Throughout recorded time, humans have wondered about the afterlife and its relationship to this life. Tolstoy takes a spin on that and focuses on the interface between the two. What exactly happens as one approaches death? Few have experienced near-death, but no one has experienced death fully. What is dying like?
Tolstoy provides his answer in this short depiction of a Russian lawyer Ivan Ilych. He lives a normal, even boring, life and suddenly gets sick. His performance at work suffers, and his family gawks at him. He experiences pain and after much contemplation, decides that there is no meaning in death. He is offered last rites. Eventually, he dies saying to himself, “Death is finished… It is no more!”, and the book ends.
Throughout this process, we readers peer into his inner life. We see his uncertainty and curiosity about death. In twenty-first century parlance, he grieves his own death as he comes to accept his mortality. At one point, he thinks, “There is no explanation! Agony, death… What for?” He also reflects on the quality of his life and decides that he lived a good life.
Tolstoy offers readers the opportunity to examine their own experience and to accept, albeit incompletely, their own finitude. He writes in the Christian tradition even though much of this work applies to those outside this faith. He takes no position on the existence of an afterlife, either positively or negatively. Instead, he focuses on what a (good?) death consists of and how human nature reacts when approaching death.
This classical yet modern statement about how humans approach death helps readers detach from their own emotions towards death. By observing Ivan Ilych, we readers observe ourselves and the prejudices we carry towards death on the basis of our own experiences. Thus, Tolstoy offers us a liturgy of sorts. He allows us to play out the drama over and over in this short novella. In so doing, he seeks to allow us to embrace life more fully. That job is accomplished through his strongly asserted words. The rest is up to us.
The Death of Ivan Ilych
By Leo Tolstoy; transl. by Louise and Aylmer Maude
First published 1886
Independently published
ISBN13 9781798500620
Page Count: 85
Genre: Literary Fiction
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