Books: War & Peace

Books: War & Peace

the most meaningful description of the death experience that i have ever read i have read just now in WAR AND PEACE of the death of prince andrei.

it is the leave-taking of the soul from the body and the manifestations of that leave-taking on the physical and on those of the loved ones, here, natasha, prince andrei's lover and princess marya, his sister.

tolstoy's description begins with natasha explaining to marya the course of prince andrie's condition and its ups and downs:

"'but two days ago...THIS suddenly happened.
i don't know why but you will see what i
mean.'" (original emphasis)

it was not a new physical ailment like pneuonia or gangrene that had set in, it was the physical manifestation of the soul's leave-taking.

this is how it looked to princess marya:

"when natasha opened the door...and let
princess marya enter the room...[marya]
understood what natasha meant by the words:
'two days ago THIS suddenly happened.' she
took it to mean that he had suddenly softened
and that this softness and susceptibility were
signs of approaching death."

"'how are you, marie? how did you manage to
get here?' he said in a voice as even and
aloof as his gaze."

"if he had uttered a desperate shriek, that
cry would have been less horrifying to
princess marya than the tone of his voice."

"'and have you nikolushka [his son]'? he
asked in the same deliberate, even tone
and with an obvious effort to remember."

"'how are you now?'" asked princess marya.."

"'that, my dear, you must ask the doctor,"
he replied, and with a manifest effort to
be gracious, and speaking with his lips
only (his mind was clearly not on what he
was saying)..."

"she understood the change that had come
over him two days ago. in his words,
his tone, and above all in his almost
hostile look, could be felt that alienation
from all things earthly that is so terrible
to one who is alive. evidently it was difficult
for him to understand anything living; YET IT
SEEMED THAT HE FAILED TO UNDERSTAND NOT BECAUSE
HE HAD LOST THE POWER TO DO SO, BUT BECAUSE HE
UNDERSTOOD SOMETHING ELSE--SOMETHING THE LIVING
DID NOT AND COULD NOT UNDERSTAND AND WHICH
WHOLLY ABSORBED HIM." [emphasis added]

when my mother was dying there was a similar affect. i would say something to her or ask her something and she would say "what?" in an almost annoyed way.

at first i thought she was not hearing. but after awhile i realized that she was not all there, not in the sense that the drugs had made her goofy but in the way tolstoy describes it, that her soul was leaving and she was absorbed in other thoughts.

tolstoy continues on this point:

"...he was indifferent to everything,
indifferent because something of
far greater importance had been
revealed to him."

"the conversation was cold, desultory,
and continually broken off."

"'andrei, would you like...would you like
to see nikolushka? [marya asked]."

"for the first time there was a barely
perceptible smile on prince andrei's face,
but princess marya, who knew his face so
well, saw with horror that it was not
a smile of pleasure or of affection for his
son, but of gentle irony at his sister's
using what she believed to be the ultimate
means of awakening his feelings."

after seeing nikolushka briefly marya began crying in andrei's presence. now tolstoy describes what andrei is thinking and experiencing:

"when princess marya began to cry he
understood that she was crying at
the thought of nikolushka being left
without a father. he made a great effort
to come back to life and see things from
their point of view."

"'yes, to them it must seem sad,'" he thought.
'"but how simple it is!'"

..."'they don't understand that all these feelings
they set such store by--all our feelings,
all those ideas that seem so important to us
DO NOT MATTER. we cannot understand one
another,'" [emphasis in original]

tolstoy continues the description from andrei's perspective:

"[he]...knew...that he was already half
dead. he was conscious of an alienation
from everything earthly, and of a strange
and joyous lightness of being."

"during the hours of solitude, suffering,
and partial delirium that he spent after
he was wounded, the more deeply he reflected
on the principle of eternal love that had
been newly revealed to him, the more he
unconsciously renounced earthly life. to
love everyone and everything, always to
sacrifice oneself for love, meant not to
love any one person, and not to live this
earthly life."

before my mother died she had a presentiment of her death. for many years she had had a recurring dream in which she was standing on the edge of a field and on the opposite end was her father, long dead.

in her dream, her father smiled at her and said "come on, honey; come on, dear." and mum had not gone. she said "daddy, i'm not ready." she told meher father "had put his head down and turned away with the saddest look on his face."

mum always said that she knew that if she had gone to her dad that she would have died. "so you see benjamin, i know that when it's my time, my dad will come for me."

a week before her death, after a couple of days of noticably declining health she had the dream again. she awoke that morning and told my brother, "tim, my dad was here last night." tim asked what she meant and she said "my dad was here, he was in the bed with me all night."

tolstoy describes prince andrei's epiphany:

"...what natasha referred to when she
said: "THIS suddenly happened" had
occurred two days before princess
marya's arrival. it was the final
spiritual struggle between life and
death..."

"it happened in the evening." he fell asleep:

"he dreamed he was lying in the room
he actually was in but that he had not
been wounded and was well. a great many
people...appear before him. he talks to
them...they are preparing to go away...
gradually,imperceptibly, all these persons
begin to disappear, and are supplanted by
a single problem: the closed door."

"he gets up and goes to the door to bolt
and lock it, EVERYTHING depends on whether
he succeeds in locking it in time."

"he starts toward it... but his legs will
not move...IT stands behind the door....
that ominous something is alreay pressing
against it and forcing its way in. something
inhuman--death--is breaking in and must be
stopped..."

"his efforts are feeble and ineffectual...
once more IT pushed from outside...IT
entered, and it was DEATH. and prince
andrei died."

as with my mother's epiphany though, that was just THE SIGN. neither my mother nor tolstoy's character actually physically died at that moment although both were aware that IT was now irrevocable:

"but at the very moment he died,
prince andrei remembered that he
was asleep, and at that very moment,
having exerted himself, awoke."

"'yes, that was death. i died--and i awoke.
yes, death is an awakening!"

"and his soul was suddenly sufused with
light..and from then on that strange
lightness did not leave him again."

"this is what happened to him two days
before princess marya's arrival."

"with his awakening from sleep that day,
there began for prince andrei an awakening
FROM life." [emphasis added]

my mother went quietly at about 6 am on april 5, which had been my father's birthday. lucy, our hospice nurse, called tim and told him she thought he should come over because mum had stopped breathing.

tolstoy:

"when he was in the last throes and the
spirit left the body, princess marya and
natasha were present."

"'is it over?'" asked princess marya after
the body had lain motionless for some moments,
growing cold before their eyes."

"natasha went up to it, looked into the dead
man's eyes and quickly closed them."

i was not present when my mother died but i had been present for the events after THE SIGN, had flown back home and then came back up the day she died.

i got to her house a little before dusk. i entered the house, empty except for her cocker spaniel.

buddy greeted me in his usual friendly way. i went through the kitchen and stood at the entrance to the hallway that led down to mum's bedroom.

buddy had scampered ahead of me and was standing at the entrance to the bedroom, looking into the room where mum had so recently lain, and then looking at me,looking into the empty room and then back at me.

i wept as i walked down the hallway and when i entered the bedroom and saw her hospice bed gone but the imprints on the carpet that the legs of the bed had left were still there.

i smelled her smell still in the room and saw her clothes. i wept when i went into her bathroom and saw everything just as it had been a few days before and yet with everything irrevocably different now.

mum was 85, had survived skin cancer, two episodes of breast cancer, bladder cancer and had finally succumbed to liver cancer.

i wept of course because she was my mother and because i missed her and felt the loss so much. but i also wept because of the strange, awesome death process that i had witnessed. it was like as tolstoy describes the feelings of natasha and princess marya:

"[they]also wept now, but not because
of their personal grief; they wept
out of a reverent emotion that filled
their souls before the solemn mystery
of a death that had been consummated
in their presence."


-benjamin harris