“Prince Andrei not only knew that he would die, but felt that he was dying, that he was already half dead. He experienced an awareness of that estrangement from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being. Without haste or worry, he waited for what lay ahead of him. The dread, the eternal, the unknown and far off, of which he had never ceased to feel the presence throughout his life, was now close to him and – by that strange lightness of being he experienced – almost comprehensible and palpable.
Formerly he had been afraid of the end. Twice he had experienced that frightful, tormenting feeling of the fear of death, the end, and now he no longer understood it.” (IV-One-XVI-p. 982)