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 Death . . . according to Tolstoy July 1, 2009
Eric S. Kim (Southern California)
This review is for the Modern Library release of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Master and Man."
Death is obviously something that people don't want to talk about, or even think about. We're always afraid of dying, unless you're someone who doesn'y really give a crap about yourself or the world. But what does this fear mean? Can there be a good side to death? What will happen to those around us once we've passed? These are just some of the questions that that we ask ourselves once we delve into these two short stories. In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," a disease is killing a man of success, while in "Master and Man," a peasant and his master are trapped in the middle of a heavy snowstorm. While both stories are different, both deal with death and what happens (and what we think) when we're about to pass away. I won't give much on what happens (you might know what happens in "Ilyich" just by the title, but there's actually more to it in the story), but these short stories have to be some of the finest from Tolstoy. I don't think I've ever read such powerful tales about death before. It really shows you how marvelous this author really is.
A little reminder, though: "Ilyich" is a bit depressing, so don't read it until you have the heart to.
One of the best books I've read! April 25, 2009
Barbara C. Jensen
What an AMAZING book! It's short, but you will be sure to read it over and over again. The book is about the life and death (but mostly death) of the highly esteemed judge, Ivan Illych. Tolstoy walks the reader through Ivan Illych's last months; it's really amazing to think Tolstoy could write such profound thoughts on the subject.
A must have- especially for lovers of philosophy or psychology!
On reading Tolstoy for the first time January 16, 2009
Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been reluctant for decades to read the great Russian master because I never felt I had the time to tackle War and Peace or Anna Karenina. I suspect others have felt the same way and thereby missed reading one of the truly great literary artists to have ever lived. Put it off no more. Pick up this 317-page splendid collection of some of Leo Tolstoy's best stories including the celebrated "The Death of Ivan Ilyich."
There are six other stories, the most significant of which is perhaps the sad "Polikushka" which is just about as long as "Ivan Ilyich" and to my mind a bit better in some respects. I also very much liked "The Raid" and "The Woodfelling" which are starkly realistic stories about soldiers engaged and not engaged in battle told wistfully without phony heroics or needless sensationalism. In fact, every story is not just excellent, but deeply engaging, cathartic and transcending as only great literature can be.
You don't have to read more than a few pages before you are struck with the sheer majesty of Tolstoy's gargantuan narrative style, his command of all aspects of storytelling from the kind of deep understanding of character that one finds in Shakespeare, to the kind of descriptive power about people and their environs that can only come from someone with a prodigious memory, a sharp eye and an unusual ability to concentrate. Somehow Tolstoy always knows what to leave in and what to leave out. He knows how to describe without slowing down the tale or making the reader aware of "purple passages." Everything flows like the great Don as naturally as breathing, but with a massive density of observation and experience, both intellectual and emotional, that frankly leaves this scribe in awe.
Tolstoy reminds me of Guy de Maupassant in his realistic depictions of peasant and bourgeois life, except that--hard to believe--he is even better! Furthermore, Tolstoy displays in a restrained and subtle manner a deep love for his characters. Again like Shakespeare he understands the psychology of the high and the low and is sympathetic to their struggles. Even though Ivan Ilyich was a self-important and pitiless magistrate who lived something close to an empty, unobserved life, which Tolstoy presents without rancor or pity, there is nonetheless a sense, especially toward the end, of compassion and empathy for a man who, although elevated in society, really didn't know any better than to blindly follow an animal bourgeois existence.
Although some of the stories are written in the first person Tolstoy stands back and is uninvolved, a seeing eye and a listening ear. Because of his great narrative power, Tolstoy even in the first person seems almost god-like in his point of view. He sees the landscapes and the trees and little children with their soft skin and plaintive cries, and he sees the blowhards and the hypocrites, the pathetic and the drunk, and the stupid, and treats them all the same. For the most part, at any rate. Sometimes his gaze favors some and disparages others. He is both objective and subjective, both a literary artist who values truth with a capital "T" and someone who cares deeply about these people he has invented/imagined/observed and remembered. He presents such an incredibly rich and vivid portrait of life in 19th century Russia that you feel you are there in the bitter cold beneath high blue skies, wearing the rags and the birch bark boots, smoking the cheap tobacco and throwing back the oily vodka, sleeping five to a bed listening to the cockroaches near the stove in the black of night, fearful of death and crossing yourself before icons, and all the while dreaming of something grand and laughing uneasily at the absurdity of life and shivering at the inevitability of death.
Yes, this collection, as Anthony Briggs, one of the translators, says in his fine introduction, is about death. Ivan Ilyich dies, but many others also die. Some in battle, some in bravado, some by accident and some by their own hand. Some foolishly, some painfully, some without a notion of why or what for, but all of them essentially alone. Tolstoy focuses intently on this dying and goes deep into the souls of those dying, how they cling to life and rationalize away what is to come and what they have done, lying to themselves; and how others take it as their due, without self-pity, without a word, just a hand to the chest and a stoppage of life, and then a report, some words exchanged, a bit of gossip about so-and-so who is now gone.
But as Carl Sandburg told us, the grass will still grow and cover all, and life will go on, and again the same delusions and appetites and vanities will be propagated and the same pain and suffering, the same petty quarrels and petty delights, snatches of beauty amidst the ugly squalor will be seen again, and, as at the ending of "The Raid," a sonorous voice will once again lift itself into the air in song, and the men will move quietly on to a new task, a new beginning, toward a final ending somewhere down the long and dusty road.
Wonderful August 25, 2008
Mr. Steiner (New York)
Tolstoy's brief novella 'Death of Ivan Ilyich' is one of the most compact and brilliant meditations on the meaning of death in literature. Tolstoy's breathtaking naturalism is truly miraculous. Ivan Ilyich is respectful administrator who is dying a painful death from a malignant tumor. Much as Kafka would later do in 'The Metamorphosis,' the dying man's suffering is nothing more than an annoyance for his friends and family. He spirals into a decline of intense suffering as he must stare into the meaning of his life and his inevitable end.
Master and Man is also a wonderful novella, filled with stark, realistic depictions of the Russian peasantry, as a greedy landowner drags his obedient servant on a journey into a night blizzard to claim more property. As the pair become increasingly lost, they too must grapple with the possibility of their mortality.
Pasternak has provided competent, though clunky translations of Tolstoy's original Russian.
Tolstoy Wrote with the Mind of God June 24, 2008
Gary Betz
My life would be a poor thing had I never read Tolstoy. Why does Russian translate so very very easily to English? This I found in Russian literature.
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