About this title: Tolstoy's most celebrated short story, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", takes place at the deathbed of an ordinary man who is forced to contemplate not only his own death but the great philosophical questions that have never troubled him before. The story reflects Tolstoy's preoccupations during his profound spiritual crisis in 1881.
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Description: Fine. SOFTCOVER. MMPB. Very Nice Condition copy. Slight paper toning only. NO spine creases. All pages are present, clean and un-creased. Cover has no tears. No underlining, highlighting, tears, stamps, bookplates, remainder marks, price clips, etc. Not an Ex-library copy. I ship International orders by Air Mail. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Dell
Date Published: 1981-03-01
ISBN-13:9780553210354ISBN:0553210351
Description: Very Good. No names, no marks, no stickers. No creases in cover or spine. Text is clean, bright and unmarked. Binding is tight and square. We recommend EXPEDITED MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780146001451ISBN:0146001451
Description: Good. *** Expect to see light wear and some spine creasing *** Dispatched in padded packaging. ** UK SELLER-Get it in days not weeks ** read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780146001451ISBN:0146001451
Description: Good. This book is in GOOD overall condition. It shows signs of having been read and has general light wear to the cover, spine and pages. read more
"A man dies slowly and in great agony. He ponders the meaning of life, and this increases his anguish: even worse than the physical pain of a slow, lingering death is the spiritual anguish of realising he has wasted his life.
Tolstoy's main target here is dishonesty and hypocrisy. This is established from the opening scene, when Ivan Ilyich's death is announced, and the reaction of his colleagues is to think about how this will affect their promotion chances, while speaking the usual lines about it being a "sad business" and so on. Even his widow, Praskovya Fiodorovna, is more concerned about herself than her dead husband: after telling a mourner about his three days and nights of incessant screaming, she says "Oh, what I have gone through!" Then she tries to find out how she can increase the government pension money due to her from her husband's death.
Then Tolstoy takes us on a quick tour back through Ivan Ilyich's life, showing us that he also participated fully in this dishonesty, concerning himself with appearances and advancement. In every decision, even marriage, he is heavily influenced by what other people will think. With each promotion in his career as a judge, he attains more power and money, but it's never enough. At each stage he simply spends more money imitating people higher in the social scale than he is, and wanting to attain that next level. It's not coincidental that he sustains his fatal injury while climbing a ladder to show a workman exactly how he wants a new curtain to be hung. The novel is saturated with vanity, pettiness and materialism, and they cause Ivan Ilyich's spiritual and physical death.
Long before Kubler-Ross, Tolstoy hit on the stages of grief in the character Ivan Ilyich. He goes through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, although not always in that order. He often swings violently between the different emotions, depending on his own state of mind and on outside events like a doctor getting his hopes up.
The only examples of honesty in the book are in children (both Ivan Ilyich's own childhood and his young son Vassya) and in the character of Gerassim, the butler's assistant. Vassya and Gerassim don't lie to him or see him as an inconvenience - they display simple human affection and love for him.
Indeed, love seems to be what Tolstoy is saying life is all about - not romantic love necessarily, but a broader kind of love for your fellow human beings and for God. This is what was missing from Ivan Ilyich's life as he immersed himself in petty advancement and the acquisition of meaningless accoutrements. This deathbed revelation at first causes him great agony as he rages against all the lost time, but in the end it's what allows him to find peace."
"I read this in high school, and frankly, I think I was mostly bored. I read this in college and thought, "Wow, this is really a pretty good piece of literature." I read it a couple of days ago, now that I am an adult with children and so many more worries and responsibilities, and thought, "Terrifying." Also, I thought, as I'm sure Tolstoy intended his readers to think, about how I should try to make my life meaningful---treat those I love better, don't focus on things that don't matter. Of course, later that day I got upset with my son for some insignificant thing, but at least afterward I apologized with hugs and kisses . . . hey, it's easy to think about how we should live differently, but it's hard to do it. And reminders like this novella can be good for us. I think Tolstoy put our feelings about the deaths of others and about the prospect of our own deaths into words precisely throughout the book, but I think this sums it up best: "The syllogism he had learnt 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 certainly not as applied to himself.""
"A Short Story Experiment for Tolstoy and Hemingway Fans Alike
Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1954): "How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him."
The reading of this story (and the other) was prompted by a passage written by Jeffrey Meyers in his biography, Hemingway, A Biography, which states...
"Hemingway matched his own short story against Tolstoy's finest work in that genre when he consciously imitated and transformed 'The Death of Ivan Ilych' (1886) in 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro'" Page 275
So did he or didn't he? And if he did, who did it better?
The following is an attempt to answer the first question. Specifically, is there any merit to the claim that Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a rework of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich?" Upon reading both stories I would conclude that the premise is plausible.
In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," Tolstoy studies and captures the experiences of a dying man, Ivan Ilyich, who has never considered the prospect of death. While the story was written over 120 years ago, I believe that the reactions and emotions that are expressed in the story to be true. In fact, the emotions that are expressed by Ivan Ilyich represent the most significant difference between the two stories.
Hemingway could have found Tolstoy's story irresistible for it's subject matter. It likely provided Hemingway a means to explore how man faces death and it also provided Hemingway an opportunity to merge the realization of death with the stoic (grace under pressure) attitude of the typical Hemingway hero. In true Hemingway fashion, he seems to have placed the Tolstoy story on the burner, boiled the story down to the key elements of his intensions, added salt to taste, and produced "The Snows of Kilimanjaro.""
"The death of Ivan Ilyich is a tour de force in the realm of literature. It is a literary masterpiece. It is written by one of the greatest writers the world has witnessed namely Leo Tolstoy. It is a story written during the relentlessly worldly and materialistic age of Czarist Russia. The story is a flashback of the life of a worldly careerist judge who dies. It is the morbid story of a successful judge who is spiraled downwards into the inescapable jaws of death. The protagonist is hurled into the throes of death in a quick space of time. It shows how difficult it is to acknowledge death for a man who has never ever given the thought of death even a fleeting thought. The book documents the trauma faced by the judge when he comes to terms with his ill fate. Tolstoy is a well renowned authority on the subject of death. Through the agonies of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy portrays death as a terrible irreversible phenomenon, which humans find it difficult to grapple with. The book is a thorough and horrific glimpse into the abyss that is death. The story depicts death also as an unknown mystery that is viewed as an unavoidable and macabre absolute. The story was the culmination of a nine-year spiritual crisis in Tolstoy’s life. It reflects Tolstoy’s obsession and fear of death and his inability to come to terms with it.
The judge is a worldly careerist who is fascinated with his work. His work keeps him engrossed and diverts his mind from distractions and problems in his life. He is endowed with arbitrary power. He has position, prestige and status in his society. He is bestowed with the trappings of power. He is very conscious of his status, power and position in society. He has inclinations toward materialistic and worldly pursuits. He socializes with people of high social stature and does not interact with people whom he deems to be below his status. He had strained relations with his wife but did not divorce her due to fear of negative social reactions. His life is divorced from spirituality. He never prayed to God and never attended churches. He led a life exactly opposite of a simple earthly existence.
Suddenly he falls ill and his life is turned upside down. He contracts a fatal disease and is terminally ill for the rest of his days. The disease and his realization of his imminent death brings out the worst in him. The fear and trepidation of death completely devastates him. He loses focus on work. His concentration is ripped apart. His personality is metamorphosed. He starts throwing temper tantrums at his wife and children. He hates the world around him. He thinks his wife and children and friends are not showing genuine affection, empathy and sympathy with him. His pride and ego is hurt. He feels people are lying to him and are deceiving him. He finds only a simple boy called Gerasim comforting and sympathizing with him. He feels only Gerasim understands him. He finally dies.
Through this story Tolstoy tries to express a few of his ideas. Tolstoy believes people fear death. Tolstoy feels people can never acknowledge their own death. He also feels people should lead spiritual lives and believe and pray in God. He feels leading simple, spiritual and austere lives would reduce the fear and suffering associated with death. He also feels people think of dying men as liabilities."
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