Please tell me in which case a comma is placed before the dash, with the exception of the design of someone else's speech.
A comma is placed before the dash if the structure of the sentence 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 compound sentences, as well as in a period (as a rule, a polynomial complex sentence, intonationally falling into two parts - increase and decrease). This is described in detail in the relevant sections of the "Handbook of the Russian language" by D. E. Rozental.
| Question #293964 | ||
Tell me how to correctly format the heading of a dictionary entry containing a participial phrase, with or without a comma: Lymphoid tissue associated with the mucosa (LTAS) (,) is ...?
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
The closing bracket is followed by a comma and a dash.
| Question No. 292038 | ||
Is a second comma needed or is one dash sufficient? The first thing that catches your eye (,) is the abundance of lakes.
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Comma needed: subordinate clause what catches the eye stands out on both sides. Each of the signs ( comma and dash) is placed on its own grounds.
| Question #287634 | ||
Good afternoon, please tell me if a comma and a dash are needed in this case: wash-resistant colors obtained using exclusively safe dyes are a guarantee of impeccable quality Thank you
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Comma and dash before a word pledge needed.
| Question #286753 | ||
Hello, dear Gramota.Ru. Unfortunately, I did not receive an answer to my yesterday's question, so I have to ask it again. Are the punctuation marks in the sentence correct? Particularly worried about the _comma and dash _ after it. But so does the rest. Thanks in advance. I really hope to get an answer. Honestly, it's very necessary. Suggestion: From the color of a product to the material it is made of, everything can affect...
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Punctuation marks are placed correctly.
| Question #284948 | ||
hello, please indicate the rule according to which a comma and a dash are placed in a row in this sentence: The main motive that prompted doctors to apply to the institution is, of course, two daughters.
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Each sign is placed on its basis. The comma “closes” the attributive phrase after the word being defined; a dash is placed before the predicate, attached to the subject word This.
| Question #284600 | ||
Good afternoon. Need a comma before the dash (because of "what")? Or does a dash replace a comma? But this does not mean that the addresses collected according to the standard scheme are useless - these are also clients.
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Your punctuation matches the rules. However, D. E. Rosenthal noted that before a non-union connecting sentence that begins with a pronominal word This, often put a comma and a dash as a single sign .
| Question #284415 | ||
Thank you for your unwavering service. 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 there is a comma before the dash after the phrase "suddenly pronounce them wrong" in the passage below. "He spoke only when it was expected of him, and spoke approximately as he walked into the dining room: he stumbled, stopped, looking for the right words in his multilingual dictionary, weighing those that were clearly suitable, but fearful - suddenly you pronounce them incorrectly, - - rejecting others who will not be understood here, or they will sound very rude and harsh. Help desk response: A comma is placed between homogeneous circumstances weighing and rejecting. The dashes that highlight the insertion 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 pronouncing is not justified by the rules? Thank you. Galina Filippovna
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Design but it's scary - suddenly you pronounce them incorrectly refers to words searching in his multilingual dictionary for the right words, weighing those that are clearly suitable. It is about such a semantic connection that a single comma and dash sign speaks.
| Question #282372 | ||
Hello.
Faced with an unusual punctuation mark:, - (comma and dash). Information about its use in modern literature is not found. The only appearance I recorded at Rosenthal, thus:§113. Comma and dash in a complex sentence and in a period
A comma and a dash in a complex sentence are put as a single sign:
1) before the main sentence, which is preceded by a series of homogeneous subordinate clauses, if the splitting 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 Stoltz did anything for this, what he did and how he did it, we do not know (Dobrolyubov);
2) in front of a word that is repeated in order to connect with it a new sentence (often 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 without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, everything was in his hands (L. Tolstoy); His life, which began (in his memoirs so wonderfully) with a huge church porch ... and the voice of his mother, in which the flinty path shone a thousand times and the star spoke to the star - this life was filled with new, ever new meaning with every hour (Kataev);
3) in artistic speech in the period (see § 219, Types of syntactic repetition, paragraph 3) (significant in terms of sentence, most often complex, which is divided by a pause into two parts - increase and decrease) between its parts, for example: A person is accepted for composing a poem for various reasons: to win the heart of a beloved, to express his attitude to the reality surrounding him, whether it be a landscape or a state, to capture the state of mind in which he is currently located, to leave a mark on the earth - for this it is taken by the pen (Joseph Brodsky).
Inside the parts of the period, if they are significantly common, a semicolon is put in artistic speech. Less often, commas are placed between the parts (members) of the period, for example: Like a hawk floating in the sky, having given many circles with strong wings, suddenly stops, flattened in the air in one place, and shoots from there with an arrow at a male quail screaming at the very road - so Tarasov son Ostap suddenly ran into a cornet and immediately threw a rope around his neck (Gogol).Please specify how relevant this punctuation mark is, whether it is replaced in our time by just a dash or a comma. To what extent can Rosenthal be trusted in this rule?
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
The complete academic reference book "Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation", ed. V. V. Lopatina (M., 2006 and later editions) provides for the setting of a comma and a dash as a single sign in a complex sentence, if the sentence is built in the form of a period that is divided into two parts - pronounced with an increase and decrease in tone (comma and dash are placed in place of division): If old foliage rustled under foot, if different twigs turned red, if willows turned around, if trees of different species spoke with the aroma of their bark, then there is movement in birch trees, and there is nothing to spoil the birch(Prishv.). In such sentences, the main part often has a generalizing character and completes the enumeration of the preceding subordinate clauses: When I found myself in the bosom of the Odessa family, when I listened to Mika'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 inspired the profit of forces, what life hurried me to cope with - I brought everything here(TV). The fact that this sign has now lost its relevance is not mentioned in the directory, 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 obsolete. This is a comma and a dash between parts of a compound sentence: Next in line were police stations - and there no one heard anything about David(Shv.), As well as highlighting plug-in structures with this sign: You get into a carriage - it's so nice after the carriage - and roll along the steppe road(Ch.).
| Question #279406 | ||
Hello Literacy! 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, appointed to reign in Novgorod (,) (-) seriously aggravated. Thank you!
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
The specified comma and dash are required.
| Question #275251 | ||
Hello, dear Diploma! Please explain something. For several times now, I have been doing an interactive dictation on your portal. And what is most surprising: the computer gives me errors where I did not make them. For example: “I forgot the word that I wanted to say,” Osip Emilievich wrote. The computer tells me that I need a comma and a dash. Although I put a comma and a dash. Next, I re-perform the task - and again the same thing. And not only in this proposal. 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. Sincerely, Serge.
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
You need a quote, comma and dash. In that order. Check, please.
| Question #274368 | ||
Good afternoon, tell me, please: recently I have often encountered non-standard design of direct speech. In all the spelling rules I know, it is clearly stated: if the author’s words break direct speech, then (provided that there should be a period at the break point or there should not be a 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. The following option is regularly encountered in fiction: instead of a comma and a dash, in the case described above, they put a dot and a dash, while the words of the author begin with a capital letter. I initially sinned on the source of literature (electronic books), but then I took a couple of books in the Mayakovsky Library (St. Petersburg) - the same thing is 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 such a design option is possible?
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
The rule you are quoting has not been repealed. But there is one more rule related to the design of direct speech: if the author's words after direct speech are 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?
| Question #273587 | ||
When and according to what grammar rules are commas and dashes put in sentences:, -
Thank you.
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
A comma and a dash can be placed as a single character and 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 was 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 basis, for example: An important task set by the organizers of the Olympiad is to support talented youth(a comma closes the subordinate clause, a dash is placed between the subject and the predicate).
| Question #269359 | ||
Is the following sentence correct? "With us - the law is on your side!"
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
The comma and dash are not needed in this sentence.
| Question #266809 | ||
Hello! I am writing to you for the fifth time. Please, if for some reason you cannot answer, tell me, and I will not ask this question again. All my life I thought I knew how direct speech is formed. But more and more often I see how in newspapers, books after quotation marks that close direct speech, if at the end of direct speech there is a question mark, exclamation point or ellipsis, after the quotation mark put a dot or a comma. For example: "What wonderful weather!", - he exclaimed. He exclaimed: "What wonderful weather!". She screamed, "Where are you going?" And recently I opened the book of 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. Tell me, please, was I taught incorrectly at school and at the philological faculty of the university? Or did I miss something? Why those dots and commas?
The answer of the reference service of the Russian language
Your question has two parts. We'll try to answer.
If direct speech is worth before introducing it author's words, then a comma and a dash are placed after direct speech, and the author's words begin with a lowercase letter: “We understand everything perfectly, Nikolai Vasilievich,” Solodovnikov quipped to himself, sitting down on a white stool(Shuksh.). If after direct speech there is a question, exclamation point or ellipsis, then these signs are preserved, and a comma is not put; the words of the author, as in the first case, begin with a lowercase letter: “Yes, it was necessary to say goodbye! ..” - he realized when the covered car was already climbing up to the vozvoz(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 period and a dash are put; the second part of direct speech begins with a capital letter: “Am I giving happiness to many people now, as I did before? thought Kiprensky. “Are only fools trying to arrange the well-being of their lives?”(Paust.); “Yes, be quiet! - the attendant ordered. “Can you shut up?!”(Shuksh.).
2. But you need to put a dot at the end of the sentence (after the quotes).
... If the closing quote is preceded by a question mark, exclamation mark, or ellipsis (and this is where the sentence ends), then the same characters required by the terms of the entire sentence are not repeated after the closing quote; unequal characters (before the quote and after the quote) are placed; compare: “Have you read the novels What Is to Be Done? and “Who is to blame?”; Who does not 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 met more than once on the pages of our application with student work and research. The material brought to your attention is also written by the student, not the teacher. And it is dedicated to a very, very topical topic ...
......It all started with a mistake. In the dictation, I came across such a tricky sentence: “After all, for ordinary artists, nature in places where a shadow falls on it, as it were, consists of a different substance than in illuminated places - it’s wood, bronze, anything but a shaded body”. All my neighbors on the desk began to argue: what to put before the word This- a comma, a dash, or both?
Opinions were divided, and we turned to the teacher. “Whoever wants to understand this problem, read grammar references, look in books for sentences in which commas and dashes stand side by side, and together we will try to figure it out,” he said.
This idea seemed interesting to me, and for the next lesson I brought my “collection” (I compiled it while studying “A Reader on Russian Literature of the 19th–20th Centuries” (Moscow: Lamand Enterprises, 1999).
In "Handbook of Spelling, Pronunciation and Literary Editing" by D.E. Rosenthal, E.V. Dzhandzhakova and N.P. Kabanova (M.: CheRo, 1999) it is written that a comma and a dash in a complex sentence are put as a single sign:
1) before the main clause, which is preceded by a series of homogeneous subordinate clauses, if the splitting of the whole into two parts is emphasized, for example: Which one is to blame , who is right, – not for us to judge (I. Krylov); Whether Stoltz did anything for this, what he did and how he did it, we do not know. (N. Dobrolyubov);
2) before a word that is repeated in order to connect with it a new sentence (more often 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! (V. Belinsky); Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, everything was in his hands. (L. Tolstoy); His life, which began (in memories so wonderful) a huge church porch ... and mother's voice, in which a flinty path shone a thousand times and a star spoke to a star - this life was filled with new, ever new meaning with each hour (V. Kataev);
3) in artistic speech in a period (significant in terms of the sentence, most often complex, which is divided by a pause into two parts - an increase and a decrease) between its parts, for example: A man starts writing a poem different considerations: to win the heart of a beloved, to express his attitude to the reality surrounding him, whether it be a landscape or a state, in order to capture the state of mind, in where he is currently located in order to leave a mark on the earth - for this he takes up the pen (I. Brodsky); Like a hawk floating in the sky, having made many circles with its strong wings, suddenly stops, flattened in the middle of the air in one place, and from there shoots with an arrow at a male quail that screamed at the very road - so Tarasov's son Ostap suddenly flew into a cornet and immediately threw it around his neck rope (N. Gogol).
Armed with this information, I began to look for examples. And here's what I found.
1. After the winter spent in Dyalizh, among the sick and peasants, to sit in the living room, look at this young, graceful and, probably, pure creature and listen to these noisy, annoying, but still cultured sounds - it was so pleasant, so new ...( A. Chekhov. Ionych)
The sign "comma + dash" stands between the subject, expressed by a number of homogeneous infinitives, and the predicate; the example does not fit any of the items named in the reference book. The grammatical basis of the sentence sit, it was so nice to watch and listen does not imply the appearance of any signs between the subject and the predicate, there are no constructions separated by commas here either. This means that the sign “comma + dash” can be considered purely authorial.
By the way, there is another punctuation difficulty in this sentence. Commas around turnover among the sick and men reflect the author's intention to show the clarifying nature of the circumstance.
2. At first, Startsev was struck by what he saw now for the first time in his life and which, probably, will no longer happen to be seen: a world unlike anything else, a world where the moonlight is so good and soft ... ( A. Chekhov. Ionych)
Here the sign "comma + dash" corresponds to paragraph 2 of the Handbook, cited above.
3. Startsev barely found the gate - it was already dark, like on an autumn night - then he wandered for an hour and a half, looking for the alley where he left his horses. ( A. Chekhov. Ionych)
This example does not fit any of the cases described in the Handbook. This proposal contains a plug-in design (it was already dark, like an autumn night); it is marked with a double dash. comma after word night necessary, since, firstly, it closes the comparative turnover, and secondly, it separates homogeneous predicates from each other found, wandered. comma after word gates not obligatory, it can be considered an author's sign, set for greater expressiveness (and partly, perhaps, for symmetry).
4. He was a little ashamed, and his vanity was offended - he did not expect a refusal - and could not believe that all his dreams, languor 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 the same 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, which closes 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 then traded in a shop in the village here - hit me in the face with his fist, blood came out of his nose ... ( A. Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard)
This example also does not fit any of the cases described in the Handbook. A typical plug-in construction is highlighted here not by the standard “dash pair” sign, but by the “comma + dash” paired sign.
7. Yaroslavl grandmother sent fifteen thousand to buy the estate in her name - she does not believe us - and this money would not even be enough to pay the percentage. ( A. Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard)
See the comment to Proposition 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 on proposal 3. However, in this proposal, the author did not put that very optional comma before the first dash. In principle, it was possible to do without the second comma here, since the comma before the union a in a compound sentence, a dash can be replaced.
9. The inhabitants of the suburban seaside resort - mostly Greeks and Jews, cheerful and suspicious, like all southerners - hurriedly moved to the city. ( A. Kuprin. Garnet bracelet)
Here, a separate application, highlighted with the help of the double dash sign, and a comparative turnover “met”. Normative combination of signs.
10. Fishing boats, hardly distinguishable by the eye - they seemed small - dozed motionless in the sea surface, not far from the coast. ( A. Kuprin. Garnet bracelet)
Plug-in design they looked small indicated by a double dash, a comma after the word small closes the participle. It is non-trivial here that the author decided to introduce the inserted construction into the participial turnover.
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)
The comma here closes the subordinate clause, the dash (in accordance with the norm) separates the parts of the sentence connected by an asyndetic connection. It is possible to replace the combination of characters with a semicolon or (worse) with a colon.
12. You will see that frozen pigs are brought up - Christmas is coming soon. ( I. Shmelev. Summer of the Lord)
The comma closes the subordinate clause, the dash separates the parts connected by an unassociated connection. It is not possible to change the character combination.
I believe that even these examples will be enough to understand how important it is to “track” syntactic constructions in a sentence: some, standing next to each other, create a situation of combining signs (sentences 11, 12); the latter are able to "absorb" a punctuation mark belonging to a neighbor (see commentary on sentence 8); As for the special sign "comma + dash", it is predominantly the author's, apparently, it was generated by the punctuation fashion, and now in many cases it is being replaced by a simple dash.
As for the sentence that gave rise to heated debates among my classmates, now I can say with knowledge of the matter: it needs both a comma, which closes the comparative turn, and a dash, “opening” a new part of the 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 at the will of the author himself, but at the will of editors and proofreaders.
"Death of Ivan Ilyich"
In a large building of judicial institutions, during a break in the session on the Melvinsky case, the members and the prosecutor met in the office of Ivan Yegorovich Shebek, and the conversation turned to the famous Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vasilievich got excited, proving lack of jurisdiction, Ivan Yegorovich stood his ground, while Pyotr
Ivanovich, without entering into a dispute at first, did not take part in it and looked through the Vedomosti that had just been submitted.
Lord! - he said, - Ivan Ilyich is dead.
Really?
Here, read, - he said to Fyodor Vasilyevich, giving him a fresh, still fragrant issue.
It was printed in a black border: "Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina informs her relatives and friends with heartfelt regret about the death of her beloved husband, a member of the Judicial Chamber, Ivan Ilyich Golovin, which followed on February 4 of this 1882. The removal of the body on Friday, at one o'clock in the afternoon."
Ivan Ilyich was a companion 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, in the place of Alekseev - either Vinnikov, or
Stack. So, having heard about the death of Ivan Ilyich, the first thought of each of the gentlemen who gathered in the office was also what significance this death could have on the movement or promotion of the members themselves or their acquaintances.
“Now, I’ll probably get a place for Shtabel or Vinnikov,” thought Fyodor
Vasilevich. “I have been promised this for a long time, and this increase for me is eight hundred rubles in addition, except for the office.”
“Now I’ll have to ask for the transfer of my brother-in-law from Kaluga,” thought
Petr Ivanovich. - My wife will be very happy. Now it won’t be possible to say that I never did anything for her family.”
I thought so that he could not get up, ”Pyotr Ivanovich said aloud. -
What did he actually have?
The doctors couldn't determine. That is, they were defined, but differently. When I last saw him, I thought he would get better.
I haven't been to him since the holidays. Everything was going.
What, did he have a fortune?
It seems that the wife has something very small. But something insignificant.
Yes, you will need to go. They lived terribly far away.
That is, far from you. Everything is far from you.
Here, he cannot forgive me that I live across the river, - smiling at
Shebeka, said Pyotr Ivanovich. And they started talking about the range of urban distances, and went to the meeting.
In addition to the considerations caused by this death in every consideration about the transfers and possible changes in the service that may follow from this death, the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance aroused in everyone who learned about it, as always, a feeling of joy that he died, and not I.
"What it's like, he's dead; but I'm not here," everyone thought or felt. Close acquaintances, the so-called friends of Ivan Ilyich, at the same time involuntarily thought about the fact that now they need to fulfill very boring duties of decency and go to a memorial service and to the widow with a visit of condolences.
Fedor Vasilyevich and Pyotr Ivanovich were closest of all.
Pyotr Ivanovich was a friend at the School of Law and considered himself indebted to Ivan Ilyich.
Having conveyed to his wife at dinner the news of the death of Ivan Ilyich and considerations 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 stood a carriage and two cabbies. Downstairs, in the antechamber, leaning against the wall was a glazed coffin lid with tassels and powder-polished galloon. Two ladies in black were taking off their coats.
One, Ivan Ilyich's sister, is an acquaintance, the other is an unfamiliar lady. Comrade Peter
Ivanovich, Schwartz, descended from above and, seeing from the top step, who was entering, stopped and winked at him, as if saying: “Ivan Ilyich ordered stupidly:
whether business we with you".
Schwartz's face with English sideburns and the whole thin figure in tails had, as always, an elegant solemnity, and this solemnity, always contrary to the nature of Schwartz's playfulness, had a special salt here. So thought Pyotr Ivanovich.
Pyotr Ivanovich let the ladies go ahead of him and slowly followed them up the stairs. Schwartz did not go down, but stopped at the top. Pyotr Ivanovich understood why: he obviously wanted to come to an agreement where to screw it up today. The ladies went up the stairs to the widow, and Schwartz, with his serious, strong lips and playful eyes, pointed to Pyotr Ivanovich to the right, into the dead man's room.
Pyotr Ivanovich entered, as he always does, perplexed as to what he would have to do there. One thing he knew was that in these cases it never interferes with being baptized. As to whether it was necessary to bow at the same time, he was not entirely sure and therefore chose the middle one: entering the room, he began to cross himself and bow a little, as it were. As far as the movements of his arms and head allowed him, he at the same time looked around the room. Two young men, one high school student, nephews, I think, were crossing themselves out of the room. The old woman stood motionless. And the lady with strangely raised eyebrows said something to her in a whisper. The deacon in a frock coat, cheerful, resolute, read something aloud with an expression that excludes any contradiction; the pantry peasant Gerasim, passing in front of Pyotr Ivanovich with light steps, was scattering something on the floor. Seeing this
Pyotr Ivanovich immediately felt the slight smell of a decaying corpse. AT
his last visit to Ivan Ilyich, Pyotr Ivanovich saw this peasant in the cabin; he acted as a nurse, and Ivan Ilyich was especially fond of him.
Pyotr Ivanovich kept crossing himself and bowing slightly in the middle direction between the coffin, the deacon, and the images on the table in the corner. Then, when this gesture of baptism with his hand seemed to him already 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 dead man, sunk with stiff limbs in the lining of the coffin, with his head forever bent on the pillow, and exposed, as dead men always do, his yellow waxy forehead with slicks on sunken temples and protruding nose, as if pressing on the upper lip. He had changed a lot, had grown even thinner since Pyotr Ivanovich had not seen him, but, like all the dead, his face was more beautiful, most importantly, more significant than it was on the living. There was an expression on his face that what needed to be done was done, and done right. In addition, in this expression there was also a reproach or a reminder to the living.
This reminder seemed to Pyotr Ivanovich inappropriate, or at least not of concern to him. Something became unpleasant to him, and therefore Pyotr Ivanovich hurriedly crossed himself again and, as it seemed to him, too hastily, inconsistently with decency, turned and went to the door. Schwartz was waiting for him in the entrance room, legs wide apart and playing with both hands behind his back with his top hat. One look at a playful, clean and elegant figure
Schwartz was refreshed by Pyotr Ivanovich. Pyotr Ivanovich realized that he, Schwartz, stood above this and did not succumb to depressing impressions. One view of him said:
the incident of Ivan Ilyich's memorial service cannot in any way serve as a sufficient reason for declaring that the order of the meeting was violated, that is, that nothing can prevent this very evening from cracking open it with a deck of cards, while the footman will arrange four unburned candles; there is no reason at all to suppose that this incident could prevent us from enjoying a pleasant evening as well. He said this in a whisper to the passing Peter
Ivanovich, offering to join the party with Fyodor Vasilyevich. But apparently
Pyotr Ivanovich was not destined to screw this evening. Praskovya Fyodorovna, a short, fat woman, despite all her efforts to arrange the opposite, nevertheless swelled from the shoulders down, all in black, with a head covered with lace and with the same strangely raised eyebrows as the lady standing opposite the coffin, went out from her chambers with other ladies and, escorting them to the door of the dead man, she said:
Now there will be a memorial service; pass.
Schwartz, bowing vaguely, stopped, obviously not accepting or rejecting this proposal. Praskovya Fyodorovna, recognizing Pyotr Ivanovich, sighed, went right up to him, took him by the 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 one had to be baptized there, one had to shake hands here, breathe in and say: "Believe me!". And he did just that. 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 gave his hand, and they went into the inner rooms, past
Schwartz, who sadly winked at Pyotr Ivanovich: “That’s the screw! Don’t look for it, we’ll take another partner.
said his playful look.
Pyotr Ivanovich sighed even more deeply and sadder, and Praskovya Fyodorovna shook hands with him gratefully. Entering her living room, upholstered in pink cretonne with an overcast lamp, they sat down at the table: she on the sofa, and Pyotr Ivanovich on the low pouffe, which had been upset by the springs and which was incorrectly placed under his seat. Praskovya Fyodorovna wanted to warn him to sit on another chair, but found this warning inappropriate for her position and changed her mind. Sitting down on this pouffe, Pyotr Ivanovich remembered how Ivan Ilyich arranged this drawing 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 carving of the table. Pyotr Ivanovich got up to unhook it, and the pouffe freed under him began to stir and push it. The widow herself began to unhook her lace, and Pyotr Ivanovich sat down again, pressing down on the pouf that rebelled under it.
But the widow did not unhook everything, and Pyotr Ivanovich got up again, and again the pouffe rebelled and even clicked. When it was all over, she took out a clean cambric handkerchief and began to cry. Pyotr Ivanovich was cooled by the episode with the lace and the struggle with the pouffe, 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 Fyodorovna 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 conviction that it could not be otherwise.
Smoke, please, - she said in a magnanimous and at the same time murdered voice, and took up with Sokolov the question of the price of a place. Pyotr Ivanovich, lighting a cigarette, heard that she had inquired in great detail about the different prices of land and determined the one that should be taken. In addition, having finished about the place, she also ordered about the choristers. Sokolov left.
I do everything myself,” she said to Pyotr Ivanovich, pushing the albums that lay on the table to one side; and, noticing that the ashes were threatening the table, without delay she moved the ashtray to Pyotr Ivanovich and said: “I find it pretense to assure that I cannot, from grief, deal with practical matters.
On the contrary, if something can not console me ... but entertain, then this is concern for him. She again took out her handkerchief, as if about to cry, and suddenly, as if overpowering herself, she shook herself and began to speak calmly:
However, I have business with you.
Pyotr Ivanovich bowed, not allowing the springs of the pouffe to diverge, which immediately stirred under him.
He has suffered terribly in recent days.
Did you suffer a lot? asked Pyotr Ivanovich.
Ah, terrible! For the last not minutes, but hours, he screamed incessantly. For three days in a row he shouted without translating his voice. It was unbearable. I can't understand how I got through this; could be heard behind three doors. Oh! what I got!
And was he remembered? 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 man whom he knew so closely, first as a cheerful boy, a schoolboy, then as an adult partner, despite the unpleasant consciousness of the pretense of his and this woman, suddenly horrified Peter
Ivanovich. He saw again that forehead, the nose pressing against his lip, and he was afraid for himself.
"Three days of terrible suffering and death. After all, it's now, any minute can come for me too," he thought, and for a moment he felt frightened.
But immediately, he himself did not 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, thinking in this way, he succumbs to a gloomy mood, which should not be done, as it was evident 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, which is characteristic only of Ivan Ilyich, but not at all characteristic of him.
After various conversations about the details of the truly terrible physical suffering endured by Ivan Ilyich (these details were recognized by
Pyotr Ivanovich only by the way Ivan Ilyich's torment acted on the nerves
Praskovya Fyodorovna), the widow apparently 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 got into conversation and expressed what was obviously her main business with him; this matter consisted of questions about how, on the occasion of the death of her husband, to get money from the treasury. She pretended to ask Pyotr Ivanovich for advice about the pension: but he saw that she already knew down to the smallest detail and what he did not know: everything that could be extorted from the treasury on the occasion of this death; but what she wanted to know was whether there was some way to get even more money out of it. Pyotr Ivanovich tried to invent such a means, but after some thought 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 evidently began to contrive a means of getting rid of her visitor. He understood this, put out his cigarette, got up, shook hands, and went into the hall.
In the dining room with a clock, which Ivan Ilyich was so glad that he bought in a brikabrak, Pyotr Ivanovich met the priest and several other acquaintances who had come to the memorial 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 looked grim, determined, almost angry. She bowed to Pyotr Ivanovich, as if he were to blame for something. Standing behind her daughter with the same offended look was a wealthy young man known to Pyotr Ivanovich, a judicial investigator, her fiancé, as he heard. He bowed dejectedly 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, terribly resembling Ivan Ilyich. It was little Ivan Ilyich, as Pyotr Ivanovich remembered him in Jurisprudence. His eyes were both tear-stained and the kind that unclean boys have at 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. A memorial service began - candles, groans, incense, tears, sobs. Peter
Ivanovich stood frowning, looking at his feet in front of him. He never looked at the dead man and did not succumb to the relaxing influences to the end and was one of the first to leave. There was no one in the front. Gerasim, the pantry peasant, rushed out of the dead man's room, flung all the coats over with his strong hands in order to find Pyotr Ivanovich's coat, and handed it over.
What, brother Gerasim? - said Pyotr Ivanovich, to say something.
God's will. We’ll all be right there, ”said Gerasim, showing his white, solid peasant teeth, and, like a man in the midst of intense work, he quickly opened the door, called the coachman, helped Pyotr Ivanovich and jumped back to the porch, as if thinking up what else he could do. do.
Pyotr Ivanovich was especially pleased to breathe clean air after the smell of incense, corpse and carbolic acid.
Where do you order? asked the coachman.
It's not too late. I will also visit Fyodor Vasilyevich. 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 shop (from French bric-a-brac).
The past history of Ivan Ilyich's life 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 a career in St. Petersburg in various ministries and departments that brings people to a position in which, although it turns out clearly that they are not fit to fulfill any significant position, they are nevertheless, according to their long and past service and their ranks cannot be expelled and therefore receive fictitious fictitious places and 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 elder made the same career as his father, only in a different ministry, and was already close to the service age at which this salary inertia is obtained.
The third son was a failure. He spoiled himself in various places and now served on the railways: both his father and brothers, and especially their wives, not only did not like to meet him, but unless absolutely necessary they did not even remember his existence. The sister was behind Baron Gref, the same Petersburg official as his father-in-law. Ivan Ilyich was le phenix de la famille, as they said. He was not as cold and orderly 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 younger one did not finish and was expelled from the fifth grade, while Ivan Ilyich finished the course well. In jurisprudence, he was already what he was afterwards all his life: a capable person, 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 placed people. He was not an ingratiating boy or later an adult, but from the very young years he had something that, like a fly to the light, he was drawn to the highest placed people in the world, assimilated their methods, their views on life and with them established friendly relations. All the hobbies of childhood and youth passed for him, leaving no big traces; he gave himself up to sensuality and vanity, and - in the end, in the upper classes - to liberality, but all within certain limits, which his feeling correctly pointed out to him.
In jurisprudence, he committed acts that previously seemed to him great nasty things and inspired him with disgust for himself, while he committed them; but later, seeing that these deeds 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.
Leaving Jurisprudence in the tenth grade and having received money from his father for uniforms, Ivan Ilyich ordered a dress from Scharmer, hung a medal with the inscription: "respice finem" on key rings, said goodbye to the prince and tutor, dined with his comrades at Donon's and with new fashionable suitcases, linen, dress, shaving and toiletries and a blanket, ordered and bought in the best stores, went to the province to the position of an official for special assignments of the governor, which was delivered to him by his father.
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 pleasant and decent fun; occasionally he traveled on behalf of his superiors to the counties, behaved with dignity both with the highest and with the lowest, and with accuracy and incorruptible honesty, which he could not help but be proud of, he carried out the assignments assigned to him, mainly on the affairs of schismatics.
In official affairs, despite his youth and penchant for light fun, he was extremely reserved, official, 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 used to say about him, to whom he was a household person.
There was also a relationship in the provinces with one of the ladies who imposed herself on a dapper jurist; there was also a milliner; there were drinking parties with visiting adjutants and trips to a distant street after supper; there was also serving the boss and even the boss's wife, but all this carried such a high tone of decency that all this could not be called bad words: it all fit only under the rubric of the French saying: il faut que jeumesse se passe4.
Everything happened with clean hands, in clean shirts, with 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 person.
Ivan Ilyich was offered a position by the investigators. Ivan Ilyich accepted it, despite the fact that the position was in another province and he had to abandon established relations and establish new ones. Ivan Ilyich was seen off by his friends, they made a group, brought him a silver cigarette box, and he left for a new place.
The judicial investigator Ivan Ilyich was the same comme il faut "ny, decent, able to separate official duties from private life and inspiring general respect, as he was an official for special assignments. The very service of the investigator was much more interesting and attractive for Ivan Ilyich than the former In the former service, it was pleasant to walk freely in Scharmer's uniform to walk past the trembling and waiting for the reception of petitioners and officials who envy him, directly to the chief's office and sit down with him for tea and cigarettes, but there were few people who directly depended on his arbitrariness. Such people were only police officers and schismatics when he was sent on errands; and he liked to deal politely, almost in a comradely manner with people who depended on him, he liked to make it feel that here he was, able to crush, friendly, simply treats them "There were few such people then. Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that everyone, without exception, the most important self-satisfied people - everything is in his hands and that he has only to write certain words on a paper with a heading, and this important, self-satisfied person will be brought to him as an accused or a witness, and if he does not want to put him, he will stand before him and answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused this power of his, on the contrary, he tried to soften its expressions; but the consciousness of this power and the possibility of softening it were for him the main interest and attraction of his new service. In the service itself, precisely in the investigations,
Ivan Ilyich very quickly mastered the method of putting aside all circumstances not related to the service, and putting on any most complex matter in such a form in which the matter would be only externally reflected on paper and in which his personal view would be completely excluded and, most importantly, would be observed. all required formalities. This case was new. And he was one of the first people who worked out in practice the appendix of the charters of 1864.
Having moved to a new city to take the place of a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich made new acquaintances, connections, put 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 slight dissatisfaction with the government, moderate liberality and civilized citizenship. At the same time, without changing the elegance of his dress in the least, Ivan Ilyich, in his new position, stopped shaving his chin and gave freedom to his beard to grow where he wanted.
The life of Ivan Ilyich in the new city turned out very pleasantly:
the society that opposed the governor was friendly and good; the salary was higher, and then whist added no small pleasantness 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 always won.
vAfter two years of service in the new city, Ivan Ilyich met his future wife. Praskovya Fyodorovna Mikhel was the most attractive, intelligent, brilliant girl of the circle in which Ivan Ilyich moved. Among other amusements and recreations from the work of the investigator, Ivan Ilyich established a playful, easy relationship with Praskovya Fyodorovna.
Ivan Ilyich, being an official for 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, then I can prove that in this kind I can do it better than others. So, occasionally at the end of the evening he danced with Praskovya Fyodorovna, and mainly during these dances he defeated Praskovya Fyodorovna. 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 marry?" he said to himself.
The maiden Praskovya Fyodorovna was of a good noble family, not bad;
was a small fortune. Ivan Ilyich could count on a more brilliant game, but this one was a good one too. Ivan Ilyich had his salary, he hoped she would have the same. Good relationship; she is a sweet, pretty and quite decent woman. To say that Ivan Ilyich got married because he loved his bride and found in her sympathy for his views on life would be just as unfair as to say that he got 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 he did what the highest-placed people considered right.
And Ivan Ilyich got married.
The very process of marriage and the first time of married life, with marital caresses, new furniture, new dishes, new linen, went very well before the wife's pregnancy, so that Ivan Ilyich was already beginning to think that marriage would not only not disturb that 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 still aggravate it. But then, from the first months of his wife's pregnancy, something new, unexpected, unpleasant, heavy and indecent appeared, which could not be expected and from which it was impossible to get rid of.
A wife without any reason, as it seemed to Ivan Ilyich, de gaite de coeur
As he told himself, she began to violate the pleasantness and decency of life: for no reason she was jealous of him, demanded that he look after herself, found fault with everything and made him unpleasant and rude scenes.
At first, Ivan Ilyich hoped to be freed from the unpleasantness of this situation by the very easy and decent attitude to life that had helped him out before - he tried to ignore his wife's disposition, continued to live as easily and pleasantly as before: he invited friends to make a party, he tried to leave in a club or with friends. But once, with such energy, his wife began to scold him with such vigor, and so stubbornly continued to scold him whenever he did not fulfill her demands, obviously determined not to stop until he submitted, that is, he would not stay at home and she will not, like her, grieve that Ivan Ilyich was horrified. He realized that married life - at least with his wife -
does not always contribute to the pleasantness 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 funds for this. The service was one thing that impressed Praskovya Fedorovna, and Ivan Ilyich, through the service and the duties arising from it, began to fight with his wife, shielding 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 was required to participate, but in which he could not understand anything, the need for Ivan Ilyich to shield himself from the world outside the family became even more insistent.
But, as the wife became more irritable and demanding, and
Ivan Ilyich more and more transferred the center of gravity of his life to the service.
He became more fond of the service and became more ambitious than he had been before.
Very soon, not 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, a life approved by society, you need to work out - a certain attitude, as well as to the service.
And Ivan Ilyich developed such an attitude towards married life. He demanded from family life only those comforts of a home dinner, a hostess, a bed that she could give him, and, most importantly, that decency of external forms that were determined by public opinion. As for the rest, he was looking for cheerful pleasantries and, if he found them, was very grateful; if he met rebuff and grouchiness, he immediately went into his separate world of service, fenced off by him, and found pleasantries in it.
Ivan Ilyich was valued as a good campaigner, and three years later he was made a fellow prosecutor. New duties, their importance, the ability to bring to trial and put everyone in jail for the publicity of speeches; the success that Ivan Ilyich had in this matter - all this attracted him to the service even more.
The children have gone. The wife became more and more grouchy and angry, but worked out
Ivan Ilyich's attitude to domestic life made him almost impervious to her grouchiness.
After seven years of service in one city, Ivan Ilyich was transferred to the position of prosecutor in another province. They moved, there was little money, and the wife did not like the place where they moved. Although the salary was higher than before, life was more expensive; in addition, two children died, and therefore family life became even more unpleasant for Ivan Ilyich.
Praskovya Fyodorovna reproached her husband for all the hardships that happened in this new place of residence. Most of the subjects of conversation between husband and wife, especially the upbringing of children, led to questions on which there were memories of quarrels, and quarrels were ready to flare up at any moment. Only those rare periods of love remained, which were found on the spouses, but did not last long. These were islands, on which they landed for a while, but then again launched into a sea of hidden enmity, expressed in alienation from each other. This estrangement might have upset Ivan Ilyich if he had thought that it should not be so, but he now already recognized this situation not only as normal, but also as the goal of all activity in the family. His aim was to free himself more and more from these troubles and to give them a character of harmlessness and propriety; and he achieved this by spending less and less time with his family, and when he was forced to do so, he tried to secure his position by the presence of strangers. The main thing is that Ivan Ilyich had a service. In the service world, all the interest of life was concentrated for him. And this interest consumed him. Consciousness of his power, the possibility of destroying any person whom he wants to destroy, importance, even external, at his entrance to the court and meetings with subordinates, his success in front of superiors and subordinates, and, most importantly, the skill of his conduct of affairs, which he felt - all this pleased him and, together with conversations with comrades, dinners and whist, filled his life. So, in general, Ivan Ilyich's life continued to go on as he thought it should go: pleasantly and decently.
So he lived for another seven years. The eldest daughter was already sixteen years old, another child had died, and there remained a schoolboy, a subject of contention. Ivan
Ilyich wanted to send him to jurisprudence, but Praskovya Fyodorovna, to spite him, sent him to the gymnasium. The daughter studied at home and grew up well, the boy also studied well.
1 family pride (French)
2 foresee the end (lat.)
3 good fellow (French)
4 youth must go wild (French)
So Ivan Ilyich's life went on for seventeen years from the time of his marriage. He was already an old prosecutor, who had refused some transfers, waiting for a more desirable place, when one unpleasant circumstance unexpectedly happened, which completely disturbed his calmness of life. Ivan Ilyich was waiting for the post of chairman in the university city, but Goppe got ahead of himself somehow and got this post. Ivan Ilyich became irritated, began to make reproaches, and quarreled with him and with his immediate superiors; they became cold to him and in the next appointment he was again bypassed.
This was in 1880. This year was the most difficult in the life of Ivan Ilyich. AT
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 in relation to him the greatest, most cruel injustice, seemed to others to be a completely ordinary thing. Even his father did not consider it his duty to help him. He felt that everyone had abandoned him, considering his position with 3,500 salaries 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 sawing 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, in order to facilitate funds, he took a vacation and went to live with his wife for the summer in the village with his brother Praskovya Fyodorovna.
In the countryside, without service, Ivan Ilyich for the first time felt not only boredom, but unbearable anguish, and decided that it was impossible to live like that and that some decisive measures must be taken.
After spending a sleepless night, which Ivan Ilyich spent the whole 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, go to another ministry.
The next day, despite all the excuses of his wife and brother-in-law, he went to
Petersburg.
He followed one; beg for a place of five thousand salaries. He no longer adhered to any ministry, direction or type of activity. He only needed a place, a place with five thousand, for administration, for banks, for railways, for the institutions of Empress Maria, even customs, but without fail five thousand and without fail to leave the ministry, where they did not know how to evaluate him.
And this trip of Ivan Ilyich was crowned with an amazing, unexpected success. In Kursk, F. S. Ilyin, an acquaintance, sat down in the first class and reported a fresh telegram received by the Kursk governor that a coup would take place in the ministry one of these days: Ivan was appointed to replace Pyotr Ivanovich
Semenovich.
The proposed coup, in addition to its significance for Russia, was of particular importance for Ivan Ilyich in that he, putting forward a new face, Peter
Petrovich and, obviously, his friend Zakhar Ivanovich, was extremely favorable to Ivan Ilyich. Zakhar Ivanovich beat comrade and friend Ivan
In Moscow, the news was confirmed. And having arrived in Petersburg, Ivan Ilyich found Zakhar Ivanovich and received a promise of the right place to his former Ministry of Justice.
A week later he telegraphed to his wife:
"Zakhar Miller's place at the first report I receive an appointment."
Thanks to this change of faces, Ivan Ilyich unexpectedly received in his former ministry such an appointment in which he became two degrees higher than his comrades: five thousand salaries and three thousand five hundred elevating. All vexation with his former enemies and with the whole ministry was forgotten, and Ivan
Ilyich was quite happy.
Ivan Ilyich returned to the village cheerful, contented, as he had not been for a long time. Praskovya Fyodorovna also cheered up, and a truce was concluded between them. Ivan Ilyich talked about how everyone honored him in
Petersburg, like all those who were his enemies, were now put to shame and dishonored before him, how they envy him for his position, especially about how much everyone loved him in Petersburg.
Praskovya Fyodorovna 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 converged, and that again his faltering life was acquiring the real, characteristic of it, character of cheerful pleasantness and decency.
Ivan Ilyich came for a short time. On September 10, he had to accept the post and, in addition, he needed time to settle in a new place, transport everything from the provinces, buy, order, and much more; in a word, arrange things as it was decided in his mind, and almost exactly the same as it was decided in Praskovya Fyodorovna's soul.
And now, when everything was arranged so successfully, and when they agreed with his wife in the goal and, moreover, they lived together for a short time, they got together so amicably, as they had not met since the first years of their married life. Ivan Ilyich was thinking of taking his family away at once, but the insistence of his sister and son-in-law, who suddenly became especially kind and related to Ivan Ilyich and his family, made Ivan
Ilyich left alone.
Ivan Ilyich left, and the cheerful disposition of the spirit, produced by luck and agreement with his wife, one reinforcing the other, did not leave him all the time.
A lovely apartment was found, the very thing that the husband and wife dreamed of. Wide, high, old-style reception rooms, a comfortable grandiose study, rooms for the wife and daughter, a classroom for the son - everything was thought up for them on purpose. Ivan Ilyich himself took up the arrangement, chose wallpaper, bribed furniture, especially from junk, 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 arrangement exceeded his expectations.
He understood that comme il faut, graceful and not vulgar character that everything will take on when it is ready. Falling asleep, he imagined the hall what it would be like.
Looking at the living room, not yet finished, he already saw the fireplace, the screen, the bookcase and these scattered chairs, these dishes and plates on the walls and bronze, when they all fall into place. He was pleased with the thought of how he would hit Pasha and
Lizanka, who also have a taste for this. They don't expect it at all. AT
he managed to find and buy cheaply 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 the new service of him, who loves this work, occupied less than he expected. AT
At 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 himself often fiddled around, even rearranging the furniture and outweighing the curtains himself. Once he climbed a ladder to show the incomprehensible upholsterer how he wanted to drape, he stumbled and fell, but, like a strong and dexterous man, he held on, only knocked sideways on the handle of the frame. The bruise hurt, but soon passed - Ivan
Ilyich felt especially cheerful and healthy all this time. He wrote:
I feel like fifteen years have slipped off me. He thought to finish in September, but dragged on until mid-October. But it was charming, - not only he spoke, but everyone who saw him spoke to him.
In essence, it was the same thing that happens to all people who are not quite rich, but those who want to be like the rich and therefore only look like each other: damasks, ebony, flowers, carpets and bronzes. Dark and shiny - all the things that all people of a certain kind do to be like all people of a certain kind. And he was so similar that it was impossible even to pay attention; but it all seemed to him something special. When he met his people at the railway station, brought them to his lighted apartment, and a footman in a white tie unlocked the door to the hall decorated with flowers, and then they entered the living room, study and gasped with pleasure, -
he was very happy, took them everywhere, imbibed their praises and beamed with pleasure. That same evening, when over tea Praskovya Fyodorovna asked him, among other things, how he had fallen, he laughed and imagined in his faces how he had flown and frightened the upholsterer.
I am a gymnast by no means. Another would have been killed, but I hit a little here; when you touch it, it hurts, but it already passes; just a bruise.
And they began to live in a new apartment, in which, as always, when they settled down well, only one room was missing, and with new means, to which, as always, only a little bit - some five hundred rubles - was missing, and it was very good. It was especially good at first, when not everything was arranged yet and it was still necessary to arrange it: now buy, then order, then rearrange, then adjust. Although there were some disagreements between husband and wife, both were so pleased and there was so much to do that everything ended without big quarrels. When there was no longer anything to arrange, it became a little boring and something was missing, but then acquaintances, habits were already made, and life was filled.
Ivan Ilyich, after spending the morning in court, returned to dinner, and at first his disposition was good, although it suffered a little precisely from the premises. (Every stain on the tablecloth, on the damask, the torn string of the curtain irritated him: he put so much work into the device that any destruction hurt him.) But in general, Ivan Ilyich's life went the way, according to his faith, life should have flowed: easily nice and decent. He got up at nine, drank coffee, read the newspaper, then put on his uniform and went to court. The yoke in which he worked was already crumpled there; he immediately got into it.
Petitioners, certificates in the office, the office itself, meetings - public and administrative. In all this, one had to be able to exclude everything that is raw, vital, which always violates the regularity of the course of official affairs: one must not allow any relations with people other than official ones, and the reason for relations should be only official and the relations themselves only official. For example, a person comes and wants to know something, Ivan Ilyich as an unofficial person and cannot have any relationship with such a person; but if there is a relation of this person as to a member, such as can be expressed on paper with a heading, then within the limits of these relations Ivan Ilyich does everything, everything decisively that is possible, and at the same time he observes a semblance of human friendly relations, that is, courtesy. As soon as a service relationship ends, so does everything else. Ivan Ilyich mastered this ability to separate the official side 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 the human and the official. relations. He allowed himself this because he felt in himself the strength, whenever he needed to, again single out one service and discard the human. This business went on with Ivan Ilyich not only easily, pleasantly and decently, but even masterfully. In between he smoked, drank tea, talked a little about politics, a little about common affairs, a little about cards, and most of all about appointments. And tired, but with the feeling of a virtuoso, who clearly finished his part, one of the first violins in the orchestra, he returned home. At home, the daughter and mother went somewhere or they had someone; the son was in the gymnasium, prepared lessons with tutors and studied regularly in what is taught in the gymnasium. Everything was fine. 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 -
compared evidence and brought 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. Pleasures of Ivan
Ilyich had small dinners, to which he invited ladies and men important in secular position, and such a pastime with them that would have looked like the usual pastime of such people, just as his drawing room was similar to all drawing rooms.
Once they even had an evening, 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 Fyodorovna had her own plan, but Ivan Ilyich insisted on taking everything from an expensive confectioner, and took a lot of cakes, and there was a quarrel over the fact that the cakes were left, and the confectioner's bill was forty-five rubles. The quarrel was great and unpleasant, so that Praskovya Fyodorovna said to him: "Fool, sour." And he grabbed his head and in his hearts mentioned something about a divorce. But the evening itself was fun. It was the best company, and Ivan Ilyich danced with the princess
Trufonova, the sister of the one who is known for the establishment of the society "Take away my grief." The joys of service were the joys of pride; public joys were the joys of vanity; but the real joys of Ivan Ilyich were the joys of playing vint. He admitted that after everything, after any unhappy events in his life, the joy that, like a candle, burned in front of all the others, was to sit down with good players and non-cried partners in screw, and without fail four of them (five of them it really hurts to go out, although you pretend that I love you very much), and play a smart, serious game (when the cards are up), then have dinner and drink a glass of wine. And to sleep after the screw, especially when in a small win (big - unpleasant), Ivan Ilyich went to bed in a particularly good mood.
This is how they lived. Their circle of society was the best, both important people and young people traveled.
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, smuts that flew to them with tenderness into the living room with Japanese dishes on the walls. Soon these dirty little friends ceased to scatter, and the Golovins were left with only the best company. Young people courted Lizanka, and Petrishchev, Dmitry's son
Ivanovich Petrishchev and the only heir to his fortune, the magistrate, began to court Lisa, so that Ivan Ilyich had already talked about this with Praskovya Fyodorovna: whether to take them to ride in troikas or arrange a performance. This is how they lived. And everything went on like this, without changing, and everything was very good.
Everyone was healthy. It was impossible to call it unhealthy that Ivan Ilyich sometimes said that he had a strange taste in his mouth and something awkward in the left side of his stomach.
But it happened that this awkwardness began to increase and pass not into pain yet, but into the consciousness of 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. Husband and wife began to quarrel more and more often, and soon lightness and pleasantness disappeared, and one decency was with difficulty maintained. The scenes became more frequent again. Again, only islands remained, and those are few on which husband and wife could converge without an explosion.
And Praskovya Fyodorovna now said, not without reason, that her husband had a difficult character. With her usual habit of exaggerating, she said that there had always been 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 nit-picking always began just before dinner, and often, precisely when he began to eat, over soup. Now he noticed that some of the dishes were spoiled, then the food was not like that, then his son put his elbow on the table, then his daughter's hairstyle. And he blamed Praskovya Fyodorovna for everything. Praskovya Fyodorovna at first objected and told him unpleasant things, but once or twice at the beginning of dinner he became so furious that she realized that this was a painful state that was caused in him by eating, and humbled herself; no longer objected, but only hurried to dinner. Praskovya Fyodorovna placed her humility on her great merit. Deciding that her husband had a terrible character and made the misfortune of her life, 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 that he died, but she could not wish it, because then there would be no salary. And that irritated her even more against him. She considered herself terribly unhappy precisely because even his death could not save her, and she became irritated, concealed this, and this hidden irritation of her intensified his irritation.
After one scene in which Ivan Ilyich was especially unfair, and after which he, in explaining, said that he was definitely irritable, but that it was from an illness, she told him that if he was sick, then he needed to be treated, and demanded that he went to the famous doctor.
He went. Everything was as he expected; everything was the way it always is.
And the expectation, and the pretense, doctoral, familiar to him, the same one that he knew in himself in court, and tapping, and listening, and questions that require definite and obviously unnecessary answers, and a significant air that inspired that you, they say, just submit to us, and we will arrange everything - we know and undoubtedly how to arrange everything, everything in one manner for any person you want. Everything was exactly the same as in court. Just as he pretended to be over the defendants in court, so the famous doctor also pretended to be over him.
The doctor said: so-and-so indicates that you have so-and-so inside you; but if this is not confirmed by the research of so-and-so, then you must assume so-and-so. If, however, one assumes such and such, then ... etc. For Ivan Ilyich, only one question was important: is his position 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 caecum. There was no question about the life of Ivan Ilyich, but a dispute between a wandering kidney and a caecum. And in front of Ivan Ilyich, the doctor brilliantly resolved this dispute in favor of the caecum, making a reservation that the study of urine could provide new evidence and that then the case would be reconsidered. All this was exactly the same thing that Ivan himself did a thousand times.
Ilyich over the defendants in such a brilliant manner. The doctor made his summary just as brilliantly and triumphantly, even cheerfully, glancing at the defendant from above his spectacles. From the doctor's resume, Ivan Ilyich drew the conclusion that it was bad, and what was bad for him, the doctor, and, perhaps, it didn't matter to anyone, but he felt bad. And this conclusion struck Ivan Ilyich painfully, evoking in him a feeling of great pity for himself and great anger at this doctor, who was indifferent to such an important question.
But he did not say anything, but got up, put the money on the table and, sighing, said:
We sick people probably often ask you inappropriate questions, he said. - In general, is it a dangerous disease or not? ..
The doctor looked sternly at him with one eye through his spectacles, as if to say: Defendant, if you do not remain within the limits of the questions put to you, I will be forced to issue an order to remove you 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 got out slowly, despondently got into the sleigh and drove home. All the way he went over everything that the doctor said, trying to translate all these confusing, obscure scientific words into simple language and read in them the answer to the question: is it bad - is it very bad for me, or is there nothing else? And it seemed to him that the meaning of everything said by the doctor was that it was very bad. Everything seemed sad to Ivan Ilyich in the streets. The cabbies were sad, the houses were sad, the passers-by, the shops were sad. But this pain, a dull, aching pain that did not stop for a second, seemed to take on a different, more serious meaning in connection with the doctor's unclear speeches. Ivan Ilyich 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, a daughter in a hat came in: she was going to go with her mother.
She sat down with an effort to listen to this boredom, but could not stand it for a long time, and her mother did not listen to the end.
Well, I'm very glad, - said the wife, - so now you, look, take your 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 to take medicine, to follow the doctor's prescriptions, which changed on the occasion of the examination of the urine. But it just so happened that in this study and in what was to follow it, there was some kind of confusion. 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. Or he forgot, or lied, or hid something from him.
But Ivan Ilyich nevertheless began to fulfill the instructions exactly, and in this fulfillment he found consolation for the first time.
From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilyich's main occupation was the exact fulfillment of the doctor's instructions regarding hygiene and the taking of medicines and listening to his pain, to all his bodily functions. The main interests of Ivan Ilyich were human diseases and human health. When people talked about the sick, about the dead, about those who had recovered, especially about such an illness that resembled his own, he, trying to hide his excitement, listened, asked questions and made application to his illness.
The pain did not decrease; but Ivan Ilyich made efforts to force himself to think that he was better off. And he could deceive himself as long as nothing worried him. But as soon as there was trouble with his wife, a failure in the service, bad cards in the screw, so now he felt the full force of his illness; he used to endure these failures, expecting that he was about to correct the bad, to overcome, to wait for success, a grand slam. Now, every failure crippled him and plunged him into despair. He said to himself: just now I began to get better and the medicine was already beginning to act, and now this damned misfortune or unpleasantness ... And he was angry at the misfortune or at the people who made him trouble and killed him, and 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 his anger at circumstances and people intensifies his illness and that therefore he should not pay attention to unpleasant accidents; but he made quite the opposite reasoning: he said that he needed calmness, followed everything that disturbed this calmness, and at every slightest violation he became irritated. What worsened his situation was that he read medical books and consulted doctors. The deterioration went on so evenly that he could deceive himself by comparing one day with another, -
there was little difference. But when he consulted with the doctors, then it seemed to him that things were getting worse and even very quickly. And despite this, he constantly consulted with doctors.
This month he visited another celebrity: another celebrity said almost the same thing as the first, but put the questions differently. And the advice with this celebrity only aggravated Ivan Ilyich's doubt and fear. His friend's friend, a very good doctor, defined the disease in a completely different way and, despite the fact that he promised recovery, confused Ivan Ilyich even more with his questions and assumptions and strengthened his doubts.
The homeopath defined the disease in a different way and gave the medicine, and Ivan Ilyich, secretly from everyone, took it for a week. But after a week of not feeling relief and losing confidence in both the previous treatments and this one, he became even more discouraged.
Once a familiar lady told about healing with icons. Ivan Ilyich found himself listening attentively and verifying the reality of the fact.
This incident frightened him. “Have I really become so mentally weak?” he said to himself.
Trivia! All nonsense, do not give in to suspiciousness, but, having chosen one doctor, strictly adhere to his treatment. So I will do it. Now it's over. I will not think, and until the summer I will strictly carry out the treatment. And there you will see.
Now the end of these hesitation!.." It was easy to say it, but impossible to do it. his mouth, and his appetite and strength were weakening. It was impossible to deceive yourself: something terrible, new and so significant, which had never been more significant in his life with Ivan Ilyich, was taking place in him.
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 the most.
Ilyich. Household - mainly his wife and daughter, who were in the midst of trips - he saw, they did not understand anything, they were annoyed that he was so sad and demanding, as if he were to blame for this. 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 kept it regardless of what he said and did. The attitude was this:
You know, - she told her acquaintances, - Ivan Ilyich cannot, like all good people, strictly follow the prescribed treatment. Today he will take drops and eat as ordered, and lie down in time; tomorrow, suddenly, if I look, he forgets to take it, eats sturgeon (and he was not ordered), and sits 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 because of the pain...
Yes, there is already why it was, only in this way you will never recover and torment us.
External, expressed to others and to himself, the attitude of Praskovya
Fyodorovna felt so bad about her husband's illness that Ivan Ilyich was to blame for this illness, and this whole illness is a new nuisance that he causes to his wife. Ivan Ilyich felt that this came out of her involuntarily, but that did not make him feel any better.
In court, Ivan Ilyich noticed, or thought he noticed, the same strange attitude towards himself: sometimes it seemed to him that they were looking at him as if he were a person who would soon have a job to do; then all of a sudden his friends began to make fun of his suspiciousness in a friendly way, as if something terrible and terrible, unheard of, that started up in him and constantly sucked him and irresistibly attracted 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 make a party, sat down. They handed over, warmed up new cards, tambourines were added to tambourines, there are seven of them. The partner said: no trump cards, -
and supported two tambourines. What else? Fun, cheerfully should be - a helmet. And
suddenly Ivan Ilyich feels this sucking pain, this taste in his mouth, and something wild seems to him that he can rejoice at the helmet at the same time.
He looks at Mikhail Mikhailovich, his partner, how he beats the table with a sanguine hand and politely and condescendingly refrains from seizing 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, forgets the trump cards and trumps once again in his own and loses the helmet at three minutes, and what is most terrible of all 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 it is hard for him and they tell him: "We can stop if you are tired. You can rest." Relax? No, he's not at all tired, they're playing out the rubber. All are dark and silent. Ivan Ilyich feels that he has unleashed this gloominess on them and cannot dispel it. They have dinner and leave, and Ivan
Ilyich is left alone with the realization that his life is poisoned for him and poisons the lives of others, and that this poison does not weaken, but more and more penetrates his whole being.
And with this consciousness, and even with physical pain, and even with horror, one had to go to bed and often did not sleep from pain for most of the night. BUT
the next morning I had to get up again, get dressed, go to court, talk, write, and if I didn’t go, be at home with the same twenty-four hours a day, each of which was torment. And he had to live like this on the edge of death alone, without one person who would understand and pity 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 Fyodorovna went shopping. Entering his office, he found his brother-in-law, a healthy sanguine man, unpacking his suitcase himself. 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, and restrained himself. This movement confirmed everything.
What has changed?
Yes... there is a change.
And no matter how much Ivan Ilyich suggested after his brother-in-law to talk about his appearance, the brother-in-law remained silent. Praskovya Fyodorovna arrived, the brother-in-law went to her.
Ivan Ilyich locked the door with a key and began to look in the mirror - straight ahead, then from the side. He took his portrait with his wife and compared the portrait with what he saw in the mirror. The change was huge. Then he bared his arms to the elbow, looked, lowered his sleeves, sat down on the ottoman and became blacker than the night.
“No need, no need,” he said to himself, jumped up, went to the table, opened the case, 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 Fyodorovna.
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 (it was a famous doctor) said opposite...
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 broken away and how she was wandering. And by an effort of his imagination he tried to catch this kidney and stop it, strengthen it: so little was needed, it seemed to him. "No, I'll go to
Pyotr Ivanovich." (This was the friend who had a doctor friend.) He called, ordered to lay down the horse and got ready to go.
Where are you Jean? - asked the wife with a particularly sad and unusually kind expression.
This unaccustomed kindness embittered him. He looked at her darkly.
I need to see Pyotr Ivanovich.
He went to a friend who had a doctor friend. And with him to the doctor. He caught him and had a long conversation with him.
Looking at the anatomical and physiological details of what the doctor thought was happening in him, he understood everything.
There was one thing, a little thing in the caecum. All of this could improve. 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 dinner.
I dined, talked merrily, but for a long time I could not go to my place to study. Finally he went to his study and immediately sat down to work. He read cases, worked, but the consciousness that he had a postponed important sincere business, which he would deal with after completion, did not leave him. When he finished his business, he remembered that this heartfelt matter was thoughts about the caecum. But he did not give in to them; he went into the drawing-room for tea. There were guests, they spoke and played the piano, they sang;
there was an examining magistrate, the daughter's desired fiance. Ivan Ilyich spent the evening, according to Praskovya Fyodorovna, more cheerfully than others, but he did not forget for a moment that he had important thoughts about the caecum put aside. AT
At eleven o'clock he said goodbye and went to his room. He had slept alone ever since his illness, in a small room by the study. He went undressed and took a novel
Zola, but did not read it, but thought. And in his imagination that desired correction of the caecum was taking place. It was sucked in, thrown out, correct activity was restored. "Yes, that's all true," he said to himself. "We just need to help nature." He remembered the medicine, got up, took it, lay on his back, listening to how the medicine works beneficially and how it destroys the pain. "Only accept evenly and avoid harmful influences; already now I feel somewhat better, much better." He began to feel his side, -
does not hurt to the touch. "Yes, I don't feel right, it's already much better." He put out the candle and lay down on his side... The caecum is being corrected, absorbed. Suddenly he felt a familiar old, dull, aching pain, stubborn, quiet, serious. In the mouth, the same familiar muck. Sucked in the heart, confused in the head. "My God, my God!" he said. "Again, again, and it will never stop." And suddenly he saw things from a completely different angle. "A caecum? A kidney," he said to himself. "Why deceive yourself? Isn't it obvious to everyone except me that I'm dying, and the only question is the number of weeks, days - now, perhaps. That was light, and now it's darkness. That I was here, and now I'm going there! Where to?" " He was cold, his breathing stopped. He heard only heartbeats.
"I won't be, so what will happen? Nothing will happen. So where will I be when I'm gone? Really death? No, I don't want to." He jumped up, wanted to light a candle, rummaged around with trembling hands, dropped the candle with the candlestick on the floor and again fell back 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 don’t want to know, and don’t regret. doors, voices and ritornellos.) They don't care, but they will also die. Fools. Me before, and them after; and it will be the same for them. And they rejoice. Beasts!" Anger choked him. And it became painful, unbearably hard for him. It cannot be that everyone has always been doomed to this terrible fear. He got up.
"Something is wrong; you need to calm down, you need to think it all over again." And so he began to think. “Yes, the beginning of the illness. I hit my side, and I was still the same, both today and tomorrow; it ached a little, then more, then a doctor, then despondency, melancholy, again a doctor; and I kept walking closer, closer to the abyss. "Closer, closer. And now I'm wasting away, I have no light in my eyes. And death, and I'm thinking about the gut. I'm thinking about fixing the gut, and this is death. Really death?" Again horror came over him, he was out of breath, bent down, began to look for matches, pressed his elbow on the bedside table. She interfered with him and hurt him, he got angry with her, pressed harder with annoyance and knocked down the nightstand. And panting in despair, he fell on his back, expecting death at once.
The guests were leaving at this time. Praskovya Fyodorovna saw them off. She heard the fall and entered.
Nothing. Dropped by accident.
She went out and brought a candle. He lay, breathing heavily and quickly, like a man who had run a mile, looking at her with fixed eyes.
What are you Jean?
Nothing. U...ro...nil. "What can I say. She won't understand," he thought.
She didn't really understand. She picked it up, lit a candle for him and hurriedly left: she had to see off the guest.
When she returned, he was also lying on his back, looking up.
What do you, or worse?
She shook her head and sat down. - You know, Jean, I'm thinking whether to invite Leshchetitsky to the house.
This means the famous doctor to invite and spare no expense. He smiled venomously and said; "Not". She sat down, came up and kissed him on the 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, sleep.
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 at all.
That example of a syllogism, which he studied in Kizeweter's logic:
Kai is a man, people are mortal, therefore Kai is mortal, it seemed to him in his whole life that he was right only in relation to Kai, but not in any way to him. That was
Kai is a man, a man in general, and it was perfectly fair; but he was not
Kai is not a man at all, but he has always been a very, very special being from all other beings; 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, youth, youth. Was it for Kai that smell of a leather-striped 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 so much for Kai? Did he rebel for pies in Jurisprudence? Was Kai so in love? How 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, thoughts - it's a different matter for me. And it can't be that I should die. It would be too terrible.
That's how he felt.
“If I were to die, like Kayu, then I would have known it, that’s how my inner voice would have told me, 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 here's the thing," he said to himself. "It can't be. It can't be, but there is. How can it be?
How to understand this?"
And he could not understand and tried to drive away this thought as false.
wrong, painful, and displace it with other, correct, healthy thoughts. But this thought, not only a thought, but as if a reality, came again and stood before him.
And he called in turn to the place of this thought other thoughts, in the hope of finding support in them. He tried to return to the old trains of thought that had previously obscured the thought of death for him. But - a strange thing - everything that previously obscured, concealed, destroyed the consciousness of death, now could no longer produce this effect. Most of the last time Ivan Ilyich spent most of his time in these attempts to restore the former ways of feeling that obscured death. Then he said to himself: "I'll take up the service, because I lived it." And he went to court, driving away all doubts from himself; he entered into conversations with his comrades and sat down, according to his old habit absent-mindedly, with a pensive glance, surveying the crowd and leaning with both emaciated hands on the arms of the oak chair, leaning over to his comrade in the same way as usual, advancing the matter, whispering, and then, suddenly throwing up his eyes and straight sitting down, uttered well-known words and started the business. But suddenly, in the middle, a pain in the side, paying no 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 her way, and she came and stood right in front of him and looked at him, and he became stupefied, the fire went out in his eyes, and he began again to ask himself: "Is she really the only one?" And
comrades and subordinates saw with surprise and chagrin that he, such a brilliant, subtle judge, got confused and made mistakes. He shook himself, tried to come to his senses, and somehow brought the meeting to the end and returned home with a sad consciousness that, in the old way, his judicial case could not hide from him what he wanted to hide; that he could not get rid of her by a judicial act, and what was worst of all was that she distracted him not so that he would do anything, but only so that he would look at him, right in her eyes , looked at her and, doing nothing, was inexpressibly tormented.
And, fleeing 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, not so much destroyed, as translucent, as if she penetrated everything, and nothing could shield her.
It used to happen that lately he would go into the drawing room he had cleaned - into the drawing room where he fell, for which he, - how venomously it was funny for him to think,
For the device of which he sacrificed his life, because he knew that his illness began with this bruise - he entered and saw that there was a scar cut by something on the lacquered table. He looked for the reason: and found it in the bronze decoration of the album, bent at the edge. He took an album, dear, compiled by him with love, annoyed at the slovenliness of his daughter and her friends - now torn, now the cards are turned over. He carefully put it in order, folded the decoration again.
Then the idea came to him to move this whole etablissement with albums to another corner, to the flowers. He called the footman: either the daughter or the wife came to the rescue; they disagreed, contradicted, he argued, got angry;
but everything was fine, because he did not remember her, she was not visible.
But then the wife said, when he himself was moving: "Let people do it, you will harm yourself again," and suddenly she flashed through the screen, he saw her. She flickered, he still hopes that she will hide, but involuntarily he listened to his side - the same thing sits there, still whines, and he can no longer forget, and she clearly looks at him from behind the flowers. Why all?
"And it is true that here, on this curtain, I, as in an assault, lost my life.
Really? How terrible and how stupid! It can't be! It can't be, but it is."
He went into the study, went to bed, and again remained alone with her, face to face with her, but there was nothing to do with her. Just look at her and go cold.
Prim. 7 device, structure (French).
How this happened in the third month of Ivan Ilyich's illness, it was impossible to say, because it was done step by step, imperceptibly, but what happened was that his wife, and his daughter, and his son, and servants, and acquaintances, and doctors, and, most importantly, he himself knew that the whole interest in him for others consisted only in how soon, at last, he would empty the place, free the living from the embarrassment produced by his presence, and free himself from his sufferings.
He slept less and less; they gave him opium and started spraying him with morphine.
But this did not relieve him. The dull anguish that he experienced in a half-asleep state at first only relieved him like something new, but then it became just as or even more painful than open pain.
Special dishes were prepared for him according to the prescription of doctors; but all these dishes were tasteless and tasteless to him, more disgusting and more disgusting.
Special devices were also made for his stool, and each time it was torment. Anguish from impurity, indecency and smell, from the knowledge that another person must participate in this.
But it was in this most unpleasant business that consolation came to Ivan Ilyich.
Gerasim, the pantry man, always came to carry him out.
Gerasim was a clean, fresh young muzhik who had grown fat on city grubs. Always cheerful, clear. At first, the sight of this man, always clean, dressed in Russian, doing this disgusting deed, embarrassed Ivan Ilyich.
Once he got up from the ship and, unable to lift his pantaloons, collapsed on an easy chair and looked with horror at his bare, with sharply marked muscles, powerless thighs.
Gerasim entered in thick boots, spreading around him a pleasant smell of tar from boots and the freshness of winter air, Gerasim with a light, strong step, in a clean apron and a clean cotton shirt, with sleeves rolled up on his bare, strong, young hands, and, not looking at Ivan Ilyich , - obviously, holding back, so as not to offend the patient, the joy of life shining on his face,
Went to the ship.
Gerasim,” said Ivan Ilyich weakly.
Gerasim shuddered, obviously frightened that he had missed something, and with a quick movement turned his fresh, kind, simple, young face, just beginning to grow a beard, towards the patient.
What would you like?
I think it's embarrassing for you. You excuse me. I cant.
Have mercy, sir. - And Gerasim flashed his eyes and bared his young white teeth. - Why don't you try? Your business is sick.
And with deft, strong hands he did his usual work and went out, stepping lightly. And five minutes later, just as lightly stepping, he returned.
Ivan Ilyich was still sitting in the armchair.
Gerasim, - he said, when he put a 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 lightly stepped, embraced, deftly, gently lifted and held, with the other hand he pulled up his pantaloons and wanted to plant. But Ivan Ilyich asked him to take him to the sofa. Gerasim, without effort and as if without pressing, led 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 did not want to let go.
Here's what: move me, please, this chair. No, this one, under your feet.
I feel better when my legs are higher.
Gerasim brought in a chair, set it down without knocking, lowered it straight down to the floor, and lifted Ivan Ilyich's feet onto the chair; It seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better as Gerasim lifted his legs high.
I feel better when my legs are higher, - said Ivan Ilyich. - Give me that pillow over there.
Gerasim did it. He raised his legs again and laid down. Again Ivan Ilyich felt better while Gerasim held his legs. When he lowered them, he felt worse.
Gerasim, - he said to him, - are you busy now?
No way, sir, - said Gerasim, who had learned from the city people to talk with the gentlemen.
What else do you need to do?
Yes, what should I do? I redid everything, only to chop wood for tomorrow.
So hold my legs up, can you?
Why is it possible. - Gerasim raised his legs higher, and it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that in this position he did not feel pain at all.
How about firewood?
Don't you dare worry. We'll make it.
Ivan Ilyich ordered Gerasim to sit down and hold his legs and talked to him. AND -
strange thing - it seemed to him that he was better while Gerasim held his legs.
Since then, Ivan Ilyich began to call Gerasim sometimes and made him hold his legs on his shoulders and liked to talk to him. Gerasim did this easily, willingly, simply and with a kindness that touched Ivan Ilyich. Health, strength, cheerfulness 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.
Ivan Ilyich's main torment was the lie, that lie, for some reason recognized by everyone, that he was only ill and not dying, and that he only had to be calm and treated, and then something very good would come of it. He knew that no matter what they did, nothing would come of it, except for 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 they wanted to lie about him on the occasion of his terrible situation and wanted and forced him to take part in this lie. The lie, this lie committed against him on the eve of his death, the lie that was supposed to 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 did their tricks on him, he was within a hair's breadth of screaming at them: stop lying, and you know and I know that I'm dying, so at least stop lying. But he never had the heart to do so. The terrible, terrible act of his dying, he saw, was reduced by everyone around him to the degree of an accidental unpleasantness, partly indecent (like how they treat a person who, having entered 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 position. 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 sleep, saying: "Don't you worry, Ivan Ilyich, I'll get some more sleep"; or when he suddenly, switching to "you", added: "If you are not sick, why not serve?" Only Gerasim did not lie, everything showed that he alone understood what was the matter, and did not consider it necessary to hide it, and simply pitied the emaciated, weak gentleman. He even once directly said when Ivan Ilyich sent him away:
We will all die. Why not make an effort? - he said, expressing by this that he is not burdened by his work precisely because he carries it for a dying person and hopes that someone in his time will carry the same work for him.
In addition to this lie, or as a result of it, the most painful thing for Ivan was
Ilyich that no one pitied him the way he wanted to be pitied:
At certain moments, after long sufferings, Ivan Ilyich most of all wanted, no matter how ashamed he was to admit it, - he wanted someone to take pity on him, like a sick child. He longed to be caressed, kissed, to cry over him, as one caresses and consoles children. He knew that he was an important member, that he had a graying beard, and that therefore it was impossible; but he still wanted it. And in relations with Gerasim there was something close to this, and therefore relations with Gerasim consoled him. Ivan Ilyich wants to cry, he wants to be caressed and wept over him, and here comes a comrade, a member of Shebek, and, instead of crying and caressing, Ivan Ilyich makes a serious, stern, thoughtful face and, out of 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
Pyotr the lackey put out the candles, opened one curtain and began to quietly clean up.
Whether it was morning, whether it was evening, whether it was Friday, whether it was Sunday, it was all the same, everything was the same: aching, excruciating pain that did not subside for a moment; the consciousness of a life that is hopelessly leaving, but still not yet gone;
the same dreadful, hateful death approaching, which alone was reality, and still the same lie. What are the days, weeks and hours of the day?
Would you like some tea?
"He needs order so that the gentlemen drink tea in the morning," he thought, and said only:
Would you like to move to the sofa?
"He needs to put the chamber in order, and I'm in the way, I'm unclean, a mess," he thought, and said only:
No, leave me.
The footman tinkered still more. Ivan Ilyich held out his hand. Peter approached helpfully.
What do you order?
Peter took out a watch that lay at hand and handed it over.
Half past eight. Didn't you get up there?
Not at all. Vasily Ivanovich (it was a son) went to the gymnasium, and
Praskovya Fyodorovna was ordered to wake them up if you asked. Will you order?
No, don't. - "Should I try some tea?" he thought. Yes, tea...
Peter went to the exit. Ivan Ilyich was afraid to be left alone. "What would stop him? Yes, a cure." - Peter, give me the medicine. - "Why, maybe the medicine will also help." He took a spoon and drank. "No, it won't help. It's all nonsense, a deceit," he decided as soon as he felt the familiar sugary and hopeless taste. And he groaned. Peter is back. - No, go.
Bring some tea.
Peter left. Ivan Ilyich, left alone, groaned not so much from pain, no matter how terrible it was, but from anguish. "All the same, all these endless days and nights. If only sooner. What sooner? Death, darkness. No, no.
Anything is better than death!"
When Pyotr entered with tea on a tray, Ivan Ilyich looked at him for a long time in confusion, not understanding who he was and what he was. Peter was embarrassed by this look. And
when Pyotr was embarrassed, Ivan Ilyich woke up.
Yes, - he said, - tea ... well, put it on. Just help me wash and clean my shirt.
And Ivan Ilyich began to wash himself. He washed his hands and face with rest, brushed his teeth, began combing his hair and looked in the mirror. He felt frightened: especially frightening was the way his hair was pressed flat against his pale forehead.
When they changed his shirt, he knew that he would be even more afraid if he looked at his body, and did not look at himself. But that's where it all ended. He put on a dressing gown, covered himself with a rug and sat down in an armchair for tea. For 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, stretching out his legs. He lay down and let go
All the same. Now a drop of hope will flash, now the sea of despair will rage, and all pain, all pain, all melancholy and all 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 there was 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 here's the bell in the front. Aw, doctor. Exactly, this is a doctor, fresh, cheerful, fat, cheerful, with that expression - that you were scared of something, and we will arrange everything for you now. 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 puts on a tailcoat in the morning and goes on visits. The doctor cheerfully, consolingly rubs his hands.
I am 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 bit until he warms up, and when he warms up, he will fix everything.
Well, how?
Ivan Ilyich feels that the doctor wants to say, "How are you?"
Ivan Ilyich looks at the doctor with an expression of the question: "Are you really never 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, here you are, sick, always like that. Well, now, it seems, I have warmed up, even the most accurate Praskovya Fyodorovna would have nothing to object to my temperature. Well, hello. And the doctor shakes hands.
And, throwing away all the former playfulness, the doctor begins to seriously examine the patient, pulse, temperature, and tapping and listening begin.
Ivan Ilyich knows firmly and undoubtedly that all this is nonsense and an empty deceit, but when the doctor, kneeling down, stretches out over him, leaning his ear now higher, now lower, and performs 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 already knew very well that they were lying and why they were lying.
The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, was tapping out something else, when Praskovya Fyodorovna's silk dress rustled in the doorway and her reproach was heard.
Peter that she was not informed about the arrival of the doctor.
She enters, kisses her husband, and immediately begins to prove that she got up a long time ago and only by misunderstanding she was not there when the doctor arrived.
Ivan Ilyich looks at her, scrutinizes her all over, and reproaches her with both the whiteness, and the plumpness, and the cleanliness of her hands, her neck, the gloss of her hair and the sparkle of her eyes full of life. He hates her with all the strength of his soul, and her touch makes him suffer from a surge of hatred for her.
Her attitude towards him and his illness is the same. Just as the doctor developed an attitude towards his patients, which he could no longer get rid of, so she developed one attitude towards him - that he does not do something that is necessary, and it is his own fault, and she lovingly reproaches him for this, - and could no longer remove this relationship to him,
Why, he doesn't listen! Doesn't receive on time. And most importantly -
lays down in a position that is probably harmful to him - legs up.
She told how he makes Gerasim hold his legs.
The doctor smiled contemptuously affectionately: "Well, they say, to 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
Fyodorovna announced to Ivan Ilyich that he did what he wanted, but today she invited the famous doctor, and together with Mikhail Danilovich (that was the name of the ordinary doctor) they would examine and discuss.
Please don't resist. I do this for myself, - she said ironically, making it feel that she does everything for him and only by this does 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 hard to make out anything.
She did everything about him only for herself and told him that she was doing for herself what she definitely did for herself as such an incredible thing that he had to understand it back.
Indeed, at half past eleven the famous doctor arrived. Listenings and significant conversations began again in his presence and in another room about the kidney, about the caecum, and questions and answers with such a significant air that again instead of the real, the question of life and death, which now alone stood before him, the question of the kidney appeared. and the caecum, who were doing something wrong, and who are about to be attacked for this by Mikhail
Danilovich and a celebrity and force them to reform.
The famous doctor said goodbye with a serious, but not hopeless look. And
to the timid question, which Ivan Ilyich turned to him with shining fear and hope in his eyes, 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 Fyodorovna even burst into tears as she left the office door to hand over the honorarium to the famous doctor.
The uplift of spirit produced by the doctor's hope did not last long.
Again the same room, the same paintings, curtains, wallpaper, flasks and the same aching, suffering body. And Ivan Ilyich began to moan; they gave him an injection, and he forgot himself.
When he woke up, it was getting dark; they brought him lunch. He ate with the effort of the broth; and again the same thing, and again the coming night.
After dinner, at seven o'clock, Praskovya Fyodorovna came into his room, dressed as for the evening, with thick, toned breasts and traces of powder on her face. In the morning she reminded him of their trip to the theatre. was coming
Sarah Bernhardt, and they had a box that 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 a box and go, because this is an educational aesthetic pleasure for children.
Praskovya Fyodorovna came in pleased with herself, but as if guilty. She sat down, asked about her health, as he saw, only to ask, but not to find out, knowing that there was nothing to find out, and began to say what she needed to: that she had never gone would, but the box is taken, and Helen and the daughter and Petrishchev (the judicial investigator, the daughter's fiancé) are going, 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 did without her as prescribed by the doctor.
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, lined with a dense white collar, with a huge white chest and strong thighs covered in tight black trousers, with one stretched white glove on his hand and with a clack.
Behind him crept in unnoticed and a schoolboy in a brand new uniform, poor thing, in gloves and with a terrible blue under his eyes, the meaning of which Ivan knew
The son was always pitiful to him. And his frightened and condoling look was terrible. Apart from Gerasim, it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that only Vasya understood and pitied him.
Everyone sat down, again asked about health. There was silence. Lisa asked her mother about binoculars. There was a squabble between mother and daughter, who went where to do it. It came out unpleasant.
Fyodor Petrovich asked Ivan Ilyich if he had seen Sarah Bernhardt. Ivan
Ilyich did not at first understand what was being asked of him, and then he said:
Not; have you seen it?
Yes, in Adrienne Lecouvreur.
Praskovya Fyodorovna said that she was especially good at that. The daughter objected. A conversation began about the grace and reality of her acting, the same conversation that is always the same.
In the middle of the conversation Fyodor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilyich and fell silent.
Others looked and fell silent. Ivan Ilyich looked at him with shining eyes, obviously indignant at them. It needed to be fixed, but it couldn't be fixed. There had to be some way to break the silence. No one dared, and everyone became afraid that a decent lie would suddenly be violated somehow, and it would be clear to everyone what is. Lisa was the first to make up her mind. She broke the silence.
She wanted to hide what everyone was experiencing, but let it out.
However, if you go, then it's time, - she said, looking at her watch, a gift from her father, and slightly perceptibly, significantly about something known to them alone, 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 it was easier for him: there was no lie, -
she left with them, but the pain remained. All the same pain, all the same fear made it that nothing is hard, nothing is easier. Everything is worse.
Again minute after minute, hour after hour, everything is the same, and there is no end, and the inevitable end is all the more terrible.
Yes, send Gerasim, - he answered Peter's question.
Another two weeks have passed. Ivan Ilyich did not get up from the sofa. He did not want to lie in bed and lay on the couch. And, lying almost all the time with his face to the wall, he alone suffered all the same unresolved suffering and alone thought all the same unresolved thought. What is it? 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 opposite moods, which replaced one another: one was despair and the expectation of an incomprehensible and terrible death, the other was hope and an interest-filled observation of the activity of your body. Either before my eyes there was one kidney or intestine, which for a while deviated from the performance of its duties, then there was one incomprehensible terrible death, from which nothing can be got rid of.
These two moods from the very beginning of the disease succeeded each other; but the further the illness progressed, the more dubious and fantastic the considerations about the kidney became, and the more real the consciousness of impending death.
As soon as he remembered what he was three months ago, and what he is now; to remember how evenly he went downhill - so that every possibility of hope would be destroyed.
In recent times, that loneliness in which he was lying facing the back of the sofa, that loneliness in the midst of a crowded city and his many acquaintances and family - loneliness, which could not be more complete anywhere: neither at the bottom of the sea, nor in the earth - the last during this terrible loneliness Ivan Ilyich lived only in the imagination in the past. One by one, he presented pictures of his past. It always began with the nearest in time and reduced to the most distant, to childhood, and stopped there. Did Ivan Ilyich remember the boiled prunes that he was offered to eat today, did he remember the raw, shriveled French prunes in childhood, about its special taste and abundance of saliva when it came to the stone, and next to this memory of taste a whole series of memories of that time arose : nanny, brother, toys. "Don't talk about it ... it hurts too much," Ivan Ilyich said to himself, and was again transported to the present. A button on the back of the sofa and wrinkles in morocco. "Morocco is expensive, fragile; the quarrel was because of him. But the morocco was different, and another quarrel, when we tore the portfolio from my father 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 drive 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 as further back, there was more life. There was more goodness in life, and there was more life itself. Both merged together. "Just as the torments go from bad to worse, so the whole life went from bad to worse," he thought. One point of light is back there, at the beginning of life, and then it gets blacker and blacker and faster and faster. "Inversely proportional to the squares of distances from death",
thought Ivan Ilyich. And this image of a stone flying down with increasing speed sunk into his soul. Life, a series of increasing suffering, flies faster and faster towards the end, the most terrible suffering. "I'm flying..." He trembled, stirred, wanted to resist; but already he knew that it was impossible to resist, and again, tired of looking, but unable not to look at what was before him, he looked at the back of the sofa and waited, waited for this terrible fall, shock and destruction. “You can’t resist,” he said to himself. “But at least understand why this is? he said to himself, remembering all the legitimacy, correctness and decency of his life. "It's 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?"
So two weeks passed. In these weeks, an event desired by Ivan Ilyich and his wife happened: Petrishchev made a formal proposal. It happened in the evening. The next day Praskovya Fyodorovna went in to her husband, pondering how to announce Fyodor Petrovich's proposal to him, but that very night with Ivan
Ilyich brought about a new change for the worse. Praskovya Fyodorovna found him on the same sofa, but in a new position. He lay on his back, groaning and looking ahead of him with a fixed gaze.
She started talking about drugs. He shifted his gaze to her. She did not finish what she began: such anger, specifically towards her, was expressed in this 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 as well as at his wife, and to her questions about her health, he dryly told her that he would soon free them all from himself. Both fell silent, sat down and left.
What are we to blame? Lisa told her mother. - That's exactly what we did!
I feel sorry for 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.
And you can't; leave.
The doctor went into the drawing room and told Praskovya Fyodorovna that it was very bad, and that the only remedy was opium to alleviate suffering, which must be terrible.
The doctor said that his physical suffering was terrible, and it was true; but more terrible than his physical sufferings were his moral sufferings, and this was his main torment.
His moral suffering consisted in the fact that that night, looking at Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured high-cheeked face, it suddenly occurred to him: what, like in fact my whole life, conscious life, was "not right."
It occurred to him that what had seemed to him before a complete impossibility, that he had not lived his life as he should have, that this could be true. It occurred to him that those barely perceptible encroachments of his struggle against what was considered good by the highest placed people, barely perceptible encroachments, which he immediately drove away from himself - that they could be real, and everything else could not be then. And his service, and his arrangements for life, and his family, and these interests of society and service - all this could not be right. He tried to defend it all to himself. And suddenly he felt all the weakness of what he protects. And
there was nothing to defend.
“And if this is so,” he said to himself, “and I am leaving life with the consciousness that I have ruined everything that was given to me, and it is impossible to correct it, then what?”
He lay down on his back and began to sort out 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 been revealed to him at night. He saw himself in them, everything that he lived by, and clearly saw that all this was not what it was, all this was a terrible huge deception, covering both life and death. This consciousness increased, multiplied tenfold his physical suffering. He groaned and tossed and tugged at his clothes. It seemed to him that she was choking and crushing him. And for that he hated them.
They gave him a large dose of opium, he forgot himself; but in the afternoon the same thing began again. He drove everyone away from him and rushed from place to place.
The wife came to him and said;
Jean, darling, do it for me (for me?). It can't hurt, but it often helps. Well, it's nothing. And healthy often...
He opened his eyes wide.
What? Communion? What for? No need! And yet...
She started crying.
Yes my friend? I'll call ours, he's so cute.
Excellent, very good,” he said.
When the priest came and confessed him, he relented, felt as if relieved from his doubts and consequently from suffering, and a moment of hope came to him. He again began to think about the caecum and the possibility of correcting it. He took communion with tears in his eyes.
When they laid him down after communion, he felt light for a moment, and again there was hope for life. 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:
Isn't it better for you?
He said, without looking at her, yes.
Her clothes, her build, the expression of her face, the sound of her voice - all told him one thing: "Not that. Everything that you lived and live is a lie, a deceit that hides life and death from you." And as soon as he thought this, his hatred arose, and instead of hatred, physical excruciating suffering and suffering, the consciousness of inevitable, near death. Something new has happened:
began to screw, and shoot, and squeeze the breath.
The expression on his face when he said "yes" was terrible. Having said this "yes", looking her straight in the face, he turned around quickly, unusually for his weakness, and shouted:
Go away, go away, leave me!
From that moment began that three days of unceasing screaming, 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, the end, and the doubt had not been resolved, and remained a doubt.
Wu! Whoa! Wu! he shouted in different intonations. He started yelling: "I don't want to!" - and so he continued to shout at 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 was thrusting him. He fought like a man condemned to death fights in the hands of an executioner, knowing that he cannot be saved; and every minute he felt that, despite all the efforts of the struggle, he was getting closer and closer to that which terrified him. He felt that his torment lay in the fact that he was sticking himself into this black hole, and even more so in the fact that he could not climb into it.
Climbing is hindered by the recognition that his life was good. It was this justification of his life that clung and did not let him go forward and tormented him most of all.
Suddenly, some force pushed him in the chest, in the side, squeezed his breath even more, he fell into the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, something lit up.
It happened to him what happened to him in a railroad car, when you think that you are going forward, but you are going back, and suddenly you find out the real direction.
Yes, everything was wrong, he said to himself, but it was nothing. You can, you can do that. What is "that"? he asked himself, and suddenly fell silent.
It was at the end of the third day, an hour before his death. At that very moment, the schoolboy quietly crept up to his father and went up to his bed. The dying man screamed desperately and threw his arms around. His hand fell on the head of the gymnasium.
The schoolboy grabbed it, pressed it to his lips and wept.
At that very time Ivan Ilyich failed, saw the light, and it was revealed to him that his life was not what he needed, but that this 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. The wife approached him. He looked at her. She looked at him with an open mouth and unwiped tears on her nose and cheek, with a desperate expression.
He felt sorry for her.
Yes, I'm torturing them, he thought. They're sorry, but they'll be better off when I'm dead. He wanted to say it, but he couldn't get it out. “However, why talk, you have to do it,” he thought. He pointed to his wife with a look at his son and said:
Take away... it's a pity... and you... - He wanted to say "I'm sorry" again, but he said "Skip", and, not being able to recover, he waved his hand, knowing that the one who needed it would understand.
And suddenly it became clear to him that what tormented him and did not come out, that suddenly everything comes out at once, and from two sides, from ten sides, from all sides. Feel sorry for them, we must do so that they do not 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 to?" Well, where are you, pain?
He began to listen.
"Yes, here she is. Well, let the pain."
"And death? Where is it?"
He searched for his former habitual fear of death and did not find it. Where is she? What death? There was no fear, because there was no death either.
Instead of death, there was light.
So that's it! he suddenly spoke out loud. - What a joy!
For him, all this happened in one moment, and the meaning of this moment did not change. For those present, his agony continued for another two hours. Something bubbled in his chest; his emaciated body trembled. Then the gurgling 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 air, stopped halfway through his 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 LN Tolstoy", part 12, "Works of recent years". M., 1886.
Certain evidence of the beginning of work on this story has not been preserved. In the spring of 1882, Tolstoy read in the editorial office of the Sovremennye Izvestiya newspaper the original version of the story, which he was going to print then, 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 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).
Levochka read us a passage from a story he had written, a little gloomily, but very well; here he writes, as if he experienced something important when he read such a small passage. He called it to us: "Death of Ivan Ilyich."
“Today I began to finish and continue the death of Ivan Ilyich. I seem to have told you a plan: a description of the simple death of a simple person, describing from him. publication, and now I want to make 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 the life story of Ivan Ilyich Mechnikov, the prosecutor of the Tula District Court, who died on July 2, 1881, guessing a serious illness. T. A. Kuzminskaya wrote that Tolstoy felt in Mechnikov, when he was in Yasnaya Polyana, an outstanding person. His "death thoughts, talk about the futility of his life", 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 my elder brother's life (his name was Ivan Ilyich, his death was the theme for Tolstoy's famous story" The Death of Ivan
Ilyich"). My forty-five-year-old brother, feeling the approach of death from a purulent infection, retained the complete clarity of his great mind. While I was sitting at his head, 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," he ended up "reconciled, saying to himself that, in essence, there is only one quantitative difference between death at 45 or later" (I.
I. Mechnikov. Sketches of optimism. M., 1964, p. 280). In the preface to the fifth edition of his book "Etudes on the Nature of Man" in 1915, Mechnikov wrote about
L. N. Tolstoy as a writer who "gave the best description of the fear of death" (I.
I. Mechnikov. Essays on human nature. M., 1961, p. 7).
The earliest responses to the story are found in diary entries or personal correspondence of artists. These records, not designed to be read, are evidence of the sincerity of the statements. July 12, 1886 P.
I. Tchaikovsky wrote: “I have 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. a man did not bashfully bow his head when they calculate before him all the great things that Europe has given mankind ... "(" Diaries of P. I. Tchaikovsky,
1873-1891", M., 1923, p. 211). I. N. Kramskoy, author of the famous portrait
argued: “To speak of the Death of Ivan Ilyich, and even more so to admire, would be at least inappropriate. 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 reappeared in Russian literature... It is surprising in this story that there is no complete decoration, without which, it seems, there is not a single human work "(I. N. Kramskoy. Letters in two volumes. M., 1966, v. 11, with.
On April 25, 1886, V.V. Stasov wrote to Tolstoy: “No nation, nowhere 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” (Leo Tolstoy and V.V.
Stasov. Correspondence. 1878-1906. L., 1929, p. 74).
151, 161), in which he praises "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". The author points to the consonance of the idea of Tolstoy's story with Dostoevsky's idea about how the gentleman would not have to go to the "kufelny" (that is, the kitchen) for training
man. What Dostoevsky "frightened" was accomplished by Tolstoy, giving his hero the only consolation before his death - the sympathy of the peasant Gerasim, who
"taught the gentleman to appreciate true participation in a suffering person - participation, before which everything that secular people bring to each other at such moments is so insignificant and disgusting" (N. S. Leskov. Sobr. soch., vol. 11, M. , 1958, pp. 149, 154).
The magazine controversy that unfolded around the story reflected various attitudes towards the social and moral position of the writer. In the article "Journal campaign against Count L. N. Tolstoy," the reactionary critic V. L. Bureniya, in contrast to "aspirations for violent reforms," welcomed
"instructive" direction of Tolstoy's creativity ("... this is the most instructive of all the stories ever written, and the most amazing"). Thus, he tried to use the name of Tolstoy in the fight against revolutionary propaganda. Burenin owns the assessment of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" as
"an example of such deep realism and such deep unvarnished truth, which can hardly be found among the greatest artists of the word" (V. L. Burenin.
Critical studies. SPb., 1888, p. 223). Here it is impossible not to see a direct direction against the position of N.K. Mikhailovsky, who argued in one of the articles of 1886 that "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is, without a doubt, a wonderful story, but "is not the first number either in artistic beauty or in strength and clarity of thought, or, finally, the fearless realism of writing" (N.K.
Mikhailovsky. Sobr. cit., vol. VI. SPb., 1897, p. 378).
In 1888, an enthusiastic response about A. Lisovsky's story appeared in the journal Russkoye Bogatstvo: "The story" The Death of Ivan Ilyich "... by the extraordinary plasticity of the image, then by its deep truthfulness, by the complete absence of any conventions and embellishments - this story is unparalleled in the history of Russian literature and must be recognized as the triumph of realism and truth in poetry." He also noticed that the
the "rebirth" of the hero "is the result of a broad criticism of modern life" (ѓ 1, pp. 182, 195).
In 1890, in the same "Russian wealth" Dm. Strunin wrote that Tolstoy created "an outstanding literary type" which "in its various manifestations embraces the most diverse circles of our society" (ѓ 4, p. 118).
Romain Rolland called the story "one of those works of Russian literature that excited French readers the most" (Romain
Rollan. Sobr. cit., vol. 2. M., 1954, p. 312).
Leo Tolstoy - Death of Ivan Ilyich, read text
See also Leo Tolstoy - Prose (stories, poems, novels...):
Hadji Murad
I returned home through the fields. It was the middle of summer. The meadows were cleared and...
Owner and worker
I It was in the seventies, the day after the winter Nikola. AT...
What an amazing sign - a dash!
Today it is difficult to imagine that once there were no punctuation marks in our language. But centuries passed, in the XVI century. typography appeared in Russia, and when publishing books, it was necessary not only to separate one sentence from another, but also to try to make the idea understandable. So there was a question mark, an exclamation point, brackets, then a colon (although they were called differently than now). In the eighteenth century Russian writers N.M. Karamzin and G.R. Derzhavin began to use another sign - a dash (from the French tiret - a dash, a derivative of the verb tirer - to pull True, at first it was called differently: a line, a long line, a ruler, a sign crossings, a black line of ink. This innovation was met with hostility by many, they did not see the need for it. However, over time, an unusual sign took root in our written language, attitudes towards it changed, and gradually it became very popular. Now it performs many functions, and sometimes even displaces other, familiar punctuation... In what cases do we use a dash?
| Syntactic constructions in which a dash is placed | Examples |
| 1. In elliptical sentences with a pause or in the same type; | Behind the snowy field - the snowy field ... Barge - on the water, I - on the bank. |
| 2. In incomplete sentences as part of a complex one, at the place where some | member of the sentence (usually predicate); I sat on my good horse, and Savelich - on a skinny and lame horse. |
| 3. In the absence of a linking verb, if both main members are noun. in the name case; or num., or verbs in neopr. form; the predicate can be preceded by the words this, this is, here, it means, this means, one of; | Beauty is the decoration of the world. Books are intertwined people. To regret a stupid thing you have done is to commit another stupid thing. Five five - twenty five. |
| 4. Before a common application, located at the end of the sentence and having a touch of independence, clarification; a dash may precede a single application if it can be inserted before it namely; | Cobwebs hanging in the air settled on his face - a sure sign of the approaching autumn. Paying tribute to his time, Mr. Goncharov also brought out an antidote to Oblomov - Stolz. |
| 5. After one of the homogeneous members, if there is an application to it, in order to avoid ambiguity; | There were two geologists in the tent, a young man - our random companion, a guide and me. |
| 6. After homogeneous members before a generalizing word; | Among the birds, insects - in a word, the approach of spring was felt everywhere. |
| 7. Between direct speech and the words of the author; | “You enlightened me, hero,” the head said with a sigh. |
| 8. Before replicas in dialogue; | You have changed beyond recognition. - And you - not so much. |
| 9. In a non-union complex sentence, a) if the second sentence contains a contrast or an unexpected addition; b) the second sentence contains a result or conclusion from what is said in the first; c) the first sentence has the meaning of a condition or time; |
He spoke seriously - everyone laughed. There are many scientists - few smart ones. Planting gardens - decorating life. |
In some cases, the Russian language uses a double sign - two dashes.
| 1. A common application, standing inside the phrase, after the noun being defined, is highlighted with a dash on both sides, if it is necessary to emphasize the shade of its independence; | The bat, a light, almost incorporeal part of the approaching darkness, silently darted over the lawn. |
| 2. A dash is placed before and after the words of the author, which are inside direct speech; | “Aha! Got you! Wait! - shouts the rider daring. “Get ready, friend, for the mortal slaughter.” |
| 3. Two dashes are put if words or a sentence are inserted in the middle of another sentence for the purpose of explaining, supplementing or expressing feelings (the use of brackets would weaken the connection between them); | Reluctantly, foot by foot, I trudge to the village, dejectedly I approach the hut. And there - these are the times! - grandmother's laughter, Anna's perky talk. Here - where to go - everyone went home. |
| 4. On both sides, a group of homogeneous members can be distinguished by a dash. | Usually, Cossacks were taken from the riding villages - Elanskaya, Veshenskaya, Migulinskaya and Kazanskaya - to the 11-12th army Cossack regiments. |
A dash is placed between two or more proper names, the totality of which is called some kind of teaching or scientific institution: the Joule-Lenz law; the law of Bouguer - Lambert - Beer (everyone participated in their discovery). In double surnames, a hyphen is put: M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin; G. Beecher Stowe.
A dash can also be used to denote temporal, quantitative or spatial limits: flight Moscow - Delhi; with a weight of nine - ten kilograms; holiday for august - september.
Often a dash is used after a comma as an additional sign for connection with a repeated word, or if it is necessary to emphasize the splitting of a single into two parts, or to indicate a transition from an increase to a decrease in a period. For example:
Now, as a judicial investigator, Ivan Ilyich felt that without exception, the most important, self-satisfied people, everything was in his hands. (Tolstoy)
Who is to blame among them, who is right, is not for us to judge. (Krylov)
In the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov “When the yellowing field is agitated”, the period ends twice with a double punctuation mark:
... When the icy key plays along the ravine
And, plunging the thought into some kind of vague dream,
Babbling me a mysterious saga
About the peaceful land, from where it rushes, -
Then the anxiety of my soul humbles itself,
Then the wrinkles on the forehead diverge, -
And I can comprehend happiness on earth,
And in the sky I see God...
Very interesting are the cases when the dash is placed in atypical conditions. So, in the "Spelling and Punctuation Guide for Press Workers" and in the "Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation" it is possible to put a dash before (or after) the union AND, connecting two homogeneous predicates, if the second predicate expresses something unexpected or a consequence of first. Moreover, any part of the sentence can be separated in this way. For example:
I sang - and forgot insults
Blind happiness and enemies.
... And this unfortunate one,
Having the stupidest height
Clever as a demon - and terribly angry.
Behind him a wonderful swarm of arapov,
Crowds of timid slaves,
Like ghosts, from all sides
They run and hide.
All night she's her destiny
Wondered in tears and - laughed,
The beard scared her.
But Chernomor was already known
And he was funny, but never
Horror is incompatible with laughter. (A. Pushkin. Ruslan and Lyudmila)
And the sound of his song in the soul of a young
Remained - without words, but alive. (M. Lermontov)
There are, however, examples when a dash stands before other unions, and not just before AND:
And into the snow on a fatal scale
The sorcerer fell - and sat there. (A. Pushkin)
I don't read poetry, but I love
Dirty joking paper sheet flying. (M. Lermontov)
A similar picture is observed in compound sentences (and not only with the union AND), as well as in complex structures of various types:
Oh, knight, that was Naina!
I to her - and the fatal flame
For a daring look was my reward.
Farlaf, leaving his lunch,
Spear, chain mail, helmet, gloves,
Jumped into the saddle and without looking back
He flies - and he follows him.
Soul, as before, every hour
Full of languid thought -
But the fire of poetry went out. (A. Pushkin)
Why are you unhappy
Will people tell me?
That's why I'm unhappy
Good people that the stars and the sky -
The stars and the sky - and I'm a man! (M. Lermontov)
No matter how bad
No matter how difficult -
Don't give up
Look ahead. (A. Tvardovsky)
When Rogdai is indomitable,
Tormented by a deaf foreboding,
Leaving your companions
Set off to a secluded land
And rode between the deserts of the forest,
Immersed in deep thought
The evil spirit disturbed and confused
His yearning soul ... (A. Pushkin)
In his wonderful beard
A fatal force lurks
And, despising everything in the world, -
As long as the beard is intact -
The traitor does not fear evil. (A. Pushkin)
However, the listed conditions do not exhaust all the possibilities of this amazing sign. So, the authors share them with homogeneous members, in which there are unions:
Who will tell my thoughts to the crowd?
I - or God - or no one! (M. Lermontov)
The subject and the predicate are separated where the dash is not supposed to be put according to the rules:
Envy is the recognition of oneself defeated.
Ah, Arbat, my Arbat, you are my vocation,
You are both my joy and my misfortune. (B. Okudzhava)
Separate the comparative turnover:
Tender - like a young peri, the creation of earth and paradise,
sweet - how we are in a foreign land
between the sounds of a foreign language
familiar sound, native two words! (M. Lermontov)
Highlight introductory sentences:
I learned rare features
inimitable style;
But I turned the sheets
And - I confess - I grumbled at God. (A. Pushkin)
I was ready for death and torment
And call the whole world to battle
To your young hand -
Madman! - once again shake! (M. Lermontov)
Every day I wake up from sleep
I heartily thank God
Because in our time
There aren't many wizards.
Besides - honor and glory to them! -
Our marriages are safe ... (A. Pushkin)
Sometimes there are cases of setting a dash between independent sentences, which makes this sign one of the means of interphrase communication:
Old man! I heard many times
That you saved me from death. -
What for?..
It's time! - The east is already clear,
The Circassian woke up, ready to go.
Fame, glory, what are they? -
And they have power over me...
People want to have souls... So what? -
Souls in them are colder than waves! (M. Lermontov)
Examples of replacing colons with dashes are not uncommon. Obviously, the great expressiveness of the latter is recognized:
I see clearly - you are an exile. (M. Lermontov)
And who will interrupt this wondrous dream?
When will the awakening come?
I do not know - the law of fate is hidden! (A. Pushkin)
Ruslan raises a vague look
And he sees right above the head -
With a terrible mace raised
Carla Chernomor is flying. (A. Pushkin)
At the stable, everything is public - horses, bridles, collars.
I look around - my sled barely sticks out of the snow scree. (L. Kuzmin)
Never argue with a fool - people may not notice the difference between you.
Deviations from the accepted norms of punctuation are especially noticeable in literary texts. These are the so-called copyright punctuation marks. And it is no coincidence that the dash is among them as one of the most versatile and frequent. The appearance of such signs is apparently explained by the fact that poets and writers feel the language subtly and strive to convey not only the shades of meaning, but also the richness of the intonations of live speech, mark pauses so that the reader “hears” everything the author wanted to say, and can also read text aloud with appropriate intonation.
We propose to conduct observations on the use of dashes; read the given examples expressively; track how the intonation pattern of sentences changes if you remove the dash or replace it with another sign.
1. But the young princess, quietly blossoming, meanwhile grew, grew, rose - and blossomed. 2. “I don’t need your tents, or boring songs, or feasts - I won’t eat, I won’t listen!” Thought - and began to eat. 3. Know that your fate is close, because this princess is me. 4. Anchar, like a formidable sentry, stands alone in the whole universe. 5. And I - full of careless faith - I sang to swimmers. 6. Poets - everyone praises, read - only magazines. (A. Pushkin) 7. Whether I am rushing on a horse, - the steppe answers me; Do I wander late at times - the sky shines for me with the moon! 8. Not knowing the insidious betrayal, I gave you my soul; did you know the price of such a soul? You knew - I didn't know you! 9. They go - and suddenly they see the mound through the blue morning fog ... 10. And the heart, full of regrets, keeps a deep trace of the dead - but holy visions. 11. Accept me, my old friend; and here is the prophet! - I will not forget your services to the grave! 12. Do not believe, do not believe yourself, young dreamer, be afraid of inspiration like ulcers ... It is the heavy delirium of your sick soul or a captive thought of irritation. 13. The shadow turns black in all corners - and - strange - Orsha was seized by fear! 14. A young man conceals at will - both joy and sorrow. In her eyes - how bright it is in the sky, in her soul it is dark, like in the sea! (M. Lermontov) 15. And she slowly came to her senses, and began to listen to the noise, and listened for a long time - carried away, immersed in a conscious thought. 16. Do not believe, do not believe the poet, maiden, do not call him your own - and fear poetic love more than fiery anger! (F. Tyutchev) 17. Life is an endless knowledge, take your staff and go! 18. I myself am your mouth, mute as a stone! I, too, was exhausted in the shackles of silence. I am the light of extinct suns, I am a frozen flame of words, blind and dumb, wingless, like you. (M. Voloshin) 19. Molchalin sat on a horse: his foot in the stirrup, and the horse - on its hind legs, it is on the ground - and right in the crown! (A.Griboedov)
The above materials allow us to conclude that the dash is a truly amazing sign that has many functions, capable of playing contrasting roles: to highlight semantic parts in a sentence; emphasize individual words, phrases as much as possible; express opposition, explanation, result, consequence; indicate a pause, inviting the reader to slow down reading and pay special attention to the words following the dash; make the text clearer. No wonder there is an opinion: if you don’t know which sign to put, put a dash.
In the humanities classes, students can make their own observations on the texts of those poets and writers who actively used this “crossing mark”, or “ink strip”, and make sure that our punctuation is not a frozen set of rules, but a living, developing phenomenon that enriches our ability to convey the most subtle shades of meaning.
Rosenthal D.E. Russian language. Allowance for entering universities. - M., 1999.
