helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the
cruelty of God, and the absence of God.

"Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me here?
Why, why dost Thou torment me so terribly?"

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 for? What have I done to Thee? What is

it for?"
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 within him.
"What is it you want?" was the first clear conception capable

of expression in words, that he heard.
"What do you want? What do you want?" he repeated to himself.

"What do I want? To live and not to suffer," he answered.
And again he listened with such concentrated attention that

even his pain did not distract him.
"To live? How?" asked his inner voice.

"Why, to live as I used to -- well and pleasantly."
"As you lived before, well and pleasantly?" the voice

repeated.
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.
as soon as the period began which had produced the present

Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now melted before his
sight and turned into something trivial and often nasty.

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 light-heartedness, 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 away from me. And now it is all done and there is
only death.

"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 the riddles of life and death, as

something quite impossible.
"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 his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.

X
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 lonelinesspondered always on the same insoluble
question: "What is this? Can it be that it is Death?" And the

inner voice answered: "Yes, it is Death."
"Why these sufferings?" And the voice answered, "For no

reason -- they just are so." Beyond and besides this there was
nothing.

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 impending death.
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