The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Robleh Wais
This is a subtle work with a narrative power that compels the reader to wonder about its real point.
We wonder why Ilyich, the novel’s protagonist, is dying from what appears to be such a superficial injury. At first, we are mildly surprised by the mishap, and as the story continues, a modern reader is bound to feel a sense of detached pity, not only for Ivan Ilyich, but for the people of that period. Medical practice in the nineteenth century was often little more than a collection of eclectic diagnoses and treatments. Effective treatment of even minor disorders was limited. The idea that infections were caused by transmissible agents such as bacteria or viruses had not yet been fully developed, and surgery was still in its infancy.
Tolstoy’s fictional Ilyich, as he progresses through medical treatment, illustrates with horrifying clarity the primitive state of medical science at the time. Of course, this was probably not Tolstoy’s conscious purpose. He likely believed he was portraying medicine realistically. But imagine your doctor explaining a case of appendicitis with such mumbo-jumbo as a floating liver and melancholy. Worse still, if the treatment failed, the physician could do little more than control the pain with morphine.
To think it may have been only appendicitis! At least, that is what I surmised. We still have incurable illnesses today, yet we look back with some arrogance at a time when conditions now routinely treated could amount to a death sentence. This is the setting Tolstoy uses to draw us into Ilyich’s world.
Tolstoy also avoids overdramatizing his subject’s condition. We feel, hope, and pray with Ivan that he may live and come to understand his illness. In the process, we come to understand what Ilyich eventually realizes: hope, the subsumption of desire, is not enough. He must have faith and belief in an ideal if he is to endure his pitiable fate.
Tolstoy represents God as a faceless and pervasive, yet almost gentle, probing being who takes Ilyich from this life into the next through that terrifying instrument: death. Death is always set diametrically against him. This contrapuntal texture creates a powerful theme. Ilyich wants a cure, but Death will not relent.
Balancing the action are Ilyich’s mental soliloquies about his earlier life. He once possessed life but never knew anything beyond the orthodoxy of living. While pondering why he must die, he recalls his past and feels doubly wronged. He has done nothing, in his own estimation, to deserve death. He was upright and fair in his dealings with friends and family. Yet he is evanescing toward an inescapable end. Why?
Here Tolstoy has the reader entranced. We are forced to ask why Ilyich has lived and why such dumb luck has befallen him.
This is an existential question that Tolstoy explores in the latter portion of the story. By this point, Ilyich has abandoned hope of survival. He becomes increasingly introspective, resigned, and absorbed in the ordinary details of his decline. At moments, his hope of living is renewed, only to be destroyed by another bout of deteriorating illness.
In the end, he accepts his fate through an appeal to Christian belief in the goodness of God. My identification with Ilyich was broken at this point. I had not expected Tolstoy to make such a direct appeal to Christianity. I later learned that Christianity became a focal point for him after many personal setbacks.
This is unfortunate because the story had developed such a clearly defined theme. To conclude with what resembles a Christian morality play diminishes the existential power of the preceding narrative. Readers of Sartre or Camus would find much to identify with up to the denouement. The questions of meaning and purpose are explored so effectively through Ilyich’s inner reflections that it is disappointing to see the story resolve itself in an explicitly Christian endpoint.
Anna Karenina
Tolstoy achieves something that few writers have managed in the romantic novel: he brings an epic tragedy fully to life. There is no need to suspend disbelief. The world of the wealthy Russian gentry is rendered with such detail that it becomes entirely convincing.
The character of Levin strikes me as especially intriguing. He is a farmer and an intellectual, a closed-minded aristocrat who nevertheless entertains the revolutionary ideas of his time. I found it riveting to watch Tolstoy wrestle with the then-emerging philosophy of Marxism through Levin’s brother.
There are plots and subplots throughout the novel, all tied together by the unfolding tragedy of Anna and Vronsky. Tolstoy uses Levin particularly well. Through his perceptions, the reader gains a strong sense of realism. When Tolstoy portrays early spring at Levin’s estate, for example, one experiences the atmosphere through Levin’s meticulous concern for his farm and for the peasants he employs.
There are flaws, however. One is Tolstoy’s treatment of romantic dialogue. The conversations between Levin and Oblonsky ring true to the modern reader. One can imagine sitting and having a chat with them. That familiarity disappears when Vronsky speaks with Anna. Their exchanges often seem affected, almost one step removed from Elizabethan prose.
This may be partly because Tolstoy was writing within a nineteenth-century romantic style. Even so, I found their passion forced and out of harmony with the tone of the rest of the novel. At times, it slows the movement of the plot. The ending, however, is perfect. Anna’s choice is exactly what it should be given the course of events, and Vronsky is led toward his inevitable fate.
A review of Master and Man, a short story by Leo Tolstoy: Master and Man
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