on seeing life in the deadest things

I took note of the following passages, both of which capture the irony of being able to see life in a dead body. The following is from Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”.

He had changed very much, had grown still thinner, since Pyotr Ivanovich last saw him, but, as with all dead people, his face was more handsome, and above all more significant, the it had been in the living man.

This one below is from Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep where he describes Geiger’s dead body that is lying on the carpet.

His glass eye shone brightly up at me and was by far the most lifelike thing about him. At a glance none of the three shots I heard had missed. He was very dead.

There is life even in the deadest things, and death in what appears to be lively. He who observes irony and is able to articulate it adds not just in his own ability to dissect the world but also gives pleasure and enlightenment to those who reads his prose.