The Death of Ivan Ilitch

It is about the one of the three news of Leon Tolstoï, written in 1886, with Maître and servant (1895) and the Sonata with Kreutzer (1889).

Topic

Whoever reads the Death of Ivan Ilitch will see there an unexpected mixture literary which combines the description of frivolities like small lownesses, and painted the ordinary commun run and skimped of a spirit which will be discovered with its egoistic and small astonishment (Ivan Ilitch), victim at 44 years of an extreme disease in the suffering which will open the eyes to him.

At the beginning of this news, the hero - magistrate - is satisfied with his life. With measurement however that in him a pain develops which does not want to disappear and which it includes/understands that its death approaches, it also becomes aware that its entourage does not see it in a light as advantageous as it did not imagine it; initially revolted, it is seen with measurement of its reflections obliged to note that this not very flattering image that one has of him is founded.

Whereas it passes by an extreme Désespoir however occurs a kind of Transfiguration, a feeling of immense forgiveness coming from it does not know where which reconciles it with itself, serenity returns to him, and resembles much so that we name today the Expérience of imminent death:

“And death? where is it? ” He sought his old fear and did not find it any more. “Where was it? Which death? There was no fear, because there was no death”.

Context

Death represents one of the central themes of the work of Tolstoï. But it is in the death of Ivan Ilitch that it appears in the most naked way, the most purified, released of the romantic artifices.

A little as in Eugenie Grandet Balzac where the poor painter, author of a crime, ends up creating under the perpetual influence of terrible remorses and of anguishes which étreignent it, of strong and sincere works, Ivan Ilitch discovers at the end of its life the lie, omnipresent hypocrisy, hatred, the dreadful loneliness and the recognition of the human failure of its life - very whole round on suitabilities, selfishness and the pleasures easy - and to which death however seems to bring at the same time a painful Repentir and almost a Rédemption.

The narrator will not accompany however Ilitch beyond the threshold by death, nor will not make it clear that this Au-delà exists. A man considering his life at the ultimate time will have simply established peace with itself and will have saved at least the last moments of them.

Internal bonds

Leon Chestov

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