A Review - Tolstoy, Leo, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ (1886)

4 out of 7 Sahabs

To read about the Sahab 7even rating system, please visit this post.

A long, drawn-out death, punctuated with retrospection and regret…if that doesn’t sound light-hearted enough, then this might be the wrong novella for you. This is the Sahab Journal’s first review on Tolstoy - considered one of the greats of Russian literature - but something about this piece kept me from giving it a higher rating. Here’s why…

SYNOPSIS (SPOILER WARNING)

While a group of law officials discuss a case, Peter Ivanovich announces the death of longtime colleague Ivan Ilyich. The officials then start to speculate about possible promotions. Peter - a friend of Ivan’s who had studied law with him - feels obligated to attend the funeral and console Ivan’s widow, Praskovya Fedorovna. The novella then focuses on Ivan’s public and private life, his fascination with high status, and his relationship with an increasingly scornful Praskovya. Over time, Ivan feels a need to distance himself from family life by focusing on his official duties and his favourite pastime: playing bridge. A higher salary and a new house keep things calm; but while showing an upholsterer how he wants his curtains to look, Ivan suffers a fall and develops a pain in his side that makes him more irritable. As doctors and treatments fail to make it go away, Ivan realises that he is dying and that everyone regards him as a burden. One of his few sources of comfort is Gerasim - a butler’s assistant, and the only person to recognise his situation. As he suffers helplessly, Ivan wonders whether he has lived his life the right way. Feeling sorry for his family, Ivan finally rejects his fear of death and embraces “light” instead.

“...as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more dignified than when he was alive, the expression on the face said that was was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly”

What is effective in the author’s telling?

Tolstoy effectively sets up Ivan’s death, starting with Peter’s announcement and subsequent visit to the funeral. This introduction abruptly drops the reader into the situation, and into Peter’s perspective as he pieces together the details of Ivan’s death. The contrast between Ivan’s official duties and social life foreshadows his need to separate himself from family life later in the story (“In official matters…he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe; but in society he was often amusing and witty”). Tolstoy also hints at the superficial nature of respectable, bourgeois society; Ivan’s marriage to Praskovya was “considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates”, but her jealous and irritable attitude places great strain on his family life. Ivan’s devotion to rearranging the new house causes him to slip and suffer an injury on his side - an injury which culminates in his death. In the end, the new house proves to be “just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves” - an explicit rebuke of conformist attempts to climb the social ladder.

“Ivan Ilyich had realised that marriage, though it may add some comforts to life, is in fact a very intricate and difficult affair”

Where did you need more from the author to be engaged?

I would have appreciated a shorter story length, as I felt that some paragraphs were needlessly long. Greater focus on Ivan’s children would have helped to flesh out his family life and gain additional insight into what those around him really thought about his death.

“Praskovya Fedorovna’s attitude to Ivan Ilyich’s illness, as she expressed it both to others and to him, was that it was his own fault”

What did the piece make you consider in an associative manner?

For me, the character of Gerasim stood out as an example of down-to-earth peasant values. Unlike the other characters, we are given quite a few vivid descriptions of Gerasim’s appearance and personality (“...grown stout on town food and always cheerful and bright”). Not only does he have a calming effect on Ivan (“Gerasim’s strength and vitality did not mortify but soothed him”); he also acknowledges the situation and shows sympathy (“everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master”). By contrast, as soon as the law colleague Shebek arrives, Ivan eschews vulnerability and takes on “a serious, severe, and profound air…This falsity around him and within him did more than anything else to poison his last days”. I also spotted a connection between Ivan’s fall and a broader critique of bourgeois values, which Ivan implicitly acknowledges (“I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid”). His existential thoughts lead him to conclude that his life has been “a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death” - a conclusion that only makes his condition worse. This is solved when Ivan gladly rejects his fear of death by embracing compassion and sympathy - a stark contrast to the indifference and scorn of those around him, as well as a return to his good-natured personality.

“I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death”

What were your overall thoughts?

This piece is a rare case of ‘substance over style’. At first, I found it too long and dragged-out to really enjoy, but once I started going over it again I realised that the philosophical and moral contents were of much deeper value than the presentation. The story’s after-the-fact intro reads like a mystery novel, with Peter Ivanovich as a surrogate for the reader who is also trying to figure out how Ivan died. The novella’s most important themes, as well as Ivan’s personality, are well-established early on, with certain running threads throughout, e.g. Ivan’s belief that life should be easy and pleasant. Tolstoy makes it clear that trying to maintain a respectable bourgeois lifestyle while imitating high society is a self-defeating enterprise that obscures deeper meaning. You could even argue that the drawn-out segments of the novella were intended to invoke Ivan’s agonising process of dying. But there is no getting around the fact that this piece just felt a bit too long, and for that I’m giving it a slightly lower rating – sorry, Tolstoy.