Quotations from an introduction to *The Death of Ivan Ilyich* by Leo Tolstoy, 1 of 3
Ronald Blythe
1922- English

The German physician and literary critic A. L. Vischer has investigated the parallel relationship that exists between a man’s total personality and his relationship to death. “Simple, uncomplicated souls,” he writes, “who do not attach such great importance to their own life, are able to accept their illness, because they accept their fate: life and heart have done their work, time for them to go. By contrast, successful and self-assured people are usually at a complete loss when faced with the reality of physical collapse.”
—Ronald Blythe, an introduction to The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

...the thought that he must die harassed him almost to the point of insanity. The very rationality of death became for him the most irrational thing of all.... He felt he could not live if there was death.
—Ronald Blythe, an introduction to The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

“Take the saving lie from the average man and you take his happiness away,” said Ibsen. The biggest saving lie is to accept a friend’s death and not one’s own.
—Ronald Blythe, an introduction to The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy was highly experienced in death, and from childhood onward his diaries, letters, and books reveal how much it intrigued him. His death “notes” range from the detailed studies he made of slaughter on the battlefield to an execution in Paris, from the animallike acceptance of death by the muzhiks on his estates to the greatly varying reactions he had to the many deaths in his own family.
—Ronald Blythe, an introduction to The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

With all but two exceptions, those surrounding Ivan Ilyich at his end feel sorry for him, “but not very.” Sorrow is a formality and he himself knows it. Nearly everything in his life has been a formality—his outlook, his marriage, his work, and his hopes—and he is hurt but not surprised by the conventional reaction to his tragedy.
—Ronald Blythe, an introduction to The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

There is the appalling possibility that the “I” upon whom this whole world of intimate impressions depends will soon have to face its absolute annihilation. The sun will rise as before, and the winds will blow as before. People will talk of the weather in the same tone. The postman will knock as did just now and the letters will fall on the mat. But he won’t be there. He, our pivot and the center of everything, will be nowhere at all.
—John Cowper Powys, in an introduction by Ronald Blythe to The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy