, the

fashionable tailor, hung a medallion inscribed *respice finem* on his watchchain, took leave of his

professor and the prince who was patron of the school, had a farewell dinner with his comrades at Donon's

firstclass restaurant, and with his new and fashionable portmanteau, linen, clothes, shaving and other toilet

appliances, and a travelling rug, all purchased at the best shops, he set off for one of the provinces where

through his father's influence, he had been attached to the governor as an official for special service.

In the province Ivan Ilych soon arranged as easy and agreeable a position for himself as he had had at the

School of Law. He performed his official task, made his career, and at the same time amused himself

pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally he paid official visits to country districts where he behaved with

dignity both to his superiors and inferiors, and performed the duties entrusted to him, which related chiefly to

the sectarians, with an exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he could not but feel proud.

In official matters, despite his youth and taste for frivolous gaiety, he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious,

and even severe; but in society he was often amusing and witty, and always good natured, correct in his

manner, and *bon enfant*, as the governor and his wife with whom he was like one of the family used

In the province he had an affair with a lady who made advances to the elegant young lawyer, and there was

also a milliner; and there were carousals with aidesdecamp who visited the district, and aftersupper visits

to a certain outlying street of doubtful reputation; and there was too some obsequiousness to his chief and

even to his chief's wife, but all this was done with such a tone of good breeding that no hard names could be

applied to it. It all came under the heading of the French saying: *"Il faut que jeunesse se passe."* It was all

done with clean hands, in clean linen, with French phrases, and above all among people of the best society

So Ivan Ilych served for five years and then came a change in his official life. The new and reformed judicial

institutions were introduced, and new men were needed. Ivan Ilych became such a new man. He was offered

the post of examining magistrate, and he accepted it though the post was in another province and obliged him

to give up the connexions he had formed and to make new ones. His friends met to give him a sendoff; they

had a group photograph taken and presented him with a silver cigarettecase, and he set off to his new post.

As examining magistrate Ivan Ilych was just as *comme il faut* and decorous a man, inspiring general

respect and capable of separating his official duties from his private life, as he had been when acting as an

official on special service. His duties now as examining magistrate were fare more interesting and attractive

than before. In his former position it had been pleasant to wear an undress uniform made by Scharmer, and to

pass through the crowd of petitioners and officials who were timorously awaiting an audience with the

governor, and who envied him as with free and easy gait he went straight into his chief's private room to have

a cup of tea and a cigarette with him. But not many people had then been directly dependent on him only

police officials and the sectarians when he went on special missions and he liked to treat them politely,

almost as comrades, as if he were letting them feel that he who had the power to crush them was treating

them in this simple, friendly way. There were then but few such people. But now, as an examining

magistrate, Ivan Ilych felt that everyone without exception, even the most important and selfsatisfied, was in

his power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of paper with a certain heading, and this or that

important, self satisfied person would be brought before him in the role of an accused person or a witness,

and if he did not choose to allow him to sit down, would have to stand before him and answer his questions.

Ivan Ilych never abused his power; he tried on the contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of

it and the possibility of softening its effect, supplied the chief interest and attraction of his office. In his work

itself, especially in his examinations, he very soon acquired a method of eliminating all considerations

irrelevant to the legal aspect of the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to a form in which it

would be presented on paper only in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter,

while above all observing every prescribed formality. The work was new and Ivan Ilych was one of the first

On taking up the post of examining magistrate in a new town, he made new acquaintances and connexions,

placed himself on a new footing and assumed a somewhat different tone. He took up an attitude of rather

dignified aloofness towards the provincial authorities, but picked out the best circle of legal gentlemen and

wealthy gentry living in the town and assumed a tone of slight dissatisfaction with the government, of

moderate liberalism, and of enlightened citizenship. At the same time, without at all altering the elegance of

his toilet, he ceased shaving his chin and allowed his beard to grow as it pleased.

Ivan Ilych settled down very pleasantly in this new town. The society there, which inclined towards

opposition to the governor was friendly, his salary was larger, and he began to play *vint* [a form of bridge],

which he found added not a little to the pleasure of life, for he had a capacity for cards, played

After living there for two years he met his future wife, Praskovya Fedorovna Mikhel, who was the most

attractive, clever, and brilliant girl of the set in which he moved, and among other amusements and

relaxations from his labours as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych established light and playful relations with

While he had been an official on special service he had been accustomed to dance, but now as an examining

magistrate it was exceptional for him to do so. If he danced now, he did it as if to show that though he served

under the reformed order of things, and had reached the fifth official rank, yet when it came to dancing he

could do it better than most people. So at the end of an evening he sometimes danced with Praskovya

Fedorovna, and it was chiefly during these dances that he captivated her. She fell in love with him. Ivan Ilych

had at first no definite intention of marrying, but when the girl fell in love with him he said to himself:

Praskovya Fedorovna came of a good family, was not bad looking, and had some little property. Ivan Ilych

might have aspired to a more brilliant match, but even this was good. He had his salary, and she, he hoped,

would have an equal income. She was well connected, and was a sweet, pretty, and thoroughly correct young

woman. to say that Ivan Ilych married because he fell in love with Praskovya Fedorovna and found that she

sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect as to say that he married because his social circle

approved of the match. He was swayed by both these considerations: the marriage gave him personal

satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates.

The preparations for marriage and the beginning of married life, with its conjugal caresses, the new furniture,

new crockery, and new linen, were very pleasant until his wife became pregnant so that Ivan Ilych had

begun to think that marriage would not impair the easy, agreeable, gay and always decorous character of his

life, approved of by society and regarded by himself as natural, but would even improve it. But from the first

months of his wife's pregnancy, something new, unpleasant, depressing, and unseemly, and from which there

His wife, without any reason *de gaiete de coeur* as Ivan Ilych expressed it to himself began to

disturb the pleasure and propriety of their life. She began to be jealous without any cause, expected him to

devote his whole attention to her, found fault with everything, and made coarse and illmannered scenes.

At first Ivan Ilych hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of this state of affairs by the same easy and

decorous relation to life that had served him heretofore: he tried to ignore his wife's disagreeable moods,

continued to live in his usual easy and pleasant way, invited friends to his house for a game of cards, and also

tried going out to his club or spending his evenings with friends. But one day his wife began upbraiding him

so vigorously, using such coarse words, and continued to abuse him every time he did not fulfil her demands,

so resolutely and with such evident determination not to give way till he submitted that is, till he stayed at

home and was bored just as she was that he became alarmed. He now realized that matrimony at any

rate with Praskovya Fedorovna was not always conducive to the pleasures and amenities of life, but on the

contrary often infringed both comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore entrench himself against such

infringement. And Ivan Ilych began to seek for means of doing so. His official duties were the one thing that

imposed upon Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his official work and the duties attached to it he began

With the birth of their child, the attempts to feed it and the various failures in doing so, and with the real and

imaginary illnesses of mother and child, in which Ivan Ilych's sympathy was demanded but about which he

understood nothing, the need of securing for himself an existence outside his family life became still more

As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilych transferred the center of gravity of his life more

and more to his official work, so did he grow to like his work better and became more ambitious than before.

Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan Ilych had realized that marriage, though it may add some

comforts to life, is in fact a very intricate and difficult affair towards which in order to perform one's duty,

that is, to lead a decorous life approved of by society, one must adopt a definite attitude just as towards one's

And Ivan Ilych evolved such an attitude towards married life. He only required of it those conveniences

dinner at home, housewife, and bed which it could give him, and above all that propriety of external forms

required by public opinion. For the rest he looked for lighthearted pleasure and propriety, and was very

thankful when he found them, but if he met with antagonism and querulousness he at once retired into his

Ivan Ilych was esteemed a good official, and after three years was made Assistant Public Prosecutor. His new

duties, their importance, the possibility of indicting and imprisoning anyone he chose, the publicity his

speeches received, and the success he had in all these things, made his work still more attractive.

More children came. His wife became more and more querulous and illtempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilych

had adopted towards his home life rendered him almost impervious to her grumbling.

After seven years' service in that town he was transferred to another province as Public Prosecutor. They

moved, but were short of money and his wife did not like the place they moved to. Though the salary was

higher the cost of living was greater, besides which two of their children died and family life became still

Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience they encountered in their new home.

Most of the conversations between husband and wife, especially as to the children's education, led to topics

which recalled former disputes, and these disputes were apt to flare up again at any moment. There remained

only those rare periods of amorousness which still came to them at times but did not last long. These were

islets at which they anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which

showed itself in their aloofness from one another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he

considered that it ought not to exist, but he now regarded the position as normal, and even made it the goal at

which he aimed in family life. His aim was to free himself more and more from those unpleasantness and to

give them a semblance of harmlessness and propriety. He attained this by spending less and less time with his

family, and when obliged to be at home he tried to safeguard his position by the presence of outsiders. The

chief thing however was that he had his official duties. The whole interest of his life now centered in the

official world and that interest absorbed him. The consciousness of his power, being able to ruin anybody he

wished to ruin, the importance, even the external dignity of his entry into court, or meetings with his

subordinates, his success with superiors and inferiors, and above all his masterly handling of cases, of which

he was conscious all this gave him pleasure and filled his life, together with chats with his colleagues,

dinners, and bridge. So that on the whole Ivan Ilych's life continued to flow as he considered it should do

so things continued for another seven years. His eldest daughter was already sixteen, another child had died,

and only one son was left, a schoolboy and a subject of dissension. Ivan Ilych wanted to put him in the

School of Law, but to spite him Praskovya Fedorovna entered him at the High School. The daughter had been

So Ivan Ilych lived for seventeen years after his marriage. He was already a Public Prosecutor of long

standing, and had declined several proposed transfers while awaiting a more desirable post, when an

unanticipated and unpleasant occurrence quite upset the peaceful course of his life. He was expecting to be

offered the post of presiding judge in a University town, but Happe somehow came to the front and obtained

the appointment instead. Ivan Ilych became irritable, reproached Happe, and quarrelled both him and with his

immediate superiors who became colder to him and again passed him over when other appointments were

This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilych's life. It was then that it became evident on the one hand that

his salary was insufficient for them to live on, and on the other that he had been forgotten, and not only this,

but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.

Even his father did not consider it his duty to help him. Ivan Ilych felt himself abandoned by everyone, and

that they regarded his position with a salary of 3,500 rubles as quite normal and even fortunate. He alone

knew that with the consciousness of the injustices done him, with his wife's incessant nagging, and with the

debts he had contracted by living beyond his means, his position was far from normal.

In order to save money that summer he obtained leave of absence and went with his wife to live in the

In the country, without his work, he experienced *ennui* for the first time in his life, and not only *ennui*

but intolerable depression, and he decided that it was impossible to go on living like that, and that it was

Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, he decided to go to Petersburg and bestir

himself, in order to punish those who had failed to appreciate him and to get transferred to another ministry.

Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he started for Petersburg with the sole object

of obtaining a post with a salary of five thousand rubles a year. He was no longer bent on any particular

department, or tendency, or kind of activity. All he now wanted was an appointment to another post with a

salary of five thousand rubles, either in the administration, in the banks, with the railways in one of the

Empress Marya's Institutions, or even in the customs but it had to carry with it a salary of five thousand

rubles and be in a ministry other than that in which they had failed to appreciate him.

And this quest of Ivan Ilych's was crowned with remarkable and unexpected success. At Kursk an

acquaintance of his, F. I. Ilyin, got into the firstclass carriage, sat down beside Ivan Ilych, and told him of a

telegram just received by the governor of Kursk announcing that a change was about to take place in the

The proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a special significance for Ivan Ilych, because

by bringing forward a new man, Peter Petrovich, and consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly

favourable for Ivan Ilych, since Sachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague of his.

In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg Ivan Ilych found Zachar Ivanovich and

received a definite promise of an appointment in his former Department of Justice.

A week later he telegraphed to his wife: "Zachar in Miller's place. I shall receive appointment on presentation

Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilych had unexpectedly obtained an appointment in his former

ministry which placed him two states above his former colleagues besides giving him five thousand rubles

salary and three thousand five hundred rubles for expenses connected with his removal. All his ill humour

towards his former enemies and the whole department vanished, and Ivan Ilych was completely happy.

He returned to the country more cheerful and contented than he had been for a long time. Praskovya

Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged between them. Ivan Ilych told of how he had been feted

by everybody in Petersburg, how all those who had been his enemies were put to shame and now fawned on

him, how envious they were of his appointment, and how much everybody in Petersburg had liked him.

Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it. She did not contradict anything, but only

made plans for their life in the town to which they were going. Ivan Ilych saw with delight that these plans

were his plans, that he and his wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life was regaining its due and natural

Ivan Ilych had come back for a short time only, for he had to take up his new duties on the 10th of

September. Moreover, he needed time to settle into the new place, to move all his belongings from the

province, and to buy and order many additional things: in a word, to make such arrangements as he had

resolved on, which were almost exactly what Praskovya Fedorovna too had decided on.

Now that everything had happened so fortunately, and that he and his wife were at one in their aims and

moreover saw so little of one another, they got on together better than they had done since the first years of

marriage. Ivan Ilych had thought of taking his family away with him at once, but the insistence of his wife's

brother and her sisterinlaw, who had suddenly become particularly amiable and friendly to him and his

So he departed, and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success and by the harmony between his wife

and himself, the one intensifying the other, did not leave him. He found a delightful house, just the thing both

he and his wife had dreamt of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a convenient and dignified

study, rooms for his wife and daughter, a study for his son it might have been specially built for them.

Ivan Ilych himself superintended the arrangements, chose the wallpapers, supplemented the furniture

(preferably with antiques which he considered particularly *comme il faut*), and supervised the upholstering.

Everything progressed and progressed and approached the ideal he had set himself: even when things were

only half completed they exceeded his expectations. He saw what a refined and elegant character, free from

vulgarity, it would all have when it was ready. On falling asleep he pictured to himself how the reception

room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing room he could see the fireplace, the screen, the

whatnot, the little chairs dotted here and there, the dishes and plates on the walls, and the bronzes, as they

would be when everything was in place. He was pleased by the thought of how his wife and daughter, who

shared his taste n this matter, would be impressed by it. They were certainly not expecting as much. He had

been particularly successful in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a particularly aristocratic

character to the whole place. But in his letters he intentionally understated everything in order to be able to

surprise them. All this so absorbed him that his new duties though he liked his official work interested

him less than he had expected. Sometimes he even had moments of absentmindedness during the court

sessions and would consider whether he should have straight or curved cornices for his curtains. He was so

interested in it all that he often did things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once

when mounting a step ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he wanted the hangings

draped, he mad a false step and slipped, but being a strong and agile man he clung on and only knocked his

side against the knob of the window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he

felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: "I feel fifteen years younger." He thought he would have

everything ready by September, but it dragged on till midOctober. But the result was charming not only in

In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich,

and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs,

and dull and polished bronzes all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other

people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all

seemed to be quite exceptional. He was very happy when he met his family at the station and brought them to

the newly furnished house all lit up, where a footman in a white tie opened the door into the hall decorated

with plants, and when they went on into the drawingroom and the study uttering exclamations of delight. He

conducted them everywhere, drank in their praises eagerly, and beamed with pleasure. At tea that evening,

when Praskovya Fedorovna among others things asked him about his fall, he laughed, and showed them how

"It's a good thing I'm a bit of an athlete. Another man might have been killed, but I merely knocked myself,

just here; it hurts when it's touched, but it's passing off already it's only a bruise."

So they began living in their new home in which, as always happens, when they got thoroughly settled in

they found they were just one room short and with the increased income, which as always was just a little

Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally arranged and while something had still to

be done: this thing bought, that thing ordered, another thing moved, and something else adjusted. Though

there were some disputes between husband and wife, they were both so well satisfied and had so much to do

that it all passed off without any serious quarrels. When nothing was left to arrange it became rather dull and

something seemed to be lacking, but they were then making acquaintances, forming habits, and life was

Ivan Ilych spent his mornings at the law court and came home to diner, and at first he was generally in a good

humour, though he occasionally became irritable just on account of his house. (Every spot on the tablecloth

or the upholstery, and every broken window blind string, irritated him. He had devoted so much trouble to

arranging it all that every disturbance of it distressed him.) But on the whole his life ran its course as he

He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and then put on his undress uniform and went to the law

courts. there the harness in which he worked had already been stretched to fit him and he donned it without a

hitch: petitioners, inquiries at the chancery, the chancery itself, and the sittings public and administrative. In

all this the thing was to exclude everything fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular course of

official business, and to admit only official relations with people, and then only on official grounds. A man

would come, for instance, wanting some information. Ivan Ilych, as one in whose sphere the matter did not

lie, would have nothing to do with him: but if the man had some business with him in his official capacity,

something that could be expressed on officially stamped paper, he would do everything, positively everything

he could within the limits of such relations, and in doing so would maintain the semblance of friendly human

relations, that is, would observe the courtesies of life. As soon as the official relations ended, so did

everything else. Ivan Ilych possessed this capacity to separate his real life from the official side of affairs and

not mix the two, in the highest degree, and by long practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such a pitch

that sometimes, in the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow himself to let the human and official

relations mingle. He let himself do this just because he felt that he could at any time he chose resume the

strictly official attitude again and drop the human relation. and he did it all easily, pleasantly, correctly, and

even artistically. In the intervals between the sessions he smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a

little about general topics, a little about cards, but most of all about official appointments. Tired, but with the

feelings of a virtuoso one of the first violins who has played his part in an orchestra with precision he

would return home to find that his wife and daughter had been out paying calls, or had a visitor, and that his

son had been to school, had done his homework with his tutor, and was surely learning what is taught at High

Schools. Everything was as it should be. After dinner, if they had no visitors, Ivan Ilych sometimes read a

book that was being much discussed at the time, and in the evening settled down to work, that is, read official

papers, compared the depositions of witnesses, and noted paragraphs of the Code applying to them. This was

neither dull nor amusing. It was dull when he might have been playing bridge, but if no bridge was available

it was at any rate better than doing nothing or sitting with his wife. Ivan Ilych's chief pleasure was giving

little dinners to which he invited men and women of good social position, and just as his drawingroom

resembled all other drawingrooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble all other such parties.

Once they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilych enjoyed it and everything went off well, except that it led to a

violent quarrel with his wife about the cakes and sweets. Praskovya Fedorovna had made her own plans, but

Ivan Ilych insisted on getting everything from an expensive confectioner and ordered too many cakes, and the

quarrel occurred because some of those cakes were left over and the confectioner's bill came to fortyfive

rubles. It was a great and disagreeable quarrel. Praskovya Fedorovna called him "a fool and an imbecile," and

But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The best people were there, and Ivan Ilych had danced with Princess

Trufonova, a sister of the distinguished founder of the Society "Bear My Burden".

The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social pleasures were those of vanity;

but Ivan Ilych's greatest pleasure was playing bridge. He acknowledged that whatever disagreeable incident

happened in his life, the pleasure that beamed like a ray of light above everything else was to sit down to

bridge with good players, not noisy partners, and of course to fourhanded bridge (with five players it was

annoying to have to stand out, though one pretended not to mind), to play a clever and serious game (when

the cards allowed it) and then to have supper and drink a glass of wine. after a game of bridge, especially if

he had won a little (to win a large sum was unpleasant), Ivan Ilych went to bed in a specially good humour.

So they lived. they formed a circle of acquaintances among the best people and were visited by people of

importance and by young folk. In their views as to their acquaintances, husband, wife and daughter were

entirely agreed, and tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and shook off the various shabby friends

and relations who, with much show of affection, gushed into the drawingroom with its Japanese plates on

the walls. Soon these shabby friends ceased to obtrude themselves and only the best people remained in the

Young men made up to Lisa, and Petrishchev, an examining magistrate and Dmitri Ivanovich Petrishchev's

son and sole heir, began to be so attentive to her that Ivan Ilych had already spoken to Praskovya Fedorovna

about it, and considered whether they should not arrange a party for them, or get up some private theatricals.

They were all in good health. It could not be called ill health if Ivan Ilych sometimes said that he had a queer

But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful, grew into a sense of pressure in his side

accompanied by ill humour. And his irritability became worse and worse and began to mar the agreeable,

easy, and correct life that had established itself in the Golovin family. Quarrels between husband and wife

became more and more frequent, and soon the ease and amenity disappeared and even the decorum was

barely maintained. Scenes again became frequent, and very few of those islets remained on which husband

and wife could meet without an explosion. Praskovya Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her

husband's temper was trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said he had always had a dreadful temper,

and that it had needed all her good nature to put up with it for twenty years. It was true that now the quarrels

were started by him. His bursts of temper always came just before dinner, often just as he began to eat his

soup. Sometimes he noticed that a plate or dish was chipped, or the food was not right, or his son put his

elbow on the table, or his daughter's hair was not done as he liked it, and for all this he blamed Praskovya

Fedorovna. At first she retorted and said disagreeable things to him, but once or twice he fell into such a rage

at the beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to some physical derangement brought on by taking

food, and so she restrained herself and did not answer, but only hurried to get the dinner over. She regarded

this selfrestraint as highly praiseworthy. Having come to the conclusion that her husband had a dreadful

temper and made her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the

more she hated her husband. She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him to die because then

his salary would cease. And this irritated her against him still more. She considered herself dreadfully

unhappy just because not even his death could save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that

After one scene in which Ivan Ilych had been particularly unfair and after which he had said in explanation

that he certainly was irritable but that it was due to his not being well, she said that he was ill it should be

He went. Everything took place as he had expected and as it always does. There was the usual waiting and

the important air assumed by the doctor, with which he was so familiar (resembling that which he himself

assumed in court), and the sounding and listening, and the questions which called for answers that were

foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and the look of importance which implied that "if only

you put yourself in our hands we will arrange everything we know indubitably how it has to be done,

always in the same way for everybody alike." It was all just as it was in the law courts. The doctor put on just

The doctor said that soandso indicated that there was so andso inside the patient, but if the investigation

of soandso did not confirm this, then he must assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then...and

so on. To Ivan Ilych only one question was important: was his case serious or not? But the doctor ignored

that inappropriate question. From his point of view it was not the one under consideration, the real question

was to decide between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis. It was not a question the doctor

solved brilliantly, as it seemed to Ivan Ilych, in favour of the appendix, with the reservation that should an

examination of the urine give fresh indications the matter would be reconsidered. All this was just what Ivan

Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing with men on trial. The doctor summed

up just as brilliantly, looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at the accused. From the

doctor's summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for

everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad. And this conclusion struck him

painfully, arousing in him a great feeling of pity for himself and of bitterness towards the doctor's

He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee on the table, and remarked with a sigh: "We sick

people probably often put inappropriate questions. But tell me, in general, is this complaint dangerous, or

The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as if to say: "Prisoner, if you will not keep

to the questions put to you, I shall be obliged to have you removed from the court."

"I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. The analysis may show something more." And

Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his sledge, and drove home. All the way home he

was going over what the doctor had said, trying to translate those complicated, obscure, scientific phrases into

plain language and find in them an answer to the question: "Is my condition bad? Is it very bad? Or is there as

yet nothing much wrong?" And it seemed to him that the meaning of what the doctor had said was that it was

very bad. Everything in the streets seemed depressing. The cabmen, the houses, the passersby, and the

shops, were dismal. His ache, this dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a moment, seemed to have

acquired a new and more serious significance from the doctor's dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now watched it

He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but in the middle of his account his

daughter came in with her hat on, ready to go out with her mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to this

tedious story, but could not stand it long, and her mother too did not hear him to the end.

"Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now to take your medicine regularly. Give me the prescription and

While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to breathe, but he sighed deeply when she left it.

He began taking his medicine and following the doctor's directions, which had been altered after the

examination of the urine. but then it happened that there was a contradiction between the indications drawn

from the examination of the urine and the symptoms that showed themselves. It turned out that what was

happening differed from what the doctor had told him, and that he had either forgotten or blundered, or

hidden something from him. He could not, however, be blamed for that, and Ivan Ilych still obeyed his orders

From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych's chief occupation was the exact fulfillment of the doctor's

instructions regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and his excretions.

His chief interest came to be people's ailments and people's health. When sickness, deaths, or recoveries were

mentioned in his presence, especially when the illness resembled his own, he listened with agitation which he

The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych made efforts to force himself to think that he was better. And he

could do this so long as nothing agitated him. But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any

lack of success in his official work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once acutely sensible of his disease.

He had formerly borne such mischances, hoping soon to adjust what was wrong, to master it and attain

success, or make a grand slam. But now every mischance upset him and plunged him into despair. He would

say to himself: "there now, just as I was beginning to get better and the medicine had begun to take effect,

comes this accursed misfortune, or unpleasantness..." And he was furious with the mishap, or with the people

who were causing the unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury was killing him but he could

not restrain it. One would have thought that it should have been clear to him that this exasperation with

circumstances and people aggravated his illness, and that he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant

occurrences. But he drew the very opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched for

everything that might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest infringement of it. His condition was

rendered worse by the fact that he read medical books and consulted doctors. The progress of his disease was

so gradual that he could deceive himself when comparing one day with another the difference was so

slight. But when he consulted the doctors it seemed to him that he was getting worse, and even very rapidly.

That month he went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as the first had done but put his

questions rather differently, and the interview with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych's doubts and fears.

A friend of a friend of his, a very good doctor, diagnosed his illness again quite differently from the others,

and though he predicted recovery, his questions and suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilych still more and

increased his doubts. A homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine

which Ivan Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a week, not feeling any improvement and having lost

confidence both in the former doctor's treatment and in this one's, he became still more despondent. One day

a lady acquaintance mentioned a cure effected by a wonderworking icon. Ivan Ilych caught himself listening

attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred. This incident alarmed him. "Has my mind really

weakened to such an extent?" he asked himself. "Nonsense! It's all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous

fears but having chosen a doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is what I will do. Now it's all

settled. I won't think about it, but will follow the treatment seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From

now there must be no more of this wavering!" this was easy to say but impossible to carry out. The pain in his

side oppressed him and seemed to grow worse and more incessant, while the taste in his mouth grew stranger

and stranger. It seemed to him that his breath had a disgusting smell, and he was conscious of a loss of

appetite and strength. There was no deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and more important than

anything before in his life, was taking place within him of which he alone was aware. Those about him did

not understand or would not understand it, but thought everything in the world was going on as usual. That

tormented Ivan Ilych more than anything. He saw that his household, especially his wife and daughter who

were in a perfect whirl of visiting, did not understand anything of it and were annoyed that he was so

depressed and so exacting, as if he were to blame for it. Though they tried to disguise it he saw that he was an

obstacle in their path, and that his wife had adopted a definite line in regard to his illness and kept to it

regardless of anything he said or did. Her attitude was this: "You know," she would say to her friends, "Ivan

Ilych can't do as other people do, and keep to the treatment prescribed for him. One day he'll take his drops

and keep strictly to his diet and go to bed in good time, but the next day unless I watch him he'll suddenly

forget his medicine, eat sturgeon which is forbidden and sit up playing cards till one o'clock in the

"Oh, come, when was that?" Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation. "Only once at Peter Ivanovich's."

"Be that as it may you'll never get well like that, but will always make us wretched."

Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan Ilych's illness, as she expressed it both to others and to him, was that

it was his own fault and was another of the annoyances he caused her. Ivan ilych felt that this opinion escaped

At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or thought he noticed, a strange attitude towards himself. It

sometimes seemed to him that people were watching him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be

vacant. Then again, his friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in a friendly way about his low spirits, as

if the awful, horrible, and unheardof thing that was going on within him, incessantly gnawing at him and

irresistibly drawing him away, was a very agreeable subject for jests. Schwartz in particular irritated him by

his jocularity, vivacity, and *savoirfaire*, which reminded him of what he himself had been ten years ago.

Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They dealt, bending the new cards to soften them,

and he sorted the diamonds in his hand and found he had seven. His partner said "No trumps" and supported

him with two diamonds. What more could be wished for? It ought to be jolly and lively. They would make a

grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych was conscious of that gnawing pain, that taste in his mouth, and it

seemed ridiculous that in such circumstances he should be pleased to make a grand slam.

He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table with his strong hand and instead of

snatching up the tricks pushed the cards courteously and indulgently towards Ivan Ilych that he might have

the pleasure of gathering them up without the trouble of stretching out his hand for them. "Does he think I am

too weak to stretch out my arm?" thought Ivan Ilych, and forgetting what he was doing he overtrumped his

partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks. And what was most awful of all was that he saw how upset

Mikhail Mikhaylovich was about it but did not himself care. And it was dreadful to realize why he did not

They all saw that he was suffering, and said: "We can stop if you are tired. Take a rest." Lie down? No, he

was not at all tired, and he finished the rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that he had

diffused this gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilych was

left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that

this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.

With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must go to bed, often to lie awake the

greater part of the night. Next morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and write; or

if he did not go out, spend at home those twentyfour hours a day each of which was a torture. And he had to

live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him.

So one month passed and then another. Just before the New Year his brotherinlaw came to town and

stayed at their house. Ivan Ilych was at the law courts and Praskovya Fedorovna had gone shopping. When

Ivan Ilych came home and entered his study he found his brotherinlaw there a healthy, florid man

unpacking his portmanteau himself. He raised his head on hearing Ivan Ilych's footsteps and looked up at him

for a moment without a word. That stare told Ivan Ilych everything. His brotherinlaw opened his mouth to

utter an exclamation of surprise but checked himself, and that action confirmed it all.

And after that, try as he would to get his brotherinlaw to return to the subject of his looks, the latter would

say nothing about it. Praskovya Fedorovna came home and her brother went out to her. Ivan Ilych locked to

door and began to examine himself in the glass, first full face, then in profile. He took up a portrait of himself

taken with his wife, and compared it with what he saw in the glass. The change in him was immense. Then he

bared his arms to the elbow, looked at them, drew the sleeves down again, sat down on an ottoman, and grew

"No, no, this won't do!" he said to himself, and jumped up, went to the table, took up some law papers and

began to read them, but could not continue. He unlocked the door and went into the receptionroom. The

door leading to the drawingroom was shut. He approached it on tiptoe and listened.

"Exaggerating! Don't you see it? Why, he's a dead man! Look at his eyes there's no life in them. But what

"No one knows. Nikolaevich [that was another doctor] said something, but I don't know what. And

Ivan Ilych walked away, went to his own room, lay down, and began musing; "The kidney, a floating

kidney." He recalled all the doctors had told him of how it detached itself and swayed about. And by an effort

of imagination he tried to catch that kidney and arrest it and support it. So little was needed for this, it seemed

to him. "No, I'll go to see Peter Ivanovich again." [That was the friend whose friend was a doctor.] He rang,

"Where are you going, Jean?" asked his wife with a specially sad and exceptionally kind look.

He went to see Peter Ivanovich, and together they went to see his friend, the doctor. He was in, and Ivan Ilych

Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what in the doctor's opinion was going on inside him,

There was something, a small thing, in the vermiform appendix. It might all come right. Only stimulate the

energy of one organ and check the activity of another, then absorption would take place and everything

would come right. He got home rather late for dinner, ate his dinner, and conversed cheerfully, but could not

for a long time bring himself to go back to work in his room. At last, however, he went to his study and did

what was necessary, but the consciousness that he had put something aside an important, intimate matter

which he would revert to when his work was done never left him. When he had finished his work he

remembered that this intimate matter was the thought of his vermiform appendix. But he did not give himself

up to it, and went to the drawingroom for tea. There were callers there, including the examining magistrate

who was a desirable match for his daughter, and they were conversing, playing the piano, and singing. Ivan

Ilych, as Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening more cheerfully than usual, but he never for a

moment forgot that he had postponed the important matter of the appendix. At eleven o'clock he said

goodnight and went to his bedroom. Since his illness he had slept alone in a small room next to his study. He

undressed and took up a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he fell into thought, and in his imagination

that desired improvement in the vermiform appendix occurred. There was the absorption and evacuation and

the reestablishment of normal activity. "Yes, that's it!" he said to himself. "One need only assist nature,

that's all." He remembered his medicine, rose, took it, and lay down on his back watching for the beneficent

action of the medicine and for it to lessen the pain. "I need only take it regularly and avoid all injurious

influences. I am already feeling better, much better." He began touching his side: it was not painful to the

touch. "There, I really don't feel it. It's much better already." He put out the light and turned on his side ...

"The appendix is getting better, absorption is occurring." Suddenly he felt the old, familiar, dull, gnawing

pain, stubborn and serious. There was the same familiar loathsome taste in his mouth. His heart sand and he

felt dazed. "My God! My God!" he muttered. "Again, again! And it will never cease." 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

"When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing. Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can

this be dying? No, I don't want to!" He jumped up and tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling

hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on his pillow.

"What's the use? It makes no difference," he said to himself, staring with wideopen eyes into the darkness.

"Death. Yes, death. And none of them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me. Now they

are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the

same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. And now

Anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. "It is impossible that all men have been

"Something must be wrong. I must calm myself must think it all over from the beginning." And he again

began thinking. "Yes, the beginning of my illness: I knocked my side, but I was still quite well that day and

the next. It hurt a little, then rather more. I saw the doctors, then followed despondency and anguish, more

doctors, and I drew nearer to the abyss. My strength grew less and I kept coming nearer and nearer, and now I

have wasted away and there is no light in my eyes. I think of the appendix but this is death! I think of

mending the appendix, and all the while here is death! Can it really be death?" Again terror seized him and he

gasped for breath. He leant down and began feeling for the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand

beside the bed. It was in his way and hurt him, he grew furious with it, pressed on it still harder, and upset it.

Breathless and in despair he fell on his back, expecting death to come immediately.

Meanwhile the visitors were leaving. Praskovya Fedorovna was seeing them off. She heard something fall

She went out and returned with a candle. He lay there panting heavily, like a man who has run a thousand

"No...o...thing. I upset it." ("Why speak of it? She won't understand," he thought.)

And in truth she did not understand. She picked up the stand, lit his candle, and hurried away to see another

"Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask Leshchetitsky to come and see you here."

This meant calling in the famous specialist, regardless of expense. He smiled malignantly and said "No." She

While she was kissing him he hated her from the bottom of his soul and with difficulty refrained from

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply

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. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with

Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys,

griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped

leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her

dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love

like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die;

but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It

"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

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

And to replace that thought he called up a succession of others, hoping to find in them some support. He tried

to get back into the former current of thoughts that had once screened the thought of death from him. But

strange to say, all that had formerly shut off, hidden, and destroyed his consciousness of death, no longer had

that effect. Ivan Ilych now spent most of his time in attempting to reestablish that old current. He would say

to himself: "I will take up my duties again after all I used to live by them." And banishing all doubts he

would go to the law courts, enter into conversation with his colleagues, and sit carelessly as was his wont,

scanning the crowd with a thoughtful look and leaning both his emaciated arms on the arms of his oak chair;

bending over as usual to a colleague and drawing his papers nearer he would interchange whispers with him,

and then suddenly raising his eyes and sitting erect would pronounce certain words and open the proceedings.

But suddenly in the midst of those proceedings the pain in his side, regardless of the stage the proceedings

had reached, would begin its own gnawing work. Ivan Ilych would turn his attention to it and try to drive the

thought of it away, but without success. *It* would come and stand before him and look at him, and he would

be petrified and the light would die out of his eyes, and he would again begin asking himself whether *It*

alone was true. And his colleagues and subordinates would see with surprise and distress that he, the brilliant

and subtle judge, was becoming confused and making mistakes. He would shake himself, try to pull himself

together, manage somehow to bring the sitting to a close, and return home with the sorrowful consciousness

that his judicial labours could not as formerly hide from him what he wanted them to hide, and could not

deliver him from *It*. And what was worst of all was that *It* drew his attention to itself not in order to

make him take some action but only that he should look at *It*, look it straight in the face: look at it and

And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations new screens and new

screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to pieces or rather

In these latter days he would go into the drawingroom he had arranged that drawingroom where he had

fallen and for the sake of which (how bitterly ridiculous it seemed) he had sacrificed his life for he knew

that his illness originated with that knock. He would enter and see that something had scratched the polished

table. He would look for the cause of this and find that it was the bronze ornamentation of an album, that had

got bent. He would take up the expensive album which he had lovingly arranged, and feel vexed with his

daughter and her friends for their untidiness for the album was torn here and there and some of the

photographs turned upside down. He would put it carefully in order and bend the ornamentation back into

position. Then it would occur to him to place all those things in another corner of the room, near the plants.

He would call the footman, but his daughter or wife would come to help him. They would not agree, and his

wife would contradict him, and he would dispute and grow angry. But that was all right, for then he did not

But then, when he was moving something himself, his wife would say: "Let the servants do it. You will hurt

yourself again." And suddenly *It* would flash through the screen and he would see it. It was just a flash,

and he hoped it would disappear, but he would involuntarily pay attention to his side. "It sits there as before,

gnawing just the same!" And he could no longer forget *It*, but could distinctly see it looking at him from

"It really is so! I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible?

He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with *It*: face to face with *It*. And nothing could

How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about step by step, unnoticed, but in the third month

of Ivan Ilych's illness, his wife, his daughter, his son, his acquaintances, the doctors, the servants, and above

all he himself, were aware that the whole interest he had for other people was whether he would soon vacate

his place, and at last release the living from the discomfort caused by his presence and be himself released

He slept less and less. He was given opium and hypodermic injections of morphine, but this did not relieve

him. The dull depression he experienced in a somnolent condition at first gave him a little relief, but only as

something new, afterwards it became as distressing as the pain itself or even more so.

Special foods were prepared for him by the doctors' orders, but all those foods became increasingly

For his excretions also special arrangements had to be made, and this was a torment to him every time a

torment from the uncleanliness, the unseemliness, and the smell, and from knowing that another person had

But just through his most unpleasant matter, Ivan Ilych obtained comfort. Gerasim, the butler's young

assistant, always came in to carry the things out. Gerasim was a clean, fresh peasant lad, grown stout on town

food and always cheerful and bright. At first the sight of him, in his clean Russian peasant costume, engaged

Once when he got up from the commode to weak to draw up his trousers, he dropped into a soft armchair and

looked with horror at his bare, enfeebled thighs with the muscles so sharply marked on them.

Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting a pleasant smell of tar and fresh winter air, came in

wearing a clean Hessian apron, the sleeves of his print shirt tucked up over his strong bare young arms; and

refraining from looking at his sick master out of consideration for his feelings, and restraining the joy of life

"Gerasim started, evidently afraid he might have committed some blunder, and with a rapid movement turned

his fresh, kind, simple young face which just showed the first downy signs of a beard.

"Oh, why, sir," and Gerasim's eyes beamed and he showed his glistening white teeth, "what's a little trouble?

And his deft strong hands did their accustomed task, and he went out of the room stepping lightly. five

"Gerasim," he said when the latter had replaced the freshly washed utensil. "Please come here and help me."

Gerasim went up to him. "Lift me up. It is hard for me to get up, and I have sent Dmitri away."

Gerasim went up to him, grasped his master with his strong arms deftly but gently, in the same way that he

stepped lifted him, supported him with one hand, and with the other drew up his trousers and would have

set him down again, but Ivan Ilych asked to be led to the sofa. Gerasim, without an effort and without

apparent pressure, led him, almost lifting him, to the sofa and placed him on it.

Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave the room. But Ivan Ilych felt his presence such a comfort that he

"One thing more, please move up that chair. No, the other one under my feet. It is easier for me when my

Gerasim brought the chair, set it down gently in place, and raised Ivan Ilych's legs on it. It seemed to Ivan

"It's better when my legs are higher," he said. "Place that cushion under them."

Gerasim did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them, and again Ivan Ilych felt better while Gerasim held

"Not at all, sir," said Gerasim, who had learnt from the townsfolk how to speak to gentlefolk.

"What have I to do? I've done everything except chopping the logs for tomorrow."

"Of course I can. Why not?" and Gerasim raised his master's legs higher and Ivan Ilych thought that in that

Ivan Ilych told Gerasim to sit down and hold his legs, and began to talk to him. And strange to say it seemed

After that Ivan Ilych would sometimes call Gerasim and get him to hold his legs on his shoulders, and he

liked talking to him. Gerasim did it all easily, willingly, simply, and with a good nature that touched Ivan

Ilych. Health, strength, and vitality in other people were offensive to him, but Gerasim's strength and vitality

What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he

was not dying but was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something

very good would result. He however knew that do what they would nothing would come of it, only still more

agonizing suffering and death. This deception tortured him their not wishing to admit what they all knew

and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him concerning his terrible condition, and wishing and forcing him to

participate in that lie. Those lies lies enacted over him on the eve of his death and destined to degrade this

awful, solemn act to the level of their visitings, their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner were a terrible

agony for Ivan Ilych. And strangely enough, many times when they were going through their antics over him

he had been within a hairbreadth of calling out to them: "Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying.

Then at least stop lying about it!" But he had never had the spirit to do it. The awful, terrible act of his dying

was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous

incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very

decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished

to grasp his position. Only Gerasim recognized it and pitied him. And so Ivan Ilych felt at ease only with

him. He felt comforted when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night long) and refused to go to bed,

saying: "Don't you worry, Ivan Ilych. I'll get sleep enough later on," or when he suddenly became familiar

and exclaimed: "If you weren't sick it would be another matter, but as it is, why should I grudge a little

trouble?" Gerasim alone did not lie; everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and did

not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master. Once

when Ivan Ilych was sending him away he even said straight out: "We shall all of us die, so why should I

grudge a little trouble?" expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because he was

doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came.

Apart from this lying, or because of it, what most tormented Ivan Ilych was that no one pitied him as he

wished to be pitied. At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he would

have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to be petted and

comforted. he knew he was an important functionary, that he had a beard turning grey, and that therefore

what he long for was impossible, but still he longed for it. and in Gerasim's attitude towards him there was

something akin to what he wished for, and so that attitude comforted him. Ivan Ilych wanted to weep, wanted

to be petted and cried over, and then his colleague Shebek would come, and instead of weeping and being

petted, Ivan Ilych would assume a serious, severe, and profound air, and by force of habit would express his

opinion on a decision of the Court of Cassation and would stubbornly insist on that view. This falsity around

It was morning. He knew it was morning because Gerasim had gone, and Peter the footman had come and put

out the candles, drawn back one of the curtains, and begun quietly to tidy up. Whether it was morning or

evening, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, it was all just the same: the gnawing, unmitigated, agonizing

pain, never ceasing for an instant, the consciousness of life inexorably waning but not yet extinguished, the

approach of that ever dreaded and hateful Death which was the only reality, and always the same falsity.

"He wants things to be regular, and wishes the gentlefolk to drink tea in the morning," thought ivan Ilych, and

"He wants to tidy up the room, and I'm in the way. I am uncleanliness and disorder," he thought, and said

The man went on bustling about. Ivan Ilych stretched out his hand. Peter came up, ready to help.

"No sir, except Vladimir Ivanovich" (the son) "who has gone to school. Praskovya Fedorovna ordered me to

"No, there's no need to." "Perhaps I's better have some tea," he thought, and added aloud: "Yes, bring me

Peter went to the door, but Ivan Ilych dreaded being left alone. "How can I keep him here? Oh yes, my

medicine." "Peter, give me my medicine." "Why not? Perhaps it may still do some good." He took a spoonful

and swallowed it. "No, it won't help. It's all tomfoolery, all deception," he decided as soon as he became

aware of the familiar, sickly, hopeless taste. "No, I can't believe in it any longer. But the pain, why this pain?

If it would only cease just for a moment!" And he moaned. Peter turned towards him. "It's all right. Go and

Peter went out. Left alone Ivan Ilych groaned not so much with pain, terrible thought that was, as from

mental anguish. Always and for ever the same, always these endless days and nights. If only it would come

quicker! If only *what* would come quicker? Death, darkness?...No, no! anything rather than death!

when Peter returned with the tea on a tray, Ivan Ilych stared at him for a time in perplexity, not realizing who

and what he was. Peter was disconcerted by that look and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilych to himself.

"Oh, tea! All right, put it down. Only help me to wash and put on a clean shirt."

And Ivan Ilych began to wash. With pauses for rest, he washed his hands and then his face, cleaned his teeth,

brushed his hair, looked in the glass. He was terrified by what he saw, especially by the limp way in which

While his shirt was being changed he knew that he would be still more frightened at the sight of his body, so

he avoided looking at it. Finally he was ready. He drew on a dressinggown, wrapped himself in a plaid, and

sat down in the armchair to take his tea. For a moment he felt refreshed, but as soon as he began to drink the

tea he was again aware of the same taste, and the pain also returned. He finished it with an effort, and then lay

Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain,

always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call someone,

but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be still worse. "Another dose of morphineto lose

consciousness. I will tell him, the doctor, that he must think of something else. It's impossible, impossible, to

An hour and another pass like that. But now there is a ring at the door bell. Perhaps it's the doctor? It is. He

comes in fresh, hearty, plump, and cheerful, with that look on his face that seems to say: "There now, you're

in a panic about something, but we'll arrange it all for you directly!" The doctor knows this expression is out

of place here, but he has put it on once for all and can't take it off like a man who has put on a frockcoat

"Brr! How cold it is! There's such a sharp frost; just let me warm myself!" he says, as if it were only a matter

Ivan Ilych feels that the doctor would like to say: "Well, how are our affairs?" but that even he feels that this

Ivan Ilych looks at him as much as to say: "Are you really never ashamed of lying?" But the doctor does not

wish to understand this question, and Ivan Ilych says: "Just as terrible as ever. The pain never leaves me and

"Yes, you sick people are always like that.... There, now I think I am warm enough. Even Praskovya

Fedorovna, who is so particular, could find no fault with my temperature. Well, now I can say

Then dropping his former playfulness, he begins with a most serious face to examine the patient, feeling his

pulse and taking his temperature, and then begins the sounding and auscultation.

Ivan Ilych knows quite well and definitely that all this is nonsense and pure deception, but when the doctor,

getting down on his knee, leans over him, putting his ear first higher then lower, and performs various

gymnastic movements over him with a significant expression on his face, Ivan Ilych submits to it all as he

used to submit to the speeches of the lawyers, though he knew very well that they were all lying and why

The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, is still sounding him when Praskovya Fedorovna's silk dress rustles at the

door and she is heard scolding Peter for not having let her know of the doctor's arrival.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and at once proceeds to prove that she has been up a long time already, and

Ivan Ilych looks at her, scans her all over, sets against her the whiteness and plumpness and cleanness of her

hands and neck, the gloss of her hair, and the sparkle of her vivacious eyes. He hates her with his whole soul.

Her attitude towards him and his diseases is still the same. Just as the doctor had adopted a certain relation to

his patient which he could not abandon, so had she formed one towards him that he was not doing

something he ought to do and was himself to blame, and that she reproached him lovingly for this and she

"You see he doesn't listen to me and doesn't take his medicine at the proper time. And above all he lies in a

The doctor smiled with a contemptuous affability that said: "What's to be done? These sick people do have

When the examination was over the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskovya Fedorovna announced to

Ivan Ilych that it was of course as he pleased, but she had sent today for a celebrated specialist who would

examine him and have a consultation with Michael Danilovich (their regular doctor).

"Please don't raise any objections. I am doing this for my own sake," she said ironically, letting it be felt that

she was doing it all for his sake and only said this to leave him no right to refuse. He remained silent, knitting

his brows. He felt that he was surrounded and involved in a mesh of falsity that it was hard to unravel

Everything she did for him was entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for herself what

she actually was doing for herself, as if that was so incredible that he must understand the opposite.

At halfpast eleven the celebrated specialist arrived. Again the sounding began and the significant

conversations in his presence and in another room, about the kidneys and the appendix, and the questions and

answers, with such an air of importance that again, instead of the real question of life and death which now

alone confronted him, the question arose of the kidney and appendix which were not behaving as they ought

to and would now be attached by Michael Danilovich and the specialist and forced to amend their ways.

The celebrated specialist took leave of him with a serious though not hopeless look, and in reply to the timid

question Ivan Ilych, with eyes glistening with fear and hope, put to him as to whether there was a chance of

recovery, said that he could not vouch for it but there was a possibility. The look of hope with which Ivan

Ilych watched the doctor out was so pathetic that Praskovya Fedorovna, seeing it, even wept as she left the

The gleam of hope kindled by the doctor's encouragement did not last long. The same room, the same

pictures, curtains, wall paper, medicine bottles, were all there, and the same aching suffering body, and Ivan

Ilych began to moan. They gave him a subcutaneous injection and he sank into oblivion.

It was twilight when he came to. They brought him his dinner and he swallowed some beef tea with

After dinner, at seven o'clock, Praskovya Fedorovna came into the room in evening dress, her full bosom

pushed up by her corset, and with traces of powder on her face. She had reminded him in the morning that

they were going to the theatre. Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the town and they had a box, which he had

insisted on their taking. Now he had forgotten about it and her toilet offended him, but he concealed his

vexation when he remembered that he had himself insisted on their securing a box and going because it

Praskovya Fedorovna came in, selfsatisfied but yet with a rather guilty air. She sat down and asked how he

was, but, as he saw, only for the sake of asking and not in order to learn about it, knowing that there was

nothing to learn and then went on to what she really wanted to say: that she would not on any account

have gone but that the box had been taken and Helen and their daughter were going, as well as Petrishchev

(the examining magistrate, their daughter's fiance) and that it was out of the question to let them go alone; but

that she would have much preferred to sit with him for a while; and he must be sure to follow the doctor's

"Oh, and Fedor Petrovich" (the fiance) "would like to come in. May he? And Lisa?"

Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh exposed (making a show of that very flesh

which in his own case caused so much suffering), strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with

Fedor petrovich came in too, in evening dress, his hair curled *a la Capoul*, a tight stiff collar round his long

sinewy neck, an enormous white shirtfront and narrow black trousers tightly stretched over his strong

thighs. He had one white glove tightly drawn on, and was holding his opera hat in his hand.

Following him the schoolboy crept in unnoticed, in a new uniform, poor little fellow, and wearing gloves.

Terribly dark shadows showed under his eyes, the meaning of which Ivan Ilych knew well.

His son had always seemed pathetic to him, and now it was dreadful to see the boy's frightened look of pity.

It seemed to Ivan Ilych that Vasya was the only one besides Gerasim who understood and pitied him.

They all sat down and again asked how he was. A silence followed. Lisa asked her mother about the opera

glasses, and there was an altercation between mother and daughter as to who had taken them and where they

Fedor Petrovich inquired of Ivan Ilych whether he had ever seen Sarah Bernhardt. Ivan Ilych did not at first

Praskovya Fedorovna mentioned some roles in which Sarah Bernhardt was particularly good. Her daughter

disagreed. Conversation sprang up as to the elegance and realism of her acting the sort of conversation

In the midst of the conversation Fedor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilych and became silent. The others also

looked at him and grew silent. Ivan Ilych was staring with glittering eyes straight before him, evidently

indignant with them. This had to be rectified, but it was impossible to do so. The silence had to be broken,

but for a time no one dared to break it and they all became afraid that the conventional deception would

suddenly become obvious and the truth become plain to all. Lisa was the first to pluck up courage and break

that silence, but by trying to hide what everybody was feeling, she betrayed it.

"Well, if we are going it's time to start," she said, looking at her watch, a present from her father, and with a

faint and significant smile at Fedor Petrovich relating to something known only to them. She got up with a

When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilych that he felt better; the falsity had gone with them. But the pain

remained that same pain and that same fear that made everything monotonously alike, nothing harder and

Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything remained the same and there was no

His wife returned late at night. She came in on tiptoe, but he heard her, opened his eyes, and made haste to

close them again. She wished to send Gerasim away and to sit with him herself, but he opened his eyes and

Till about three in the morning he was in a state of stupefied misery. It seemed to him that he and his pain

were being thrust into a narrow, deep black sack, but though they were pushed further and further in they

could not be pushed to the bottom. And this, terrible enough in itself, was accompanied by suffering. He was

frightened yet wanted to fall through the sack, he struggled but yet cooperated. And suddenly he broke

through, fell, and regained consciousness. Gerasim was sitting at the foot of the bed dozing quietly and

patiently, while he himself lay with his emaciated stockinged legs resting on Gerasim's shoulders; the same

He removed his legs from Gerasim's shoulders, turned sideways onto his arm, and felt sorry for himself. He

only waited till Gerasim had gone into the next room and then restrained himself no longer but wept like a

child. He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God,

"Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me here? Why, why dost Thou torment me so

He did not expect an answer and yet wept because there was no answer and could be none. The pain again

grew more acute, but he did not stir and did not call. He said to himself: "Go on! Strike me! But what is it

Then he grew quiet and not only ceased weeping but even held his breath and became all attention. It was as

though he were listening not to an audible voice but to the voice of his soul, to the current of thoughts arising

"What is it you want?" was the first clear conception capable of expression in words, that he heard.

And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him.

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those

best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed none of them except the

first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it

would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no

as soon as the period began which had produced the present Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now

And the further he departed from childhood and the nearer he came to the present the more worthless and

doubtful were the joys. This began with the School of Law. A little that was really good was still found there

there was lightheartedness, friendship, and hope. But in the upper classes there had already been fewer

of such good moments. Then during the first years of his official career, when he was in the service of the

governor, some pleasant moments again occurred: they were the memories of love for a woman. Then all

became confused and there was still less of what was good; later on again there was still less that was good,

and the further he went the less there was. His marriage, a mere accident, then the disenchantment that

followed it, his wife's bad breath and the sensuality and hypocrisy: then that deadly official life and those

preoccupations about money, a year of it, and two, and ten, and twenty, and always the same thing. And the

longer it lasted the more deadly it became. "It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going

up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing

"Then what does it mean? Why? It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so

horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!

"Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done," it suddenly occurred to him. "But how could that be, when I

did everything properly?" he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all

"Then what do you want now? To live? Live how? Live as you lived in the law courts when the usher

proclaimed 'The judge is coming!' The judge is coming, the judge!" he repeated to himself. "Here he is, the

judge. But I am not guilty!" he exclaimed angrily. "What is it for?" And he ceased crying, but turning his face

to the wall continued to ponder on the same question: Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror? But

however much he pondered he found no answer. And whenever the thought occurred to him, as it often did,

that it all resulted from his not having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of

Another fortnight passed. Ivan Ilych now no longer left his sofa. He would not lie in bed but lay on the sofa,

facing the wall nearly all the time. He suffered ever the same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness

pondered always on the same insoluble question: "What is this? Can it be that it is Death?" And the inner

"Why these sufferings?" And the voice answered, "For no reason they just are so." Beyond and besides

From the very beginning of his illness, ever since he had first been to see the doctor, Ivan Ilych's life had

been divided between two contrary and alternating moods: now it was despair and the expectation of this

uncomprehended and terrible death, and now hope and an intently interested observation of the functioning of

his organs. Now before his eyes there was only a kidney or an intestine that temporarily evaded its duty, and

now only that incomprehensible and dreadful death from which it was impossible to escape.

These two states of mind had alternated from the very beginning of his illness, but the further it progressed

the more doubtful and fantastic became the conception of the kidney, and the more real the sense of

He had but to call to mind what he had been three months before and what he was now, to call to mind with

what regularity he had been going downhill, for every possibility of hope to be shattered.

Latterly during the loneliness in which he found himself as he lay facing the back of the sofa, a loneliness in

the midst of a populous town and surrounded by numerous acquaintances and relations but that yet could not

have been more complete anywhere either at the bottom of the sea or under the earth during that

terrible loneliness Ivan ilych had lived only in memories of the past. Pictures of his past rose before him one

after another. they always began with what was nearest in time and then went back to what was most remote

to his childhood and rested there. If he thought of the stewed prunes that had been offered him that

day, his mind went back to the raw shrivelled French plums of his childhood, their peculiar flavour and the

flow of saliva when he sucked their stones, and along with the memory of that taste came a whole series of

memories of those days: his nurse, his brother, and their toys. "No, I mustn't thing of that....It is too painful,"

Ivan Ilych said to himself, and brought himself back to the present to the button on the back of the sofa

and the creases in its morocco. "Morocco is expensive, but it does not wear well: there had been a quarrel

about it. It was a different kind of quarrel and a different kind of morocco that time when we tore father's

portfolio and were punished, and mamma brought us some tarts...." And again his thoughts dwelt on his

childhood, and again it was painful and he tried to banish them and fix his mind on something else.

Then again together with that chain of memories another series passed through his mind of how his illness

had progressed and grown worse. There also the further back he looked the more life there had been. There

had been more of what was good in life and more of life itself. The two merged together. "Just as the pain

went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse," he thought. "There is one bright spot

there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more

and more rapidly in inverse ration to the square of the distance from death," thought Ivan Ilych. And the

example of a stone falling downwards with increasing velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing

sufferings, flies further and further towards its end the most terrible suffering. "I am flying...." He

shuddered, shifted himself, and tried to resist, but was already aware that resistance was impossible, and

again with eyes weary of gazing but unable to cease seeing what was before them, he stared at the back of the

"Resistance is impossible!" he said to himself. "If I could only understand what it is all for! But that too is

impossible. An explanation would be possible if it could be said that I have not lived as I ought to. But it is

impossible to say that," and he remembered all the legality, correctitude, and propriety of his life. "That at

any rate can certainly not be admitted," he thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if someone could see that

smile and be taken in by it. "There is no explanation! Agony, death....What for?"

Another two weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an even occurred that Ivan Ilych and his

wife had desired. Petrishchev formally proposed. It happened in the evening. The next day Praskovya

Fedorovna came into her husband's room considering how best to inform him of it, but that very night there

had been a fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found him still lying on the sofa but in a different

position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring fixedly straight in front of him.

She began to remind him of his medicines, but he turned his eyes towards her with such a look that she did

not finish what she was saying; so great an animosity, to her in particular, did that look express.

She would have gone away, but just then their daughter came in and went up to say good morning. He looked

at her as he had done at his wife, and in reply to her inquiry about his health said dryly that he would soon

free them all of himself. They were both silent and after sitting with him for a while went away.

"Is it our fault?" Lisa said to her mother. "It's as if we were to blame! I am sorry for papa, but why should we

The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilych answered "Yes" and "No," never taking his angry eyes from

The doctor went into the drawing room and told Praskovya Fedorovna that the case was very serious and that

the only resource left was opium to allay her husband's sufferings, which must be terrible.

It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilych's physical sufferings were terrible, but worse than the physical

His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, as he looked at Gerasim's sleepy, goodnatured face

with it prominent cheekbones, the question suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life has been

It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as

he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to

struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable

impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his

professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official

interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the

"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and i am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that

He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new way. In the morning when he saw first

his footman, then his wife, then his daughter, and then the doctor, their every word and movement confirmed

to him the awful truth that had been revealed to him during the night. In them he saw himself all that for

which he had lived and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception which had

hidden both life and death. This consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and

tossed about, and pulled at his clothing which choked and stifled him. And he hated them on that account.

He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at noon his sufferings began again. He

"Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can't do any harm and often helps. Healthy people often do it."

When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilych was softened and seemed to feel a relief from his

doubts and consequently from his sufferings, and for a moment there came a ray of hope. He again began to

think of the vermiform appendix and the possibility of correcting it. He received the sacrament with tears in

When they laid him down again afterwards he felt a moment's ease, and the hope that he might live awoke in

him again. He began to think of the operation that had been suggested to him. "To live! I want to live!" he

His wife came in to congratulate him after his communion, and when uttering the usual conventional words

Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her voice, all revealed the same thing. "This is

wrong, it is not as it should be. All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life

and death from you." And as soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred and his agonizing physical suffering

again sprang up, and with that suffering a consciousness of the unavoidable, approaching end. And to this

was added a new sensation of grinding shooting pain and a feeling of suffocation.

The expression of his face when he uttered that "Yes" was dreadful. Having uttered it, he looked her straight

in the eyes, turned on his face with a rapidity extraordinary in his weak state and shouted:

From that moment the screaming began that continued for three days, and was so terrible that one could not

hear it through two closed doors without horror. At the moment he answered his wife realized that he was

lost, that there was no return, that the end had come, the very end, and his doubts were still unsolved and

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he cried in various intonations. he had begun by screaming "I won't!" and continued

For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled in that black sack into which he

was being thrust by an invisible, resistless force. He struggled as a man condemned to death struggles in the

hands of the executioner, knowing that he cannot save himself. And every moment he felt that despite all his

efforts he was drawing nearer and nearer to what terrified him. he felt that his agony was due to his being

thrust into that black hole and still more to his not being able to get right into it. He was hindered from

getting into it by his conviction that his life had been a good one. That very justification of his life held him

Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to breathe, and he fell through the

hole and there at the bottom was a light. What had happened to him was like the sensation one sometimes

experiences in a railway carriage when one thinks one is going backwards while one is really going forwards

"Yes, it was not the right thing," he said to himself, "but that's no matter. It can be done. But what *is* the

This occurred at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. Just then his schoolboy son had crept

softly in and gone up to the bedside. The dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His

hand fell on the boy's head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry.

At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that

though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, "What

*is* the right thing?" and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his

eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife camp up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing

at him openmouthed, with undried tears on her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt

"Yes, I am making them wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will be better for them when I die." He

wished to say this but had not the strength to utter it. "Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. with a

look at his wife he indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry for him...sorry for you too...." He tried

to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would not leave his was all

dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act

so as not to hurt them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!" he

thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where are you, pain?"

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no

To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant did not change. For those present

his agony continued for another two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, then