![]() ![]() Rather than turning to religion, art, or the love of his life to cope with death, he turns to doctors. He's middle aged, has an unhappy family life, and a petty personality. The Death of Ivan Ilych is the story of a painfully ordinary government official who comes down with an untreatable illness and dies at home slowly, painfully, and full of loneliness. What was new and remarkable in Tolstoy's work was how unremarkable its main character – and his death – was. (Our popular culture still owes a lot to the Romantics.) They just couldn't stop talking about it, and created dying romantic heroes of all kinds: star-crossed lovers with tragic deaths, lonely tortured artists who came to painfully beautiful ends, and valiant men in battle who sacrificed themselves. In the 19th century, death had been a favorite subject of the Romantics and many writers who came after them. Writing about death was nothing new, to be sure. Ivan Ilych also acquired a reputation as one of the modern treatments of death – one that has changed the way that subject is treated. Since it was published in 1886, in Volume 12 of Tolstoy's collected works (edited by his wife, Countess Sofia Tolstoy), it's been hailed as a masterpiece by critics and readers. The Death of Ivan Ilych – alternately called a short story or a novella – is probably the most famous shorter work of Count Leo Tolstoy. ![]()
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