The Death of Ivan Ilyich

All these years I had stayed away from Tolstoy due to the sheer size of his tomes. I was convinced by a friend to pick up what is probably his smallest book The Death of Ivan Ilyich. We begin immediately after the death of judge Ivan Ilyich is published in the papers and his friends at the court are already thinking of how they could benefit from his vacancy behind the desk. His friend Pyotr Ivanovich grudgingly realizes he has to go to the wake because everyone knows how close he was to the demised. At the home, the widow Praskovya Fyodorovna expresses her grief, but actually wants to learn how the family could earn the most pension possible from Ivan’s death. We then learn about Ivan’s life, as a middle child who took after his father’s law career, was just and uncorrupt, but also focused on furthering his career as much as possible. He falls in love and marries and life is content until marital discords and disagreements start after the birth of their first child. He decides to focus even more on his career progression and ends up as a judge and moves his family to a grand estate. An injury at home slowly grows into a painful illness that gnaws away at his life. Doctor after doctor poke and prod at him, offer medicines, but nothing works as he grows frail and sick. In the end he is stuck in bed until his eventual death, observing how his family and friends continue with their lives and no one seems to understand his predicament.

This turned out to be a fantastic book. Never having read Tolstoy before, I was struck by his literary style. He is able to observe the human and social condition and express it in ways and from points of view I have never experienced before. And the writing, even through this English translation by Lynn Solotaroff, knocks you so hard! Long winding sentences filled with memorable expressions, that you end up reading them over and over again, making a note that you will return to this book to find that perfect sentence when that condition in life inevitably occurs. (This particular edition I read had an introduction which was 30 pages long! Yes, a 30 page intro to a 90 page story - which is why I always skip those.) A highly recommended gem of a book and a great way to get into Tolstoy.

Rating: 5/5

ISBN: 0553210351

Excerpts

• Visit to a doctor

The waiting, and the pomp on entry, a charade played out by the doctor and familiar to him because it was the same as he recognized in himself in court, the tapping, and the listening, the questions requiring preordained and self-evidently futile replies, and the meaningful look which proclaimed, come, come sir, just rely on us and we’ll sort it all out—we know perfectly well how to settle matters, one way will do for all, whoever they may be. It was all exactly as it was in court. Just as he put on a show in court for the man on trial, so the doctor put on a show for him.

• Ivan Ilyich suffered most of all from lies—the lie that everyone accepted, for some reason, that he was just ill, not dying, that he need only keep calm and take his medicine and something splendid would come of it. And he knew that whatever the medicines might do, nothing would come of it except more agonizing misery and death. He found this lie insufferable; he was tormented by the fact that nobody wanted to admit what he knew—what everyone knew—but chose to lie to him about his dreadful state. They wanted, even forced him to participate in the same lie. Lying—the lie inflicted on him on the eve of his death, the lie which was bound to degrade the fearful, solemn scene of his death to the level of all those visits, curtains, and sturgeons for dinner . . . this was a dreadful affliction for Ivan Ilyich. And—it was strange—many times when they were doing their stuff over him, he was within a whisker of shouting at them, Stop lying! You know and I know I’m dying, at least you could stop lying to me. But he never had the spirit to do so.