The death of Ivan Ilyich

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Title page of the 1895 edition
Tolstoy 1895

The death of Iwan Iljitsch ( Russian Смерть Ивана Ильича , German transcription Smert Iwana Iljitscha , transliteration Smert 'Ivana Il'iča ) is a story by Lev Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy (German Leo Tolstoi), written in 1886.

Structure and topics

Tolstoy describes the life and the outlook on life of the court clerk Ivan Ilyich Golovin and his untimely death at the age of 45. The fear of existence, the fear of the pain in death as well as the powerlessness and above all the cruelty of the knowledge that one has not lived one's life meaningfully are represented in a dramatic density.

content

The story begins like a novella with the funeral service of the recently deceased Ivan Ilyich Golovin, which is described from the perspective of his former school friend and colleague, Peter Ivanovich, who is not further titled. The perspective that is taken is consistently sarcastic, although Peter Iwanowitsch feels "particularly committed to Ivan Ilyich" (p. 13), as he was known to him for a long time, and dutifully goes to his funeral. At the same time, however, through Peter Ivanovich's recurring reflections at the funeral service, Tolstoy makes clear the uneventfulness or the unimportance of the death of his main character for the acquaintances, so that one would think he was affected. Even his wife complains more about the labor and labor involved in the funeral service than about the loss of her husband.

"The thought of the suffering of a person he had known so well, first as a lively schoolboy, then as an adult colleague, suddenly terrified Peter Ivanovich, despite the unpleasant awareness of his own and this woman's hypocrisy." (P . 23)

Ultimately, however, Peter Iwanowitsch leaves the funeral service carefree, in order to end the evening with a game of cards.

In the following chapters, with increasing focus on the inner life of Ivan Ilyich Golovin, his life (and his views on it) up to shortly before his death will be reproduced. The pace of the narrative slows down increasingly. While the approx. 34 years of life are told in one chapter, chapters 3 to 5 only cover the years up to the year of his death and the remaining 7 chapters only cover the approx. 4 months of his increasingly dramatic struggle with death.

While the preceding chapters have a more didactic function and contain the circumstances of the illness and the divergence between Ivan Ilyich and his wife (and thus describe the outside life), the second half of the narrative is devoted to characterizing the seemingly existential questions of the terminally ill. For example, one of the many doctors consulted was told about the inability of medicine to deal with death and thus human fate,

“You know yourself that you cannot help me. So leave me alone!
We can at least alleviate the suffering, said the doctor.
You can't do that either. Leave me in peace!"

Regarding the question of the right life or the question of the self-indebtedness of his passing away through a forfeited life ( existential fear ) it says - characteristic of the basic theme of the story,

“What if my life really wasn't the right one? The thought occurred to him that what had hitherto seemed completely impossible to him: he had lived the way he shouldn't have lived - that that was the truth. The thought occurred to him that the tendencies he had barely noticed to defend himself against what was upheld by the high places in life, those barely noticeable tendencies which he had always immediately suppressed, were really justified and that everything else was nothing: his ministry, his way of life, his family, the interests of society and the ministry - all that was perhaps nothing, nothing. ”(p. 129 f.)

Ivan Ilyich Golovin finally dies in three days of agony in extreme agony . Tolstoy describes this agony of death vividly and with unusual metaphors and insights into the side effects of approaching death. Standstill

"During these three days, during which time had stopped for him, he threw himself around in that black sack into which an invisible, insurmountable force thrust him." (P. 133)

or the phenomenon of "light at the end of the tunnel", which is often used to describe near-death experiences ,

“Suddenly some mysterious force pushed him into the chest, into the side, taking his breath away even more. He penetrated the hole, and there at the end of the hole something lit up. ”(P. 134)

With the final introspection of Ivan Ilyich Golovin's world of thought, Tolstoy suggests a causal relationship between Ivan Ilyich's insight that he has forfeited his life and his death. His consent to do it well - by sparing the relatives who have meanwhile moved to his deathbed the suffering of looking at his agony further - closes the story. Where previously the “thought that his life was good” prevented him from doing so and this “justification of his life” still “holds him tight” (p. 134), later the insight triumphs about the self-infliction of his suffering through the forfeiture of his life related guilt for the suffering of others:

“And suddenly it was clear to him that what tormented him and would not get out of him suddenly came out from two sides, from ten sides, from all sides. He felt sorry for them, he had to do something that they no longer had to suffer; he had to save them and save himself from suffering. "(p. 135)

interpretation

Tolstoy's story essentially deals with the human fear of death, the associated exposure of powerlessness to fate and, last but not least, the existential questions of the (good) life provoked in this context.

In several places Tolstoy suggests through Ivan Ilyich's considerations a causal connection between his life, which is based on habituation, comfort and decency, and early death. This corresponds to an implicit criticism of the ordered, bourgeois existence and, in particular, its classification as good .

In addition, Tolstoy shows the powerlessness of rationality (and thus of science) against death by describing the summoned physicians as hypocrites and ultimately just as powerless as Ivan Ilyich. Furthermore, Tolstoy lets his main character try in vain to master rationalizations of his desperate situation. Tolstoy shows the inherent gap between rationally valid considerations and their practical insignificance (cf.Rölli) in the following syllogism , which is always correct but does not touch existential truth and which he ascribes to Kiesewetter:

1. Cajus is a person.
2. All people are mortal.
3. So Cajus is mortal.

and lets Ivan Ilyich ask in a desperate mood why he should be the same as this Cajus ("who was the person, the person in general", p. 87), why he should also share his fate. The question, then, is why the specifics of its existence, the associated individual characteristics, have to take second place to the dictates of the general that all people die:

“Cajus is mortal, and it's all right for Cajus to die; but I, Vanya, I, Ivan Ilyich, with all my thoughts and feelings - that is a completely different matter, it cannot be that I too have to die. That would be too horrible. - That's how he felt. "(P. 88)

At this point it becomes particularly clear how little power rationality (here in the form of logic) still has for Tolstoy in an extreme situation and how little comfort it can provide. In this respect, this passage can be interpreted as a critique of rationality.

On this basis, Ivan Ilyich argues that overcoming the fear of death is impossible. With two elements, however, Tolstoy loosens the gloomy perspective on existence and human knowledge brought about by the situation: On the one hand, Ivan Ilyich draws unreflected consolation from the simple, friendly and honest manner of his peasant servant Gerasim. On the other hand, Tolstoy finally lets Ivan Ilyich die almost like a martyr who wants to end the suffering of his relatives through his death. It also indicates that he chooses his own death through the insight into the forfeiture of his existence.

The model for the main character was a friend of Tolstoy, Ivan Ilyich Metschnikow, who was a civil servant in the judiciary. Tolstoy used a detailed account of the death of Metschnikow's brother, who later won the Nobel Prize, Ilya Ilyich Metschnikow , as the material for the story.

expenditure

First edition:

  • Lev Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy: Plody prosweschtschenija i Smert Iwana Iljitscha. WA Tichanowa, St. Petersburg 1892

Translations:

  • Leo N. Tolstoj: The death of Ivan Ilyich. German Edit v. Rudolf Kassner. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1913, new edition 2002.
  • Leo N. Tolstoj: The death of Ivan Ilyich. In: Ders .: Stories . Translated from Russian by Barbara Heitkam. Afterword by Christine Müller-Scholle. Reclam, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 978-3-15-020211-1 .
  • Leo N. Tolstoj: The death of Ivan Ilyich. Translation by Johannes von Guenther. Afterword by Konrad Fuhrmann. Reclam, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 978-3-15-008980-4 .
  • Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Translated from the Russian by Julie Goldbaum. Revised by Kai Kilian. Anaconda Verlag, Cologne 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rölli, Syllogismus des Sterbens , on: http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=7904#biblio
  2. ↑ Orlando Figes : Natascha's dance: a cultural history of Russia. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2003, p. 372.
  3. ↑ Russian В. Я. Линков