The Death of Ivan
Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
Recognizing Pyotr Ivanovich, Praskovya Fyodorovna sighed, went right up to him, took his hand, and said: “I know you were a true friend Ivan Ilyich’s . . .” and looked at him, awaiting a fitting response. Pyotr Ivanovich knew that just as he had to cross himself in there, here he had to press her hand, sigh, and say: “I assure you!” And so he did. And having done so felt he had achieved the desired effect: he was touched and so was she. (p.41).
“Three days of terrible suffering and death. Why, the same thing could happen to me at anytime now,” he thought and for a moment felt panic-stricken. But at once, he himself did not know how, he was rescued by the customary reflection that all this had happened to Ivan Ilyich, not to him, that it could not and should not happen to him; and that if he were to grant such a possibility, he would succumb to depression which, as Schwartz’s expression had made abundantly clear, he ought not to do. With this line of reasoning Pyotr Ivanovich set his mind at rest and began to press for details about Ivan Ilyich’s death, as though death were a chance experience that could happen only to Ivan Ilyich, never to himself. (p. 44).
Ivan Ilyich immediately made his life in the provinces as easy and pleasant as it had been at law school. He worked, saw to his career, and at the same time, engaged in proper and pleasant forms of diversion. . . .
In the provinces he had an affair with one of the ladies who threw themselves at the chic young lawyer; there was also a milliner: there were drinking bouts with visiting aides-de-camp and after-supper trips to a certain street on the outskirts of town; there were also attempts to curry favor with his chief and even with his chief’s wife. But all this had such a heightened air of respectability that nothing bad could be said about it. It could all be summed up by the French saying; “Il faut que jeunesse se passé.” It was all done with clean hands, in clean shirts, and with French phrases, and, most importantly, among people of the best society – consequently, with the approval of those in high rank. (p.52).
But few people had been directly under his control then – only the district police officers and religious sectarians he encountered when sent out on special commissions. And he loved to treat these people courteously, almost as comrades, loved to make them feel that he who had the power to crush them was dealing with them in such a friendly, unpretentious manner. But there had been few such people. Now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich felt that all, without exception – including the most important and self-satisfied people – all were in his power, and that he had only to write certain words on a sheet of paper with an official heading and this or that important, self-satisfied person would be brought to him as a defendant or a witness, and if Ivan Ilyich did not choose to have him sit, he would be forced to stand and answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused his power; on the contrary, he tried to exercise it leniently,; but the awareness of that power and the opportunity to be lenient constituted the chief interest and appeal of his new post. (p.53).
And Ivan Ilyich developed such an attitude. Of married life he demanded only the conveniences it could provide – dinners at home, a well-run household, a partner in bed, and, above all, a veneer of respectability which public opinion required. As for the rest, he tried to find enjoyment in family life, and, if he succeeded, was very grateful; but if he met with resistance and querulousness, he immediately withdrew into his separate, entrenched world of work and found pleasure there. (p.58).
The whole procedure was just what he expected, just what one always encounters. There was the waiting, the doctor’s exaggerated air of importance (so familiar to him since it was the very air he assumed in court), the tapping, the listening, the questions requiring answers that were clearly superfluous since they were foregone conclusions, and the significant look that implied: “Just put yourself in our hands and we’ll take care of everything; we know exactly what has to be done – we always use one and the same method for every patient, no matter who.” Everything was just as it was in court. The celebrated doctor dealt with him in precisely the manner he dealt with men on trial. (p.75).
Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying, and he was in a constant state of despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he unaccustomed to such an idea, he simply could not grasp it, could not grasp it at all. The syllogism he had learned from Kiesewetter’s logic – “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal” – had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but by no means to himself. That man Caius represented man in the abstract, and so the reasoning was perfectly sound; but he was not Caius, not an abstract man; he had always been a creature quite, quite distinct from all the others. He had been little Vanya with a mama and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with toys, a coachman, and a nurse, and later with Katenka – Vanya, with all the joys, sorrows, and enthusiasms of his childhood, boyhood, and youth. Had Caius ever know the smell of that little striped leather ball Vanya had loved so much? Had Caius ever kissed his mother’s hand so dearly, and had the silk folds of her dress ever rustled so for him? Had Caius ever rioted at school when the pastries were bad? Had he ever been so much in love? Or presided so well over a court session? Caius really was mortal, and it was only right that he should die, but for him, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all his thoughts and feelings, it was something else again. And it simply was not possible that he should have to die. That would be too terrible. (p.93-94).
Ivan Ilyich suffered most of all from the lie, the lie which, for some reason, everyone accepted: that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that if he stayed calm and underwent treatment he could expect good results. Yet he knew that regardless of what was done, all he could expect was more agonizing suffering and death. And he was tortured by this lie, tortured by the fact that they refused to acknowledge what he and everyone else knew, that they wanted to lie about his horrible condition and to force him to become a party to that lie. This lie, a lie perpetrated on the eve of his death, a lie that was bound to degrade the awesome, solemn act of his dying to the level of their social calls, their draperies, and the sturgeon they ate for dinner, was an excruciating torture for Ivan Ilyich. (p.102-103).
“We all have to die someday, so why shoudn’t I help you?” By this he meant that he did not find his work a burden because he was doing it for a dying man, and he hoped that someone would do the same for him when his time came. (p.104).
Nothing did so much to poison the last days of Ivan Ilyich’s life as this falseness in himself and in those around him. (p.105).