The Death of Ivan Ilyich
and
The Devil
Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Hugh Aplin
ONEWORLD
CLASSICS
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London House
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Richmond
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United Kingdom
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich first published in Russian as Smert’ Ivana
Il’icha in 1886
The Devil first published in Russian as D’iavol in 1911
This translation first published by Hesperus Press Ltd in 2005
This revised translation first published by Oneworld Classics in 2011
Translation and notes © Hugh Aplin, 2005, 2011
Background material © Oneworld Classics Ltd
Cover image © Getty Images
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe
isbn: 978-1-84749-191-6
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unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to rectify the error
in subsequent printings.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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Contents
Introductionxi
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
1
The Devil
71
Notes
129
Extra Material
131
Leo Tolstoy’s Life
133
Leo Tolstoy’s Works
148
Select Bibliography
161
Appendix163
Introduction
Leo Tolstoy was in his early forties – just a little younger than
the eponymous Ivan Ilyich at the time of his death – when he
set off from his home at Yasnaya Polyana for the distant province of Penza, where he hoped to negotiate the advantageous
purchase of an estate he had seen advertised for sale in the
press. He was in good health, enjoying life in the bosom of a
growing family, and, with War and Peace recently completed,
was firmly ensconced in his professional sphere as one of
Russia’s greatest writers. Nonetheless, as Ivan Ilyich discovers
in the work of fiction, “in the midst of life we are in death”,
and as Tolstoy approached the town of Arzamas, he began
himself to experience unexpected intimations of mortality
in an uncomfortably vivid way. He gave some indication of
what had happened to him in a letter sent to his wife from
Saransk on 4th September 1869. “For two days now,” he wrote,
“I’ve been tormented with anxiety. The day before yesterday
I spent the night at Arzamas, and something extraordinary
happened to me. It was two o’clock in the morning, I was
terribly tired, I wanted to go to sleep and I felt perfectly well.
But suddenly I was overcome by despair, fear and terror, the
like of which I have never experienced before. I’ll tell you the
details of this feeling later: but I’ve never experienced such an
agonizing feeling before and may God preserve anyone else
from experiencing it.” (Tolstoy’s Letters, selected, edited and
translated by R.F. Christian, Athlone Press, London 1978.)
The concern Tolstoy expresses here for others is undoubtedly
praiseworthy, yet in a sense completely misplaced, for what
he had suffered was the abrupt realization of his own inevitable demise, something which has been identified as the very
xi
the death of ivan ilyich · the devil
phenomenon that above all sets mankind apart from other
animals. Thus his experience, albeit for him on this occasion unusually acute and painful, was in fact an inescapable,
universally human one. And it was this universality that he
expressed so strikingly in The Death of Ivan Ilyich, one of
his greatest shorter works, composed at a period of his life
when the theme of death was central to his writing. It can
come as no surprise, then, that at about the same time in the
mid-1880s he returned to the night in Arzamas through the
medium of another story, never completed and consequently
published only after the author’s death, entitled The Notes
of a Madman.
We do not know what details of his traumatic “feeling”
Tolstoy eventually gave to his wife, but the following extracts
from the tale show how he intended to present the event to
readers of his fiction. We begin with the narrator and his servant already approaching Arzamas in a post-chaise:
Night came on, we kept driving. We started to doze. I dozed
off, but suddenly woke up. I’d become afraid for some reason.
And, as is often the case, I woke up frightened, excited, like
when it doesn’t seem you’ll ever get to sleep. “Why am I on
this journey? Where am I going?” suddenly came into my
head. It wasn’t that I disliked the idea of buying an estate
cheaply, but it suddenly presented itself to me that there was
no reason why I needed to travel all this distance and that
I was going to die here in a strange place. And I began to
feel dreadful.
They stop for the night at the post station in Arzamas where
the narrator’s mood is not lifted by anything in his surroundings, least of all by the room he is given – small, square and
whitewashed. He manages, nonetheless, to doze off once more,
but only to wake up in the middle of the night:
xii
introduction
I was again just as aroused as in the carriage. I sensed there
was no possibility whatsoever of getting to sleep. Why have I
broken my journey here? Where am I taking myself? What am
I running away from and where am I running to? I’m running
away from something terrible and I can’t escape. I’m always
with myself, and it’s I that am a torment to myself. Here he
is, me, I’m here, all of me. Neither the estate in Penza nor
any other will add anything to me or take anything away.
And it’s I, I that am hateful to myself, unbearable, a torment
to myself. I want to fall asleep, into oblivion, and I can’t. I
can’t get away from myself. I went out into the corridor, […]
thinking to get away from what was tormenting me. But it
followed me out and cast a shadow on everything. I was just
as terrified, even more so. “What is all this nonsense,” I said
to myself. “Why am I in anguish, what am I afraid of?” –
“Me,” the voice of death inaudibly replied. “I’m here.” It
made my flesh creep. Yes, death. It was going to come, here
it was, but it ought not to have been. If my death really had
been imminent, I could not have experienced what I was
experiencing, then I would have been afraid. But now I was
not afraid, rather I could see, feel, that death was approaching, and at the same time I felt that it ought not to be. My
whole being felt the need for, the right to, life, and at the same
time death taking place. And this internal rift was horrible. I
tried to shake off this horror. I found a brass candlestick with
a burnt-down candle and lit it. The red light of the candle
and its size, a little smaller than the candlestick, all said the
same thing. There is nothing in life, but there is death, yet it
ought not to be. I tried to think about what interested me:
the purchase, my wife – not only was there nothing cheerful, it all became nothing. Everything was overshadowed by
horror for my life that was perishing.
Attempts to alleviate the situation through prayer are to no
avail, and the narrator is obliged to wake everyone and continue
xiii
 the death of ivan ilyich · the devil
the journey at once. “But I felt,” he concludes, “that something
new had settled on my soul and poisoned the whole of my
former life.”
Of course this is a fictionalized account of a biographical
fact, but the great significance for Tolstoy of impressions of
the kind described here is clear: his writings of the 1880s are in
large part a response to the problems of life and death posed
by this dramatic moment so many years before. In The Notes
of a Madman the narrator subsequently has another terrifying
experience in a coffin-like hotel room in Moscow that leads him
to question God about the meaning of life, and then, when no
reply is forthcoming, to reject Him entirely. Yet neither Tolstoy,
nor his fictional characters were twentieth-century existentialists, no matter how many features they might seem to have in
common with them, and the problem of making sense of life
and death finds a recognizably nineteenth-century resolution
in Tolstoy’s hands.
Knowledge of death, perhaps following long periods of
doubt and struggle, can eventually lead for Tolstoy to the
attainment of an advanced level of humanity that is characterized by the discovery of a capacity for unselfish love. Ivan Ilyich
is drawn to the servant Gerasim thanks precisely to the latter’s
readiness to treat his sick master with respect, honesty and
sincere, self-denying pity. This attitude is sharply contrasted
with the hypocrisy, insincerity and selfishness of Ivan Ilyich’s
family, friends and associates – and of Ivan Ilyich himself.
Finally, however, in part through his son – another “innocent”,
if only for the time being – the dying man comes to sense the
pain he has caused and to feel, instead of self-pity, selfless pity
for his family.
Unselfish love of this kind can, of course, be set in stark
contrast to the utterly selfish lust that Tolstoy came to see in
human sexuality, and which comprised the other major theme
of his fiction of the 1880s, represented here by The Devil. In
this story the main character, Irtenyev, another very ordinary
xiv
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
1
I
n the large building of the Courts of Law during a break
in the hearing of the Melvinskys’ case the members of the
court and the Public Prosecutor gathered in Ivan Yegorovich
Shebek’s office and the conversation turned to the famous
Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vasilyevich grew heated in arguing its inadmissibility for trial, Ivan Yegorovich stood his
ground, while Pyotr Ivanovich, who had not entered into the
argument to begin with, took no part in it and was looking
through the local Gazette which had just been delivered.
“Gentlemen!” he said, “Ivan Ilyich has died.”
“Really?”
“Here, read it,” he said to Fyodor Vasilyevich, and handed
him the fresh issue, still smelling of the press.
Inside a black border it said: “It is with deep regret that
Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina informs relatives and friends
of the passing of her beloved spouse, Member of the Chamber
of Justice Ivan Ilyich Golovin, which occurred on the fourth of
February of this year of 1882. The funeral is on Friday at 1 p.m.”
Ivan Ilyich had been a colleague of the assembled gentlemen
and everyone had liked him. He had been ill for several weeks;
his illness had been said to be incurable. His post had been kept
open for him, but there had been speculation that in the event
of his death Alexeyev might be appointed to his post, and to
Alexeyev’s post either Vinnikov or Shtabel. So on hearing of
Ivan Ilyich’s death, the first thought of each of the gentlemen
assembled in the office was about what significance this death
might have for the transfer or promotion of the members of
the court themselves or their acquaintances.
“I’ll probably get Shtabel’s or Vinnikov’s job now,” thought
Fyodor Vasilyevich. “It’s been promised me for a long time,
3
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
and the promotion will mean a pay increase of eight hundred
roubles for me, plus office expenses.”
“I’ll have to request a transfer from Kaluga for my brother-inlaw now,” thought Pyotr Ivanovich. “The wife will be delighted.
And now she won’t be able to say I’ve never done anything for
her relatives.”
“I didn’t think he’d ever get back on his feet,” said Pyotr
Ivanovich out loud. “It’s a shame.”
“And what exactly was it he had?”
“The doctors couldn’t make a diagnosis. That is, they made
diagnoses, but differing ones. When I saw him last, I thought
he’d get better.”
“Well I never did go round to see him, not after the holidays.
I kept meaning to.”
“And was he well off?”
“I think his wife has a very little. Something quite insignificant
though.”
“Yes, we’ll have to go. They lived a terribly long way away.”
“A long way from you, that is. Everything’s a long way from
you.”
“He just can’t forgive me for living over the river,” said Pyotr
Ivanovich, smiling at Shebek. And they began talking about
the great distances involved in the town, and went off to the
hearing.
Apart from the speculation this death prompted in each of
them about transfers and the possible changes at work which
might ensue from the death, the very fact of the death of a close
acquaintance prompted in all who had learnt of it a feeling, as
always, of joy that it was he who had died, not I.
“What about that, he’s dead; but I’m not,” each of them
thought or felt. And the close acquaintances, the so-called
friends of Ivan Ilyich, at the same time involuntarily also
thought about how they would now have to fulfil the very
dull obligations of propriety and go to a requiem and pay the
widow a visit of condolence.
4
chapter 1
Closest of all were Fyodor Vasilyevich and Pyotr Ivanovich.
Pyotr Ivanovich had been a fellow student at the law school
and considered himself indebted to Ivan Ilyich.
After giving his wife the news of the death of Ivan Ilyich
and his ideas about the possible transfer of his brother-in-law
to their district over lunch, Pyotr Ivanovich, without having a
lie-down, put on his tailcoat and went to Ivan Ilyich’s.
By the entrance to Ivan Ilyich’s apartment stood a carriage
and two cabs. Downstairs in the entrance hall, leaning against
the wall by the coat stand was a coffin lid covered with silk
brocade, with tassels and gold braid cleaned with powder.
Two ladies in black were taking off their fur coats. One, Ivan
Ilyich’s sister, was familiar, the other was an unfamiliar lady. A
colleague of Pyotr Ivanovich’s, Shvarts, was coming downstairs
and, catching sight from the top step of the man coming in, he
stopped and gave him a wink, as if to say: “Ivan Ilyich made a
mess of his arrangements; not like you and me.”
Shvarts’s face with its English sideburns and the whole of his
thin figure in a tailcoat had, as always, an elegant solemnity,
and this solemnity, which always contradicted the character
of Shvarts’s playfulness, had a particular piquancy here. So
thought Pyotr Ivanovich.
Pyotr Ivanovich let the ladies go on ahead of him and set off
slowly up the stairs behind them. Shvarts did not descend, but
stopped at the top. Pyotr Ivanovich realized why: he evidently
wanted to arrange where they would be having a game of vint*
that day. The ladies went up the stairs to the widow’s rooms,
but Shvarts, with lips firm and compressed in a serious way,
directed Pyotr Ivanovich with a playful glance and a movement
of his eyebrows to the right, into the dead man’s room.
As is always the way, Pyotr Ivanovich went in uncertain
about what he would have to do there. One thing he knew, that
crossing yourself in these instances never does any harm. As
to whether there was any need to bow as well while doing so
he was not entirely sure, and for that reason he chose a middle
5
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
course: upon entering the room he began crossing himself and
kind of bowing a little. So far as the movements of his arms
and head permitted him, he at the same time surveyed the
room. Two youngsters, one a schoolboy, seemingly nephews,
were leaving the room, crossing themselves. An old woman
stood motionless. And a lady with strangely raised eyebrows
was saying something to her in a whisper. A sacristan in a
frock coat, brisk and decisive, was reading something in a loud
voice with an expression that ruled out any contradiction; the
peasant who waited at table, Gerasim, walked by in front of
Pyotr Ivanovich with a light step and sprinkled something on
the floor. Immediately upon seeing this, Pyotr Ivanovich sensed
the faint smell of the decomposing corpse. On his last visit to
Ivan Ilyich, Pyotr Ivanovich had seen this peasant in the study;
he had carried out the duties of a sick-nurse, and Ivan Ilyich
had been particularly fond of him. Pyotr Ivanovich kept on
crossing himself and bowing slightly towards a point midway
between the coffin, the sacristan and the icons on the table in
the corner. Then, when this crossing motion with his hand
seemed to him already too protracted, he paused and began
examining the dead man.
The dead man lay, as dead men always do, particularly heavily,
sinking his cold limbs into the lining of the coffin in the manner
of a dead man, with his now for ever bowed head on a pillow,
and, as dead men always do, he was thrusting out his yellow
waxen forehead with the bald patches above the sunken temples
and his jutting nose, which seemed to be pressed down onto
the upper lip. He had changed greatly, had grown still thinner
since Pyotr Ivanovich had last seen him, but, as with all dead
men, his face was more handsome and, most importantly, more
significant than it had been on the living man. On his face was
the expression of the fact that what had needed to be done had
been done, and done correctly. Besides that, in this expression
there was also a reproach or a reminder to the living. This
reminder seemed to Pyotr Ivanovich inappropriate, or at least
6
chapter 1
of no relevance to him. He began to have an unpleasant sort of
feeling, and for that reason Pyotr Ivanovich hurriedly crossed
himself once more and, too hurriedly as it seemed to him, not in
accordance with the proprieties, he turned and went towards the
door. Shvarts was waiting for him in the connecting room with
his legs set wide apart and with both hands playing with his top
hat behind his back. One glance at Shvarts’s playful, hygienic
and elegant figure refreshed Pyotr Ivanovich. Pyotr Ivanovich
understood that he, Shvarts, stood above all this and was not
yielding to dispiriting impressions. His appearance alone said:
the incident of Ivan Ilyich’s requiem can in no way serve as
sufficient grounds for considering the agenda disrupted, that
is to say, nothing can prevent this very evening the snapping,
during its unsealing, of a pack of cards, at the same time as a
manservant is setting out four fresh candles; there is no basis at
all for assuming that this incident might prevent us from spending even this evening pleasantly. And he actually said so in a
whisper to Pyotr Ivanovich as he passed, proposing meeting for
a game at Fyodor Vasilyevich’s. But Pyotr Ivanovich was clearly
not destined to have a game of vint that evening. Praskovya
Fyodorovna, a short, fat woman who, despite all her efforts to
arrange things to the contrary, nonetheless grew broader from
the shoulders down, all in black, with lace covering her head and
with the same strangely raised eyebrows as the lady standing
opposite the coffin had had, emerged from her rooms with the
other ladies and, seeing them into the dead man’s door, said:
“The requiem will be in a moment; go through.”
Shvarts bowed indeterminately and stopped, evidently neither
accepting nor declining this proposal. Praskovya Fyodorovna,
recognizing Pyotr Ivanovich, sighed, went right up close to him,
took him by the hand and said:
“I know you were a true friend of Ivan Ilyich’s…” and looked
at him, awaiting from him actions in keeping with these words.
Pyotr Ivanovich knew that, just as he had had to cross himself there, so here he had to squeeze her hand, sigh and say:
7
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
“Believe me!” And that was what he did. And having done so,
he felt that the desired result had been achieved: that he was
touched and so was she.
“Come with me, before it begins in there; I need to have a
talk with you,” said the widow. “Give me your arm.”
Pyotr Ivanovich gave her his arm and they set off in the direction of the inner rooms, past Shvarts, who gave Pyotr Ivanovich
a mournful wink. “There goes your vint! Please don’t be hard
on us if we find another partner. We could make it a fivesome
when you get away,” said his playful look.
Pyotr Ivanovich heaved a sigh even more deep and mournful,
and Praskovya Fyodorovna squeezed his arm gratefully. On
entering her sitting room, decorated in pink cretonne and with
its dim lamp, they sat down by the table: she on a sofa, and
Pyotr Ivanovich on a low pouf with damaged springs which
sank awkwardly under his weight. Praskovya Fyodorovna
wanted to warn him to sit on another chair, but she thought
this warning out of keeping with her situation and changed her
mind. Sitting down on this pouf, Pyotr Ivanovich remembered
Ivan Ilyich decorating this sitting room and asking his advice
about this very pink cretonne with its green leaves. Sitting
down on the sofa and passing by the table (the entire sitting
room was absolutely full of knick-knacks and furniture), the
widow had caught the black lace of her black mantilla on
the table’s decorative carving. Pyotr Ivanovich half-rose to
unhook it, and the liberated pouf began undulating beneath
him and nudging him. The widow began unhooking her lace
for herself and Pyotr Ivanovich sat down again, suppressing the
rebelling pouf beneath him. But the widow failed to unhook
it completely, and Pyotr Ivanovich rose again, and again the
pouf started to rebel, and even made a cracking noise. When
all this was finished, she took out a clean cambric handkerchief and began to cry. But Pyotr Ivanovich had been cooled
by the episode with the lace and the battle with the pouf and
he sat there scowling. This awkward situation was interrupted
8
chapter 1
by Sokolov, Ivan Ilyich’s butler, reporting that the plot at the
cemetery, the one that Praskovya Fyodorovna had designated,
would cost two hundred roubles. She stopped crying and,
glancing at Pyotr Ivanovich with the look of a victim, said
in French that things were very hard for her. Pyotr Ivanovich
made a silent gesture that expressed indubitable certainty that
it could not be otherwise.
“Please, do smoke,” she said in a magnanimous and at the
same time wretched voice, and took up the question of the price
of the plot with Sokolov. As he lit a cigarette, Pyotr Ivanovich
heard her enquire most thoroughly about the various prices of
land and determine the one that should be bought. In addition,
after finishing with the plot, she gave instructions about the
choristers too. Sokolov left.
“I’m doing everything myself,” she said to Pyotr Ivanovich,
moving to one side the albums that lay on the table, and noticing that ash was threatening the table, she promptly moved an
ashtray towards Pyotr Ivanovich and pronounced: “I think it
an affectation to declare that I can’t deal with practical matters because of my grief. On the contrary, if anything can…
not comfort, but distract me, then it’s doing things for him.”
She took out the handkerchief again as if meaning to cry, then
suddenly, as if regaining control of herself, she shook herself
out of it and began to speak calmly:
“Anyway, there’s a matter I want to discuss with you.”
Pyotr Ivanovich bowed, not allowing the springs of the pouf
to uncoil as they immediately started stirring beneath him.
“He suffered dreadfully in the final days.”
“He suffered a lot?” asked Pyotr Ivanovich.
“Oh, dreadfully! Not for the final minutes, but hours, he was
screaming continually. For three days in a row he screamed
without a break. It was unbearable. I can’t understand how
I bore it; it could be heard three rooms away. Oh, the things
I’ve had to bear!”
“But surely he wasn’t conscious?” asked Pyotr Ivanovich.
9
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
“He was,” she whispered, “until the last moment. He said
goodbye to us a quarter of an hour before he died and asked
that Volodya be taken away as well.”
The thought of the suffering of a man he had known so
well, first as a cheerful lad, as a schoolboy, then as an adult
partner, irrespective of the unpleasant consciousness of his
own pretence and that of this woman, suddenly horrified Pyotr
Ivanovich. Once again he saw that forehead, the nose pressing
down on the lip, and he became afraid for himself.
“Three days of dreadful suffering and death. And it might
begin right now, at any minute, for me too,” he thought, and
for a moment he became afraid. But immediately, how he did
not know himself, the usual thought came to his aid that it had
happened to Ivan Ilyich, and not to him, and that it should not
and could not happen to him; that in thinking that way he was
succumbing to a gloomy mood, something he ought not to do,
as was evident from Shvarts’s face. And having finished this
line of reasoning, Pyotr Ivanovich relaxed and began enquiring with interest about the details of Ivan Ilyich’s passing, as
though death were a venture of a sort characteristic only of
Ivan Ilyich, but not at all characteristic of him.
After various passages of conversation about the details of
the truly dreadful physical suffering endured by Ivan Ilyich
(Pyotr Ivanovich learnt of these details only according to
the extent that Ivan Ilyich’s torment had got on Praskovya
Fyodorovna’s nerves), the widow evidently thought it necessary to get down to business.
“Oh, Pyotr Ivanovich, how hard it is, how dreadfully hard,
how dreadfully hard.” And she again began to cry.
Pyotr Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to blow her nose.
When she had blown her nose he said:
“Believe me…” and again she began to talk freely, and came
out with what was evidently the main matter she had wanted
to discuss with him; that matter consisted of questions about
how, on the occasion of her husband’s death, she might get
10
chapter 1
some money from the public purse. She pretended she was
asking Pyotr Ivanovich’s advice about a pension, but he could
see that she already knew down to the tiniest details even things
that he did not know – everything that could be extracted from
the public purse on the occasion of this death – but what she
wanted to find out was whether it was not possible somehow
to extract even more money. Pyotr Ivanovich tried to think up
such a way, but having given it some thought and having, for
the sake of decency, berated our government for its stinginess,
he said that it did not seem possible to get any more. At that
point she sighed and evidently began thinking of a way to get
rid of her visitor. He realized this, stubbed out his cigarette,
rose, squeezed her hand and set off for the entrance hall.
In the dining room with the clock that Ivan Ilyich had been
so pleased to have bought in an antique shop Pyotr Ivanovich
met the priest and several more acquaintances who had come
for the requiem, and he saw a pretty young lady he knew, Ivan
Ilyich’s daughter. She was all in black. Her waist, very slim,
seemed even slimmer. She had a gloomy, resolute, almost angry
look. She bowed to Pyotr Ivanovich as if he were to blame for
something. Behind the daughter, with the same offended look,
stood a rich young man Pyotr Ivanovich knew, an examining
magistrate, her fiancé, so he had heard. He bowed to them
dolefully and meant to go through into the dead man’s room,
when from under the stairs there appeared the small figure of
the schoolboy son, dreadfully like Ivan Ilyich. This was the
little Ivan Ilyich as Pyotr Ivanovich remembered him at the
law school. His eyes were both tear-stained and like those that
impure boys of thirteen or fourteen sometimes have. On seeing
Pyotr Ivanovich, the boy began knitting his brow sternly and
shamefacedly. Pyotr Ivanovich nodded his head to him and
went into the dead man’s room. The requiem started – candles, groans, incense, tears, sobbing. Pyotr Ivanovich stood
frowning, gazing at his feet in front of him. Not once did he
glance at the dead man, and to the end he refused to succumb
11
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
to relaxing influences, and was one of the first to leave. There
was nobody in the entrance hall. Gerasim, the peasant who
waited at table, darted out of the deceased’s room, rummaged
with his strong arms through all the fur coats to find Pyotr
Ivanovich’s and held it up for him.
“Well, Gerasim, old fellow?” said Pyotr Ivanovich, just so as
to say something. “Isn’t it a shame?”
“It’s God’s will. It’ll be the same for all of us,” said Gerasim,
baring his white, unbroken, peasant’s teeth, and, like a man in
the swing of intensive work, he vigorously opened the door,
called a driver, helped Pyotr Ivanovich into the cab and jumped
back towards the porch as if trying to think up something else
he could do.
Pyotr Ivanovich found it particularly pleasant to get a breath
of pure air after the smell of incense, the corpse and carbolic
acid.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
“It’s not too late. I can still call in on Fyodor Vasilyevich.”
And Pyotr Ivanovich drove off. And indeed, he came upon
them playing the end of the first rubber, so it was convenient
for him to join in as a fifth player.
2
T
he past history of Ivan Ilyich’s life was the most simple
and ordinary and the most dreadful.
Ivan Ilyich died at the age of forty-five as a member of the
Chamber of Justice. He was the son of a civil servant who had
made the sort of career in various ministries and departments
in St Petersburg that gets people to a position in which, even
though it proves clear they are unfit to do any real job, they
nonetheless, due to their lengthy past service and their rank,
cannot be dismissed, and so are given fabricated, fictitious
12
chapter 2
posts and non-fictitious thousands – from six to ten – with
which they duly live to a ripe old age.
Such was the unnecessary member of various unnecessary
institutions, Privy Councillor Ilya Yefimovich Golovin.
He had three sons. Ivan Ilyich was the second son. The
eldest was making just such a career as his father had, only
in a different ministry, and was already coming close to the
service age at which that salary inertia is achieved. The third
son was a failure. In various posts he had everywhere spoilt
things for himself, and now he was working in the railways:
not only did both his father and his brothers, and especially
their wives, dislike meeting with him, but except in extreme
necessity they did not even remember his existence. His sister
was married to Baron Gref, just such a St Petersburg civil
servant as his father-in-law. Ivan Ilyich was le phénix de la
famille,* as they said. He was not so cold and precise as the
eldest, and not so reckless as the youngest. He was the happy
medium between them – an intelligent, lively, pleasant and
decent man. He had been educated along with the youngest
brother in the law school. The youngest had failed to graduate, having been expelled from the fifth class, but Ivan Ilyich
had completed the course successfully. At the law school he
had already been what he subsequently was for the whole
of his life: a capable person, cheerfully good-natured and
gregarious, but strict in his fulfilment of what he considered
his duty, and what he considered his duty was everything that
was considered such by people in the highest places. He was
not ingratiating either as a boy or later as a grown man, but
from a very early age he had the feature that, like a fly to the
light, he was drawn to people in the highest places in society,
assimilated for himself their ways, their outlooks on life, and
established friendly relations with them. All the enthusiasms
of childhood and youth passed for him without leaving any
great traces; he had given himself up to sensuality and vanity,
and – towards the end, in the senior years – to liberalism, but
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich
all within certain limits, which were reliably indicated to him
by his instinct.
Acts were committed by him at the law school which had
previously seemed to him utterly disgusting and which instilled
in him revulsion towards himself at the time he was committing
them, but subsequently, seeing that those acts were being committed by people in high places too, and were not considered
bad by them, he did not go so far as acknowledging them to
be good, but he did completely forget about them and was not
at all distressed by memories of them.
Leaving the law school as a tenth-grade civil servant, and
receiving from his father the money to be fitted out with a
uniform, Ivan Ilyich ordered himself clothes from Scharmer,*
hung his medal with the inscription “respice finem”* on a
watch chain, said goodbye to the Prince and his tutor, dined
with his schoolfellows at Donon’s,* and with valise, linen,
clothing, shaving and toilet accessories and a travelling rug,
all new and fashionable, ordered and purchased in the very
best shops, he left for the provinces and a post provided for
him by his father as an officer for special commissions with a
provincial governor.
In the provinces Ivan Ilyich immediately organized for himself a situation just as easy and pleasant as his situation in the
law school had been. He worked, forged a career and at the
same time had fun in a pleasant and respectable way; he would
occasionally travel out to rural districts on the orders of his
superiors, where he conducted himself with dignity with both
high and low, and with a precision and incorruptible honesty
of which he could not help but be proud, and carried out the
commissions entrusted to him, predominantly on matters
concerning schismatics.*
In official matters he was, despite his youth and his penchant for mild fun, extremely restrained, formal and even
severe; but in social matters he was often playful and witty
and always good-natured, decorous and bon enfant,* as the
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chapter 2
governor and his wife, with whom he was like one of the
family, said of him.
In the provinces there was also a liaison with one of the ladies
who threw herself at the rather stylish lawyer; there was also
a milliner; there were also drinking bouts with visiting aidesde-camp and trips after dinner to a distant street; there was
also obsequiousness to the governor and even to the governor’s
wife, but it all bore such an elevated tone of respectability that
bad words could not have been used to describe it all; it all
fitted only the rubric of the French saying: il faut que jeunesse
se passe.* Everything took place with clean hands, in clean
shirts, with French words and, most importantly, in the very
highest society, and therefore with the approval of people in
high places.
Ivan Ilyich served thus for five years, and then there came a
change at work. New judicial institutions appeared; new men
were needed.
And Ivan Ilyich became that new man.
Ivan Ilyich was offered a post as an examining magistrate,
and Ivan Ilyich accepted it, despite the fact that the post was in
a different province and he had to give up established relationships and establish new ones. Ivan Ilyich was given a send-off
by his friends, they had a group photograph taken, presented
him with a silver cigarette case, and he left for his new post.
Ivan Ilyich was just as comme il faut* and decent an examining magistrate, adept at dividing his official duties from his
private life and inspiring universal respect, as he had been an
officer for special commissions. And in itself the work of a
magistrate was of much greater interest and attractiveness
for Ivan Ilyich than his former work. In his former work
it had been pleasant to stroll in a free and easy way in his
uniform jacket from Scharmer’s past trembling petitioners
awaiting an audience and envious functionaries, straight into
the governor’s office, and to sit down with him for tea and a
cigarette; but the people directly dependent on his authority
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich
were few. Such people were only rural police chiefs and schismatics when he was sent with a commission, and he liked to
treat such people who were dependent on him courteously,
almost in a comradely way, he liked to let them feel that here
was he, capable of crushing them, treating them amicably
and simply. Such people then had been few. But now, as an
examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich felt that all, all without
exception, the most pompous, self-satisfied people – all were
in his hands, and that he only had to write certain words on
a piece of headed paper, and that pompous, self-satisfied man
would be brought to him in the capacity of the accused or a
witness, who would, if he did not want to let him sit down,
stand before him and answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never
abused this power of his; on the contrary, he tried to emolliate its manifestations; but the consciousness of this power
and the opportunity of emolliating it comprised for him the
main interest and attraction of his new work. In the work
itself, specifically in investigations, Ivan Ilyich very quickly
assimilated the technique of dismissing from his mind all
circumstances unrelated to work and of dressing any case,
even the most complex, in such a way that only the outward
appearance of the case was reflected on paper, and such that his
personal view was completely excluded and, most importantly,
all the required formality was observed. This was something
new. And he was one of the first men to work out in practice
the application of the Code of 1864.*
On moving to a new town to the post of examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich made new acquaintances and liaisons, set
himself up in a new way and adopted a rather different tone.
He set himself up at a certain dignified distance from the
provincial authorities and chose the best circle of magistrates
and wealthy gentlefolk living in the town, and adopted a tone
of mild discontent with the government, of moderate liberalism and urbane civic-mindedness. At the same time, without
in the least altering the elegance of his dress, Ivan Ilyich in his
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chapter 2
new position stopped shaving his chin and allowed his beard
the freedom to grow where it liked.
Ivan Ilyich’s life turned out very pleasantly in the new town
too: society opposed to the governor was friendly and good;
his salary was higher, and no small pleasure in life was added
at this time by whist, which Ivan Ilyich began to play, showing
a capacity to play cards cheerfully, weighing things up quickly
and very subtly, so that on the whole he always won.
After two years working in the new town Ivan Ilyich met
his future wife. Praskovya Fyodorovna Mikhel was the most
attractive, intelligent and brilliant girl of the circle in which
Ivan Ilyich moved. Among the other amusements and ways of
relaxing from the labours of a magistrate Ivan Ilyich established
a playful, easy relationship with Praskovya Fyodorovna.
When he had been an officer for special commissions, Ivan
Ilyich had generally danced, but as an examining magistrate he
now danced as an exception. He now danced in the sense that
“I may indeed be in the new institutions and in the fifth grade,
but if it’s a matter of dancing, I can prove that in that respect
I can do better than others.” Thus at the end of an evening he
would occasionally dance with Praskovya Fyodorovna, and it
was primarily in the course of these dances that he made his
conquest of Praskovya Fyodorovna. She fell in love with him.
Ivan Ilyich had no clear, definite intention to marry, but when
the girl fell in love with him he asked himself this question.
“Indeed, why on earth not get married?” he said to himself.
The unmarried Praskovya Fyodorovna was of good gentle
birth and not bad-looking; there was a little money. Ivan Ilyich
might have reckoned on a more brilliant match, but this was
a good match too. Ivan Ilyich had his salary, she, he hoped,
would have just as much. Good family connections; she was
nice, pretty and a perfectly respectable woman. To say that
Ivan Ilyich got married because he came to love his fiancée and
found in her sympathy with his outlook on life would be just
as incorrect as to say that he got married because people of his
17
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
social group gave this match their approval. Ivan Ilyich married
for both reasons: he was doing something pleasant for himself
in acquiring such a wife, and at the same time was doing what
people in the highest places considered right.
And Ivan Ilyich got married.
The process of getting married itself and the first period
of married life, with conjugal caresses, new furniture, new
crockery, new linen, passed very well up until his wife’s pregnancy, so that Ivan Ilyich was already starting to think that
not only would marriage not disrupt the nature of a life that
was easy, pleasant, cheerful and always seemly and approved
by society, the nature Ivan Ilyich considered characteristic of
life as a whole, but would further intensify it. Yet at that point,
from the first months of his wife’s pregnancy, there appeared
a certain something that was new, unexpected, unpleasant,
trying and unseemly, which could not have been expected and
of which it was quite impossible to be free.
His wife, without, as it seemed to Ivan Ilyich, any grounds,
de gaîté de cœur,* as he said to himself, began to disrupt the
pleasantness and decorum of life: without any reason she was
jealous of him, she demanded that he be attentive towards
her, she found fault with everything and made unpleasant and
vulgar scenes.
At first Ivan Ilyich hoped to rid himself of the unpleasantness
of this situation with that same easy and decent attitude to life
which had come to his aid before – he tried ignoring his wife’s
frame of mind, continued to live easily and pleasantly just as
before: he invited friends round to make up a hand of cards,
tried going out himself to the club or to see acquaintances. But
on one occasion his wife began abusing him in vulgar terms
with such energy and then continued so persistently to abuse
him every time he failed to carry out her demands, evidently
firmly resolved not to stop until he submitted, that is, until he
stayed at home and was just as miserable as her, that Ivan Ilyich
was horrified. He realized that married life – at least with his
18