Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich Died So That We Can Live

Comments · 35

• HO

  @homer30 · 16 years ago

  I disagree, Ivan in the end found his answer. He finally understood his question: What is death? He finally understood in the end that he's been living a death-like existence, a moral death. When he understood this and accepted death, his pain stops and he said "Death is finished......it is no more!"

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• DA

  @dayisdone123 · 7 years ago

  “What do I want? To live and not to suffer,&quot; he answered.<br><br>And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him. &quot;To live? How?&quot; asked his inner voice.<br><br>&quot;Why, to live as I used to—well and pleasantly.&quot;<br><br>&quot;As you lived before, well and pleasantly?&quot; the voice repeated.<br><br>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 longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.”

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• JA

  @jamesbaldock4140 · 5 years ago

  Given the the pace of life, it is difficult to always remember know important it is to leave a fulfilling one. The importance of doing so only completely occupies a person&apos;s mind when the imminence of their own death hits them like a freight train. It was too late for Ivan Ilyich, but it&apos;s not to late for us.

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• CA

  @Cassify06 · 13 years ago

  this book made a scar on my sould...really touching!

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• BO

  @bogitoMusic · 10 years ago

  In Russian: it = оно ; she = она ; he = он. But anyways – a profound analysis. Well told.

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• AD

  @adiconstantin4598 · 4 years ago

  Every word is important, when reading such a book (The least example: the hit was in the left side of the stomach, so the appendix cannot be involved)

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• OS

  @OswaldBeef · 15 years ago

  &quot;Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,&quot; it suddenly occured to him. &nbsp;&quot;But how could that be, when I did everything properly?&apos; he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this,the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.<br><br>

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• PR

  @premachandrannannatt592 · 12 years ago

  The novel gives an insight into what death is, and what one is supposed to do in the face of imminent death. &nbsp;A great experience.

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• XY

  @XYGamingRemedyG · 12 hours ago

  With a name like that, he sounds like he&apos;s serving a youthful porpoise.

• ST

  @steverafferty7511 · 3 years ago

  Really moving book. Great lecture as well. I now want to read the book again.

• FE

  @feytertom · 15 years ago

  I like the interpretation of the disease, and how Tolstoj does not in detail describe the origins of this disease, so as to bring the reader in Ivan Ilitsj&apos; place :) very good interpretation

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• HB

  @HB-iq6bl · 9 years ago

  This story was set in the present<br>He didnt question his existence &nbsp;or purpose <br>His description is the &nbsp;experience of un remitting pain and sufferring