The language of speaking about and reflecting on death: an analysis of L. Tolstoy’s story "The death of Ivan Ilyich"
The language of speaking about and reflecting on death: an analysis of L. Tolstoy’s story "The death of Ivan Ilyich"

Summary/Abstract: This paper is an attempt to interpret the phenomenon of death, at least in terms of its relevance to our understanding of life, using L. Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” as a congenial starting point. It is an important attribute of death that it fundamentally defies analysis, and, with human consciousness blocking our access to anything that does so, we find ourselves unable to “admit” death into ourselves or identify ourselves with it. Hence our efforts to come to terms with the phenomenon of death by reducing it to a kind of semiotic form expressed in the accepted practices of mourning and burial. The inevitable clash between the phenomenon of death and that of Dasein, whose topos of opposition is being itself, results in an antinomy which can only be resolved by addressing the phenomenal essence of both as a means of looking beyond their mere contents, clearing thereby a space for thought that is normally occupied by consciousness.

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