Introduction

'Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.' The judge Ivan Ilyich has lived by the rules, risen step by step, and led a decent, pleasant and proper life. While hanging curtains he falls from a ladder and bruises his side, and from then on his illness grows worse day by day. In the months as death approaches he finds that his wife, his daughter and his colleagues all hide behind falsehood and care only for themselves; only the young servant Gerasim looks after him with sincerity. At last he begins to ask: 'What if my whole life has been wrong?' In his final moments he sees the light. A Confession is Tolstoy's account of his spiritual crisis around the age of fifty: famous, successful and happy in his family, he found life meaningless, thought more than once of suicide, and at last found a reason to live in the faith of the ordinary working people. This volume contains both works.