Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen

Prince Andrew not only knew that he was going to die, but felt that he was dying, and was half dead already.He experienced a sense of being apart from the world, and a pleasant and strange sense of relief.He waited for the time limit he was facing without rushing or panicking.The majestic Eternal, the unknown, the distant Lord, whose being he had continually touched throughout the continuation of his life, was now approaching him, and, in the strange lightness he experienced, it was almost intelligible, can feel... He used to be afraid of the ultimate.Twice he had experienced death, the ultimate horror, the horrific, painful feeling, but he did not understand it now.

He felt it for the first time when the cannonballs spun toward him like tops, and he looked at the fallow fields and the bushes and the sky and knew it was death coming towards him.When he woke up after being wounded, the flower of love that seemed to break free from the life that oppressed him, eternal freedom and no longer bound by life, bloomed in his heart. Therefore, he was not afraid of death, nor to think about it. During those painful solitary and half-comatose days after his wound, the more he contemplated what the new principles of eternal love had revealed to him, the more he detached himself from life on earth, without himself feeling that the love of everything proposed " "Teaching without discrimination" asserts that it does not contain logical meaning.The Mohists follow logic, love everyone, and always sacrifice yourself for love, even if you don’t love anyone, that is—don’t live in the world.Moreover, the more he immersed himself in the principle of love, the more he distanced himself from life, and the more completely he removed the barrier between life and death when people have no love.When he thought for the first time that he should die, he said to himself: Well, it's better this way.

But that night in Mytishchi, when he was half-conscious, the person he wanted to see appeared before him, and when he put her hand to his lips and wept silent tears of joy, to a A woman's love sneaked into his heart without knowing it, and connected him with life again.Thoughts of joy and surprise came to disturb him again.Thinking back to the moment when he met Kuragin at the dressing station, he would not be in that same emotion now: instead he was now concerned about whether he was still alive.But he dared not ask. His condition was consistent with his physiology, but what Natasha called "he had that" happened two days before Duke Maria's arrival.It was that final spiritual struggle between life and death, and death won.It is a sudden awakening to the cherishment of life, manifested in love for Natasha, and a last resignation to face the horrors of the unknown.

It was one night, and he, as he always did after meals, was in a low-grade fever, but his mind was unusually clear.Sonia sat at the table and pondered a small condensed thought.To truly understand the writer's thoughts, one should also say that he was dozing off, and suddenly, a feeling of happiness appeared on his body. "Ah, here she is!" she thought to herself. Sure enough, Natasha's footsteps came from where Sonia was sitting just now. From the time she began to nurse him, he had always experienced this physical feeling of being close to her.She sat in the armchair diagonally across from him, and shaded his candlelight, knitting a stocking. (Prince Andrey once told her that no one is good at caring for patients like old mothers. Since the 1970s, they have regarded themselves as "socialist reformers" and opposed Marxism. Try, they always knit socks while nursing, and There is a sense of peace in the action of knitting socks, after listening to it, she started to knit socks).Her slender fingers were knitting quickly, occasionally clicking the needles, and the profile of her drooping, pensive face was clearly visible to him.She moved—the ball of thread tumbled from her lap.She trembled, glanced at him, covered the candle with her hand, bent down cautiously and nimbly, picked up the ball of thread, and sat back down.

He looked at her without blinking, and saw that every time she moved by herself, she would sigh deeply, but he didn't dare to do so, so he could only breathe carefully. In the Abbey of Troitz, they talked about the past, and he told her that if he lived, he would thank God forever for the wound that brought him back to her, but since then they have never Talked about the future. "Is this possible?" he thought while looking at her now, listening to the slight clang of metal knitting needles. "Has fate so strangely brought me to her just to die? . . . Has the truth of life been presented to me only because I have lived my life in vanity? I love her more than anything in the world. But what can I do if I love her?" He thought of the natural truth, that the empirical, experimental method is the only way to reach it, no, and at the same time groaned involuntarily from the habit he had when he was in pain. .

Hearing the groan, Natasha put down her socks and bent over to approach him. Suddenly she saw his shining eyes, got up briskly, walked to him, and bent down. "You didn't sleep?" "No, I have been looking at you for a long time; I feel you coming in. No one has given me such soft peace as you... Light, I am so happy that I could cry." Natasha moved closer.Her face glowed with ecstasy. "Natasha, I love you so much, more than anything in the world." "But what about me?" She turned her face away for a moment, "Why do you love me so much?" she said.

"Why so much love? ... Well, what do you think, what does it feel in your heart, your whole heart: Can I live? What does it look like to you?" "I believe, I believe!" Natasha almost shouted, clasping his hands warmly. He was silent. "That would be great!" So he took her hand and kissed it. Natasha felt happy and excited; but she remembered at once that this was wrong, that he needed peace. "So you didn't sleep," she said, suppressing her joy, "try to sleep as much as you can... please." He shook her hand and let go, and she went back to the candle and sat back in her original position.She looked at him twice, and his eyes were shining at her. She set a limit on how much to knit, and said to herself that she would never look at him again until she finished knitting.

Sure enough, after this he quickly closed his eyes and fell asleep.Not long after he fell asleep, he suddenly woke up in a cold sweat. When he fell asleep, he was still thinking about the problem he had been thinking about all this time-life and death.And more thinking about death, he felt closer to it. "What about love? What is love?" he thought. "Love prevents death. Love is life. It is only because I love that I understand everything, everything, and only because I love that everything exists, and only because I love. Everything is connected only with love. Love is God, and to die—that is: I, as a molecule of love, return to the source of total eternity.” It comforted him to think this way.But that's just thinking.There was also a lack, something personal, intellectual—not obvious yet, and so, still restless and inexplicable, he fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was lying in the room where he now lay, but not hurt, but well.Many different characters, humble and indifferent, appeared before him, and they talked with him, arguing about things that need not be argued.They are going to a place.Prince Andrei vaguely remembered that all this was meaningless, that he had other most important business, but he went on, surprising them with empty witticisms.Gradually, imperceptibly, these characters all began to disappear, and all that remained was the question of closing the door.He got up and went to the door so that he could put the bolt and close the door.Everything depends on whether he has time to close the door tightly.He walked, hurried, but his feet could not move, so he knew that he would not have time to close the door, but still mustered all his strength in vain.He sank into agonizing terror.This terror is the terror of death: "it" stands at the door.But just as he was crawling feebly and clumsily towards the door, this terrible thing pressed on from the other side and burst through the door.Something inhuman—death—was about to break through the door, which should have been held back, and he reached the door, mustering his last strength—it was impossible to close the door—even if he held it; But his strength was weak and he was inflexible, and the door was opened and closed again under the thrust of the dreadful thing.

It came over there again.His last supernatural strength was in vain, and the two doors were thrown open without a sound. "It" came in, and it was "death."And so Prince Andrew died. But at the moment of death, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep, and at the same time, at the moment of death, he exerted force on himself and woke up. "Yes, this is death. I am dead—I am awake. Yes, death—is awakening." Suddenly his heart lighted up, and the veil that had hitherto shrouded the unknown was within him. The mind's eyes are lifted up in front of it.He felt as if he had broken loose from the strength that had bound him before, and he felt that strange relief that had not left him since then.

When he woke up in a cold sweat and moved on the couch, Natasha came up to him and asked him what was wrong.He didn't answer her, and didn't understand her, just looked at her with strange eyes. This is what happened to him two days before Princess Marya's arrival.From that day on, as the doctor said, the internal fever had a bad development, but Natasha didn't pay attention to what the doctor said, and she saw the terrible spiritual symptoms that were more unsuspecting to her. From that day on, for Prince Andrei, waking up from a dream—that is, waking up to life.He feels that the awakening of life, as opposed to the continuation of life, is no more slowly awakened than the awakening of dreams, as opposed to the continuation of dreams. In this slower awakening there is nothing terribly hasty. His last days were ordinary and simple. Princess Maria and Natasha, who never left him, also felt this.They did not weep, they did not tremble, and in their last hours they themselves felt that they were no longer tending to him (he was gone, he had left them) but to the most intimate memory of him—his body only.They felt this so strongly that the outward horror of death had no power over them, and they felt no need to vent their sorrow.They cried neither in his presence nor behind his back, and never spoke of him among themselves, feeling unable to express in words what they knew in their hearts. They both saw him sinking deeper and deeper away from them, slowly and calmly, into that one place, and they both knew that it should be so, so well. Confession was made to him, communion was taken; all came to him to say good-bye.When his son was brought up to him, he kissed him with his lips and turned his head away, not because he felt heavy and regretful (Princess Marya and Natasha knew that), but simply because he was crying, What was required of him was done; but when he was told to bless his son, which he did, he opened his eyes and looked around again, as if asking if there was anything more that needed to be done. Princess Marya and Natasha were beside him at the last shuddering moment of the departing body. "Passed away?!" said Princess Marya after his body had been lying motionless and cooling for a few minutes.Natasha walked over, bent over the dead eyes, and hastily closed them.She closed those eyes, and instead of kissing them, she crouched over the embodiment of that most intimate memory of him. "Where has he been? Where is he now?" When the cleansed corpse was dressed in shrouds and laid in a coffin on the table, everyone went to say goodbye and wept. Nikolushka wept, bewildered grief tore his heart.The countess and Sonya wept, and Natasha regretted and thought of his death.The old count wept, thinking that soon, he felt, he too would take the same dreadful step. Natasha and Princess Marya are weeping now too, but not out of their own personal sorrow, they weep out of a pious move, their hearts are moved by the mystery of death which they have seen, Stealth is simple and dignified.