Konstantin Levin struggles with the thought of death as he listens to his brother struggle to live:
Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him (his brother). His thoughts were of the most various but the end of all his thoughts was the same –death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him…
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten –death.”
He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact — that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so…
The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble questions presented itself — death.
Filed under: Art
