I haven't read a lot of Tolstoy, and did only in this instance because one of my students wanted to discuss this book within the context of Marx (whom we had read together for class) and because it was short; I can often be convinced to read short things.
This novella follows the death of Ivan Ilych, which you might gather from the title. Ivan Ilych is a public servant, married with children, mostly concerned about getting enough money to have a comfortable life. The novella begins with Ivan's colleagues' remarkably selfish response to his death, thinking mostly how it impacts their own job situation and even how it impacts that evening's game of cards. On the one hand, I think there's something true about this--when a disaster strikes, we think first about how it will affect us. On the other hand, while Tolstoy might find this to be a common response to death, he does not find it to be the only possible response. We see this with Ivan's own ability to make peace with death moments before he dies.
Ivan and his wife's level of happiness with each other depends almost entirely on external circumstances. If things were going well, he could be nice; if not, he was a terror. This clearly isn't virtue in Aristotle's sense of the word, which is independent of external circumstances (this was what Ivan asked for forgiveness for, too, on his deathbed--for torturing his family). It is when he asks for forgiveness that his fear of death ceases and he dies. Presumably his very attempt to apologize to his family meant that it would be possible to treat them well, regardless of external circumstances.
There was also something going on in Tolstoy's treatment of medicine and law, although I'm not quite sure what it was. He portrays Ivan as advancing a new form of law in which law acts as a science rather than as an art. Ivan's form of law attempts to remove judgment and individuality from the equation and seeks impersonality. Similarly, Tolstoy critiques medicine for its impersonality--Ivan seeks understanding and humane treatment, while the doctors attempt to simply treat his body. In the end, this fails--the doctors cannot agree nor diagnose his ailment, and Ivan moves from one course of treatment to another. It seems that Tolstoy is seeking more individual treatment and care and justice than what was offered in either law or medicine.
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1 comment:
Tolstoy's view of medicine seems to come from Rousseau (for example)--Tolstoy was Rousseau's Number One Fan, with the exception that Tolstoy's characters tend to experience very un-Rousseauian last-minute conversions to Christianity. Also, Tolstoy sometimes seems to have written dress rehearsals of his works, and "Ivan Ilych" seems to have had a practice run as "Three Deaths." This may actually be the worst short story in the history of Western literature, but I think it illuminates what he was trying to do in Ivan Ilych, especially with the question of natural death and the screaming. (I can't believe your post didn't mention the screaming!)
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