Comma plus dash. XXVIII. Punctuation marks in a complex sentence Now the judicial investigator Ivan Ilyich

Please tell me in what case a comma is placed before a dash, with the exception of formalizing someone else’s speech.

A comma is placed before a dash if the sentence structure requires it.

A comma and a dash as a single punctuation mark can be placed in complex sentences, non-union complex sentences, between parts of complex sentences, as well as in a period (as a rule, a polynomial complex sentence, intonationally divided into two parts - rising and falling). This is described in detail in the relevant sections of the “Handbook of the Russian Language” by D. E. Rosenthal.

	Question No. 293964

Tell me how to correctly formulate the title of a dictionary entry containing a participial phrase, with or without a comma: Lymphoid tissue associated with the mucosa (LTA) (,) is...?

Russian help desk response

The closing parenthesis is followed by a comma and a dash.

	Question No. 292038

Is a second comma necessary or is one dash enough? The first thing that catches your eye(,) is the abundance of lakes.

Russian help desk response

A comma is needed: subordinate clause what catches your eye stands out on both sides. Each of the characters (comma and dash) is placed on its own base.

	Question No. 287634

Good afternoon, please tell me if a comma and a dash are needed in in this case: wash-resistant colors obtained from exclusively safe dyes are the key to impeccable quality Thank you

Russian help desk response

Comma and dash before a word pledge needed.

	Question No. 286753

Hello, dear Gramota.Ru. Unfortunately, I did not receive an answer to my question yesterday, so I have to ask it again. Is the punctuation in the sentence correct? I'm especially concerned about the comma and the dash after it. But so does the rest. Thank you in advance. I really hope to receive an answer. Honestly, it's very necessary. Suggestion: From the color of the product to the material from which it is made, everything can affect...

Russian help desk response

Punctuation marks are placed correctly.

	Question No. 284948

hello, please indicate the rule by which commas and dashes are placed in a row in this sentence: The main motive that prompted doctors to contact the institution was, of course, two daughters.

Russian help desk response

Each sign is placed on its own base. The comma “closes” the attributive phrase that comes after the word being defined; a dash is placed before the predicate, attached to the subject word This.

	Question No. 284600

Good afternoon. Need a comma before the dash (because of the "what")? Or does a dash replace a comma? But this does not mean that addresses collected according to the standard scheme are useless - these are also clients.

Russian help desk response

Your choice of punctuation follows the rules. However, D. E. Rosenthal noted that before a non-union connecting clause beginning with a pronominal word This, a comma and a dash are often used as a single character .

	Question No. 284415

Thank you for your continuous service at the “post”. Your portal is a treasure trove of difficult cases of our language practice. I have doubts about the answer to question No. 281705: Please explain why a comma is needed before the dash after the phrase “in case you pronounce them incorrectly” in the passage below. “He spoke only when it was expected of him, and he spoke approximately the same way as he walked to the dining room: he stumbled, stopped, looking for the right words in his multilingual dictionary, weighing those that were clearly suitable, but he was afraid that he might pronounce them incorrectly,” - rejecting others who will not be understood here, or they will sound very rude and harsh." Help Desk Answer: A comma is placed between similar circumstances, weighing and rejecting. Dashes that highlight an inserted construction do not affect the placement of other punctuation marks in the sentence. But in this case, the comma between the participles is in a different place - before BUT: weighing those, but fearfully rejecting others... And then the comma after you pronounce is not justified by the rules? Thank you. Galina Filippovna

Russian help desk response

Design but I'm afraid you might pronounce them incorrectly refers to words looking for the right words in his multilingual dictionary, weighing those that are clearly suitable. It is precisely this semantic connection that is indicated by the single sign comma and dash.

	Question No. 282372

Hello.
I came across an unusual punctuation mark: , - (comma and dash). I did not find information about its use in modern literature. The only appearance I recorded was from Rosenthal, thus:

§113. Comma and dash in a complex sentence and in a period

A comma and a dash in a complex sentence are placed as a single sign:
1) before the main sentence, which is preceded by a number of homogeneous subordinate clauses, if the breakdown of a complex whole into two parts is emphasized, for example: Who is to blame among them, who is right, is not for us to judge (Krylov); Whether Stolz did anything for this, what he did and how he did it, we don’t know (Dobrolyubov);
2) before a word that is repeated in order to connect with it a new sentence (usually a subordinate clause) or a further part of the same sentence, for example: Could this new social movement not be reflected in literature - in literature, which is always an expression of society! (Belinsky); Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that all, without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, were all in his hands (L. Tolstoy); His life, which began (so wonderfully in his memories) with a huge church porch... and the voice of his mother, in which the flint path shone a thousand times and the star spoke to the star - this life was filled with every hour with new, ever new meaning (Kataev);
3) in artistic speech in the period (see §219, Types of syntactic repetition, paragraph 3) (a sentence of significant length, most often complex, which is divided by a pause into two parts - rising and falling) between its parts, for example: A person begins to compose a poem in different ways considerations: to win the heart of his beloved, to express his attitude towards the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state, to capture the state of mind in which he this moment is there to leave a mark on the earth - for this he takes up the pen (Joseph Brodsky).
Within parts of the period, if they are significantly widespread, a semicolon is placed in artistic speech. Less often, commas are placed between parts (members) of the period, for example: Like a hawk floating in the sky, having made many circles with its strong wings, suddenly stops, spread out in the air in one place, and shoots from there with an arrow at a male quail shouting near the road, - so Tarasov son Ostap suddenly ran into the cornet and immediately threw a rope around his neck (Gogol).

Please clarify how relevant this punctuation mark is in general, whether it is now simply replaced by a dash or a comma. How far can Rosenthal be trusted in this rule?

Russian help desk response

Complete academic reference book “Rules of Russian spelling and punctuation”, ed. V.V. Lopatin (M., 2006 and later editions) provides for the placement of a comma and a dash as a single sign in a complex sentence, if the sentence is constructed in the form of a period, which is divided into two parts - pronounced with a rise and fall in tone (comma and dash are placed at the division point): If the old foliage rustled under your feet, if different branches turned red, if the willows turned around, if trees of different species began to speak with the aroma of their bark, then it means there is movement in the birches, and there is no point in spoiling the birch(Priv.). In such sentences main part often has a generalizing character and completes the listing of the preceding subordinate clauses: When I found myself in the bosom of the Odessa family, when I listened to Mikhail’s violin, when, floating on my back, I looked into the deep sky - everything fell into place(Grain); What was bitter to me, what was hard and what gave me strength, what life hurried me to cope with - I put it all here(TV). The reference book does not say that this sign has now lost its relevance, in other words, such punctuation also corresponds to the modern written norm.

But two other cases of using a comma and a dash as a single character in the reference book are marked as outdated. This is a comma and a dash between parts of a compound sentence: Next in line were police stations, and no one had heard anything about David there.(Priv.), as well as highlighting inserted structures with this sign: You get into the carriage - it’s so nice after the carriage - and roll along the steppe road(Ch.).

	Question No. 279406

Hello, Gramota! Is the punctuation correct: In the last years of Vladimir’s life, his relationship with his sons - Svyatopolk, the former Prince of Turov, and Yaroslav, who was appointed to reign in Novgorod (,) (-) seriously worsened. Thank you!

Russian help desk response

The specified comma and dash are needed.

	Question No. 275251

Hello, dear Diploma! Please explain something. This is the umpteenth time I’ve been doing an interactive dictation on your portal. And what’s most surprising: the computer gives me errors where I didn’t make them. For example: “I forgot the word that I wanted to say,” wrote Osip Emilievich. The computer tells me that I need a comma and a dash. Although I put a comma and a dash. Next, I repeat the task - and again the same thing. And not only in this sentence. If I didn't know the rule, I would think I was wrong. And this is not the first time... Please tell me what's wrong. Best regards, Serge.

Russian help desk response

You need a quotation mark, a comma and a dash. In this order. Check, please.

	Question No. 274368

Good afternoon, please tell me: lately I have often seen non-standard formatting of direct speech. All the spelling rules that I know clearly say: if the author’s words break direct speech, then (provided that there should be a period at the place of the break or there should be no punctuation mark at all) a comma and a dash are placed before the author’s words; The author's words are written with a lowercase letter. Regularly in fiction the following option occurs: instead of a comma and a dash in the case described above, they put a dot and a dash, and the author’s words begin with a capital letter. I initially sinned on the source of literature (electronic books), but then I took a couple of books from the Mayakovsky Library (St. Petersburg) - the same thing there! Perhaps my knowledge is outdated and/or insufficient, maybe there are some new/well-forgotten old norms of the Russian language according to which this design option is possible?

Russian help desk response

The rule you quote has not been canceled. But there is one more rule related to the design of direct speech: if the author’s words appearing after direct speech represent a separate sentence (do not contain a verb of speech), then they begin with a capital letter:

- Hurry, the school is on fire! - And he ran home to wake people up.

Perhaps you have come across a similar design option?

	Question No. 273587

When and according to what grammar rules are commas and dashes placed in sentences: , -
Thank you.

Russian help desk response

A comma and a dash can be placed as a single character or as a combination of characters. As a single sign, a comma and a dash are possible in a complex sentence, for example: Even the water became agitated - that’s how the frogs jumped(Prishvin). But more often you can find a combination of a comma and a dash, where each character stands on its own base, for example: An important task that the organizers of the Olympiad set for themselves is to support talented youth(a comma closes the subordinate clause, a dash is placed between the subject and the predicate).

	Question No. 269359

Is the following sentence written correctly? "With us, the law is on your side!"

Russian help desk response

Commas and dashes are not needed in this sentence.

	Question No. 266809

Hello! This is the fifth time I am writing to you. Please, if for some reason you cannot answer, tell me and I will not ask this question again. All my life I thought that I knew how direct speech was formed. But more and more often I see how in newspapers and books, after quotation marks closing direct speech, if at the end of direct speech there is a question mark, exclamation point or ellipsis, after the quotation mark they put a period or a comma. For example: “What wonderful weather!” he exclaimed. He exclaimed: “What wonderful weather!” She shouted: “Where are you going?” And recently I opened a book from the seventy-second year of the Leningrad publishing house - and there is the same story: dots after quotation marks after direct speech with an exclamation or question. Please tell me, was I taught wrong at school and at the university philology department? Or did I miss something? Why these periods and commas?

Russian help desk response

There are two parts to your question. We'll try to answer.

If direct speech is worth before introducing it in the author's words, then after direct speech there is a comma and a dash, and the author’s words begin with a lowercase letter: “We understand everything perfectly, Nikolai Vasilyevich,” Solodovnikov quipped to himself, sitting down on a white stool.(Shuksh.). If after direct speech there is a question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis, then these marks are preserved and a comma is not placed; the author’s words, as in the first case, begin with a lowercase letter: “Yes, I should have said goodbye!..” - he realized when the covered car was already climbing up(Shuksh.); “My blue-eyed guardian angel, why are you looking at me with such sad anxiety?” - Krymov wanted to say ironically(Bond.).

If there is an exclamation or question mark at the place of the break, then it is preserved, followed by a dash before the words of the author (with a lowercase letter), after these words a dot and a dash are placed; the second part of direct speech begins with a capital letter: “Do I now give happiness to many people, as I did before? - thought Kiprensky. “Is it really only fools who try to arrange the well-being of their lives?”(Paust.); “Yes, be quiet! - ordered the duty officer. “Can you be quiet?!”(Shuksh.).

2. But you need to put a period at the end of the sentence (after the quotation marks).

...If the closing quotation mark is preceded by a question mark, exclamation mark, or ellipsis (and the sentence ends there), then the same marks required by the terms of the entire sentence are not repeated after the closing quotation mark; unequal characters (before the quotation mark and after the quotation mark) are placed; compare: “Have you read the novels “What is to be done?” and “Who is to blame?”; Who doesn’t know the magnificent words of A. Blok: “Erase random features. And you will see - the world is beautiful..."?; Haven’t you read the novel “What is to be done?”!

Readers have more than once encountered student works and research on the pages of our application. The material presented to your attention was also written by a student, not a teacher. And it is dedicated to a very, very relevant topic...

......It all started with a mistake. In the dictation I came across this cunning sentence: “After all, with ordinary artists, nature in places where a shadow falls on it seems to consist of a different substance than in illuminated places - it’s wood, bronze, anything you like, just an unshaded body " All my desk neighbors began to argue: what should I put in front of this word - a comma, a dash, or both?
Opinions were divided, and we turned to the teacher. “Who wants to understand this problem, read grammar reference books, look in books for sentences in which a comma and a dash are next to each other, and together we will try to figure it out,” he said.
This idea seemed interesting to me, and to the next lesson I brought my “collection” (I compiled it while studying the “Anthology of Russian Literature of the 19th–20th Centuries” (M.: Lamand Enterprises, 1999).

In A Guide to Spelling, Pronunciation, and Literary Editing by D.E. Rosenthal, E.V. Dzhandzhakova and N.P. Kabanova (M.: CheRo, 1999) writes that a comma and a dash in a complex sentence are placed as a single sign:

1) before the main sentence, which is preceded by a number of homogeneous subordinate clauses, if the division of the whole into two parts is emphasized, for example: Which of them is to blame, which is right, is not for us to judge (I. Krylov); Whether Stolz did anything for this, what he did and how he did it, we don’t know (N. Dobrolyubov);

2) before a word that is repeated in order to connect with it a new sentence (usually a subordinate clause) or a further part of the same sentence, for example: Could this new social movement not be reflected in literature - in literature, which is always an expression of society! (V. Belinsky); Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that all, without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, were all in his hands (L. Tolstoy); His life, which began (so wonderfully in his memories) with a huge church porch... and the voice of his mother, in which the flint path shone a thousand times and the star spoke to the star - this life was filled with every hour with new, ever new meaning (V. Kataev );

3) in artistic speech in a period (a sentence of significant volume, most often complex, which is divided by a pause into two parts - rising and falling) between its parts, for example: A person begins to compose a poem for various reasons: to win the heart of his beloved, to express his attitude to the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state, in order to capture the state of mind in which he is currently in, in order to leave a mark on the earth - for this he takes up his pen (I. Brodsky); Like a hawk swimming in the sky, having made many circles with its strong wings, suddenly stops, spread out in the air in one place, and shoots from there with an arrow at a male quail shouting near the road - so Taras’s son Ostap suddenly flew at the cornet and immediately threw it around his neck rope (N. Gogol).

Armed with this information, I began to look for examples. And this is what I found.

1. After the winter spent in Dyalizh, among the sick and the peasants, sitting in the living room, looking at this young, graceful and, probably, pure creature and listening to these noisy, annoying, but still cultural sounds - it was so pleasant, so new ... (A. Chekhov. Ionych)

The sign “comma + dash” stands between the subject, expressed by a series of homogeneous infinitives, and the predicate; the example does not fit any of the points mentioned in the reference book. The grammatical basis of the sentence to sit, watch and listen was so pleasant does not imply the appearance of any signs between the subject and the predicate, and there are no constructions separated by commas. This means that the “comma + dash” sign can be considered purely the author’s.

By the way, there is another punctuation difficulty in this sentence. The commas around the phrase among patients and men reflect the author’s intention to show the clarifying nature of the circumstance.

2. At first, Startsev was struck by what he was now seeing for the first time in his life and what he would probably never see again: a world unlike anything else - a world where the moonlight is so good and soft... (A. Chekhov. Ionych)

Here the “comma + dash” sign corresponds to paragraph 2 of the “Directory” quoted above.

3. Startsev barely found the gate - it was already dark, like an autumn night - then he wandered around for an hour and a half, looking for the lane where he had left his horses. (A. Chekhov. Ionych)

This example does not fit any of the cases described in the Handbook. This sentence contains an insertion construction (it was already dark, like an autumn night); it is marked with a double dash sign. A comma after the word night is necessary, since it, firstly, closes the comparative phrase, and secondly, separates homogeneous predicates from each other found, wandered. A comma after the word gate is not necessary; it can be considered an author’s mark, placed for greater expressiveness (and partly, perhaps, for symmetry).

4. He was a little ashamed, and his pride was offended - he did not expect a refusal - and he could not believe that all his dreams, yearnings and hopes had led him to such a stupid end. (A. Chekhov. Ionych)

This example also does not fit any of the cases described in the Handbook. See the comment to the previous sentence - everything is similar here.

5. He remembered his love, the dreams and hopes that worried him four years ago - and he felt embarrassed. (A. Chekhov. Ionych)

This example also does not fit any of the cases described in the Handbook. The obligatory sign here is a comma, closing the subordinate clause. The dash was added by the author for greater expressiveness.

6. I remember when I was a boy of about fifteen, my late father - he was selling in a shop here in the village back then - hit me in the face with his fist, blood came out of my nose... (A. Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard)

This example also does not fit any of the cases described in the Handbook. A typical insertion design is marked here not by the standard “dash pair” sign, but by the paired “comma + dash” sign.

7. The Yaroslavl grandmother sent fifteen thousand to buy an estate in her name - she doesn’t believe us - and this money would not even be enough to pay the interest. (A. Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard)

See comment to proposal 3: everything is similar here.

8. The young lady tells me to dance - there are many gentlemen, but few ladies - and my head is spinning from dancing, my heart is beating. (A. Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard)
See commentary to sentence 3. However, in this sentence the author did not put that very optional comma before the first dash. In principle, it was possible to do without a second comma here, since a comma before the conjunction a in a complex sentence can be replaced by a dash.

9. The inhabitants of the suburban seaside resort - mostly Greeks and Jews, life-loving and suspicious, like all southerners - hastily moved to the city. (A. Kuprin. Garnet bracelet)

Here we “met” a separate application, highlighted with the “paired dash” sign, and a comparative phrase. Regulatory combination of signs.

10. Fishing boats, difficult to distinguish with the eye - they seemed small, - motionlessly dozed in the surface of the sea, not far from the shore. (A. Kuprin. Garnet bracelet)

The insertion construction they seemed small is indicated by a paired dash, a comma after the word small closes the participial phrase. What is not trivial here is that the author decided to introduce the insertion construction into the participial phrase.

11. It was about him that Skobelev once said: “I know one officer who is much braver than me - this is Major Anosov.” (A. Kuprin. Garnet bracelet)

A comma here closes the subordinate clause, a dash (in accordance with the norm) separates parts of the sentence connected by a non-union connection. It is possible to replace the combination of characters with a semicolon or (even worse) with a colon.

12. You will see that frozen pigs are being delivered - Christmas will come soon. (I. Shmelev. Summer of the Lord)

A comma closes a subordinate clause, a dash separates parts connected by a non-union connection. It is not possible to replace the combination of characters.

I believe that even these examples are quite enough to understand how important it is to “track” in a sentence syntactic constructions: some, standing next to each other, create a situation of combining signs (sentences 11, 12); the latter are capable of “absorbing” a punctuation mark belonging to a neighbor (see commentary on sentence 8); As for the special sign “comma + dash”, it is mainly the author’s, it was apparently created by punctuation fashion, and now in many cases it is replaced by a simple dash.

As for the sentence that gave rise to heated debate among my classmates, now I can say with knowledge of the matter: it needs both a comma, closing the comparative phrase, and a dash, “opening” a new part complex sentence. However, this combination of characters can be replaced with a semicolon.

The teacher praised me and said one more important thing: often the author’s mark appears not by the will of the author himself, but by the will of editors and proofreaders.

"The Death of Ivan Ilyich"

In the large building of judicial institutions, during a break in the hearing on the Melvinsky case, the members and the prosecutor met in the office of Ivan Yegorovich Shebek, and the conversation turned to the famous Krasov case. Fyodor Vasilyevich got excited, proving his lack of jurisdiction, Ivan Egorovich stood his ground, Pyotr

Ivanovich, without first entering into the dispute, did not take part in it and looked through the newly submitted Vedomosti.

Gentlemen! - he said, “Ivan Ilyich died.”

Really?

Here, read,” he said to Fyodor Vasilyevich, handing him a fresh, still fragrant issue.

In a black rim was printed: “Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, with spiritual sorrow, informs her relatives and friends about the death of her beloved husband, a member of the Trial Chamber, Ivan Ilyich Golovin, which occurred on February 4th of this 1882. The removal of the body is on Friday, at one o’clock in the afternoon.”

Ivan Ilyich was a comrade of the assembled gentlemen, and everyone loved him. He had been ill for several weeks; they said that his illness was incurable. The place remained with him, but there was a consideration that in the event of his death Alekseev could be appointed in his place, and in Alekseev’s place either Vinnikov or

Stack. So, having heard about the death of Ivan Ilyich, the first thought of each of the gentlemen gathered in the office was what significance this death could have on the transfers or promotions of the members themselves or their acquaintances.

“Now, I’ll probably get the job of Stabel or Vinnikov,” thought Fedor

Vasilevich. “I was promised this a long time ago, and this increase amounts to an eight hundred ruble increase for me, in addition to the office.”

“Now I’ll have to ask for my brother-in-law’s transfer from Kaluga,” I thought

Peter Ivanovich. - My wife will be very happy. Now it will no longer be possible to say that I never did anything for her family."

“I thought that he wouldn’t get up,” Pyotr Ivanovich said out loud. -

What did he actually have?

The doctors couldn't tell. That is, they defined it, but in different ways. The last time I saw him, I thought he would get better.

And I haven’t been to see him since the holidays. Everyone was getting ready.

What, did he have a fortune?

There seems to be something very small about the wife. But something insignificant.

Yes, I'll have to go. They lived terribly far away.

That is, it is far from you. Everything is far from you.

“He can’t forgive me that I live across the river,” smiling at

Shebeka, said Pyotr Ivanovich. And they started talking about the range of city distances, and went to the meeting.

In addition to those caused by this death in every consideration of movements and possible changes in the service that could result from this death, the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance evoked in everyone who learned about it, as always, a feeling of joy that he died, and not me.

“What, he died; but I didn’t,” everyone thought or felt. Close acquaintances, the so-called friends of Ivan Ilyich, at the same time involuntarily thought that they now needed to fulfill the very boring duties of decency and go to the memorial service and pay a condolence visit to the widow.

The closest were Fyodor Vasilyevich and Pyotr Ivanovich.

Pyotr Ivanovich was a friend at the law school and considered himself indebted to Ivan Ilyich.

Having conveyed to his wife at dinner the news of Ivan Ilyich’s death and thoughts about the possibility of transferring his brother-in-law to their district, Pyotr Ivanovich, without going to rest, put on a tailcoat and went to Ivan Ilyich.

At the entrance to Ivan Ilyich’s apartment there was a carriage and two cab drivers. Downstairs in the hall, near a coat rack, a glazed coffin lid with tassels and galloon polished with powder was leaning against the wall. Two ladies in black were taking off their fur coats.

One, Ivan Ilyich’s sister, is an acquaintance, the other is an unfamiliar lady. Comrade Peter

Ivanovich, Schwartz, came down from above and, from the top step, seeing him enter, stopped and winked at him, as if saying: “Ivan Ilyich made a stupid order:

it's just you and me."

Schwartz's face with English sideburns and his whole thin figure in a tailcoat had, as always, an elegant solemnity, and this solemnity, always contrary to the nature of Schwartz's playfulness, had a special salt here. That's what Pyotr Ivanovich thought.

Pyotr Ivanovich let the ladies go ahead of him and slowly followed them up the stairs. Schwartz did not go down, but stopped upstairs. Pyotr Ivanovich understood why: he obviously wanted to come to an agreement on where to screw up today. The ladies went up the stairs to the widow, and Schwartz, with seriously folded, strong lips and a playful look, movement of his eyebrows, showed Pyotr Ivanovich to the right, into the dead man’s room.

Pyotr Ivanovich entered, as always happens, perplexed about what he would have to do there. One thing he knew was that it never hurts to be baptized in these cases. As for whether it was necessary to bow at the same time, he was not entirely sure and therefore chose the middle one: upon entering the room, he began to cross himself and seem to bow a little. As far as the movements of his hands and head allowed him, he at the same time looked around the room. Two young men, one a high school student, it seems, nephews, crossing themselves, left the room. The old woman stood motionless. And the lady with strangely raised eyebrows said something to her in a whisper. A sexton in a frock coat, cheerful, decisive, was reading something loudly with an expression that excluded any contradiction; the barman Gerasim, walking in front of Pyotr Ivanovich with light steps, sprinkled something on the floor. Seeing this

Pyotr Ivanovich immediately felt the slight smell of a decomposing corpse. IN

On his last visit to Ivan Ilyich, Pyotr Ivanovich saw this guy in the office; he acted as a nurse, and Ivan Ilyich especially loved him.

Pyotr Ivanovich kept crossing himself and bowing slightly in the middle direction between the coffin, the sexton and the images on the table in the corner. Then, when this movement of baptism with his hand seemed to him to be too long, he stopped and began to look at the dead man.

The dead man lay, as dead men always lie, especially heavily, like a corpse, drowning his numb limbs in the bedding of the coffin, with his head forever bent on the pillow, and exposed, as dead men always exhibit, his yellow waxy forehead with licks on his sunken temples and his protruding nose, as if pressing on the upper lip. He had changed a lot, he had lost even more weight since Pyotr Ivanovich had not seen him, but, like all dead people, his face was more beautiful, and most importantly, more significant, than it was on the living. There was an expression on his face that what needed to be done had been done, and done correctly. In addition, this expression also contained a reproach or a reminder to the living.

This reminder seemed inappropriate to Pyotr Ivanovich, or at least not relevant to him. Something felt unpleasant to him, and therefore Pyotr Ivanovich hastily crossed himself again and, as it seemed to him, too hastily, incongruously with decency, turned and went to the door. Schwartz was waiting for him in the passage room, legs spread wide and playing with his top hat with both hands behind his back. One look at the playful, clean and elegant figure

Schwartz refreshed Pyotr Ivanovich. Pyotr Ivanovich realized that he, Schwartz, stood above this and did not succumb to depressing impressions. One look at him said:

the incident of Ivan Ilyich’s funeral service cannot in any way serve as a sufficient reason to recognize the order of the meeting as being violated, that is, that nothing can prevent this very evening from clicking, opening it, a deck of cards, while the footman is arranging four unburnt candles; There is generally no reason to believe that this incident could prevent us from having a pleasant evening today. He said this in a whisper to Peter as he passed by.

Ivanovich, offering to join in a game with Fyodor Vasilyevich. But apparently

Pyotr Ivanovich was not destined to screw this evening. Praskovya Fedorovna, a short, fat woman, despite all the efforts to make it look the opposite, still widening from the shoulders down, all in black, with a head covered in lace and with the same strangely raised eyebrows as the lady standing opposite the coffin, came out from her chambers with the other ladies and, leading them through the dead man’s door, said:

Now there will be a funeral service; come through.

Schwartz bowed vaguely and stopped, obviously neither accepting nor rejecting this offer. Praskovya Fedorovna, recognizing Pyotr Ivanovich, sighed, walked up to him, took his hand and said:

I know that you were a true friend of Ivan Ilyich... - and looked at him, expecting from him actions corresponding to these words.

Pyotr Ivanovich knew that just as he had to be baptized there, so here he had to shake hands, sigh and say: “Believe me!” And so he did. And, having done this, he felt that the result was the desired one: that he was touched and she was touched.

Let's go before it starts; “I need to talk to you,” said the widow. - Give me your hand.

Pyotr Ivanovich offered his hand, and they headed into the inner rooms, past

Schwartz, who winked sadly at Pyotr Ivanovich: “That’s the screw! Don’t ask me too much, we’ll take another partner. Just five of us when you get off,” -

said his playful look.

Pyotr Ivanovich sighed even deeper and sadder, and Praskovya Fedorovna shook his hand gratefully. Entering her living room, upholstered in pink cretonne with a cloudy lamp, they sat down at the table: she on the sofa, and Pyotr Ivanovich on a low ottoman, upset by the springs and incorrectly positioned under his seat. Praskovya Fedorovna wanted to warn him to sit on another chair, but she found this warning inappropriate for her position and changed her mind. Sitting down on this pouffe, Pyotr Ivanovich remembered how Ivan Ilyich arranged this living room and consulted with him about this very pink cretonne with green leaves. Sitting down on the sofa and passing by the table (in general, the whole living room was full of gizmos and furniture), the widow caught the black lace of her black mantle on the thread of the table. Pyotr Ivanovich rose up to unhook it, and the ottoman released under him began to worry and push him. The widow herself began to unhook her lace, and Pyotr Ivanovich sat down again, pressing down the pouffe that was rebelling under him.

But the widow did not unhook everything, and Pyotr Ivanovich stood up again, and again the pouf rebelled and even clicked. When it was all over, she took out a clean cambric handkerchief and began to cry. Pyotr Ivanovich was chilled by the episode with the lace and the fight with the pouf, and he sat frowning. This awkward situation was interrupted by Sokolov, Ivan Ilyich’s barman, with a report that the place in the cemetery that Praskovya Fedorovna had appointed would cost two hundred rubles. She stopped crying and, looking at Pyotr Ivanovich with the air of a victim, said in French that it was very difficult for her. Pyotr Ivanovich made a silent sign, expressing the undoubted confidence that it could not be otherwise.

“Smoke, please,” she said in a magnanimous and at the same time defeated voice and took up the issue with Sokolov about the price of the place. Pyotr Ivanovich, lighting a cigarette, heard that she asked very carefully about the different prices of land and determined the one that should be taken. In addition, having finished with the location, she also made arrangements for the singers. Sokolov left.

“I do everything myself,” she told Pyotr Ivanovich, pushing the albums lying on the table to one side; and, noticing that the ashes threatened the table, without hesitation she moved the ashtray to Pyotr Ivanovich and said: “I find it a pretense to insist that I cannot do practical things due to grief.”

On the contrary, if there is anything that can not console me... but entertain me, then it is caring about him. - She again took out a handkerchief, as if about to cry, and suddenly, as if overpowering herself, she shook herself and began to speak calmly:

However, I have something to do with you.

Pyotr Ivanovich bowed, not allowing the springs of the pouf, which immediately began to move under him, to disperse.

IN last days he suffered terribly.

Did you suffer a lot? - asked Pyotr Ivanovich.

Oh, terrible! For the last not minutes, but hours, he had been screaming incessantly. For three days in a row he screamed without stopping his voice. It was unbearable. I can't understand how I stood it; you could hear it behind three doors. Oh! what I endured!

And was he really in memory? - asked Pyotr Ivanovich.

Yes,” she whispered, “until the last minute.” He said goodbye to Us a quarter of an hour before his death and also asked to take Volodya away.

The thought of the suffering of a person whom he knew so closely, first as a cheerful boy, a schoolboy, then as an adult partner, despite the unpleasant consciousness of his and this woman’s pretense, suddenly horrified Peter

Ivanovich. He saw that forehead again, pressing his nose on his lip, and he felt afraid for himself.

“Three days of terrible suffering and death. After all, this can happen now, at any moment for me,” he thought, and he felt scared for a moment.

But immediately, he didn’t know how, the usual thought came to his aid that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich, and not to him, and that this should not and could not happen to him; that by thinking this way, he was succumbing to a gloomy mood, which he should not do, as was obvious from Schwartz’s face. And, having made this reasoning, Pyotr Ivanovich calmed down and began to ask with interest the details about the death of Ivan Ilyich, as if death were such an adventure that was characteristic only of Ivan Ilyich, but not at all characteristic of him.

After various conversations about the details of the truly terrible physical suffering suffered by Ivan Ilyich (I learned these details

Pyotr Ivanovich only by the way Ivan Ilyich’s torment got on his nerves

Praskovya Fedorovna), the widow, obviously found it necessary to get down to business.

Oh, Pyotr Ivanovich, how hard, how terribly hard, how terribly hard,

And she cried again.

Pyotr Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to blow her nose. When she blew her nose, he said:

Believe me... - and again she started talking and expressed what was obviously her main concern to him; the matter consisted of questions about how to get money from the treasury on the occasion of the death of her husband. She pretended to ask Pyotr Ivanovich for advice about a pension: but he saw that she already knew to the smallest detail what he did not know: everything that could be extracted from the treasury on the occasion of this death; but what she wanted to know was whether there was any way she could get even more money. Pyotr Ivanovich tried to come up with such a remedy, but after thinking for a while and out of decency scolding our government for its stinginess, he said that it seemed that it was no longer possible. Then she sighed and, obviously, began to think of a way to get rid of her visitor. He realized this, put out the cigarette, stood up, shook hands and went into the hallway.

In the dining room with the clock, which Ivan Ilyich was so happy with that he bought in a bricabraque, Pyotr Ivanovich met the priest and several other acquaintances who had come to the funeral service, and saw a beautiful young lady he knew, the daughter of Ivan Ilyich. She was all in black. Her waist, very thin, seemed even thinner. She had a gloomy, determined, almost angry look. She bowed to Pyotr Ivanovich, as if he were to blame for something. Behind his daughter stood with the same offended look a rich young man familiar to Pyotr Ivanovich, a judicial investigator, her fiancé, as he had heard. He bowed sadly to them and was about to go into the dead man’s room, when from under the stairs appeared the figure of a schoolboy son who looked terribly like Ivan Ilyich. This was little Ivan Ilyich, as Pyotr Ivanovich remembered him in Jurisprudence. His eyes were tear-stained and the kind that unclean boys have at the age of thirteen or fourteen. The boy, seeing Pyotr Ivanovich, began to frown sternly and bashfully. Pyotr Ivanovich nodded his head to him and entered the dead man's room. The funeral service began - candles, moans, incense, tears, sobs. Peter

Ivanovich stood frowning, looking at his feet in front of him. He did not look even once at the dead man and did not completely succumb to the relaxing influences and was one of the first to leave. There was no one in the front room. Gerasim, the barman, jumped out of the dead man’s room, threw through all the fur coats with his strong hands to find Pyotr Ivanovich’s fur coat, and handed it over.

What, brother Gerasim? - said Pyotr Ivanovich to say something.

God's will. “We’ll all be there,” said Gerasim, baring his white, solid peasant teeth, and, like a man in the midst of intense work, he quickly opened the door, called the coachman, picked up Pyotr Ivanovich and jumped back to the porch, as if thinking of something else for him to do. do.

Pyotr Ivanovich was especially pleased to breathe in the clean air after the smell of incense, a corpse and carbolic acid.

Where do you want it? - asked the coachman.

It's not too late. I’ll go see Fyodor Vasilyevich again. And Pyotr Ivanovich went. AND

Indeed, he caught them at the end of the first rubber, so it was convenient for him to enter fifth.

Prim. antique store (from the French bric-a-brac).

The past life story of Ivan Ilyich was the simplest and most ordinary and the most terrible.

Ivan Ilyich died at the age of forty-five, a member of the Judicial Chamber. He was the son of an official who had made in St. Petersburg, in various ministries and departments, that career that brings people to that position in which, although it clearly turns out that they are not fit to fulfill any significant position, they are still, by their long and past history, service and their ranks cannot be kicked out and therefore receive fictitious fictitious places and non-fictitious thousands, from six to ten, with which they live to a ripe old age.

Such was the Privy Councilor, an unnecessary member of various unnecessary institutions,

Ilya Efimovich Golovin.

He had three sons, Ivan Ilyich was the second son. The eldest had the same career as his father, only in a different ministry, and was already close to the service age at which this inertia of salary is obtained.

The third son was a loser. He had spoiled himself in various places and was now serving on the railways: his father, his brothers, and especially their wives not only did not like to meet with him, but unless absolutely necessary they did not remember his existence. The sister was married to Baron Gref, a St. Petersburg official like his father-in-law. Ivan Ilyich was le phenix de la famille, as they said. He was not as cold and neat as the older one, and not as desperate as the younger one. He was the middle between them -

smart, lively, pleasant and decent person. He was brought up together with his younger brother in Jurisprudence. The youngest did not finish and was expelled from the fifth grade, but Ivan Ilyich completed the course well. In Law he was already what he was subsequently all his life: a capable man, cheerfully good-natured and sociable, but strictly fulfilling what he considered his duty; He considered as his duty everything that was considered as such by the highest-ranking people. He was not an ingratiating boy, nor later an adult, but from a very young age he was drawn to the highest-ranked people in the world, adopted their methods, their views on life and with them. established friendly relations. All the hobbies of childhood and youth passed for him without leaving any big traces; he gave himself over to sensuality and vanity, and - in the end, in the upper classes - to liberalism, but all within certain limits, which his feelings correctly pointed out to him.

In Jurisprudence, he committed actions that previously seemed to him to be great disgusting things and inspired him with self-loathing while he was committing them; but later, seeing that these actions were committed by high-ranking people and were not considered bad by them, he not only recognized them as good, but completely forgot them and was not at all upset by the memories of them.

Having left Jurisprudence in the tenth grade and having received money from his father for uniforms, Ivan Ilyich ordered himself a dress from Scharmer, hung a medal with the inscription: “respice finem” on key rings, said goodbye to the prince and teacher, had lunch with his comrades at Donon’s and with new fashionable suitcases, linen, a dress, shaving and toiletries and a blanket, ordered and bought in the best stores, he went to the province to take the place of an official on special assignments for the governor, which his father delivered to him.

In the provinces, Ivan Ilyich immediately arranged for himself the same easy and pleasant position as his position in Jurisprudence. He served, made a career and at the same time had a pleasant and decent time; From time to time he traveled on behalf of his superiors to the districts, behaved with dignity both with superiors and with inferiors, and with precision and incorruptible honesty, of which he could not help but be proud, he carried out the assignments assigned to him, mainly on the affairs of schismatics.

In official matters, despite his youth and penchant for light fun, he was extremely restrained, formal and even strict; but in public he was often playful and witty and always good-natured, decent and bon enfant, as his boss and boss, for whom he was a household person, said about him.

There was also a relationship in the province with one of the ladies who imposed herself on the dapper lawyer; there was also a milliner; there were drinking parties with visiting adjutants and trips to the distant street after dinner; There was also subservience to the boss and even to the boss’s wife, but all this bore such a high tone of decency that all this could not be called bad words: all this fit only under the rubric of the French saying: il faut que jeumesse se passe4.

Everything happened with clean hands, in clean shirts, with in French words and, most importantly, in the highest society, therefore, with the approval of high-ranking people.

So Ivan Ilyich served for five years, and a change in service came.

New judicial institutions appeared; new people were needed.

And Ivan Ilyich became this new man.

Ivan Ilyich was offered a position by judicial investigators. Ivan Ilyich accepted it, despite the fact that the position was in another province and he had to abandon established relationships and establish new ones. Ivan Ilyich’s friends saw him off, formed a group, presented him with a silver cigarette case, and he left for a new place.

The judicial investigator Ivan Ilyich was just as comme il faut, decent, able to separate official duties from privacy and inspiring general respect, as he was an official of special assignments. The investigator's service itself was much more interesting and attractive for Ivan Ilyich than the previous one. In the previous service, it was pleasant to walk freely in Sharmer’s uniform, past the trembling and waiting petitioners and officials who envied him, straight into the boss’s office and sit down with him for tea and a cigarette; but there were few people directly dependent on his arbitrariness. Such people were only police officers and schismatics when he was sent on errands; and he loved to treat people who depended on him courteously, almost in a comradely way, he loved to make them feel that he, who could crush them, was simply treating them in a friendly manner. There were few such people then. Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that everyone, without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, was all in his hands and that he had only to write certain words on a piece of paper with a heading, and this important, self-satisfied person would be brought to him in as an accused or a witness, and he will, if he does not want to sit him down, stand in front of him and answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused this power of his; on the contrary, he tried to soften its expression; but the awareness of this power and the ability to soften it constituted for him the main interest and attractiveness of his new service. In the service itself, precisely in the investigations,

Ivan Ilyich very quickly learned the technique of removing from himself all circumstances not related to service, and putting every most complex matter into such a form in which the matter would only be externally reflected on paper and in which his personal view would be completely excluded and, most importantly, would be respected all the required formality. This was a new matter. And he was one of the first people to put into practice the application of the statutes of 1864.

Having moved to a new city to take the place of a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich made new acquaintances, connections, positioned himself in a new way and adopted a slightly different tone. He placed himself at some dignified distance from the provincial authorities, and chose the best circle of judges and wealthy nobles who lived in the city, and adopted a tone of mild dissatisfaction with the government, moderate liberality and civilized citizenship. At the same time, without changing at all the elegance of his toilet, Ivan Ilyich in his new position stopped shaving his chin and gave freedom to his beard to grow where it wanted.

Ivan Ilyich’s life in the new city was very pleasant:

the society opposing the governor was friendly and good; the salary was greater, and then whist added considerable pleasure to life, which Ivan Ilyich began to play, who had the ability to play cards cheerfully, thinking quickly and very subtly, so that in general he was always a winner.

vAfter two years of service in the new city, Ivan Ilyich met his future wife. Praskovya Fedorovna Mikhel was the most attractive, intelligent, brilliant girl in the circle in which Ivan Ilyich moved. Among other fun and relaxation from the work of the investigator, Ivan Ilyich established a playful, easy relationship with Praskovya Fedorovna.

Ivan Ilyich, being an official on special assignments, generally danced;

As a judicial investigator, he already danced as an exception. He already danced in the sense that, although in new institutions and in the fifth grade, but if it comes to dancing, I can prove that I can do this better than others. So, he occasionally danced with Praskovya Fedorovna at the end of the evening, and mainly during these dances he defeated Praskovya Fedorovna. She fell in love with him.

Ivan Ilyich did not have a clear, definite intention to marry, but when the girl fell in love with him, he asked himself this question: “Really, why not get married?” - he said to himself.

The girl Praskovya Fedorovna was good noble family, not bad;

was a small fortune. Ivan Ilyich could have counted on a more brilliant game, but this was also a good game. Ivan Ilyich had his salary, and she, he hoped, would have the same. Good relationship; she is a sweet, pretty and quite decent woman. To say that Ivan Ilyich married because he fell in love with his bride and found in her sympathy for his views on life would be as unfair as to say that he married because the people of his society approved of this party. Ivan Ilyich married for both reasons: he did something pleasant for himself by acquiring such a wife, and at the same time did what the highest-ranking people considered correct.

And Ivan Ilyich got married.

The very process of marriage and the first period of married life, with marital caresses, new furniture, new dishes, new linen, before his wife’s pregnancy, went very well, so that Ivan Ilyich was already beginning to think that marriage not only would not disrupt the character of an easy, pleasant life, cheerful and always decent and approved by society, which Ivan Ilyich considered characteristic of life in general, but will further aggravate it. But then, from the first months of my wife’s pregnancy, something new, unexpected, unpleasant, heavy and indecent appeared, which could not be expected and which could not be gotten rid of.

A wife without any reason, as it seemed to Ivan Ilyich, de gaite de coeur

As he told himself, she began to disturb the pleasantness and decency of life: she was jealous of him for no reason, demanded that he court her, found fault with everything and made unpleasant and rude scenes to him.

At first, Ivan Ilyich hoped to free himself from the unpleasantness of this situation with the same easy and decent attitude to life that had helped him out before - he tried to ignore his wife’s mood, continued to live as easily and pleasantly as before: he invited friends to join him, tried to leave himself to a club or with friends. But his wife once with such energy began to scold him with rude words and so stubbornly continued to scold him every time he did not fulfill her demands, obviously determined not to stop until he submitted, that is, would not sit at home and She won’t be as sad as she is that Ivan Ilyich was horrified. He realized that married life - at least with his wife -

does not always contribute to the pleasures and decency of life, but, on the contrary, often violates them, and that therefore it is necessary to protect oneself from these violations. AND

Ivan Ilyich began to look for means for this. Service was the one thing that impressed Praskovya Fedorovna, and Ivan Ilyich, through service and the responsibilities arising from it, began to fight with his wife, protecting his independent world.

With the birth of a child, attempts at feeding and various failures at the same time, with real and imaginary illnesses of the child and mother, in which Ivan Ilyich’s participation was required, but in which he could not understand anything, the need for Ivan Ilyich to isolate himself from the world outside the family became even more urgent.

But as the wife became more irritable and demanding, and

Ivan Ilyich increasingly shifted the center of gravity of his life to service.

He began to love service more and became more ambitious than he had been before.

Very soon, no more than a year after his marriage, Ivan Ilyich realized that married life, while presenting some conveniences in life, is in essence a very complex and difficult matter, in relation to which, in order to fulfill one’s duty, that is, to lead a decent, life approved by society, you need to develop a certain attitude, just like towards service.

And Ivan Ilyich developed such an attitude towards married life for himself. He demanded from family life only those comforts of a home-cooked dinner, a housewife, a bed that she could give him, and, most importantly, that decency of external forms that were determined by public opinion. For the rest, he was looking for cheerful pleasantries and, if he found them, he was very grateful; if he encountered resistance and grumbling, he immediately retreated into his own separate world of service, fenced off by him, and found pleasantries in it.

Ivan Ilyich was valued as a good servant, and three years later he was made a comrade prosecutor. New responsibilities, their importance, the possibility of bringing anyone to trial and putting anyone in jail; public speeches; the success that Ivan Ilyich had in this matter - all this attracted him even more to the service.

Let's go children. The wife became more and more grumpy and angry, but worked out

Ivan Ilyich's attitude towards home life made him almost impervious to her grumpiness.

After seven years of service in one city, Ivan Ilyich was transferred to the position of prosecutor in another province. They moved, money was tight, and my wife didn't like the place they moved to. Although the salary was greater than before, life was more expensive; In addition, two children died, and therefore family life became even more unpleasant for Ivan Ilyich.

Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for all the misfortunes that happened in this new place of residence. Most subjects of conversation between husband and wife, especially the raising of children, led to questions about which there were memories of quarrels, and quarrels were ready to flare up at any moment. There remained only those rare periods of love that the spouses found, but did not last long. These were islands on which they settled for a while, but then again plunged into the sea of ​​hidden enmity, expressed in alienation from each other. This alienation could have upset Ivan Ilyich if he believed that it should not be so, but he now recognized this situation not only as normal, but also as the goal of all activities in the family. His goal was to free himself more and more from these troubles and give them the character of harmlessness and decency; and he achieved this by spending less and less time with his family, and when he was forced to do this, he tried to ensure his position by the presence of strangers. The main thing is that Ivan Ilyich had a service. For him, the whole interest of life was concentrated in the official world. And this interest consumed him. The consciousness of his power, the ability to destroy any person whom he wants to destroy, the importance, even external, at his entrance to court and meetings with subordinates, his success in front of his superiors and subordinates and, most importantly, the mastery of his business, which he felt - all this made him happy and, together with conversations with comrades, dinners and whist, filled his life. So, in general, Ivan Ilyich’s life continued to go the way he believed it should have gone: pleasantly and decently.

He lived like this for another seven years. The eldest daughter was already sixteen years old, another child died, and there remained a high school boy, a subject of contention. Ivan

Ilyich wanted to send him to Jurisprudence, but Praskovya Fedorovna, out of spite, sent him to the gymnasium. The daughter studied at home and grew up well, the boy also studied well.

1 pride of the family (French)

2 foresee the end (lat.)

3 kind fellow (French)

4 youth must go crazy (French)

This is how Ivan Ilyich’s life went for seventeen years from the time of his marriage. He was already an old prosecutor, who refused some moves, waiting for a more desirable place, when unexpectedly one unpleasant circumstance happened that completely disturbed his peace of life. Ivan Ilyich was waiting for the position of chairman in the university city, but Hoppe somehow ran ahead and got this position. Ivan Ilyich became irritated, began to make reproaches and quarreled with him and with his closest superiors; They became cold towards him and in the next appointment he was passed over again.

This was in 1880. This year was the most difficult year of Ivan Ilyich’s life. IN

This year it turned out, on the one hand, that the salary was not enough to live on; on the other hand, that everyone had forgotten him and that what seemed to him to be the greatest, cruelest injustice towards him, to others seemed to be a completely ordinary matter. Even his father did not consider it his duty to help him. He felt that everyone had abandoned him, considering his situation with a salary of 3,500 to be the most normal and even happy. He alone knew that with the consciousness of the injustices that had been done to him, and with the eternal nagging of his wife, and with the debts that he began to incur, living beyond his means, he alone knew that his situation was far from normal.

In the summer of this goal, to ease his finances, he took a vacation and went to live with his wife for the summer in the village with his brother Praskovya Fedorovna.

In the village, without service, Ivan Ilyich for the first time felt not only boredom, but unbearable melancholy, and decided that it was impossible to live like this and that it was necessary to take some decisive measures.

After spending a sleepless night, which Ivan Ilyich spent all his time walking on the terrace, he decided to go to St. Petersburg to work hard and, in order to punish them, those who did not know how to appreciate him, to move to another ministry.

The next day, despite all the excuses of his wife and brother-in-law, he went to

Petersburg.

He was going after one; beg for a position with a salary of five thousand. He no longer adhered to any ministry, direction or type of activity. He only needed a place, a place with five thousand, in the administration, in the banks, in the railways, in the institutions of the Empress Maria, even in the customs office, but certainly five thousand and certainly to leave the ministry, where they did not know how to appreciate him.

And this trip of Ivan Ilyich was crowned with amazing, unexpected success. In Kursk, F. S. Ilyin, an acquaintance, sat down in the first class and reported a recent telegram received by the Kursk governor that a coup would take place in the ministry the other day: Ivan would be appointed to replace Pyotr Ivanovich

Semenovich.

The supposed coup, in addition to its significance for Russia, was of particular significance for Ivan Ilyich in that, while putting forward a new person, Petra

Petrovich and, obviously, his friend Zakhar Ivanovich, was extremely favorable for Ivan Ilyich. Zakhar Ivanovich was Ivan's comrade and friend

In Moscow the news was confirmed. And having arrived in St. Petersburg, Ivan Ilyich found Zakhar Ivanovich and received the promise of a right place in his former Ministry of Justice.

A week later he telegraphed to his wife:

“Zakhar takes Miller’s place at the first report and I receive an appointment.”

Thanks to this change of persons, Ivan Ilyich unexpectedly received an appointment in his former ministry in which he became two degrees higher than his comrades: five thousand in salary and three thousand five hundred in allowances. All annoyance at his former enemies and at the entire ministry was forgotten, and Ivan

Ilyich was completely happy.

Ivan Ilyich returned to the village cheerful and happy, as he had not been for a long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up, and a truce was concluded between them. Ivan Ilyich talked about how everyone honored him in

Petersburg, how all those who were his enemies were put to shame and were now dishonoring him, how they envied him for his position, especially how everyone loved him so much in Petersburg.

Praskovya Fedorovna listened to this and pretended that she believed it, and did not contradict anything, but only made plans for a new arrangement of life in the city where they were moving. And Ivan Ilyich saw with joy that these plans were his plans, that they were converging, and that again his faltering life was acquiring the real, characteristic character of cheerful pleasantness and decency.

Ivan Ilyich came for a short time. On September 10, he had to accept the position and, in addition, he needed time to get settled in a new place, transport everything from the province, buy, order, and much more; in a word, to settle down as it was decided in his mind, and almost exactly as it was decided in Praskovya Fedorovna’s soul.

And now, when everything had worked out so well, and when he and his wife agreed on a goal and, moreover, had not lived together much, they got together as friendly as they had not been since the first years of their married life. Ivan Ilyich was thinking of taking his family away immediately, but the insistence of his sister and brother-in-law, who suddenly became especially kind and kindred to Ivan Ilyich and his family, made Ivan

Ilyich left alone.

Ivan Ilyich left, and the cheerful mood produced by luck and agreement with his wife, one strengthening the other, did not leave him all the time.

We found a lovely apartment, exactly what the husband and wife had dreamed of. Wide, high, old-style reception rooms, a comfortable grand office, rooms for the wife and daughter, a classroom for the son - everything was specially invented for them. Ivan Ilyich himself took up the arrangement, chose wallpaper, bought furniture, especially old ones, to which he gave a special comme il faut style, upholstery, and everything grew, grew and came to the ideal that he had created for himself. When he was half settled, his device exceeded his expectations.

He understood the comme il faut, graceful and not vulgar character that everything will take when it is ready. As he fell asleep, he imagined the hall what it would be like.

Looking at the living room, which was not yet finished, he already saw the fireplace, the screen, the bookcase and these scattered chairs, these dishes and plates on the walls and the bronze when they were all in place. He was delighted by the thought of how he would defeat Pasha and

Lizanka, who also have a taste for this. They never expect this. IN

especially, he managed to find and buy cheap old things that gave everything a particularly noble character. In his letters he deliberately presented everything worse than it was in order to amaze them. All this occupied him so much that even his new service, who loved this work, occupied him less than he expected. IN

During meetings, he had moments of absent-mindedness: he thought about which curtain rods to use, straight or matched. He was so busy with this that he often tinkered with himself, even rearranging the furniture and rehanging the curtains himself. Once he climbed onto the ladder to show the uncomprehending upholsterer how he wanted to drape, he stumbled and fell, but, like a strong and dexterous man, he held on, only hitting his side on the handle of the frame. The bruise hurt, but soon went away - Ivan

Ilyich felt especially cheerful and healthy all this time. He wrote:

I feel like fifteen years have slipped away from me. He thought to finish in September, but it took until half of October. But it was lovely - not only he said it, but everyone who saw it told him.

In essence, it was the same thing that happens to all people who are not exactly rich, but those who want to be like rich people and therefore only look alike: damask, ebony, flowers, carpets and bronze. Dark and shiny - everything that all people of a certain kind do to be like all people of a certain kind. And he looked so similar that it was impossible to even pay attention; but to him it all seemed something special. When he met his people at the station railway, brought them to his lighted, ready-made apartment and a footman in a white tie unlocked the door to the front hall decorated with flowers, and then they entered the living room, office and gasped with pleasure, -

he was very happy, took them everywhere, absorbed their praise and beamed with pleasure. That same evening, when over tea Praskovya Fedorovna asked him, among other things, how he fell, he laughed and imagined how he flew and scared the upholsterer.

It’s not for nothing that I’m a gymnast. Anyone else would have been killed, but I hit myself a little here; when you touch it, it hurts, but it goes away; just a bruise.

And they began to live in a new building, in which, as always, when they had settled well, only one room was missing, and with new funds, which, as always, were only a little short - some five hundred rubles - and it was very good. It was especially good the first time, when not everything was arranged yet and there was still work to be done: buy it, order it, rearrange it, set it up. Although there were some disagreements between husband and wife, both were so happy and there was so much to do that it all ended without big quarrels. When there was nothing left to arrange, it became a little boring and something was missing, but then acquaintances and habits were already formed, and life was full.

Ivan Ilyich, having spent the morning in court, returned for dinner, and at first his mood was good, although it suffered a little from the room. (Every stain on the tablecloth, on the damask, the torn cord of the curtain irritated him: he put so much effort into the arrangement that any destruction pained him.) But in general, Ivan Ilyich’s life went the way, according to his faith, life should have gone: easily , nice and decent. He got up at nine, drank coffee, read the newspaper, then put on his uniform and went to court. The clamp in which he worked was already crushed there; he immediately fell into it.

Petitioners, certificates from the office, the office itself, meetings - public and administrative. In all this, one had to be able to exclude everything raw and vital that always disrupts the correct flow of official affairs: one must not allow any relationships with people other than official ones, and the reason for relationships should only be official ones and the relationships themselves should only be official ones. For example, a person comes and wants to know something, Ivan Ilyich is not a person in office and cannot have any relationship with such a person; but if there is a relationship between this person as a member, one that can be expressed on paper with a heading, - within the limits of this relationship, Ivan Ilyich does everything, everything decisively that is possible, and at the same time maintains the semblance of human friendly relations, that is, courtesy. As soon as a service relationship ends, so does every other relationship. Ivan Ilyich possessed this ability to separate the official side without mixing it with his real life to the highest degree and long practice and talent developed it to such an extent that he even, as a virtuoso, sometimes allowed himself, as if jokingly, to mix the human and the official relationship. He allowed himself to do this because he felt within himself the strength, whenever he needed it, to once again highlight what was official and put aside what was human. Ivan Ilyich handled this matter not only easily, pleasantly and decently, but even masterfully. In between, he smoked, drank tea, talked a little about politics, a little about general affairs, a little about the arts, and most of all about appointments. And tired, but with the feeling of a virtuoso who had clearly mastered his part, one of the first violins in the orchestra, he returned home. At home, the daughter and mother went somewhere or had someone over; the son was in the gymnasium, prepared his lessons with tutors and regularly studied what was taught in the gymnasium. All was good. After dinner, if there were no guests, Ivan Ilyich sometimes read a book about which they talk a lot, and in the evening he sat down to work, that is, read papers, coped with the laws, -

He compared the evidence and brought it under the laws. It was neither boring nor fun for him.

It was boring when you could play vint: but if there was no vint, then it was still better than sitting alone or with your wife. Ivan's pleasure

Ilyich had small dinners to which he invited ladies and men of important social status, and spending time with them that would be similar to the ordinary pastime of such people, just as his living room was similar to all living rooms.

One time they even had an evening where they danced. And Ivan Ilyich had fun, and everything was fine, only there was a big quarrel with his wife over cakes and sweets:

Praskovya Fedorovna had her own plan, but Ivan Ilyich insisted on taking everything from the expensive pastry chef, and took a lot of cakes, and the quarrel was because the cakes were left, and the pastry chef’s bill was forty-five rubles. The quarrel was big and unpleasant, so Praskovya Fedorovna told him: “Fool, be sour.” And he grabbed his head and in his hearts mentioned something about divorce. But the evening itself was fun. There was the best company, and Ivan Ilyich danced with the princess

Trufonova, the sister of the one who is known for establishing the “Carry away my grief” society. The joys of service were the joys of self-love; public joys were the joys of vanity; but Ivan Ilyich’s real joys were the joys of playing vint. He admitted that after everything, after any unpleasant events in his life, the joy that burned like a candle in front of all the others was to sit down with good players and non-screaming partners in a screw, and certainly four (five of them) it’s very painful to go out, although you pretend that I love you very much), and play a smart, serious game (when the cards are on), then have dinner and a glass of wine. And to sleep after a screw, especially when there was a small win (a big one is unpleasant), Ivan Ilyich went to bed in a particularly good mood.

This is how they lived. Their social circle was the best, they traveled and important people, and young people.

In looking at the circle of their acquaintances, the husband, wife and daughter were in complete agreement and, without saying a word, equally wiped themselves off and freed themselves from all sorts of different friends and relatives, the dirt that scattered towards them with tenderness in the living room with Japanese dishes on the walls. Soon these scruffy friends stopped scattering, and the Golovins were left with only the best company. Young people looked after Lizanka, and Petrishchev, Dmitry’s son

Ivanovich Petrishchev and the only heir to his fortune, a judicial investigator, began to look after Liza, so Ivan Ilyich was already talking about this with Praskovya Fedorovna: should they take them for a ride on troikas or put on a performance. This is how they lived. And everything went on like this, without changing, and everything was very good.

Everyone was healthy. It could not be called ill that Ivan Ilyich sometimes said that he had a strange taste in his mouth and something uneasy in the left side of his stomach.

But it happened that this awkwardness began to increase and turn not into pain, but into the consciousness of a constant heaviness in the side and into a bad mood. This bad mood, growing stronger and stronger, began to spoil the pleasantness of an easy and decent life that had been established in the Golovin family. The husband and wife began to quarrel more and more often, and soon the lightness and pleasantness disappeared, and only decency was barely maintained. The scenes became more frequent again. Again, only islands remained, and there were few of them on which husband and wife could meet without an explosion.

And Praskovya Fedorovna now said, not without reason, that her husband had a difficult character. With her characteristic habit of exaggeration, she said that she had always had such a terrible character that her kindness was needed to endure it for twenty years. The truth was that the quarrels now started from him. His nagging always began just before lunch and often just when he started eating, over soup. Either he noticed that some of the dishes were damaged, then the food was not right, then the son put his elbow on the table, then his daughter’s hairstyle. And he blamed Praskovya Fedorovna for everything. Praskovya Fedorovna at first objected and told him trouble, but twice during the start of dinner he became so furious that she realized that this was a painful state that was caused in him by eating, and she humbled herself; she no longer objected, but only hurried to dinner. Praskovya Fedorovna considered her humility a great merit. Deciding that her husband had a terrible character and had made her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself. And the more she felt sorry for herself, the more she hated her husband. She began to wish for him to die, but she could not wish this, because then there would be no salary. And this irritated her even more against him. She considered herself terribly unhappy precisely because even his death could not save her, and she became irritated, hid it, and this hidden irritation of her increased his irritation.

After one scene in which Ivan Ilyich was especially unfair and after which he said during the explanation that he was definitely irritable, but that it was because of his illness, she told him that if he was sick, then he needed to be treated, and demanded that he he went to the famous doctor.

He went. Everything was as he expected; everything was as it always is.

And the waiting, and the pretended importance, doctoral, familiar to him, the same one that he knew in himself in court, and the tapping, and the listening, and the questions requiring definite and, obviously, unnecessary answers, and the significant look that suggested that You, they say, just submit to us, and we will arrange everything - we know and undoubtedly how to arrange everything, all in one manner, for every person you want. Everything was exactly the same as in court. Just as he acted over the defendants in court, so the famous doctor made the same appearance over him.

The doctor said: such and such indicates that you have such and such inside; but if this is not confirmed by studies of such and such, then you need to assume such and such. If we assume this and that, then... etc. For Ivan Ilyich, only one question was important: is his situation dangerous or not? But the doctor ignored this irrelevant question. From the doctor's point of view, this question was idle and not subject to discussion; there was only a weighing of probabilities - a wandering kidney, chronic catarrh and diseases of the cecum. There was no question about the life of Ivan Ilyich, but there was a dispute between the wandering kidney and the cecum. And in front of Ivan Ilyich’s eyes, the doctor brilliantly resolved this dispute in favor of the cecum, making the reservation that a urine test could provide new evidence and that then the case would be reconsidered. All this was exactly the same as what Ivan himself had done a thousand times.

Ilyich handled the defendants in such a brilliant manner. The doctor made his resume just as brilliantly and triumphantly, even cheerfully, looking over his glasses at the defendant. From the doctor’s summary, Ivan Ilyich drew the conclusion that it was bad, and that he, the doctor, and, perhaps, everyone didn’t care, but he felt bad. And this conclusion painfully struck Ivan Ilyich, causing in him a feeling of great self-pity and great anger at this doctor, indifferent to such an important question.

But he didn’t say anything, but stood up, put the money on the table and, sighing, said:

We patients probably often ask you inappropriate questions,” he said. - In general, is this a dangerous disease or not?..

The doctor looked at him sternly with one eye through his glasses, as if to say: defendant, if you do not stay within the limits of the questions put to you, I will be forced to order your removal from the courtroom.

“I have already told you what I considered necessary and convenient,” said the doctor. -

Further research will show. - And the doctor bowed.

Ivan Ilyich came out slowly, sadly sat down in the sleigh and drove home. All the way, without stopping, he went through everything that the doctor said, trying to translate all these confusing, unclear scientific words into simple language and read in them the answer to the question: is it bad - am I very bad, or nothing else? And it seemed to him that the meaning of everything the doctor said was that it was very bad. Everything seemed sad to Ivan Ilyich on the streets. The cab drivers were sad, the houses were sad, the passers-by, the shops were sad. This pain, a dull, aching pain that never stopped for a second, seemed to take on a different, more serious meaning in connection with the doctor’s vague speeches. Ivan Ilyich now listened to her with a new heavy feeling.

He came home and began to tell his wife. The wife listened, but in the middle of his story his daughter came in wearing a hat: she was getting ready to go with her mother.

She sat down with an effort to listen to this boredom, but could not stand it for long, and her mother did not listen to the end.

Well, I’m very glad,” said the wife, “so now, look, take the medicine carefully.” Give me the prescription, I'll send Gerasim to the pharmacy. - And she went to get dressed.

He held his breath while she was in the room, and sighed heavily when she left.

Well then, he said. - Maybe, and definitely nothing else.

He began taking medications and following the doctor’s orders, which changed due to a urine test. But it just so happened that there was some confusion in this study and in what was to follow it. It was impossible to get to the doctor himself, but it turned out that what was being done was not what the doctor told him. Either he forgot, or lied, or was hiding something from him.

But Ivan Ilyich nevertheless began to strictly follow the instructions and in this fulfillment he found consolation for the first time.

Ivan Ilyich’s main occupation since his visit to the doctor was the exact fulfillment of the doctor’s instructions regarding hygiene and taking medications and listening to his pain, to all his bodily functions. Ivan Ilyich's main interests were human diseases and human health. When they talked in front of him about the sick, about the dead, about the recovered, especially about a disease that was similar to his, he, trying to hide his excitement, listened, asked questions and made an application to his illness.

The pain did not decrease; but Ivan Ilyich made an effort to force himself to think that he was better. And he could deceive himself as long as nothing bothered him. But as soon as there was trouble with his wife, failure in the service, bad cards in the screw, now he felt the full force of his illness; It happened that he endured these failures, expecting that he was about to correct the bad, overcome, wait for success, a grand slam. Now every failure crippled him and plunged him into despair. He said to himself: I had just begun to get better and the medicine was already beginning to take effect, and now this damned misfortune or trouble... And he was angry at the misfortune or at the people who were making trouble for him and killing him, and he felt how this anger was killing him ; but could not refrain from it. It would seem that it should have been clear to him that this anger towards circumstances and people intensifies his illness and that therefore he should not pay attention to unpleasant accidents; but he did the exact opposite reasoning: he said that he needed peace, kept an eye on everything that disturbed this peace, and at any slightest disturbance he became irritated. What made his situation worse was what he read. medical books and consulted with doctors. The deterioration proceeded so evenly that he could deceive himself by comparing one day with another, -

there was little difference. But when he consulted with doctors, then it seemed to him that things were going for the worse, and even very quickly. And despite this, he constantly consulted with doctors.

That month he visited another celebrity: the other celebrity said almost the same thing as the first, but posed the questions differently. And the advice with this celebrity only deepened Ivan Ilyich’s doubts and fears. A friend of his friend - a very good doctor - defined the disease completely differently and, despite the fact that he promised recovery, with his questions and assumptions he further confused Ivan Ilyich and increased his doubts.

The homeopath defined the disease in an even different way and gave medicine, and Ivan Ilyich, secretly from everyone, took it for a week. But after a week, not feeling relief and having lost confidence in both the previous treatments and this one, I became even more despondent.

Once a lady I knew talked about healing with icons. Ivan Ilyich found himself listening attentively and verifying the reality of the fact.

This incident frightened him. “Am I really that mentally weak?” he said to himself.

Nonsense! It’s all nonsense, you shouldn’t succumb to suspiciousness, but, having chosen one doctor, strictly adhere to his treatment. That's what I'll do. It's over now. I won’t think about it and will strictly follow the treatment until the summer. And it will be seen there.

Now the end of these hesitations!.." It was easy to say this, but impossible to do. The pain in his side kept tormenting him, it seemed to intensify, became constant, the taste in his mouth became more and more strange, it seemed to him that he smelled something disgusting from his mouth, and his appetite and strength were weakening. It was impossible to deceive himself: something terrible, new and so significant, something more significant that had never happened to Ivan Ilyich in his life, was happening in him. And

he alone knew about it, yet those around him did not understand or did not want to understand and thought that everything in the world was going on as before. This was what tormented Ivan most of all.

Ilyich. The family - most importantly his wife and daughter, who were in the midst of trips - he saw, did not understand anything, they were annoyed that he was so sad and demanding, as if it was his fault. Although they tried to hide it, he saw that he was a hindrance to them, but that his wife had developed a certain attitude towards his illness and adhered to him regardless of what he said and did. The attitude was like this:

You know,” she told her acquaintances, “Ivan Ilyich cannot, like all good people, strictly follow the prescribed treatment. Today he will take the drops and eat as ordered, and go to bed on time; Tomorrow, suddenly, if I look, he will forget to take it, eat sturgeon (but he was not ordered), and sit at the screw for up to an hour.

Well, when? - Ivan Ilyich will say with annoyance. - Once at Peter's

Ivanovich.

And yesterday with Shebek.

I still couldn't sleep from the pain...

Yes, for whatever reason, it’s the only way you’ll never recover and you’re torturing us.

External, expressed by others and himself, Praskovya’s attitude

Feodorovna had this attitude towards her husband’s illness that Ivan Ilyich was to blame for this illness and this whole illness was a new nuisance that he was causing his wife. Ivan Ilyich felt that this was coming out of her involuntarily, but this did not make it any easier for him.

In court, Ivan Ilyich noticed, or thought he noticed, the same strange attitude towards himself: it seemed to him that they were looking at him closely, as if he were a person who would soon have to leave his place; then suddenly his friends began to make friendly jokes about his suspiciousness, as if something terrible and terrible, unheard of, that had started inside him and was constantly sucking him and uncontrollably pulling him somewhere, was the most pleasant subject for a joke. Especially Schwartz, with his playfulness, vitality and comme il faut, which reminded Ivan Ilyich of himself ten years ago, irritated him.

Friends came to form a party and sat down. They dealt, warmed up new cards, added diamonds to diamonds, there were seven of them. The partner said: no trump cards, -

and supported two diamonds. What else? It should be fun, cheerful - a helmet. AND

suddenly Ivan Ilyich feels this sucking pain, this taste in his mouth, and something wild seems to him in the fact that he can rejoice at the helmet.

He looks at Mikhail Mikhailovich, his partner, as he hits the table with a sanguine hand and politely and condescendingly refrains from grabbing bribes, but moves them towards Ivan Ilyich in order to give him the pleasure of collecting them, without bothering himself, without stretching his hand far. “Why does he think that I’m so weak that I can’t stretch my hand far,” thinks Ivan Ilyich, he forgets his trump cards and trumps his own again and loses the helmet without three, and what’s most terrible is what he sees, how Mikhail Mikhailovich suffers, but he doesn’t care. And it’s terrible to think why he doesn’t care.

Everyone sees that he is having a hard time and tells him: “We can stop if you are tired. You can rest.” Relax? No, he is not tired at all, they are finishing the rubber. Everyone is gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilyich feels that he has unleashed this gloom on them and cannot dispel it. They have dinner and leave, and Ivan

Ilyich is left alone with the consciousness that his life is poisoned for him and poisons the lives of others, and that this poison does not weaken, but penetrates his entire being more and more.

And with this consciousness, and even with physical pain, and even with horror, I had to go to bed and often stay awake from pain for most of the night. A

the next morning I had to get up again, get dressed, go to court, speak, write, and if I didn’t go, be at home with the same twenty-four hours in a day, each of which was torture. And he had to live like this on the edge of death alone, without one person who would understand and take pity on him.

This went on for a month or two. Before the New Year, his brother-in-law came to their city and stayed with them. Ivan Ilyich was in court. Praskovya Fedorovna went shopping. Entering his office, he found his brother-in-law there, a healthy sanguine man, unpacking his suitcase. He raised his head to Ivan's steps

Ilyich and looked at him for a second in silence. This look revealed everything to Ivan

Ilyich. The brother-in-law opened his mouth to gasp, but held back. This movement confirmed everything.

What, has it changed?

Yes... there is a change.

And no matter how much Ivan Ilyich asked his brother-in-law to talk about his appearance, the brother-in-law remained silent. Praskovya Fedorovna arrived and her brother-in-law went to see her.

Ivan Ilyich locked the door and began to look in the mirror - straight ahead, then from the side. He took the portrait of himself and his wife and compared the portrait with what he saw in the mirror. The change was huge. Then he exposed his arms to the elbows, looked, lowered his sleeves, sat down on the ottoman and became blacker than the night.

“No, no, no,” he said to himself, jumped up, went to the table, opened the file, began to read it, but could not. He unlocked the door and went into the hall. The door to the living room was closed. He approached her on tiptoe and began to listen.

No, you’re exaggerating,” said Praskovya Fedorovna.

How am I exaggerating? You can't see - he's a dead man, look at his eyes. No light. What does he have?

No one knows. Nikolaev (it was another doctor) said something, but I don’t know. Leshchetitsky (he was a famous doctor) said on the contrary...

Ivan Ilyich walked away, went to his room, lay down and began to think: “A kidney, a wandering kidney.” He remembered everything the doctors had told him, how she had become distracted and how she was wandering. And with an effort of imagination he tried to catch this bud and stop it, strengthen it: so little was needed, it seemed to him. "No, I'll go back to

Pyotr Ivanovich." (This was the friend whose friend was a doctor.) He called, ordered the horse to be pawned and got ready to go.

Where are you going, Jean? - asked the wife with a particularly sad and unusually kind expression.

This unusual kindness embittered him. He looked at her darkly.

I need to see Pyotr Ivanovich.

He went to a friend whose friend was a doctor. And with him to the doctor. He found him and talked with him for a long time.

Looking at the anatomical and physiological details of what the doctor thought was happening inside him, he understood everything.

There was one thing, a little thing in the cecum. All this could get better. Strengthen the energy of one organ, weaken the activity of another, absorption will occur, and everything will get better. He was a little late for lunch.

I had lunch, talked cheerfully, but for a long time I could not go to my room to study. Finally he went into the office and immediately sat down to work. He read the cases, worked, but the consciousness that he had an important, intimate matter postponed, which he would deal with upon completion, did not leave him. When he finished his business, he remembered that this intimate matter was thoughts about the cecum. But he did not indulge in them, he went into the living room for tea. There were guests, they talked and played the piano, they sang;

there was a forensic investigator, a desired groom for his daughter. Ivan Ilyich spent the evening, as Praskovya Fedorovna noted, more cheerfully than others, but he did not forget for a minute that he had important thoughts about the cecum. IN

At eleven o'clock he said goodbye and went home. He had been sleeping alone since his illness, in a small room next to his office. He went, undressed and took the novel

Zola, but didn’t read it, but thought about it. And in his imagination that desired correction of the cecum took place. It was absorbed, thrown out, and proper activity was restored. “Yes, that’s all true,” he said to himself. “We just need to help nature.” He remembered the medicine, stood up, took it, lay on his back, listening to how beneficial the medicine was and how it eliminated the pain. “Just take it evenly and avoid harmful influences; I already feel a little better, much better.” He began to feel his side, -

It doesn't hurt to the touch. “Yes, I don’t feel it, really, it’s much better.” He put out the candle and lay down on his side... The cecum is corrected and absorbed. Suddenly he felt a familiar old, dull, aching pain, persistent, quiet, serious. The same familiar muck in my mouth. My heart sank and my head became confused. “My God, my God!” he said. “Again, again, and never stops.” And suddenly the situation presented itself to him from a completely different perspective. “A cecum? A kidney,” he said to himself. “It’s not about the cecum, it’s not about the kidney, it’s about life and... death. Yes, there was life and now it’s going away, going away, and I can’t hold it back. Yes ". Why deceive yourself? Isn't it obvious to everyone except me that I am dying, and the only question is the number of weeks, days - now, maybe. Then there was light, and now there is darkness. Then I was here, and now there! Where? " He was overcome with cold, his breathing stopped. He heard only heartbeats.

“I won’t be there, so what will happen? Nothing will happen. So where will I be when I’m gone? Is it really death? No, I don’t want to.” He jumped up, wanted to light a candle, fumbled with trembling hands, dropped the candle and candlestick on the floor and fell back again onto the pillow. “Why? It doesn’t matter,” he said to himself, looking into the darkness with open eyes. “Death, Yes, death. And they don’t know anyone, and they don’t want to know, and they don’t regret. They’re playing.” (He heard distant sounds from behind doors, booming voices and ritornellos.) They don’t care, but they will also die. Fools. For me before, and for them after; and the same will happen to them. And they rejoice. Cattle! " Anger choked him. And it became painfully, unbearably difficult for him. It can’t be that everyone will always be doomed to this terrible fear. He stood up.

“Something is wrong; we need to calm down, we need to think about everything again.” And so he began to think about it. "Yes, the beginning of the illness. I hit my side, and I was still the same, both today and tomorrow; a little aching, then more, then the doctors, then despondency, melancholy, again the doctors; and I kept walking closer, closer to the abyss. Less strength ". Closer, closer. And now I'm exhausted, there's no light in my eyes. And death, but I'm thinking about the gut. I'm thinking about fixing the gut, and this is death. Is it really death?" Horror came over him again, he was out of breath, bent over, began looking for matches, and pressed his elbow on the bedside table. She disturbed him and hurt him, he became angry with her, pressed harder with annoyance and knocked over the bedside table. And in despair, gasping for breath, he fell on his back, expecting immediate death.

The guests were leaving at this time. Praskovya Fedorovna saw them off. She heard the fall and entered.

Nothing. Dropped it accidentally.

She went out and brought a candle. He lay there, breathing heavily and quickly, like a man who had run a mile, looking at her with fixed eyes.

What are you doing, Jean?

Nothing. U...ro...neil. “What can I say? She won’t understand,” he thought.

She definitely didn't understand. She picked it up and lit a candle for him and hurriedly left: she had to see off her guest.

When she returned, he was also lying on his back, looking up.

What do you think, or worse?

She shook her head and sat down. - You know, Jean, I’m thinking about inviting Leshchetitsky to your house.

This means inviting a famous doctor and sparing no expense. He smiled venomously and said; "No". She sat, came up and kissed his forehead.

He hated her with all the strength of his soul while she kissed him, and made an effort not to push her away.

Goodbye. God willing, you will fall asleep.

Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying and was in constant despair.

In the depths of his soul, Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying, but not only was he not used to it, but he simply did not understand, could not understand it in any way.

That example of a syllogism that he learned in Kieseweter's logic:

Kai is a man, people are mortal, therefore Kai is mortal, seemed to him throughout his entire life to be correct only in relation to Kai, but not in any way to him. That was

Kai is a man, a man in general, and this was completely fair; but he wasn't

Kai is not a person at all, but he has always been a completely, completely special creature from all others; he was Vanya with mom, dad, with Mitya and Volodya, with toys, the coachman, with the nanny, then with Katenka, with all the joys, sorrows, delights of childhood, adolescence, youth. Did Kai have that smell of the striped leather ball that Vanya loved so much! Did Kai kiss his mother’s hand like that and did the silk of the folds of his mother’s dress rustle like that for Kai? Did he rebel for pies in Law? Was Kai really that much in love? Could Kai conduct a meeting like that?

And Kai is definitely mortal, and it’s right for him to die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan

Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts, is a different matter for me. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too terrible.

That's how he felt.

“If I were to die, like Kai, then I would have known it, my inner voice would have told me so, but there was nothing like that in me; and I and all my friends - we understood that this was not at all the case, like with Kai. And now this is what! - he said to himself. - It can’t be. It can’t be, but it is. How can this be?

How can we understand this?

And he could not understand and tried to drive away this thought as false.

wrong, painful, and replace it with other, correct, healthy thoughts. But this thought, not only a thought, but as if reality, came again and stood before him.

And he called on other thoughts in turn to take the place of this thought, in the hope of finding support in them. He tried to return to the previous trains of thought that had previously obscured the thought of death for him. But - a strange thing - everything that previously obscured, hid, destroyed the consciousness of death, now could no longer produce this effect. Lately, Ivan Ilyich spent most of his time in these attempts to restore the previous courses of feeling that obscured death. Then he said to himself: “I’ll get busy with service, because I lived by it.” And he went to court, driving away all doubts from himself; entered into conversations with his comrades and sat down, according to his old habit, absent-mindedly, looking around the crowd with a thoughtful gaze and leaning with both emaciated hands on the arms of an oak chair, just as usual, leaning towards his comrade, moving the matter forward, whispering, and then, suddenly raising his eyes and straight sitting down, uttered the well-known words and began the business. But suddenly, in the middle, the pain in the side, not paying any attention to the period of development of the case, began its sucking business. Ivan Ilyich listened, drove away the thought of her, but she continued, and she came and stood right in front of him and looked at him, and he became dumbfounded, the fire went out in his eyes, and he began to ask himself again: “Is she really the only one?” AND

comrades and subordinates saw with surprise and chagrin that he, such a brilliant, subtle judge, was confused and made mistakes. He shook himself, tried to come to his senses and somehow brought the meeting to an end and returned home with a sad consciousness that his judicial work could not, in the old way, hide from him what he wanted to hide; that as a judge he could not get rid of her, and what was worst of all was that she distracted him to her, not so that he would do anything, but only so that he would look at her, straight into her eyes , looked at her and, doing nothing, suffered inexpressibly.

And, escaping from this state, Ivan Ilyich sought consolation, other screens, and other screens appeared and for a short time seemed to save him, but immediately again they were not so much destroyed as they became transparent, as if they penetrated through everything, and nothing could shield her.

It happened that lately he would enter the living room that he had decorated - that living room where he fell, for which he - how poisonously funny it was for him to think,

For the construction of which he sacrificed his life, because he knew that his illness began with this bruise - he entered and saw that on the varnished table there was a scar cut by something. He looked for the reason: and found it in the bronze decoration of the album, bent at the edge. He took the album, dear, which he had compiled with love, and became annoyed at the sloppiness of his daughter and her friends - sometimes it was torn, sometimes the cards were turned upside down. He carefully put it in order and folded the decoration again.

Then the idea came to him to move all this etablissement with albums to another corner, to the flowers. He called the footman: either his daughter or his wife came to the rescue; they disagreed, contradicted, he argued, got angry;

but everything was fine, because he did not remember about her, she was not visible.

But then his wife said, when he was moving: “Let people do it, you’ll hurt yourself again,” and suddenly she flashed through the screen, he saw her. She flashed, he still hopes that she will disappear, but he involuntarily listened to his side - everything is sitting there, still aching, and he can no longer forget, and she is clearly looking at him from behind the flowers. What's all this for?

“And it’s true that here, on this curtain, I lost my life, as if in an assault.

Really? How terrible and how stupid! This can't be! It can’t be, but it is.”

He went to the office, lay down and was again left alone with her, face to face with her, but there was nothing to do with her. Just look at her and feel cold.

Prim. 7 device, structure (French).

It was impossible to say how this happened in the third month of Ivan Ilyich’s illness, because it was done step by step, imperceptibly, but what happened was that his wife, and daughter, and his son, and servants, and acquaintances, and doctors, and, most importantly, he himself - they knew that the whole interest in him for others was only in how soon he would finally vacate the place, free the living from the oppression caused by his presence, and himself be freed from his suffering.

He slept less and less; they gave him opium and began to inject him with morphine.

But this didn't make it any easier. The dull melancholy that he experienced in a half-asleep state at first only relieved him as something new, but then it became as painful or even more painful than outright pain.

Special dishes were prepared for him as prescribed by doctors; but all these dishes were tasteless and tasteless to him, more disgusting and disgusting.

Special devices were also made for his bowel movements, and every time it was torture. The torment of uncleanliness, indecency and smell, from the knowledge that another person must participate in this.

But in this most unpleasant matter, consolation came to Ivan Ilyich.

The pantry man Gerasim always came to carry him out.

Gerasim was a clean, fresh young man who had grown fat from city grub. Always cheerful and clear. At first, the sight of this man, always cleanly dressed in Russian style, doing this disgusting thing embarrassed Ivan Ilyich.

Once, having gotten up from the ship and unable to lift his trousers, he fell onto an easy chair and looked with horror at his naked, powerless thighs with sharply defined muscles.

Gerasim entered in thick boots, spreading around him the pleasant smell of tar from the boots and the freshness of the winter air, with a light, strong step, in a clean apron and a clean cotton shirt, with the sleeves rolled up on his bare, strong, young arms, and without looking at Ivan Ilyich , - obviously restraining, so as not to offend the patient, the joy of life shining on his face,

He approached the ship.

Gerasim,” Ivan Ilyich said weakly.

Gerasim shuddered, obviously afraid that he had missed something, and with a quick movement turned his fresh, kind, simple, young face, which was just beginning to grow a beard, towards the patient.

What do you want?

I think this is unpleasant for you. Excuse me. I can't.

Have mercy, sir. - And Gerasim’s eyes flashed and bared his young white teeth. - Why not bother? Your business is sick.

And with deft, strong hands he did his usual job and went out, walking lightly. And five minutes later, walking just as lightly, he returned.

Ivan Ilyich was still sitting in the chair.

Gerasim,” he said when he set down the clean, washed vessel, “

please help me, come here. - Gerasim came up. - Lift me up. It’s hard for me alone, but I sent Dmitry away.

Gerasim came up; with strong hands, just as he walked lightly, he hugged her, deftly, gently lifted and held her, with the other hand he pulled up his trousers and wanted to sit her down. But Ivan Ilyich asked him to take him to the sofa. Gerasim, without effort and as if not pressing, took him, almost carrying him, to the sofa and sat him down.

Thank you. How cleverly, well... you do everything.

Gerasim smiled again and wanted to leave. But Ivan Ilyich felt so good with him that he didn’t want to let him go.

Here's what: please move this chair for me. No, this one, under your feet.

It's easier for me when my legs are higher.

Gerasim brought a chair, placed it without knocking, immediately lowered it exactly to the floor and lifted Ivan Ilyich’s legs onto the chair; It seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better as Gerasim raised his legs high.

“I feel better when my legs are higher,” said Ivan Ilyich. - Put that pillow over there for me.

Gerasim did it. He raised his legs again and laid them down. Again Ivan Ilyich felt better while Gerasim held his legs. When he lowered them, it seemed worse to him.

Gerasim,” he told him, “are you busy now?”

“No, sir,” said Gerasim, who learned from the city people to talk to gentlemen.

What else do you need to do?

So what should I do? I redid everything, just chop some wood for tomorrow.

So hold my legs higher like that, will you?

Why is it possible? - Gerasim raised his legs higher, and it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt no pain at all in this position.

What about the firewood?

Don't worry. We'll make it in time.

Ivan Ilyich ordered Gerasim to sit down and hold his feet and talked to him. AND -

It was a strange thing - it seemed to him that he felt better while Gerasim held his legs.

From then on, Ivan Ilyich sometimes began to call Gerasim and forced him to hold his legs on his shoulders and loved to talk to him. Gerasim did this easily, willingly, simply and with kindness that touched Ivan Ilyich. The health, strength, vigor of life in all other people offended Ivan Ilyich; Only the strength and vigor of Gerasim’s life did not upset, but calmed Ivan Ilyich.

The main torment of Ivan Ilyich was a lie - that lie, for some reason recognized by everyone, that he was only sick, and not dying, and that he only needed to be calm and be treated, and then something very good would come of it. He knew that no matter what they did, nothing would come of it except even more painful suffering and death. And he was tormented by this lie, tormented by the fact that they did not want to admit that everyone knew and he knew, but wanted to lie about him on the occasion of his terrible situation and wanted and forced him to take part in this lie. This lie, this lie, committed against him on the eve of his death, a lie that should reduce this terrible solemn act of his death to the level of all their visits, curtains, sturgeon for dinner... was terribly painful for

Ivan Ilyich. And - strangely - many times, when they were doing their tricks on him, he was on the verge of shouting to them: stop lying, and you know and I know that I’m dying, so at least stop lying. But he never had the courage to do this. The terrible, terrible act of his dying, he saw, was reduced by everyone around him to the level of a random nuisance, partly indecent (like how they treat a person who, upon entering the living room, spreads a bad smell from himself), thereby

"decency", which he served all his life; he saw that no one would take pity on him, because no one even wanted to understand his situation. Only Gerasim understood this situation and pitied him. And therefore Ivan Ilyich felt good only with Gerasim. He felt good when Gerasim, sometimes all night long, held his legs and did not want to go to bed, saying: “Don’t worry, Ivan Ilyich, I’ll get some more sleep”; or when he suddenly switched to “you” and added: “If only you weren’t sick, why not serve?” Only Gerasim did not lie, it was clear from everything that he alone understood what was going on, and did not consider it necessary to hide it, and simply felt sorry for the wasted, weak master. He even said directly once when Ivan Ilyich was sending him away:

We will all die. Why not bother? - he said, expressing by this that he is not burdened by his labor precisely because he carries it for a dying person and hopes that someone in his time will bear the same labor for him.

Apart from this lie, or as a result of it, the most painful thing for Ivan was

Ilyich is that no one pitied him as much as he wanted to be pitied:

At certain moments, after long suffering, Ivan Ilyich wanted most of all, no matter how ashamed he was to admit it, to have someone take pity on him, like a sick child. He wanted to be caressed, kissed, and cried over him, as children are caressed and consoled. He knew that he was an important member, that he had a graying beard and that this was therefore impossible; but he still wanted it. And in his relationship with Gerasim there was something close to this, and therefore his relationship with Gerasim consoled him. Ivan Ilyich wants to cry, he wants to be caressed and cried over, and then a comrade, a member of Shebek, comes, and, instead of crying and being caressed, Ivan Ilyich makes a serious, stern, thoughtful face and, by inertia, speaks his opinion about the meaning of the cassation decision and stubbornly insists on it. This lie around him and in himself most of all poisoned the last days of Ivan’s life.

It was morning. Because it was only morning that Gerasim left and came

Peter the footman put out the candles, opened one curtain and began to slowly tidy up.

Whether it was morning, evening, Friday, Sunday - it was all the same, everything was the same: an aching, excruciating pain that never subsided for a moment; the consciousness of a life that is hopelessly passing away, but still not yet gone;

the same terrible, hateful death approaching, which alone was reality, and the same lie. What are the days, weeks and hours of the day like?

Would you like some tea?

“He needs order, so that the gentlemen drink tea in the morning,” he thought and only said:

Would you like to go to the sofa?

“He needs to put the room in order, and I’m in the way, I’m unclean, a mess,” he thought and only said:

No, leave me.

The footman fiddled some more. Ivan Ilyich extended his hand. Peter approached helpfully.

What do you want?

Peter took out the watch that was lying at hand and handed it to him.

Half past eight. Didn't you get up there?

No way, sir. Vasily Ivanovich (it was his son) went to the gymnasium, and

Praskovya Fedorovna ordered to wake them up, if you ask. Will you order?

No, don't. - “Should I try some tea?” - he thought. - Yes, some tea...

Peter went to the exit. Ivan Ilyich became afraid to be alone. "What can we do to delay him? Yes, medicine." - Peter, give me some medicine. - “Why, maybe medicine will also help.” He took a spoon and drank. “No, it won’t help. All this is nonsense, a deception,” he decided as soon as he felt the familiar cloying and hopeless taste. “No, I really can’t believe it. But the pain, why the pain, would at least subside for a minute.” And he groaned. Peter returned. - No, go.

Bring some tea.

Peter left. Ivan Ilyich, left alone, groaned not so much from pain, terrible as it was, but from anguish. "Everything is the same and the same, all these endless days and nights. If only it were sooner. What is sooner? Death, darkness. No, no.

Anything is better than death!"

When Peter entered with tea on a tray, Ivan Ilyich looked at him in confusion for a long time, not understanding who he was and what he was. Peter was embarrassed by this look. AND

when Peter became embarrassed, Ivan Ilyich woke up.

Yes,” he said, “tea... okay, put it on.” Just help me wash my face and clean my shirt.

And Ivan Ilyich began to wash himself. With rest, he washed his hands and face, brushed his teeth, began to comb his hair and looked in the mirror. He felt scared: what was especially scary was the way his hair lay flat against his pale forehead.

When they changed his shirt, he knew that he would be even more scared if he looked at his body, and did not look at himself. But then it all ended. He put on a robe, covered himself with a blanket and sat down in a chair for tea. One minute he felt refreshed, but as soon as he began to drink tea, again the same taste, the same pain. He forcibly finished his drink and lay down with his legs stretched out. He lay down and let go

All the same. Either a drop of hope will sparkle, then a sea of ​​despair will rage, and everything is pain, everything is pain, everything is melancholy and everything is the same. One is terribly sad, he wants to call someone, but he knows in advance that with others it is even worse.

“If only I had morphine again, I would forget. I’ll tell him, the doctor, to come up with something else. It’s impossible, it’s impossible like that.”

An hour or two passes like this. But there's a bell in the hall. Maybe doctor. Exactly, this is the doctor, fresh, cheerful, fat, cheerful, with that expression - that you were scared of something, and now we will arrange everything for you. The doctor knows that this expression is not suitable here, but he has already put it on once and for all and cannot take it off, like a man who has put on a tailcoat in the morning and is going on a visit. The doctor rubs his hands cheerfully and comfortingly.

I'm cold. Frost is healthy. Let me warm up,” he says with such an expression that it’s as if you just need to wait a little until he warms up, and when he warms up, he’ll fix everything.

Well, how?

Ivan Ilyich feels that the doctor wants to say: “How are you?”, but that he also feels that it is impossible to say that, and says: “How did you spend the night?”

Ivan Ilyich looks at the doctor with an expression of a question: “Will you never be ashamed to lie?”

But the doctor does not want to understand the question.

And Ivan Ilyich says:

Everything is just as terrible. The pain does not go away, does not give up. At least something!

Yes, you sick people are always like this. Well, now, it seems, I have warmed up; even the most careful Praskovya Fedorovna would have nothing to object to my temperature. Well, hello. - And the doctor shakes hands.

And, throwing away all the previous playfulness, the doctor begins with a serious look to examine the patient, pulse, temperature, and tapping and listening begin.

Ivan Ilyich knows firmly and undoubtedly that all this is nonsense and an empty deception, but when the doctor, kneeling down, stretches out over him, leaning his ear higher, now lower, and makes various gymnastic evolutions over him with a most significant face, Ivan Ilyich succumbs to this how he used to succumb to the speeches of lawyers, when he knew very well that they would lie and why they would lie.

The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, was still tapping something when Praskovya Fedorovna’s silk dress rustled in the doorway and her reproach was heard

Peter that she was not informed about the doctor’s arrival.

She enters, kisses her husband and immediately begins to prove that she had been up for a long time and it was only due to a misunderstanding that she was not here when the doctor arrived.

Ivan Ilyich looks at her, examines her all and reproaches her for her whiteness, her plumpness, the cleanliness of her hands, her neck, the luster of her hair and the shine of her full of life eye. He hates her with all the strength of his soul, and her touch makes him suffer from a surge of hatred towards her.

Her attitude towards him and his illness is still the same. Just as a doctor developed an attitude towards patients that he could no longer remove, so she developed one attitude towards him - that he does not do something that is necessary, and he is to blame, and she lovingly reproaches him for this - and could no longer remove this attitude towards him,

But here he is, not listening! Doesn't take it on time. And most importantly -

lies down in a position that is probably harmful to him - legs up.

She told how he forces Gerasim to hold his legs.

The doctor smiled contemptuously and affectionately: “Well, what can we do, these patients sometimes invent such nonsense; but you can forgive.”

When the examination was over, the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskovya

Feodorovna announced to Ivan Ilyich that it was as he wanted, and today she invited the famous doctor, and she and Mikhail Danilovich (that was the name of the ordinary doctor) will examine and discuss.

Don't resist, please. “I do this for myself,” she said ironically, making him feel that she was doing everything for him and only this did not give him the right to refuse her. He was silent and winced. He felt that this lie surrounding him was so confused that it was difficult to make anything out.

She did everything over him only for herself and told him that she was doing for herself what she was definitely doing for herself as such an incredible thing that he had to understand it back.

Indeed, at half past twelve the famous doctor arrived. Again there were hearings and significant conversations in front of him and in another room about the kidney, about the cecum, and questions and answers with such a significant air that again, instead of the real question of life and death, which now alone stood before him, the question of the kidney came up and the cecum, who did something wrong, as they should, and who are about to be attacked for this by Mikhail

Danilovic and the celebrity will force them to improve.

The famous doctor said goodbye with a serious, but not hopeless look. AND

To the timid question, which Ivan Ilyich raised to him with sparkling eyes of fear and hope, whether there was a possibility of recovery, he answered that it was impossible to guarantee, but there was a possibility. The look of hope with which Ivan Ilyich saw the doctor off was so pitiful that, seeing him, Praskovya Fedorovna even began to cry, leaving the door of the office to hand over the fee to the famous doctor.

The uplift produced by the doctor's reassurance did not last long.

Again the same room, the same paintings, curtains, wallpaper, bottles and the same aching, suffering body. And Ivan Ilyich began to moan; they gave him an injection and he forgot.

When he woke up, it was getting dark; They brought him lunch. He ate the broth with effort; and again the same thing, and again the coming night.

After dinner, at seven o'clock, Praskovya Fedorovna entered his room, dressed as if for an evening, with thick, toned breasts and traces of powder on her face. She reminded him in the morning about their trip to the theater. Was visiting

Sarah Bernard, and they had a box, which he insisted they take. Now he forgot about it, and her outfit offended him. But he hid his insult when he remembered that he himself insisted that they get the box and go, because it was an educational aesthetic pleasure for the children.

Praskovya Fedorovna came in, pleased with herself, but as if guilty. She sat down, asked about her health, as he saw, just to ask, but not to find out, knowing that there was nothing to find out, and began to say what she needed: that she would never go would, but the box has been taken, and Helen and the daughter and Petrishchev (the judicial investigator, the daughter’s fiancé) are traveling, and that it is impossible to let them in alone. And that it would be more pleasant for her to sit with him.

If only he would do without her according to the doctor's orders.

Yes, and Fyodor Petrovich (the groom) wanted to come in. Can? And Lisa.

Let them come in.

The daughter came in, dressed up, with a naked young body, the body that made him suffer so much. And she exposed him. Strong, healthy, obviously in love and indignant at the illness, suffering and death that interfere with her happiness.

Fyodor Petrovich also entered in a tailcoat, curled a la Capoul, with a long, sinewy neck covered with a tight white collar, with a huge white chest and tight, strong thighs in tight black trousers, with one stretched white glove on his hand and with a clack.

Behind him, a schoolboy in a brand new uniform crawled in unnoticed, poor thing, with gloves and a terrible blue under his eyes, the meaning of which Ivan knew

His son was always pitiful to him. And his frightened and compassionate look was terrible. Apart from Gerasim, it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that only Vasya understood and pitied.

Everyone sat down and asked about their health again. There was silence. Lisa asked her mother about the binoculars. There was an argument between mother and daughter about who was doing where. It turned out unpleasant.

Fyodor Petrovich asked Ivan Ilyich if he had seen Sarah Bernard. Ivan

At first Ilyich did not understand what was being asked of him, and then he said:

No; have you already seen it?

Yes, in "Adrienne Lecouvreur".

Praskovya Fedorovna said that she was especially good at this and that. The daughter objected. A conversation began about the grace and reality of her playing - the same conversation that is always the same.

In the middle of the conversation, Fyodor Petrovich looked at Ivan Ilyich and fell silent.

Others looked and fell silent. Ivan Ilyich looked at them with sparkling eyes, obviously indignant at them. It was necessary to fix this, but there was no way to fix it. It was necessary to break this silence somehow. No one dared, and everyone became afraid that suddenly the decent lie would somehow be broken, and it would be clear to everyone what was happening. Lisa was the first to make up her mind. She broke the silence.

She wanted to hide what everyone was experiencing, but she let it slip.

However, if we’re going, then it’s time,” she said, looking at her watch, a gift from her father, and barely noticeably, significantly about something only they knew, she smiled at the young man and stood up, rustling her dress. Everyone got up, said goodbye and left.

When they left, it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better: there was no lie, -

she left with them, but the pain remained. The same pain, the same fear made it seem that nothing was hard, nothing was easier. It's getting worse.

Again we went minute after minute, hour after hour, everything was the same, and still there was no end, and the inevitable end became more and more terrible.

Yes, send Gerasim,” he answered Peter’s question.

Another two weeks passed. Ivan Ilyich no longer got up from the sofa. He did not want to lie in bed and lay on the sofa. And, lying almost all the time with his face to the wall, he alone suffered the same unresolved suffering and lonely thought the same unresolved thought. What is this? Is it really true that death? AND

From the very beginning of his illness, from the time Ivan Ilyich went to the doctor for the first time, his life was divided into two opposing moods that replaced one another: there was despair and expectation of an incomprehensible and terrible death, there was hope and observation of activity filled with interest. of your body. Either before my eyes there was one kidney or intestine, which for a while deviated from fulfilling its duties, then there was one incomprehensible terrible death, from which nothing could be gotten rid of.

These two moods replaced each other from the very beginning of the illness; but the further the illness progressed, the more doubtful and fantastic the thoughts about the kidney became and the more real the consciousness of approaching death.

As soon as he remembered what he was three months ago, and what he is now; remember how evenly he walked downhill - so that all possibility of hope was destroyed.

In recent times, the loneliness in which he was lying facing the back of the sofa, that loneliness among the crowded city and his many acquaintances and family - a loneliness that could not have been more complete anywhere: neither at the bottom of the sea, nor in the earth - the last During this terrible loneliness, Ivan Ilyich lived only by imagination in the past. One after another, pictures of his past were presented to him. It always began with the nearest time and came down to the most distant, to childhood, and stopped there. Did Ivan Ilyich remember the boiled prunes that he was offered to eat today? He remembered the raw, wrinkled French prunes in his childhood, their special taste and the abundance of saliva when it came to the stone, and next to this memory of the taste a whole series of memories of that time arose : nanny, brother, toys. “Don’t talk about it... it’s too painful,” Ivan Ilyich said to himself and was again transported to the present. A button on the back of a sofa and wrinkles in morocco. “The morocco is expensive and fragile; there was a quarrel over it. But there was another morocco, and another quarrel when we tore my father’s briefcase and we were punished, and my mother brought pies.” And again it stopped at childhood, and again Ivan Ilyich was in pain, and he tried to push it away and think about something else.

And again, right there, along with this course of recollection, another course of memories was going on in his soul - about how his illness intensified and grew. The same thing further back, there was more life. There was more goodness in life, and there was more life itself. Both merged together. “Just as the torment keeps getting worse and worse, so the whole life went worse and worse,” he thought. One point of light there, back, at the beginning of life, and then everything is blacker and blacker and faster and faster. "Inversely proportional to the squares of the distances from death"

Thought Ivan Ilyich. And this image of a stone flying down with increasing speed sank into his soul. Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies faster and faster towards the end, the most terrible suffering. “I’m flying...” He shuddered, moved, wanted to resist; but he already knew that it was impossible to resist, and again, tired from looking, but unable not to look at what was in front of him, he looked at the back of the sofa with his eyes and waited - waited for this terrible fall, push and destruction. “You can’t resist,” he said to himself. “But at least understand why this is? And that’s impossible. It would be possible to explain if I said that I didn’t live the way I should. But this is no longer possible to admit,” - he spoke to himself, remembering all the legality, correctness and decency of his life. “It’s really impossible to allow this,”

He said to himself, smiling with his lips, as if anyone could see this smile of his and be deceived by it. - No explanation! Torment, death... Why?"

Two weeks passed like this. During these weeks, the desired event for Ivan Ilyich and his wife happened: Petrishchev made a formal proposal. It happened in the evening. The next day Praskovya Fedorovna went to her husband, thinking about how to announce to him about Fyodor Petrovich’s proposal, but that very night with Ivan

Ilyich brought about a new change for the worse. Praskovya Fedorovna found him on the same sofa, but in a new position. He lay on his back, groaned and looked ahead with a fixed gaze.

She started talking about medications. He turned his gaze to her. She didn’t finish what she started: such anger, specifically towards her, was expressed in that look. “For Christ’s sake, let me die in peace,” he said.

She wanted to leave, but at that time her daughter came in and came up to say hello.

He looked at his daughter in the same way as at his wife and at her questions about her health, and dryly told her that he would soon free them all from himself. Both fell silent, sat and left.

What are we to blame for? - Lisa said to her mother. - We definitely did it!

I'm sorry dad, but why torture us?

The doctor arrived at the usual time. Ivan Ilyich answered him: “yes, no,” without taking his embittered gaze off him, and in the end he said:

After all, you know that nothing will help, so leave it.

We can alleviate suffering,” said the doctor.

You can’t do that either; leave it.

The doctor went out into the living room and told Praskovya Fedorovna that it was very bad and that the only remedy was opium to alleviate the suffering, which must be terrible.

The doctor said that his physical suffering was terrible, and it was true; but more terrible than his physical suffering was his moral suffering, and this was his main torment.

His moral suffering consisted of the fact that that night, looking at Gerasim’s sleepy, good-natured, high-cheeked face, it suddenly occurred to him: that, just like in fact, my whole life, my conscious life, had been “wrong.”

It occurred to him that what had previously seemed to him a complete impossibility, that he had not lived his life as he should have, that it could be true. It occurred to him that those barely noticeable impulses of his to fight against what the highest placed people considered good, barely noticeable impulses that he immediately drove away from himself - that they could be real, and the rest might not be That. And his service, and his life arrangements, and his family, and these interests of society and service - all this could not be the same. He tried to defend all this to himself. And suddenly he felt all the weakness of what he was protecting. AND

there was nothing to defend.

“And if this is so,” he said to himself, “and I leave this life with the consciousness that I have ruined everything that was given to me and cannot be corrected, then what?”

He lay down on his back and began to go through his whole life in a completely new way. When he saw the footman in the morning, then his wife, then his daughter, then the doctor, their every movement, their every word confirmed for him the terrible truth that had revealed itself to him at night. He saw himself in them, everything that he lived by, and he clearly saw that it was all wrong, it was all a terrible huge deception, covering both life and death. This consciousness increased, tenfold his physical suffering. He moaned and thrashed about and pulled at his clothes. It seemed to him that she was strangling and crushing him. And for this he hated them.

They gave him a large dose of opium, he forgot; but at lunchtime the same thing started again. He drove everyone away from him and rushed from place to place.

His wife came to him and said;

Jean, darling, do this for me (for me?). It can't hurt, but it often helps. Well, it's nothing. And healthy ones often...

He opened his eyes wide.

What? Take communion? For what? No need! However...

She began to cry.

Yes my friend? I'll call ours, he's so cute.

“Wonderful, very good,” he said.

When the priest came and confessed him, he softened, felt as if relieved from his doubts and, as a result, from suffering, and a moment of hope came to him. He again began to think about the cecum and the possibility of fixing it. He took communion with tears in his eyes.

When they laid him down after communion, he felt at ease for a minute, and hope for life again appeared. He began to think about the operation that was offered to him. “I want to live, I want to live,” he said to himself. The wife came to congratulate; she said the usual words and added:

Don't you feel better?

He said, without looking at her: yes.

Her clothes, her build, the expression of her face, the sound of her voice - everything told him one thing: “That’s not it. Everything that you lived and live with is a lie, a deception that hides life and death from you.” And as soon as he thought this, his hatred arose and, instead of hatred, physical painful suffering and with suffering the consciousness of inevitable, imminent death. Something new has happened:

it began to screw, and shoot, and squeeze my breath.

The look on his face when he said “yes” was terrible. Having said this “yes,” looking her straight in the face, he, unusually for his weakness, quickly turned on his face and shouted:

Go away, go away, leave me!

From that moment on, that three-day non-stop scream began, which was so terrible that it was impossible to hear it behind two doors without horror. The minute he answered his wife, he realized that he was lost, that there was no return, that the end had come, completely the end, and the doubt was never resolved, and remained a doubt.

Uh! Ooh! Uh! - he shouted in different intonations. He started shouting: “I don’t want to!” - and so he continued to shout the letter “u”.

All three days, during which there was no time for him, he floundered in that black bag into which an invisible, irresistible force pushed him. He struggled as someone sentenced to death struggles in the hands of an executioner, knowing that he could not escape; and with every minute he felt that, despite all the efforts of the struggle, he was getting closer and closer to what terrified him. He felt that his torment lay in the fact that he was thrusting himself into this black hole, and even more in the fact that he could not crawl into it.

What prevents him from getting through is the recognition that his life was good. It was this justification for his life that clung to him and did not let him go forward and tormented him most of all.

Suddenly some force pushed him in the chest, in the side, squeezing his breath even more, he fell into the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, something began to glow.

What happened to him was what happened to him in a railroad carriage, when you think you are going forward, but you are going backward, and suddenly you find out the real direction.

Yes, everything was wrong, he told himself, but that’s okay. You can, you can do “that.” What about "that"? - he asked himself and suddenly fell silent.

It was at the end of the third day, an hour before his death. At this very time, the schoolboy quietly crept up to his father and approached his bed. The dying man kept screaming desperately and throwing his arms. His hand fell on the schoolboy’s head.

The schoolboy grabbed it, pressed it to his lips and began to cry.

At this very time, Ivan Ilyich failed, saw the light, and it was revealed to him that his life was not what he needed, but that it could still be improved. He asked himself: what is “that”, and fell silent, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes and looked at his son. He felt sorry for him. His wife approached him. He glanced at her. She looked at him with an open mouth and unwiped tears on her nose and cheek.

He felt sorry for her.

“Yes, I’m torturing them,” he thought. “They feel sorry for them, but it will be better for them when I die.” He wanted to say it, but was unable to say it. “However, why talk, we must do it,” he thought. He pointed his wife at his son and said:

Take me away... I’m sorry... and you... - He wanted to say “sorry,” but he said “let me go,” and, no longer able to correct himself, he waved his hand, knowing that the one who needed it would understand.

And suddenly it became clear to him that what was tormenting him and was not coming out, that suddenly everything was coming out at once, and from two sides, from ten sides, from all sides. I feel sorry for them, we need to make sure they don’t get hurt. Deliver them and get rid of this suffering yourself. “How good and how simple,” he thought. “And the pain?”

he asked himself, “Where is she going?” Come on, where are you, pain?"

He began to listen.

"Yes, here it is. Well, let the pain go."

"And death? Where is it?"

He looked for his former habitual fear of death and did not find it. Where is she? What kind of death? There was no fear, because there was no death.

Instead of death there was light.

So that's it! - he suddenly said out loud. - What a joy!

For him, all this happened in an instant, and the meaning of this moment did not change. For those present, his agony continued for another two hours. Something was bubbling in his chest; his exhausted body trembled. Then the bubbling and wheezing became less and less frequent.

It's over! - someone said above him.

He heard these words and repeated them in his soul. "Death is over,"

he said to himself. “She’s gone.”

He sucked in a breath, stopped mid-breath, stretched, and died.

Death of Ivan Ilyich. Notes

from the Collected Works in 12 volumes. T. 11. M., "Pravda", 1984

For the first time - "Works of Count L.N. Tolstoy", part 12, "Works recent years". M., 1886.

There is no definite evidence of the beginning of work on this story. In the spring of 1882, Tolstoy read in the editorial office of the newspaper "Modern News" the original edition of the story, which he was then going to publish, but later significantly altered it (N. N. Gusev. L. N. Tolstoy. Materials for a biography from 1821 to 1885. M. , 1970, pp. 136-140). Apparently, it was about this story that S. A. Tolstaya wrote on December 20, 1682 to T. A. Kuzminskaya:

“Levochka... seems to have begun to write in the same spirit...” (N.N. Gusev. Chronicle of the life and work of L.N. Tolstoy, vol. 1, M., 1958, p. 554).

Lyovochka read us an excerpt from a story he had written, a little gloomily, but very well; He writes as if he had experienced something important when he read such a small passage. He called it to us: “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”

“Today I began to finish and continue the death of Ivan Ilyich. I, it seems, told you the plan: a description of the simple death of a simple person, describing from it. My wife’s birthday is on the 22nd, and all of our people are preparing gifts for her, and she asked to finish this thing for her new publication, and now I want to give her a “surprise” from myself.”

Work on the story continued even at the proofreading stage (in 1886

year). Some episodes were shortened, but the volume of the story increased significantly. It was in proofreading that, for example, Chapter X was written.

As contemporaries and the author himself testify, the story reflected life story Ivan Ilyich Mechnikov, prosecutor of the Tula District Court, who died on July 2, 1881, is suffering from a serious illness. T. A. Kuzminskaya wrote that Tolstoy felt in Mechnikov, when he was in Yasnaya Polyana, an extraordinary person. His “dying thoughts, conversations about the futility of the life he had spent,” according to the widow of the deceased, Kuzminskaya then retold

Tolstoy (T. A. Kuzminskaya. My life at home and in Yasnaya Polyana. Tula, 1958, p.

The famous scientist Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov wrote: “I was present at the last minutes of the life of my elder brother (his name was Ivan Ilyich, his death served as the theme for Tolstoy’s famous story “The Death of Ivan”

Ilyich"). My forty-five-year-old brother, feeling the approach of death from purulent infection, retained the complete clarity of his great mind. While I was sitting at his bedside, he told me his thoughts, filled with the greatest positivism. The thought of death frightened him for a long time. “But since we all must die,” then he ended up “reconciling himself, telling himself that, in essence, there is only one quantitative difference between death at 45 years old or later” (I.

I. Mechnikov. Sketches of optimism. M., 1964, p. 280). In the preface to the fifth edition of his book “Studies on Human Nature” in 1915, Mechnikov wrote about

L.N. Tolstoy as a writer who “gave the best description of the fear of death” (I.

I. Mechnikov. Sketches about human nature. M., 1961, p. 7).

The earliest responses to the story are found in diary entries or personal correspondence of artists. These notes, not meant to be read, are evidence of the sincerity of the statements. July 12, 1886 P.

I. Tchaikovsky wrote: “I read “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” More than ever, I am convinced that the greatest of all ever and anywhere former writers and artists is L. N. Tolstoy. He alone is enough for a Russian a person did not bow his head in shame when all the great things that Europe gave to humanity were counted before him..." ("The Diaries of P. I. Tchaikovsky,

1873-1891", M., 1923, p. 211). I. N. Kramskoy, author of the famous portrait

asserted: “It would be at least inappropriate to talk about “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” much less admire it. This is something that ceases to be art, but is simply creativity. This story is directly biblical, and I feel deep excitement at the thought that such a work appeared again in Russian literature... What is surprising in this story is the complete absence of decoration, without which, it seems, there is not a single human work" (I. N. Kramskoy. Letters in two volumes. M., 1966, vol. 11, With.

On April 25, 1886, V.V. Stasov wrote to Tolstoy: “No nation, anywhere in the world has such a brilliant creation. Everything is small, everything is small, everything is weak and pale in comparison with these 70 pages. And I said to myself: “Here, finally, is real art, truth and real life” (Lev Tolstoy and V.V.

Stasov. Correspondence. 1878-1906. L., 1929, p. 74).

151, 161), in which he highly evaluates “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” The author points out the consonance of the idea of ​​​​Tolstoy's story with Dostoevsky's thought about how the master would not have to go to the “kufelny” (that is, kitchen) for training.

to the man. What Dostoevsky “scared” with, Tolstoy carried out, giving his hero the only consolation before death - the sympathy of the peasant Gerasim, who

“taught the master to appreciate true sympathy for a suffering person - participation, before which everything that secular people bring to each other in such moments is so insignificant and disgusting” (N. S. Leskov. Collected works, vol. 11, M. , 1958, pp. 149, 154).

The magazine controversy that unfolded around the story reflected different attitudes toward the writer’s social and moral position. In the article “Journal campaign against Count L.N. Tolstoy,” the reactionary critic V.L. Bureniy, in contrast to the “desires for violent reforms,” strongly welcomed

"instructive" direction of Tolstoy's work ("... this is the most instructive of all the stories ever written, and the most amazing"). Thus, he tried to use Tolstoy’s name in the fight against revolutionary propaganda. Burenin also assessed “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” as

“an example of such deep realism and such deep unvarnished truth that can hardly be found among the greatest artists of the word” (V.L. Burenin.

Critical studies. St. Petersburg, 1888, p. 223). Here one cannot help but see a direct directive against the position of N.K. Mikhailovsky, who asserted in one of his articles in 1886 that “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” is, without a doubt, a wonderful story, but “is not the first issue either in artistic beauty, or in strength and clarity of thought, nor, finally, the fearless realism of writing" (N.K.

Mikhailovsky. Collection cit., vol. VI. St. Petersburg, 1897, p. 378).

In 1888, an enthusiastic response to the story by A. Lisovsky appeared in the magazine “Russian Wealth”: “The story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” ... by its extraordinary plasticity of image, its deep truthfulness, by the complete absence of any conventions and embellishments - This story is unprecedented in the history of Russian literature and should be recognized as a triumph of realism and truth in poetry." He also noticed that the most

The hero's "rebirth" is the result of widespread criticism modern life"(ѓ 1, p. 182, 195).

In 1890, in the same “Russian Wealth” Dm. Strunin wrote that Tolstoy created “an outstanding literary type,” which “in its various manifestations covers the most diverse circles of our society” (§ 4, p. 118).

Romain Rolland called the story “one of those works of Russian literature that most excited French readers” (Romain

Rolland. Collection soch., vol. 2. M., 1954, p. 312).

Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich, read the text

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I I was returning home through the fields. It was the very middle of summer. The meadows were removed and...

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I It was in the seventies, the day after winter Nikola. IN...

I learned about the death of Ivan Ilyich in court. During a break in the meeting on the boring Malvinsky case, we met in the office of Ivan Yegorovich Shebek. Our friend opened the newspaper and interrupted our conversation.

Gentlemen: Ivan Ilyich has died.

Really?

Read it here.

And I read: Praskovya - Father Golovina informs her relatives and friends with emotional sorrow, that on February 4th her husband, member of the Moscow Judicial Chamber Ivan Ilyich, died Golovin. Removal of the body <there will be>.... etc. d.

Did you suffer?

Oh, terrible. The last are not minutes, but hours. He screamed non-stop for 18 hours. You could hear it behind three doors.

Oh, what I endured.

Really?

For 18 hours he writhed and screamed incessantly. - I sighed, and heavily. It occurred to me that I would also be there for 18 hours, but I immediately realized that this was stupid. Ivan Ilyich died and screamed for 18 hours, that’s true, but I’m a different matter. This was my reasoning, if I remember carefully; and I calmed down and with interest began to ask for details about the death of Ivan Ilyich, as if death were such an adventure that was not at all typical of me.

I describe in particular detail my attitude towards death then because it was here in this office with a pink cretonne that I received something that completely changed my outlook on death and life.

It was from Praskovya Yedorovna that I received the notes of her husband, kept by him during the last 2 months of his mortal illness. After various conversations about the details of the truly terrible physical suffering suffered by Ivan Ilyich (I learned these details only from the way Ivan Ilyich’s torment got on Praskovya Yedorovna’s nerves) after various conversations, Praskovya Yedorovna conveyed the essence of her case to me. It turns out that 5 days before his death, when Ivan Ilyich still had intervals without terrible pain for an hour, half an hour, during one of these intervals Praskovya - Yedorovna found him writing. And it was discovered that he had been writing his diary for two months. Only Gerasim, the barman, knew about this. To the question: what? why? To reproaches that he was harming himself, Ivan Ilyich replied that this was his only consolation - to tell the truth to himself. First he told her: “burn them after me”; but then he thought about it and said! “But by the way, give it to Tvorogov (i.e. to me). He’s still more human than others, he’ll understand.”

And so Praskovya Fyodorovna handed me a notebook with an eight-ruble notebook in which he wrote.

What is this? - I asked. - Did you read?

Yes, I ran. It's terribly sad. Nothing can be seen more than this, how his suffering had an impact on his soul. This is terrible, and one cannot help but recognize the truth behind the materialists. He was no longer him. It’s so weak, painful. No, connection, clarity, power of expression. And you know his style. His reports were masterpieces. P.M. himself visited me (he was our main boss) and was very kind. Truly like family. He told me that this was the first, best pen in the ministry. But here,” she said, leafing through the book with her plump, ringed fingers, “it’s so weak and contradictory.” There is no logic, the very one in which he was so strong. Still, this is dear to me, you will return to me how dear everything is to him. Ah! Mich. Sem. how hard, how terribly hard - and she began to cry again. I sighed and waited for her to blow her nose. When she blew her nose, I said: believe me... and again she started talking and told me what was obviously her main interest - her financial situation. She pretended to ask me for advice about a pension, but I saw that she already knew to the smallest detail what I did not know, everything that could be extracted from the treasury for herself and for the children. - When she told everything, I shook her hand, even kissed her and went into the hallway with the book. In the dining room with the clock, which he was so happy with that he bought in a bricabraque, I met his beautiful, busty, thin-waisted daughter in black. She had a gloomy and angry, determined look. She bowed to me as if I were to blame. There was no one in the hall. Gerasim, the barman, jumped out of the dead man’s room, threw through all the fur coats with his strong hands to find mine, and handed it to me.

What a pity, brother, Gerasim.

God's will. “We’ll all be there,” Gerasim said, smiling and quickly opened the door for me, called the coachman, looked and slammed the door.

I took the notes and in the evening after the club, left alone, I took this book on the night table and began to read. -

These are the notes.

On the 6th night I do not sleep and not because of bodily suffering. They still let me sleep, but from terrible, unbearable mental suffering. Lies, deceit, lies, lies, lies, lies, all lies. Everything around me is a lie, my wife is a lie, my children are a lie, I myself am a lie, and everything around me is a lie. But if I suffer from it, I see, it means that this vile lie is true in me. If I were all lies, I would not feel it. There is, apparently, a small, tiny particle of truth in me, and it is me, and now, before death, it declares its rights; and she suffers, she is strangled from all sides, beaten to death, and it hurts me, it hurts so much that I would rather die. Let this spark go out or flare up. Now my only life is to think the truth with myself among these lies. But in order to think more clearly, to find this truth when lies flood me, I want to write it. I’ll write while I have the strength, I’ll re-read it, and then someone will read it and maybe wake up.

I’ll start from the beginning how it all happened to me.>

These notes are terrible. I read them, didn’t sleep all night and went to Praskovya Yedorovna in the morning and began asking about her husband. She told me a lot and gave me his correspondence, his former diary. When Ivan Ilyich had already been buried, I visited Praskovya Fedorovna several more times, asked her, asked his daughter, Gerasim, who came to see me. And from all this I compiled a description of the last year of Ivan Ilyich’s life.

This story is both the simplest and most ordinary and the most terrible. Here it is:

Ivan Ilyich died at the age of 42, a member of the judicial chamber. He was the son of the St. Petersburg official of the State Property, the Secret Advisor, who made a small fortune for himself. Ivan Ilyich was the second son, the eldest was a colonel, and the youngest was a failure and served on the railways, his sister was married to Baron Grillet. And the Baron was a St. Petersburg official. Ivan Ilyich was brought up in the law, spoke French, went to balls with Prince B., asked if he was his father’s son, owed the porter for pies, wore a respice finem medal, was on friendly terms with his comrades, upon leaving he ordered a tailcoat and uniform from Sharmera. It was a fun time, the subtle, dexterous lawyer immediately, under the patronage of his father, became an official on special assignments to the head of the province and for the first two years carried high and cheerfully the banner of a comme il faut jurist - honest, sociable, decent, with a sense of his own dignity and with unshakable confidence, that he shines in the darkness of the province. Ivan Ilyich danced, dragged himself, caroused; From time to time he traveled around the districts with a brand new St. Petersburg suitcase and in Sharmer's vitsmuvdir, with the gait of a decent person he went into the boss's office and stayed to have lunch and talk in French with the boss. - It was a fun, easy, calm time. There was a relationship with one of the ladies who was forcing themselves on the dapper lawyer, and this relationship almost dragged Ivan Ilyich in. But a change in service came and the connection was severed.

The career change was also fun. There were new judicial institutions. We need new people. Already, Ivan Ilyich carried the banner of decency and progress; and here on the banner it was written: Europeanism, progress, liberality, public justice - right and short. There could be no doubt that being a forensic investigator is not only a good, but a wonderful thing. The rights are enormous, irremovable, in the 5th grade. And Ivan Ilyich became a forensic investigator just as perfect and comme il faut. Things were in full swing. Ivan Ilyich wrote well and loved to write elegantly. And I was confident in myself. And things went on. But here, in another province, before a new connection began, a girl, not old, but no longer young, ran up to her. Ivan Ilyich seduced her, like everyone else. The girl was seduced, but little by little she began to draw in Ivan Ilyich and did so. And Ivan Ilyich got married. The marriage of Ivan Ilyich was the first act of life, narrowing the first scope. Praskovya Yeodorovna was of an old noble family, not ugly, plump, sensual, and had a small fortune. All this would be nothing. But Ivan Ilyich could count on the highest party, and this was a party below the average. However, well, marriage does not interfere with your career. And if I have already been caught, then I can tell myself that I am not selling my heart. That's what Ivan Ilyich told himself. And he dreamed of marital happiness so that, in addition to the former pleasures of single life, there would also be home poetry. But then it turned out that the wife was jealous, evil, pagan, stingy, stupid, and that the pleasures of a single life, even the most innocent ones, like dancing, the club should be abandoned, and instead of the poetry of the hearth there should be grumpiness, fastidiousness, reproaches. “It was the first difficult time in Ivan Ilyich’s life, but he managed to find himself. All of Ivan Ilyich’s energy went into service. He became ambitious: And service - a well-written paper - gradually became the goal and joy of his life. The children came, the wife’s fortune went to the establishment, the wife began to reproach and demand. And therefore service and ambition were further intensified by the fact that service alone could provide money. And Ivan Ilyich worked hard, willingly, and he was valued as a good servant and was promoted. But then another unpleasant event happened. Being already a comrade of the prosecutor and the best, always holding the position, Ivan Ilyich expected that he would not be passed over for his first appointment to the Prosecutor. It turned out that Gope, Comrade Prosecutor, somehow ran into St. Petersburg, and he, the youngest, was appointed, but Ivan Ilyich remained. Ivan Ilyich became irritable and got involved in an affair with the Governor. He was right; but the authorities of the court were inconvenient to have trouble with the governor. They became cold towards him. All this infuriated Ivan Ilyich, he dropped everything and went to a place below his own in another department. - We had to move. His wife tormented him with reproaches. Life and service were unpleasant. The salary was higher, but life was more expensive, the climate was bad, the doctors said. The son died. My wife said it was the climate, that it was all his fault. Out of boredom, the wife flirted with the governor. Promotion and transfer back were not expected; he himself fell ill with rheumatism. The situation was bad on all sides. But Ivan Ilyich did not despair; he went to St. Petersburg. There, through his father’s friends and a lady, he arranged for himself to move again to the Ministry of Justice to a position higher than that occupied by his comrade. They promised him, but there was no translation until 1880. - This year was the most difficult in the life of Ivan Ilyich. “But then his energy and happiness suddenly helped, and everything began to gradually settle down. It was from this time that this terrible story of the last year of Ivan Ilyich’s life, which I want to tell, begins.

Unbearable. After all, you need to know the honor, this lack of conscience - to settle and live. - This hard labor. And these claims!

Oh well, it won't be long now.

Not for long! I don't see an end to this. Obviously, he spoiled it with his self-confidence, and they won’t give him anything. And what kind of a jewel is he that he should now be the chairman? They won't give him anything. And we carry it all.

This was the case on the part of the owners. It was the same on the part of the guests. Praskovya Yedorovna said that she had never seen or expected such a ladrerie (she noticed it) and that it was a torment that she would never forget in her life. To see that they are shaking over every piece. (She was exaggerating; but there was some truth in this) and that if she had known, she would have been better off living in a hut on black bread. But she didn’t even try to live in a hut on black bread. She said all this in such an exaggerated form in order to torment Ivan Ilyich with these speeches. And Ivan Ilyich was tormented terribly by this. And Ivan Ilyich has not seen a kind face on his wife lately, nor heard a kind word. - What was even worse, the daughter, out of boredom and fat, began to flirt with the teacher. And Ivan Ilyich was to blame for all this. That’s how it was inside, but on the outside everything was very beautiful. When a neighbor came and after dinner went out with the guests onto the stone terrace and a footman in a white tie brought coffee, and everyone smiled at each other, and the daughter-in-law smiled, and the owner said that they were having especially fun in the summer these days, it seemed to the guests that this was paradise. And here was hell. And in this hell, with the fear that you would not get out of it, Ivan Ilyich lived. During his last stay in the village with his son-in-law, he, a scrupulous and proud man, noticed that he was a burden, and that a tinge of contempt was mixed in his relationship, and from his wife and daughter he heard nothing but reproaches.

In August, almost in desperation to succeed in his business, Ivan Ilyich went to St. Petersburg again. He was going for only one thing - to contrive to beg for a place with a salary of 7 thousand. He no longer adhered to any ministry, direction, or type of activity. He needed a place - a place with 7 thousand. Without a place with 7 thousand - death. He did not allow the possibility of this destruction; but on this trip he had already decided that not by justice, then by administration, by banks, by railways, by Empress Maria, even by customs - but 7 thousand. And he rode, taking himself to the market, whoever needed it, who would give more. Again this purpose of his trip was real, significant; but that’s not what was meant at all - it was meant that Ivan Ilyich’s father was very bad. He lived in Tsarskoe, and they had been waiting for his death for a long time. “Il est allé voir mon pauvre beau père.” Il ne fera pas du vieux os. “Et Jean a toujours été son favori,” said Praskovya Yedorovna and said Ivan Ilyich. And this trip of Ivan Ilyich was crowned with amazing, unexpected success. In Kursk, an acquaintance sat down in the 1st grade with Ivan Ilyich and reported a fresh telegram received in the morning by the governor that a reshuffle would take place in the ministries the other day: Pyotr Petrovich, a new face, was taking the place of Ivan Petrovich, Ivan Ivanovich was taking the place of Petr. I., P.I. in place of I.P., and Iv. P. in place of Ivan Ivanovich. All the way to Moscow, Ivan Ilyich talked with an acquaintance about what kind of consequences this change would have for Russia. In the conversation it was also implied - for Russia, but in reality the interest of the conversation was in considering the consequences of this shuffling for obtaining places with money for themselves and their acquaintances. The proposed reshuffle, introducing a new person - Pyotr Petrovich and, obviously, his friend Zakhar Ivanovich, was extremely favorable for Ivan Ilyich. Zakhar Ivanovich was a friend and a man indebted to Ivan Ilyich. In Moscow the news was confirmed. And having arrived in St. Petersburg, Ivan Ilyich found Zakhar Ivanovich and received the promise of a faithful place in his same ministry. And a week later he telegraphed to his wife: “Zakhar Shleer’s place at the first report I receive an appointment in Moscow.”

All Ivan Ilyich’s expectations were justified. He received an appointment that he did not even expect, he received an appointment in which he became two degrees higher than his comrades, 8 thousand in salary and 3,500 in allowances.

Just as grief does not go away, neither does joy. For Praskovya Yedorovna, the joy of this news was mixed with one more grief - this is the question of how to move and furnish the house so that she could go out in the highest Moscow society (this was Praskovya Yedorovna’s 20-year dream) under the pretext of taking her daughter out. There was no money. The furniture that remained in the provinces was not such that it would be possible to leave, and for 3500 you can’t start anything. This is one living room. And immediately this month this difficulty was resolved. Ivan Ilyich’s old father died two weeks after his son’s appointment. The old man had nothing except a pension of 6,000; but he had lovely furniture and things. His house was a toy of artistic vieux saxe - bronze, antique furniture - the same one that is in fashion, and all this passed to Ivan Ilyich. Ivan Ilyich’s first telegram was as follows: “Dad died quietly on the 17th at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Funeral Saturday. I'm not waiting for you. “Second telegram: “Promotions and tickets are equally divided between us and Sasha. There was a total of 12 thousand, all the movable property was mine.”

“I’m very happy for Jean,” said Praskovya Yedorovna, “that he closed his father’s eyes. I knew him little, but I also loved him. My fate is not to come out of mourning.

So suddenly Ivan Ilyich came out of a very difficult situation. I came with my family to the most pleasant place.

When Ivan Ilyich returned to the village with stories about how everyone honored him, like all those who were his. enemies, were put to shame and now behaved in front of him, how they envy him for his position, especially how everyone loved him very much in St. Petersburg. Praskovya Yedorovna was already accustomed to this manner of telling by Ivan Ilyich when he was in the spirit. She herself never noticed that in her presence others addressed Ivan Ilyich especially tenderly, but according to his stories, when he was in the spirit, it always turned out that all the people in St. Petersburg during his last stay there had one concern, one joy - to honor Ivan Ilyich, to serve him, to say pleasant things to him. - Relations in the son-in-law’s family immediately also changed. The Golovins were preparing to leave as soon as the apartment in Moscow was ready, and not only were they no longer burdened by them, but they looked after them, trying to make amends for the past.

Ivan Ilyich arrived for a short time on September 10, he had to accept the position and, in addition, he needed time to get settled in Moscow, transport everything from the province, from St. Petersburg, buy, order a lot more - in a word, get settled as it was decided Praskovya and Edorovna have been in the soul for a long time. And Ivan Ilyich liked the plan of Praskovya Yedorovna, the house of an elegant, secular, high person taking his daughter out. Not only did he like it, but Ivan Ilyich, pretending that this was his wife’s plan, himself cherished this idea. And now, when everything had worked out so well and when he and his wife agreed on a goal, and besides, they had not lived together much, they got together as amicably as they had not gotten together since the first years of their married life. Tanichka’s daughter completely dissipated, stopped flirting with the students and devoted herself entirely to the charming future in Moscow.

Ivan Ilyich was thinking of taking his family away right away; but the insistence of my sister and brother-in-law: “How is this possible? Where are you going to the hotel? It’s still so good in the village now; but for us such joy. And let Jean be satisfied and can come - there are ten hours on the train - and with us.” And it was decided that Ivan Ilyich should go alone. Ivan Ilyich left, and the cheerful mood and luck, one strengthening the other, did not leave him all the time.

They found a lovely apartment - exactly what the husband and wife had dreamed of - wide, tall, formally styled reception rooms, a comfortable, modest office, rooms for his wife and daughter, everything was specially designed for them, everything was clean, grandiose, but not new. Ivan Ilyich himself took up the arrangement, unpacked boxes from St. Petersburg, chose wallpaper, bought furniture, upholstery, and everything grew and grew and came to the ideal that he had created for himself, and even when he had arranged half of it, it exceeded his expectations. He understood that rare graceful and broad character that everything will take on when it settles down. He didn’t expect to love this business so much. As he fell asleep, he imagined the hall what it would be like. Looking at the living room, which was not yet finished, he already saw the fireplace, the screen, the bookcase and these scattered chairs and these lovely father’s bronzes, when they were all in place. He was pleased with the thought of how he would defeat Pasha and Tanichka. They don't expect this at all. Especially my father's things. In his letters and during meetings, he deliberately imagined everything worse than it was in order to amaze them. They had a presentiment of this and rejoiced. This occupied him so much that even his new service, who loved this work, occupied him less than he expected. During meetings, he had moments of absent-mindedness: he thought about what kind of cornices for curtains, straight or matched. He was so busy with this that he often tinkered with himself, even rearranging the furniture and rehanging the curtains himself.

Once he climbed onto the ladder to show the uncomprehending upholsterer how he wanted to drape, he stumbled and fell, but, like a strong and dexterous man, he managed to hold on, only hitting his side on the handle of the frame. The bruise was not serious and soon went away. In general, Ivan Ilyich, as he wrote and said, felt better than ever from this physical work around the house.

He wrote: “I feel like 15 years have slipped away from me.” He thought to finish in September, but it dragged on until half of October. For that it was lovely. Not only did he speak, but everyone who saw him spoke. When I was with Ivan Ilyich and saw his premises, it was already inhabited, and now, knowing how much work he put in and how much joy it brought him, I try to remember, but then I didn’t notice. It was the same thing that you see everywhere: damask, flowers, carpets, ebony, bronze, dark and shiny - everything that all people of a certain kind do to be like all people of a certain kind. And it was so similar to him that it was impossible to pay attention, because he had seen this very thing a thousand times. But it turns out that it took him a lot of work to achieve this resemblance, and most importantly, it completely occupied him.

When he, having met his family at the railway station, brought them to his well-lit, ready-made apartment, and a footman in a white tie unlocked the door to the front hall decorated with flowers, and then they entered the living room, the offices and gasped with pleasure, he was very happy, leading them everywhere, absorbed their praise and beamed with pleasure.

That same evening over tea, Praskovya Yedorovna, who had received a letter about his fall, asked him if he had hurt himself? He said not at all.

It’s not for nothing that I’m a gymnast, anyone else would have killed himself, but I hit myself just a little here, when you touch it, it still hurts, but it’s already going away, just a bruise.

No, how nice Tanichka’s office is, what taste.

Yes, dad will do it. Lovely.

And they began to live in the new premises with new sufficient (as almost always) funds, and it was very good. “It was especially good the first time, when not everything was arranged yet and we still had to arrange things to buy, order, rearrange, or set up. When there was nothing left to arrange, it became a little boring, but then acquaintances and habits were already formed, and life became full.

Ivan Ilyich was in a good mood; although it suffered a little from the premises. Every stain on the tablecloth, on the damask, on the torn string of the curtain irritated him. He put so much effort into the device that any destruction hurt him. But in general, Ivan Ilyich’s life seemed to him completely complete, pleasant and good. He got up at 9, drank coffee, read “The Voice”. Then he put on his uniform and went to the Court. There the clamp in which he worked had already collapsed; he immediately fell into it, Petitioners, certificates in the office, the office itself, public and administrative meetings. In all this it was necessary to act and live with one side of one’s being - the external service side. It was necessary not to allow any relationships with people other than official ones. And the reason for the relationship had to be only official, and the relationship itself was only official. For example, a person comes and wants to know something. Ivan Ilyich as a person should not and cannot have any relationship with any person; but if there is a relationship between this person and a member that can be expressed on paper with a heading, within the limits of this relationship Ivan Ilyich does everything, everything he can, and at the same time maintains the semblance of friendly human relations. As soon as a service relationship ends, so does every other relationship. Ivan Ilyich possessed this ability to separate this official web from himself, without mixing it with his real life. And through long practice and talent he developed it to such an extent that even, like a virtuoso, he sometimes allowed himself, as if jokingly, to mix human and official attitudes. He allowed himself to do this like a virtuoso, because he felt within himself the ability at every moment to again separate what should not be mixed. This matter went easily and even pleasantly for Ivan Ilyich, because he was masterful. In between smoking, he drank tea, talked a little about politics, a little about general matters, and most of all about appointments. And tired, but with the feeling of a virtuoso, who had clearly mastered his important part, one of the first violins in the orchestra, he returned home. “Here at home before dinner, Ivan Ilyich most often noticed a stain on the damask, a scratched arm of a chair, broken bronze, and began to repair it and get angry. But Praskovya Yedorovna knew this and hurried people to serve dinner.

After dinner, if there were no guests, Ivan Ilyich read “The Voice” carefully, sometimes very rarely, a book about which they talk a lot. And in the evening he sat down to work, that is, he read the papers, consulted the laws, collated the evidence and brought them under the laws. It wasn't boring for him, it wasn't fun. It was boring when you could play vint, but if there was no vint, then it was still better than sitting alone or with your wife.

Ivan Ilyich’s pleasures were small dinners, to which he invited ladies and men important in their social status, and spending time with them, which would be similar to the ordinary pastime of such people, just as his living room was similar to all living rooms. Once they even had an evening. We danced. And Ivan Ilyich had fun. And everything was fine, only a quarrel arose with his wife over cakes and sweets: Praskovya Yedorovna had her own plan, and Ivan Ilyich insisted on taking everything from Albert, and they took a lot of cakes. And the quarrel was because the cakes were left, and Albert’s bill was 45 rubles. The quarrel was big and unpleasant, so Praskovya Fedorovna told him: “You are a sour fool.” And he grabbed his head and in his heart mentioned something about divorce. But the evening itself was fun. It was the best Moscow Society and Ivan Ilyich danced with Princess Turfonova, the sister of the one who is famous for the establishment of the “take away my grief” society under the patronage of the empress. The joys of office were the joys of pride, the joys of society were the joys of vanity. But Ivan Ilyich’s real joys were the joys of playing vint. He admitted that after everything, after any joyful events in his life, the joy that burned like a candle before all the others was to sit down with good players and non-screaming partners in a screw and certainly four of them (five of us is very painful go out, even though you pretend that I love you very much) and play a smart, serious game (when the cards are on the table) with a smart, understanding partner.

Have dinner, drink a glass of wine. And to sleep after screwing, especially when there was a small win (a big one is unpleasant), Ivan Ilyich went to bed in a particularly good mood.

This is how they lived. Their social circle was the best. In looking at the circle of their acquaintances, the husband, wife and daughter were in complete agreement. And without saying a word, they equally wiped themselves off and freed themselves from all sorts of different friends and relatives’ stains, which scattered with tenderness to Moscow into the living room with majolica dishes on the walls. Soon these dirty friends stopped scattering and creating discord, and the Golovins were left with only the best company. Both important people and young people traveled. Young people looked after Tanichka, and Petrishchev, son of Dm. Iv. Petrishchev and the only heir to his fortune, the forensic investigator began to look after Tanichka. So Ivan Ilyich has already talked about this with Praskovya Fedorovna. This is how they lived. And everything went on without changing. Everyone was happy and healthy. It could not be called ill that Ivan Ilyich sometimes said that he had a strange taste in his mouth and something uncomfortable in the left side of his stomach.

The subordinate clause is separated from the main clause by a comma, or separated by commas on both sides if it is inside the main clause, for example: How long he sat by the fallen spruce tree, Andrei did not remember...(Bubennov); Kapustin promised to negotiate with the head of the school so that he would increase the number of flights for Meresyev, and suggested that Alexey create a training program for himself(B. Polevoy); It’s almost five years since I’ve been working at school; It's been a month since he returned from the village– with an incomplete main clause (but: It's been a month since he returned from the village– with intertwining main and subordinate clauses; a comma would tear off the predicate back from the subject He).

Incomplete or close to incomplete subordinate clauses are also separated by a comma, for example: He didn't understand what was going on; Happy to help in any way I can; I remembered what was taught; People know what they are doing; Do what needs to be done; I can imagine anything; He understands what's what; Sit down wherever you can; They scolded all and sundry; We'll meet you, you know where; I chatted, I don’t know what.

But: Do what you want etc., see § 114, paragraph 1.

Note 1. If the main clause is inside a subordinate clause (in a colloquial style of speech), then a comma is usually placed only after the main clause, for example: It cannot be said that he was involved in housekeeping...(Gogol) (cf.: You can't say he was doing housework).

Note 2. There is no comma between the main clause and the following subordinate clause:

a) if before subordinating conjunction or the conjunction word is negation Not, For example: Try to find out not what they have already done, but what they are going to do next; I came not to hinder you, but, on the contrary, to help;

b) if before the subordinating conjunction or allied word there is a coordinating conjunction (usually repeated) and, or, either etc., for example: Consider both what he said and how he said it; The student could not remember the name of the work or who its author was.; Wed also with a single union: I couldn’t imagine how he would get out of this situation.;

c) if the subordinate clause consists of only one conjunctive word (relative pronoun or adverb), for example: They reproach me, but I don’t know what; When leaving, he promised to return soon, but did not specify when; The mother determined the temperature with her lips: she would put her lips to her forehead and immediately determine how much.

Note 3. If the subordinating conjunction is preceded by the words especially, in particular, namely, that is, and also etc. with a connecting meaning, then a comma is not placed after these words, for example: The partisans showed great resourcefulness and exceptional composure, especially when they were surrounded; The expedition will have to end early under unfavorable conditions, namely if the rainy season begins; The author has the right to receive an advance in accordance with the terms of the contract, that is, when the manuscript is approved by the publishing house.

§ 108. Comma in complex subordinating conjunctions

If the subordinate clause is connected to the main clause using a complex subordinating conjunction ( due to the fact that, in view of the fact that, due to the fact that, due to the fact that, because, because, despite the fact that, instead of, in order to, in order that, while, after, before since, since, just as etc.), then the comma is placed once: before the conjunction, if the subordinate clause follows the main one or is inside it, or after the subordinate clause, if it precedes the main one, for example: ...Breathing became deeper and freer as his body rested and cooled...(Kuprin); The doctors feared for her life, especially since she not only did not want to take any medicine, but did not speak to anyone, did not sleep or take any food(L. Tolstoy); All the carts, because they were loaded with bales of wool, seemed very tall and plump(Chekhov).

However, depending on the meaning, the logical emphasis of the subordinate clause, the presence of certain lexical elements in the sentence (see below), a complex conjunction can fall into two parts: the first is part of the main sentence as a correlative word, and the second plays the role of a conjunction; in these cases, a comma is placed only before the second part of the combination (i.e., before the conjunction what, how, to). Wed:

To every person in order to to act, you must consider your activity important and good(L. Tolstoy). – All this has been said in order to to arouse attention to the lives of thousands of aspiring writers(Bitter);

Wed. also the division of a complex conjunction in sentences: Despite the fact that the wind... rushed freely over the sea, the clouds were motionless(Bitter); In case someone follows you, let him see where you went(Kataev); Goreva was asked to act as a translator in case the guests were interested in the castle(Pavlenko).

More often, a complex subordinating conjunction is not divided if the subordinate clause precedes the main one, for example: As the chaise approached the porch, Manilov's eyes became more cheerful and his smile widened more and more.(Gogol); Before I stopped in this birch forest, my dog ​​and I walked through a tall aspen grove(Turgenev); Since I got married, I don’t see the same love from you(A. N. Ostrovsky); Only after four hours of vigil at Stepan’s bedside had passed did Ivan Ivanovich move away in spirit(Koptyaeva).

The conditions for dismembering a complex union include:

1) the presence of negation before the conjunction Not, For example: Pastukhov got along with Tsvetukhin not because he was attracted to actors(Fedin); Winckel did not go to Landsberg because he wanted to continue his intelligence activities.(Kazakevich);

2) the presence of intensifying, restrictive and other particles before the conjunction, for example: This winter Natasha began to sing seriously for the first time, especially because Denisov admired her singing.(L. Tolstoy); The driver stopped the car opposite the gate just so that the people would clear out; Should you give up on a difficult task just because it is difficult?(Krymov);

3) the presence of an introductory word before the conjunction, for example: ...All this has an inexplicable charm for me, perhaps because I will no longer see them...(Gogol); Everyone felt free when visiting the Pryakhins, perhaps because Pavel Romanovna did not try to keep anyone busy(Koptyaeva);

4) inclusion of the first part (correlative word) in the series homogeneous members, For example: Romashov blushed to the point of real tears from his powerlessness and confusion, and from pain for the insulted Shurochka, and because through the deafening sounds of the quadrille he could not get in a single word...(Kuprin).

Note. Complex unions whereas, as if, while, meanwhile, union investigation So, a combination of a conjunction with an intensifying particle even if, only when are not dismembered.

§ 109. Punctuation in a complex sentence with several subordinate clauses

1. A comma is placed between homogeneous subordinate clauses not connected by conjunctions, for example: It seemed to me that my father was looking at me mockingly and incredulously, that I was still a child for him(Bitter); Those who do not feel confident in their abilities, those who lack determination, should better remain in their current place(Azhaev).

   If after homogeneous subordinate clauses there is a generalizing word with a preceding introductory words or a phrase ( in a word, in one word etc.), then a comma and a dash are placed before the last one, and a comma after it (cf. § 99, paragraph 1, note 2), for example: She listened to his arguments, and when he began to say that the war had brought changes, that his presence would cause worries and break habits, that he was worried about her - in a word, everything that came to his mind - the old woman’s eyes turned to him.
   

2. If homogeneous subordinate clauses are very common, especially when there are commas inside them, then a semicolon is placed between such subordinate clauses instead of a comma, for example: What was he thinking about? About the fact that he was poor; that through labor he had to achieve both independence and honor for himself; that God could have given him more intelligence and money; that there are such idle happy people, short-sighted people, sloths for whom life is much easier(Pushkin); Davydov felt a little sad because a lot had changed there now; that now he will no longer be able to sit all night long over drawings; that now they apparently forgot about him(Sholokhov).
3. Between homogeneous subordinate clauses connected by a non-repeating connecting or disjunctive conjunction, a comma is not placed, for example: It seemed as if they were tearing up the entire forest at once And the roots torn out of the ground and the earth itself groan and scream in pain(Fedin) (there are no repeating conjunctions here: the first conjunction And connects two subordinate clauses, the second – two homogeneous subjects roots And Earth, third – two homogeneous predicates moan And screaming); What kind of connection is this And who Kovpak was, we didn’t know then(Medvedev).
   

   When repeating coordinating conjunctions, a comma is placed between subordinate clauses, for example: While in the hospital, he recalled how the Nazis suddenly attacked them, And how they found themselves surrounded, and how the detachment still managed to get through to their.
   

   Unions either... or are considered to be repetitive, for example: ...To the left, the entire sky above the horizon was filled with a crimson glow, and it was difficult to understand whether there was a fire somewhere, or whether the moon was about to rise(Chekhov) (cf. § 87, paragraph 4 and § 104, paragraph 1, subparagraph 3, note).

4. Between subordinate clauses with sequential subordination, a comma is placed on a common basis, for example: ...Bobrov recalled poems he had read in some magazine, in which the poet tells his sweetheart that they will not swear to each other, because oaths would insult their trusting and ardent love(Kuprin).

§ 110. Comma at the junction of two conjunctions

1. When there are two adjacent subordinating conjunctions (or a subordinating conjunction and a conjunctive word), as well as when a coordinating conjunction and a subordinating (or conjunctive word) meet, a comma is placed between them if the removal of the subordinate clause does not require restructuring of the main clause (in practice, if the second clause does not follow part of a double union then, yes, but, the presence of which requires such a restructuring), for example: The maid was an orphan who, in order to feed herself, had to enter service(L. Tolstoy) (subordinate part to feed can be omitted or rearranged to another place in the sentence without restructuring the main part); Finally he felt that he could no longer, that no force could move him from his place, and that if he sat down now, he would never get up again.(B. Polevoy) (conditional clause with conjunction If can be omitted or rearranged); And the woman kept talking and talking about her misfortunes, and, although her words were familiar, Saburov’s heart suddenly ached from them(Simonov) (when removing a subordinate clause with a conjunction Although prepositional-pronoun combination from them becomes unclear, but structurally such an exception is possible, therefore a comma is usually placed between the coordinating and subordinating conjunctions in such cases).

   If the subordinate clause is followed by the second part of a double conjunction, then a comma is not placed between the previous two conjunctions, for example: The blind man knew that the sun was looking into the room and that if he stretched out his hand through the window, dew would fall from the bushes(Korolenko) (conditional clause with conjunction If cannot be omitted or rearranged without restructuring the subordinating sentence, since there will be words nearby What And That); The woman's feet were burned and bare, and when she spoke, she raked warm dust to her sore feet with her hand, as if trying to soothe the pain.(Simonov) (when removing or rearranging the subordinate tense with the conjunction When there will be words nearby And And That).

   Wed. Also: A thunderstorm was approaching, and when clouds covered the entire sky, it became dark, like twilight.. – A thunderstorm was approaching, and when the clouds covered the entire sky, it became dark, like twilight.(in the second case after the union And, joining a complex sentence, there is no comma); The preparations took a long time, and when everything was ready to leave, there was no point in going(after the adversarial conjunction A in these cases, as a rule, a comma is not placed, since neither the removal nor the rearrangement of the subordinate clause following the conjunction is possible).

   In sentences like He left a long time ago, and where he is now, I don’t know comma after conjunction And not installed.

2. A comma is usually not placed between an connecting conjunction (after a period) and a subordinating conjunction, for example: And I know who you are; Why this is said, I don’t understand. The possibility of placing a comma after other connecting conjunctions is associated with the intonational and semantic emphasis of the subordinate clause, for example: However, if you are so insistent on your offer, I am ready to accept it.

§ 111. Dash in a complex sentence

With intonation emphasis, clauses and clauses (additional and subject), less often conditionals and clauses, standing in front the main sentence may be separated from it not by a comma, but by a dash, for example: If anyone asks what, keep quiet...(Pushkin); How he got here - he just couldn’t understand.(Gogol); That she is an honest person is clear to me...(Turgenev); Let them tyrannize as they wish, even let them skin me alive - I won’t give up my will(Saltykov-Shchedrin); If I look into the distance, if I look at you - and some kind of light will light up in my heart(Fet); They sent me some books, but I don’t know which ones..

§ 112. Colon in a complex sentence

A colon is placed before a subordinating conjunction in those rare cases when the preceding part of a complex sentence contains a special warning about subsequent clarification (at this point a long pause is made and the words can be inserted namely), For example: And, having done this, he felt that the result was the desired one: that he was touched and she was touched(L. Tolstoy); I am afraid of one thing: that overwork of people will not affect their work; Every day the idea that was expressed to us more than once became more and more obvious: that newspapers are not yet public opinion.

§ 113. Comma and dash in a complex sentence

A comma and a dash in a complex sentence are placed as a single sign:

1) before the main sentence, which is preceded by a number of homogeneous subordinate clauses, if the breakdown of a complex whole into two parts is emphasized, for example: Who is to blame and who is right is not for us to judge(Krylov); Did Stolz do anything for this, what did he do and how did he do it - we don’t know.(Dobrolyubov);

2) before a word that is repeated in order to connect with it a new sentence (usually a subordinate clause) or a further part of the same sentence, for example: How could this new social movement not be reflected in literature - in literature, which is always an expression of society!(Belinsky); Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that all, without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, were all in his hands(L. Tolstoy);

3) in a period (a sentence of significant volume, most often complex, which is divided by a pause into two parts - an increase and a decrease) between its parts , For example: At that hour, when, it seemed, there was no strength to breathe, when the sun, having heated Moscow, fell in a dry fog somewhere beyond the Garden Ring, no one came under the linden trees, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty(Bulgakov).

Within parts of a period, if they are significantly widespread, a semicolon is inserted.

In other cases of a combination of a comma and a dash, each of these signs is placed on its own base, for example: Pushkin, our greatest poet, is the founder of the Russian literary language(a comma closes a separate application, a dash is placed where the connective is missing).