A comparative study of life and death subject in Mevlana Rumi’s “Masnavi” and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's “The Death of Ivan Ilych”

Abstract

Many scholars throughout history have written about humanity’s essential questions, especially life and death. Among them, the Persian Sufi poet and mystic Mevlana Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi, and the famous Russian writer and thinker Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy can be mentioned. Rumi believed that this universe is a path towards the eternal world. According to him, a man who has good intentions and lives a good life, does not fear death. All he wants to say in his work can be summarized in the following sentence: “Thou shalt not be delivered until the death!” Also, L.N. Tolstoy thought, that death is the beginning of a new life, and believed that we should live a beautiful simple life and love humans. Thus, our fear of death would be abated.