The Anatomy of Influence

Jan 12, 2026

"There are many perspectives moving like waves of darkness across our shocked spirits as we read King Lear, and Shakespeare privileges none of them." --This speaks to Shakespeare's wonderful impersonality, which lends to his characters so much of their own vitality. He will not lecture them and command them what to do; he allows them the privilege of speaking and acting for themselves.

The Anatomy of Influence

Jan 9, 2026

"...sometimes in my unruly fashion I follow my much-missed friend, the late Anthony Burgess, in the mental enterprise of wondering how Hamlet and Falstaff would have fared in the same play." --I envy this mental legroom.

The Anatomy of Influence

Jan 9, 2026

"A skeptical awareness that our lives are perpetually in flux, that we are always undergoing change, separates Montaigne and Shakespeare from Plato." --I think this is very astute, and is perhaps why Shakespeare and Montaigne seem so vivid and alive to me where Plato feels so flat.

The Anatomy of Influence

Jan 2, 2026

"The art of writing lines, replies, which express a passion with full tone and complete imaginative intensity, and in which you can none the less catch the resonance of its opposite--this is an art which no poet has practiced except the unique poet Shakespeare." --This articulates something which has always dazzled me about Shakespeare. He is never carried away by his own characters, or his own poetry. His poise is immense.

The Anatomy of Influence

Jan 1, 2026

"To seek the writer Shakespeare in his work is a vain quest, but to seek the work in the writer can be a rich enterprise." -- This distinction seems fruitful to me. To trace the path of the *writer* through his works is interesting; to trace the path of the *man*, far less so.

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!