We learn in the fourth paragraph of the second chapter of Death that Ivan was the second son of Privy Councilor (a fairly low-grade bureaucrat) "an unnecessary member of an various unnecessary institutions." Ivan was le phеnix de la famille -- not as "cold and formal" as his elder brother, and not a loser ("неудачник") like his little brother. He was "an intelligent, lively, pleasant and proper person."
Those last couple of adjectives, "pleasant and proper" ("приятный и прличный", priYATny i priLICHny) get repeated, as a unit, sixteen times in the course of the novella, in one form or another. It is the "chorus" of the novel: Ivan is "pleasant and proper" which means, in Tolstoy's topsy-turvy world, "unpleasant and improper."
The first word, приятный is tightly connected with the word "friend", приятель, priYATel'. (All the characters at the funeral viewing from the first chapter are repeatedly described as Ivan's "friends.") In fact, the word приятно is etymologically directly related to the German freund and the English "friend." (P's get switched with f's all the time in the history of languages -- think of the word philosophy.) So, one could translate the first word in that repeated phrase as "friendly."
The word "proper" (прилично) is formed directly from the Russian word for "face," лицо. The idea here is that you always put forth the right, appropriate appearance. Of course, the "problem" with Ivan (the secret to his "success" in life) is that he has so many faces, a new one for each new occasion...
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