Tolstoy's definition of society

Probably the most famous line in Ivan is the one that runs, in the most literal translation:

The past history of Ivan Ilyich’s life had been the most simple and ordinary, and most dreadful.

What a dreadful sentiment, no?

Most translations stray from the literal translation and editorialize a bit: They add "and therefore the most dreadful." I'm more of a literalist in such matters, but surely they hear the pitch correctly: Ivan's life is terrible in direct proportion to its "ordinariness" and "simplicity." (We understand, quickly, that for Tolstoy the "real" world we live in is, in fact, a world of topsy-turviness, where we valorize the grotesque as ordinary and the distorted as simple.)

I'm rereading Tolstoy's On Life, a work that I believe (well, lots of people believe) illuminates much of Ivan. I came across this passage (Hapgood translation, edited pretty heavily by me), that really struck a chord for me with that "most simple and ordinary = most dreadful" sentiment. Anyone who knows Tolstoy's works well -- be it Anna Karenina or War and Peace or Death of Ivan Il'ich -- will immediately recognize this passage as a summary of Tolstoy's model of society. It also "rhymes" so well with Ivan, particularly the first chapter's discussion of the "social inconvenience of death" and the story of Ivan's "simple and ordinary" life.

This passage comes at the point in On Life where Tolstoy, seeking an answer to the question "What in my life is not destroyed by the knowledge of my death," looks to not only his own contemporary society, but also to the history of mankind's communal existence. What is life, in the sense of the life of society? What guidance does the behavior of people in society offer that might help us to find happiness in the face of anguish-before-death?

This guidance has no rational explanation but it directs the vast majority of the actions of all men... This guidance cannot be accurately expressed because it is composed of facts and actions the most varied as to place and time. It is lights upon the boards of their ancestors for the Chinese pilgrimages to famous places for the Mahometan a certain amount of prayer words for the Indian it consists of fidelity to his flag and honor to his uniform for the warrior the duel for the man of the world blood vengeance for the mountaineer; it means certain sorts of food on specified days a particular mode of education for one's children; it means visits, a certain decoration of one's dwelling, specified manners of celebrating funerals, births and deaths. It signifies an interminable number of facts and actions filling the whole of life. It means what is called propriety, custom, and, most frequently of all, duty.

Man beholds everywhere about him from his very childhood men going about their business with full assurance and solemnity… [And so] that man not only begins to do the same things but even attempts to ascribe a rational meaning to these deeds. He wishes to believe that the men who do these things possess an explanation of the reasons for which they do what they do. And he begins to be convinced that these deeds have a rational meaning if not wholly known to him known to these at least.

But the majority of the rest of mankind, not being possessed of a rational explanation of life, find themselves in precisely the same situation as himself. They do these things only because others who, it seems to them, have an explanation of these deeds demand that they do same. And thus involuntarily deceiving each other, people become ever more and more accustomed not only to do these things without possessing a rational explanation: They become accustomed to ascribing to these deeds some mysterious sense, incomprehensible even to themselves. And the less they understand the meaning of what they do the more doubtful to themselves these acts become the more importance do they attach to them and with all the greater solemnity do they fulfil them. And the rich man and the poor man do what others do about them, and they designate these acts as their duty, their sacred duty, reassuring themselves by the thought that what has been done so long by so many people and is so highly prized by them cannot but be the real business of life. life And men live on to hoar old age to death striving to believe that if they themselves do not know why they live others do know this the very people who know precisely as little about it as those who depend upon them New people come into existence are born grow up and looking upon this whirlpool of existence called life in which old gray respected men surrounded by the reverence of the people assert that this senseless commotion is life and that there is no other go away after being jostled at its doors.

It's here maybe most clearly that we discover that the card playing that goes on throughout the novel (it is, after all, Ivan's greatest pleasure -- and Schwartz and Pyotr Ivanovich sneak out of Ivan's service to play cards) -- that the card playing is nothing but a metaphor for society. Or maybe more exactly that society is but card playing writ large, with its arbitrary rules and values that govern our actions and, despite their absurdity, define the ordinary.