Friday, November 30, 2007

From "On Life"

"On Life" is probably Tolstoy's more rigorously argued, most philosophical essay. Tolstoy worked on the essay in 1887, so not long after finishing The Death of Ivan Il'ich (1885-March 1886). It reflects his interest and education in contemporary philosophy, an interest that began about twenty years earlier. As my colleague James Scanlan has pointed out, "On Life" is nothing more or less than an attempt to answer the question Tolstoy posed first and best in his A Confession: "Does life have a meaning that is not destroyed by the inevitable death that awaits me?"

That question is pertinent to our exploration of Death of Ivan Il'ich, and the following quote synthesizes, in very simple terms, Tolstoy's best response to it. The language of the essay strikes me as highly idiomatic and conversational, as though Tolstoy were talking through the problem with a friend. I've tried to preserve his tone.

One trouble with my translation is coping with Tolstoy's frequent use of the word zhalko (something like twenty times in the passage), a conversational but very powerful word which most often means "this makes me feel sorrow and regret," but also has overtones of shame (Kak tebe ne zhalko!), pity towards, contempt for, and begrudging something. It is directly related to the words "to complain" and "to sting."
***
I imagine that I will die, and with that my life will end, and this idea torments and terrifies me, because I feel sorry for myself. But what dies? What is it that I regret? What am I, from the most ordinary point of view? I am first and foremost flesh. Well, and so what? That is why I am afraid? I mourn for that? No, it turns out that is not it: A body, a substance can never disappear, nowhere, not even the tiniest bit of it. So it turns out that that part of me has been taken care of, there is no reason for me to fear for that part. Everything will remain unharmed.

But no, not for that do I grieve.
What I pity is myself, Lev Nikolaevich [Tolstoy's full name], or Ivan Semyonovich... Yes, but isn't it true that each of us is not who we were twenty years ago, and that every day we become someone different? So what is it again that I pity, what am I sorry for? What I mourn, what I feel sorry for, is my consciousness of myself, my "I."

Yes, but even this consciousness of yours wasn't ever one thing, but it was instead various things: It was something different a year ago, and even more different ten years ago and entirely different before that. For as long as you remember, it has forever gone on changing. So, why then is it that you like your present consciousness, why is it that you mourn losing it? Had it always been one and the same thing, then it would make sense. But it has never done anything but change. You cannot see nor discover its beginning, and yet here you are suddenly wanting it never to end, wishing that this consciousness that is now within you would never ever change. For as long as you can remember yourself, you've been on the move. You came into this life, not knowing how; but you know that you came in this special "I" which you are, then off you went, going on, going on, until you have reached the middle. And suddenly, not quite rejoicing and not quite fearing, you balk, and you do not want to budge, you don't want to continue further because you cannot see what lies ahead. And yet you didn't see the place from which you've just come, and yet you made it. You entered through the entrance, yet you don't want to exit from the exit.

Your entire life has been a journey through physical existence. Onward you've gone, hurrying along your way, and suddenly you start regretting that what you have always been doing, continues to happen.

What seems terrible to you is a significant change in your situation that occurs with carnal, physical death. But isn't it true that the same kind of change happened to you at your birth, and nothing bad came of that; on the contrary, what happened was so good that you don't want to part with it.

What can scare you? You say that you will miss that you, with its current feelings, thoughts, with a certain way of looking at the world, with its present relationship with the world. You fear losing your relationship with the world? What exactly is this relationship? What does it consist of? If it's that you who drinks, eats, reproduces, builds your home, gets dressed -- the particular way that you relate to other people and creatures. Well, all of that is really just the relationship of each human, as a rationalizing creature, to life, and this relationship in no way can disappear. There are, have been, and will be millions of such relationships, and their species will be preserved, probably just as doubtlessly as each and every atom will be preserved. The instinct for preservation of the species is instilled in animals so strongly, and is therefore so durable, that there is no reason to worry about it. If you are an animal, then there is nothing for you to fear; if you are physical matter, then you are even more guaranteed in your eternalness.

But if what you afraid of losing is not something animal, then you are afraid of losing your personal, rational [spiritual] relationship to the world — that with which you entered into existence. But you know that that thing arose not with your birth. It existed independent of your being born as animal, and therefore it cannot be dependent on the death of your animal nature. (My fairly loose translation, from the beginning of Chapter XXXII)

More from Pascal...

Another thought from Pascal that resonates very strongly with Ivan:
21. We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone. We should therefore act as if we were alone, and in that case should we build fine houses, etc. We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth. ( Pensées)

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The "social inconvenience" of death


The German philosopher Martin Heidegger has a reference to "Death of Ivan Il'ich" towards the beginning of the second part of Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time. The reference to Tolstoy comes right after a discussion of the ways in which we, all of us, "flee" in the face of death. Specifically, it is attached to the sentence: "Indeed, the dying of Others is seen often enough as social inconvenience, if not even a downright tactlessness, against which the public is to be guarded." Heidegger's footnote to this sentence reads: "In his story 'The Death of Ivan Il'ich" Leo Tolstoi has presented the phenomenon of the disruption and breakdown of having 'someone die.'"

Heidegger's right. No other literary account so pitilessly exposes the inconvenience of death, the fact that death disrupts the flow of public life. Everyone near Ivan is bummed out, but not because Ivan has died: Instead, now "the public" has to go through all the hassle involved in dealing with the tactlessness of death.

But death does not inconvenience the public in any but the most superficial way. We flee the knowledge that "I will die," and instead focus on the fact that "he has died." Here's Tolstoy's mordant, caustic recounting of society's reaction to death:
Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from Ivan Ilych's death, the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who hard of it the complacent feel that, 'it is he who is dead and not I.' Each one thought or felt, 'Well, he's dead but I'm alive!' But the more intimate of Ivan Ilych's acquaintances, his so-called friends, could not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolences to the widow.
Lenin, who after his fashion loved and respected Tolstoy the artist and social critic, wrote that Tolstoy's greatest talent was the "ripping off of masks," exposing the tawdry and low that hides behind civility and tradition and good manners. He might have had this passage in mind.

Ivan has "made a mess of things," as Schwartz's wink conveys to Peter Ivanovich when they meet on the stairs before the funeral service. But this mess of things extends beyond the social -- Tolstoy indiscreetly reminds us, when describing how Gerasim is strewing something (carbolic acid) on the floor, that dead people (especially before the advent of modern mortuary care) stink.

If we think that our death will matter to society, that our death will disrupt the flow of life around us, the "happiness" of others, we are wrong:
[Schwartz's] look said that this incident of a church service for Ivan could not be a sufficient reason for infringing on the order of the session, that it would certainly not prevent his unwrapping of a new pack of cards and shuffling them that evening.
Tolstoy's point here, in the first few pages of the story, is not only to reveal the cruel indifference of society to an individual's death. (You can buy Tolstoy's analysis of the hypocrisy of society, or not.) But he surely has a point: We all know that we're mortal, that "one dies," but it is an entirely different realization that "I die." When Peter Ivanovich learns that Ivan spent three days screaming incessantly ("Oh, what I have suffered!" his wife remarks in telling of Ivan's awful death!), it occurs to Peter that "this might suddenly, at any time, happen to me." And for a moment he is terrified:
Buthe did not himself know how—the customary reflection at once occurred to him that this had happened to Ivan Ilych and not to him, and that it should not an could not happen to him, and that to think that it could would be yielding to depression which he ought not to do, as Schwartz's expression plainly showed.
What would it mean to live with the real, unflinching understanding of what it means to say, "I will die?"

Let me end with one of many excellent observations on this point from the French philosopher Pascal's Pensées:
Picture a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death; each day some are strangled in the sight of the rest; those who remain see their own condition in that of their fellows, looking at one another with sorrow and without hope, each awaiting his turn. This is the picture of the condition of man.
A full accounting of our lives (say Heidegger, Tolstoy and Pascal) must begin (and of course end) with the realization that we are condemned to death.

But here, I think, is a glimmer of hope in Tolstoy: Must we look "with sorrow and without hope" at one another, at our fellows? Is there some way out, or no exit?

Monday, November 26, 2007

A pleasant and proper man...

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...

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

About Ivan Il'ich Golovin

We know from the obituary announcement that the hero of our tale is named Ivan Il'ich Golovin (Иван Ильич Головин). I'm not at all an expert in the history and meaning of names, but some Googling and browsing in my reference works reveals the following:
  • Iván: Ivan's first-name (Christian name, given name -- in Russian, imya имя) is the Russian variant of our Anglo-American John. Both names derive from the Greek Ἰωάννης, Iōannēs. (That "v" in Ivan isn't so strange when you think of the Italian version of John, Giovanni.) We in the English-speaking world got the name through the Romans (Johanne) who got it from the Greeks, but the Russians get it (and their religion) from the Greek (Byzantine) tradition. The name originates in Hebrew, Yôḥānān, "God is Gracious" or "God takes pity." As in English, Ivan is one of the more popular names in the Russian tradition. Russian, which has a very strong and elaborate nicknaming tradition, derives a number of variants from Ivan, some of which appear in the novel: Vanechka, Vaniusha, Vanyok, and Vanya (Ванечка, Ванёк, Ванюша, Ваня) being but a few. It's fairly important to point out, without in any way exaggerating the point, that Ivan is the stereotypical Russian first name -- like Tom for an Englishman or Fritz for a German of Pedro for a Mexican.
  • Il'ích or Ilých: Russian patronymics (отчества) derive, fairly obviously, from the child's father's first name. Ivan's father's name was Il'ia (we could write it Il'ya, too) (Илья), or the name of the prophet Elijah, or Eliyahu, which means (probably) "my God is Yahu" (Yahu being one way to write the "unpronounceable name of God, aka Yahweh, aka the Judeo-Christian God"). Il'ya was and remains a very popular name for males.
  • Golovín: Ivan's last name (family name, фамилия) is Golovín (Головин). Golova (голова) is "head" in Russian. Believe it or not, it was fairly common in Old Russian (say, seventh to the ninth century, in the area that now includes Belarus, Ukraine and Russia) to name your kids after parts of the body. There were names like Glaz (глаз eye), Ruka (рука arm), and Golova (голова head). Those first names eventually gave rise (like in English, with the name John) to family names, Golovin, Rukin, Glazov, (Головин, Рукин, Глазов), etc.
Now, Tolstoy wasn't one of those authors (like Dostoevsky) who gave his heroes representative names, names that indicated some essential quality. (Karamazov, for instance, means "stained" or "black" (карий, from Greek for black/brown) -- thus Dostoevsky's family is etymologically marked as sinners.) Nonetheless, at least in this case, Tolstoy's hero is aptly named -- he is the Russian Everyman (or just the Everyman). His challenge, like Elijah's, is bold and direct: "You have done evil in the sight of the Lord." And we get in his head, we gain access to his inner thoughts at that most intimate and personal, and universal and common, moment: Death.

Soviet Commentary to "Ivan"

I thought I'd share with readers a few things from the commentary in the back of the Jubilee Edition of Tolstoy's collected works. Trivia about a very untrivial book:
  • Tolstoy began the novel in the fall of 1885.
  • The novel was based, very loosely, on a real person, Ivan Il'ich Mechnikov (Иван Ильич Мечников), a lawyer from Tula (not far from Tolstoy's estate), whom Tolstoy apparently met and admired in the 1860s. Mechnikov died on the second of July, 1881. Tolstoy's sister-in-law, Tatiana Kuzminskaya, passed on to Tolstoy details of Mechnikov's death, which she learned from Mechnikov's wife. Very soon afterwards, Tolstoy began work on a story "The Death of a Judge," which eventually became Death of Ivan Il'ich.
  • The story began originally as a first-person narrative, perhaps Ivan's own diary or letters from him, during the time leading up to his death. Tolstoy eventually abandoned the idea as too difficult, and switched over to the omniscient (all-knowing) third-person narrative device used in the story we are reading.
  • Tolstoy wanted to tell the story of "a simple man who dies a simple death," though it's difficult to reconcile this initial plan with the book we are reading -- simple is one of Tolstoy's synonyms for "good," and Ivan Il'ich's life was anything but good or simple.
  • He finished the novel on March 25, 1886, and presented it to his wife as a birthday present! ("Happy Birthday, Honey!") Sof'ia Andreyevna (his wife) was working on a "collected works" of her husband, in part because Tolstoy had, in 1886, more or less abandoned his literary endeavors (he returns to them, of course, and Ivan is the first of many masterful works from the last three decades of his life), more or less taken a vow of poverty, and more or less decided that everything and everyone around him was corrupt and immoral, including his wife... But more on this phase in Tolstoy's life in a later post.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Gentlemen... Ivan Il'ich has died!

I teach Tolstoy's masterful work, Death of Ivan Il'ich, at least once a year: At the conclusion of the fall semester in a small, intimate course in the Honors Program here at Stetson University. It's included at the end of a a very fine, thoughtful collection of essays about life's choices, Leading Lives that Matter. I also teach it in a larger course, a seminar "Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?" that I teach every couple of years in the Russian Studies program here at Stetson.

Besides my pedagogical relationship with Tolstoy's story, it's personally important to me: The Death of Ivan Il'ich, along with Tolstoy's A Confession, were formative influences in college. I cannot remember if I read them as an assignment, or if I just happened across them, but ultimately, in a complicated and not always coherent way, these stories led me to study Russian (at Indiana University), then to live in Russia (where I worked and taught in the 1990s), then to study Russian literature (at Northwestern, where I completed my PhD in 2001), then to teach Russian (at Stetson since 2000). My engagement with Tolstoy (it's a love-hate relationship, to be sure) led me to write my dissertation on Tolstoy's "non-resistance to evil," and I guess ultimately to my being appointed (anointed? condemned?) Editor of the Tolstoy Studies Journal.

Since I teach the work to non-Russian speakers, it's been a while since I've read it in Russian. In preparation for my presentation in April at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I've decided to start by rereading the piece in Russian... And there's no better place to read it than volume 26 in the Jubilee Complete Collected Works of Tolstoy, a monumental edition of Tolstoy's literary works, articles, diaries and letters (ninety volumes, each about nine-hundred pages!!!!) which was begun in 1928, one-hundred years after Tolstoy's birth (thus the "Jubilee"). The Yasnaya Polyana Museum (the museum on Tolstoy's ancestral estate) has digitized all the volumes of the Collected Works and made them available online.