The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

Beautiful, just beautiful. Compassion and love free him.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

"a terrible, vast deception, concealing *both life and death*"--this is very striking. By avoiding death he has avoided life. They are inseparable.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

His attempt at deception even alone is so poignant; the smile smiled as if there were someone to see and be deceived by it.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

Also how wonderfully fluid Tolstoy's motion from the abstract to the abstract rooted in the specific; these recollections of Ivan's childhood ground the abstract notion of death as much as his suffering does.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

What an insight! "As if I was going steadily downhill, while imagining I was going up."

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

This is so deeply moving.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Mar 1, 2024

How dismissive the doctor is! "Ah, you sick people are always like that." This insensitivity to a dreadful thing we all share in common is monstrous, and unfortunately I think it's very prevalent in our society today in professional settings in all sorts of cases. Tolstoy moves between past and present tense so fluidly! Of course I understand why young writers are taught not to mix tenses, as it's easy to do so carelessly; but what rigid rules we've made, and I think we lose quite a bit by adhering to them slavishly.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 24, 2024

Discussion Prompt: Gerasim is the only one who acknowledges what is happening to Ivan Ilyich, and treats him with "pity". While in our society "pity" tends to have a negative connotation, how in this case does Gerasim's pity humanize Ivan Ilyich and restore his dignity in the face of recognizing his own mortality? Or does it?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 23, 2024

Gerasim seems to be the beginning of Ivan Ilyich's transcendence of his pettiness. This torment of the lie, that the people around Ivan Ilyich want to reduce his death to an "indecency", and force his participation, is so deftly and strikingly stated.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 23, 2024

Interesting that he says "I and all my friends understood that things were quite otherwise". Even here he puts himself in a society.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 23, 2024

This is so poignant and universal. I'm sure if I learned tomorrow I was dying I would react in just the same way. This passage with Caius is just wonderful.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 16, 2024

This is an extremely powerful sequence. The conviction he is getting better beforehand is like a pianissimo before a sforzando.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 16, 2024

I like this phrase, "Then he...sat on the ottoman, and turned darker than night." Interesting that his wife's kindness makes him angry. Because he knows it to be false, or if it if real, because it suggests the truth, that he is dying, which he wants to avoid?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 16, 2024

Again, I'm really stricken by his isolation, which seems to make him suffer almost more than his illness itself.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 16, 2024

This is really quite moving, this new isolation he finds himself in; people are so afraid of illness they would rather blame the patient. I don't think anything has changed there. An interesting change to present tense; really makes it feel immediate.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 16, 2024

Here the physical descriptions of his slow succumbing to illness are so poignant and disturbing, with the pain in his side and more particularly the taste in his mouth. Then there is this phrase: "something dreadful...was being accomplished in Ivan Ilyich." I am really stricken by this word, "accomplished", in this context.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 13, 2024

Auscultation -- listening to heart or other organs with stethoscope Interesting that Ivan Ilyich recognizes the same "officialness" in the doctor as exists in himself as a judge.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 10, 2024

This is a great contrast that Tolstoy is building between Ivan Ilyich's petty content and his future great trial.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 10, 2024

The bruise is excellent foreshadowing of his illness; very chilling, to be honest.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 10, 2024

I love the repetition of the pretentious French "comme il faut", especially as Ivan Ilyich becomes completely happy.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 10, 2024

Oh my goodness--it's taken him until middle age to feel unbearable anguish?? I wonder if Tolstoy means this as another sign that he is "skating" on the surface of life, caring only for "pleasantness and decency" and not for real things.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 9, 2024

I really like how we're seeing the unsightly inner workings of Ivan Ilyich here, specifically around his exultation in petty power; it gives a hint of his "great vileness" in law school.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Feb 2, 2024

Tolstoy is enviably proficient at the quick summary of necessary but momentary characters, like Ivan Ilyich's father. I would really like to improve in this area myself.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 31, 2024

Ooh, I'm intrigued by Ivan Ilyich's daughter's "almost wrathful look"! I like two things especially about the description of the service: the five-noun image of "candles, moans, incense, tears, sobs" and Pyotr Ivanovich's looking at everybody's feet. Muzhik? -- Simply a Russian peasant. Is a muzhik a serf, or not? Before 1861, yes, but at the time Tolstoy writes, no. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. Carbolic acid? -- Sweet smelling chemical compound, discovered 1834 by Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, used in antiseptic surgery and wound care. I wonder what its use was here? Apparently carbolic acid is used as a fixative in embalming.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 29, 2024

Absolutely brilliant turn here, the return of the image of the "thrust-out nose" is superb. Schwartz continues to be my favorite character, even off-stage. I like his talisman-like quality!

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 29, 2024

Cretonne? --a heavy cotton fabric, typically with floral pattern, used for upholstery. Ah, perfection. I know this lady at once! And a "sullen lamp"! Oh my goodness, this is one of the funniest paragraphs I've ever read--a sort of slapstick Austen!

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 29, 2024

"...and his thrust-out nose, as if pressing down on his upper lip." I can see this in my mind's eye, a startlingly great image. I like the sense of "anamnesis" or recollection from the repetition of "always" in the first section of this paragraph. I am also struck by the repetition of words, like bells, very purposefully. "Face", "expression", "reminder"--these create a sense of exposition and variation, as on a musical theme.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 27, 2024

Discussion Prompt: How does Tolstoy contrast sensual details with abstract truths to create narrative and dramatic interest?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 27, 2024

I am IN LOVE with the description of Schwartz, the contrast between his solemn exterior and playful interior is perfection itself. Again, Tolstoy's style reminds me so much of Austen's, the same clarity and brevity and exquisite turn of phrase. Vint--card game--"vingt et un"? The latter turns up in Austen. Oh my gosh, I could write paragraphs on the last paragraph here, (don't worry, I won't!): with what assurance and ease Tolstoy fills the room in such a narrow space! The comedy of Pyotr Ivanovich's bumbling nonsense is delightful, and coming from the very point in Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" where Father Zosima's corpse begins giving off an odor, I am intrigued by the Russian willingness to approach this sensual experience, as opposed to English authors I've read from roughly the same era, who tend to deal more in abstractions about death. Tolstoy strikes exactly the right balance between creating the scene and allowing the reader's imagination to fill its corners.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Jan 27, 2024

Oh my, the immediate consideration of promotions and other petty tawdry social things, reminds me a great deal of Austen--Austen however writes in the major key, Tolstoy in the minor. I like this sentence/paragraph very much, with its surprising ending: "...a feeling of joy that it was he who was dead and not I." I wonder if the "I" is in the original? Many many one-sentence paragraphs. Extremely interesting. Like an exposition in which a theme is clearly stated.