Audio Reading of Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Read by Oliver Ford Davies

entire

Cartoon on the experience of his own struggle to find enlightenment and a deeper spiritual agreement of life, Tolstoy in The Expiry of Ivan Ilyich takes usa on the final journey towards death with Ivan Ilyich, who, falling victim to an incurable illness, ponders on his own life – its shallowness and lack of pity, wondering what is the pregnant of information technology all. At times sombre, at times satirical, Tolstoy's novel raises questions near the way we alive and how we should strive even at the finish to seek concluding redemption. Information technology is a powerful masterpiece of psychological exploration, and has influenced writers as diverse equally Hemingway and Nabokov.

• 3 CDs

  Running Time: 2 h 51 m

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  More product details

  ISBN:	978-962-634-851-2
  Digital ISBN:	978-962-954-570-3
  Cat. no.:	NA385112
  Download size:	42 MB
  Translated by:	Aylmer and Louise Maude
  BISAC:	FIC004000
  Released:	Nov 2007

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Reviews

Tolstoy wrote his brusk novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich after a dark night of the soul that led him to question his entire life, and eventually to find comfort in Christianity and peasant simplicities. The book is a coded version of his suffering and makes tough, only ultimately deeply rewarding listening. Oliver Ford Davies, the philosopher and actor fresh from a memorably gruff rendering of Diogenes Laertius for the Naxos audiobook Ancient Greek Philosophy, makes the dying Ilyich touchingly human.

Christina Hardyment, The Times

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Painfully and slowly, Judge Ivan Ilyich is dying and, as he does so, he comes to recognise the truth about his impeccable life. For all his propriety and success, it has been meaningless and empty. Ilyich loathes his wife and realises his 'concerned' colleagues are merely waiting to step into his shoes. And he recognises the selfless devotion with which he is cared for past the peasant boy Gerasim as the just real truth in the whole of his own shallow life. Only at the end, when Ilyich breaks through the 'black sack' of decease, is he absolved. Ford Davies's leisurely narration and the passages of Russian music complement Tolstoy's serious theme and his presentation of Ilyich'south anguished emotions is masterly.

Rachel Redford, The Observer

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Plenty of these homegrown comedies of manners. At that place aren't many jokes in this relentless novella about a cold, computing, materialistic minor member of the St Petersburg judiciary, whose but ambition is to keep up with the Ivanovs. Until, that is, he falls ill with a mysterious last disease that opens his optics to the shallowness of his friends, his family unit and, most of all, himself. Tolstoy's prose is majestic, his pace measured, his characters unflinchingly true to life, his message dour. If you've never read whatever Tolstoy, best not start with this one – yous might top yourself before you go round to Anna Karenina.

Sue Arnold, The Guardian, sixteen February 2008

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In the lovely, depression tones of a fine storyteller, Oliver Fox Davies guides united states through the stages of Tolstoy's mini masterpiece. Davies's skill with inflection, even within words, heightens the social satire of the early section and shifts with Ilyich'due south slide into ever increasing hurting and irritability. With the terror and anguish of approaching expiry, his voice grows convincingly hoarse. Until his affliction, Ivan Ilyich had never reflected on his life. But he slowly comes to see his life as 'a terrible, huge deception which had hidden life and death.' Equally he lays dying, his lifelong friends think of the promotions that may come their way, and his wife 'began to wish he would die, but she didn't desire him to die because so his salary would cease.' He has ever avoided homo connection, but through the tender ministrations of a peasant he comes to recognize the 'mesh of falsity' in which he'south lived. Written more a century ago, Tolstoy's work still retains the power of a contemporary novel.

Publisher's Weekly, January 2008

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Tolstoy's novella offers a penetrating examination of the Christian organized religion and the nature of life and death. Listeners will also be sure to delight in Tolstoy's sharp and sometimes satirical eye for the very modern-sounding details of the life of a nineteenth-century Russian bureaucrat. With masterful ease, a warm tone, and conversational pacing, British thespian Oliver Davies captures Ivan Ilyich'south preoccupation with interior decorating and debt and his avoidance of family weddings and habitation remedies. Then the shadow of death wipes away all trivialities and pretence. This work's prose and performance are so vivid, then human, and so listenable that there's no doubt why Tolstoy stands every bit one of the giants of earth literature.

B. P., AudioFile Magazine

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Booklet Notes

The Decease of Ivan Ilyich was written at a time of cracking crisis in Tolstoy'south life. He was questioning his religion – the Orthodox Christian religion in which he had been brought up. He wanted to face up to the inevitability of death and make some sense of it. The event was The Expiry of Ivan Ilyich, in which he follows the gradual procedure of a human being wasting abroad through death, and in the process discovering the truth about himself, his family and friends. He recognises the lives they all pb are shallow, cocky-centred and ultimately worthless, though he had always believed he was leading a skillful and moral life, but as the mercilessly objective narrator of the story says:

'Ivan Ilyich's life had been most uncomplicated and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.'

Ivan had never reflected on his life until the moment of his death. The unproblematic goodness of the peasant boy Gerasim, who attends him in his last illness, tells Ivan more about the true purpose of life than his married woman or any of his close friends can communicate. In a Christ-like empathetic way, Gerasim serves and helps the dying Ivan without complaint or self-interest, accepting that decease is a function of nature, and Ivan enjoys being comforted and cared for like a little child. It is the man contact he has denied himself for so long. Gradually Ivan realises this is the 'real affair' and he's been living a false life obsessed with materialism, never examining or questioning its true value. In his final affliction he at present sees his ain worthlessness reflected in the lives and attitudes of those around him. He sees his wife contriving to blame him for the inconvenience he is causing her; his girl Lisa, bored with his illness that interrupts her social life; his friends and colleagues in the judiciary totting up the opportunities that will be created by his decease. They exercise not, or will non, or are afraid to connect with Ivan's suffering. Self-preservation comes first, and as the death drags on through the weeks, their apathy towards Ivan grows, just every bit Ivan'due south hatred for them every bit representatives of his own shallow life proportionately increases.

'How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about step by step, unnoticed, but in the third calendar month of Ivan Iych'southward illness, his wife, his daughter, his son, his acquaintances, the doctors, the servants, and in a higher place all he himself, were aware that the whole involvement he had for other people was whether he would soon vacate his place, and at terminal release the living from the discomfort caused by his presence and be himself released from his sufferings.' (Chapter 7)

Ivan'southward struggle with death mirrors Tolstoy'south own life-long struggle, both spiritual and intellectual.

Born into the Russian nobility, well-nigh of his fellow countrymen would have envied him, he was wealthy and well-educated, married at 34 and had 13 children. Secure and prosperous, it was in these years Tolstoy wrote State of war and Peace and Anna Karenina. Only he was not comfy as a wealthy landowner, who owned many serfs, whose poverty and ignorance played on his conscience. But as Ivan began to recognise in the peasant Gerasim the existent meaning of life, then Tolstoy too reflected on the value of a peasant's life: its peace and simplicity, as he saw information technology, came from a complete religion in God. These feelings came to a head in 1876, and for 9 years Tolstoy gave up fiction writing to explore in depth his own spirituality, or lack of it. He wrote the autobiographical A Confession in 1882, in which he declared that he suffered from depression considering he could discover no meaning in life, and developed his thoughts further in tracts with titles similar The Kingdom of God is inside y'all.

Over a ten year search Tolstoy evolved his own brand of Christianity focusing on Christ as a model of love in action, and a belief in non-resistance to evil. The struggles, dilemmas and agonies Tolstoy went through during this menstruum resulted in the pocket-size masterpiece: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in which he uncompromisingly draws on his ain experiences and contemplations on the painful process of expiry. A process involving self-examination that Tolstoy sees as necessary to find truthful peace and happiness.

As he nears his terminate, Ivan in his stupefied state feels that 'he and his pain were being thrust into a narrow, deep black sack, merely though they were pushed further and farther in they could not be pushed to the bottom…he was frightened however wanted to fall through the sack, he struggled but yet co-operated. And suddenly he broke through, roughshod, and regained consciousness… (Chapter 9)

A symbolic journeying where he is 'born again', and merely afterwards which he can see clearly for the outset time the mistakes of his life, a life 'petty and ofttimes nasty', and the possibility of God's forgiveness. Only later on his intense suffering is he enlightened that he is spiritually empty and what he idea was the 'right' way to live was merely pandering to the petty and meaningless rules of a shallow social club. Even at his last breath, he realises that if he tin can overcome his hatred for his wife and family and bear witness them genuine compassion it will bring him peace in death:

'He was lamentable for them, he must human action so equally non to hurt them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. 'How good and how simple!' he thought. (Affiliate 12)

Understanding and compassion bring him release from pain and the incessant question 'Why?' that has troubled him since his illness took hold. The genuine grief of his son acts equally a catalyst, and it seems that this one moment of penitence makes upwards for his entire mis-spent life. The Christian values, so important to Tolstoy, are here self-axiomatic.

As Ivan approaches his inevitable decease, the mood of the novel darkens and becomes increasingly sombre and terrifying, but the early on role is lighter, and satirical in tone.

The story opens with events after the death of Ivan, where the hypocrisy of his family and friends is expressed in almost farcical terms. As Ivan's wife, Praskovya Fedorovna talks to his friend Piotr Ivanovitch almost her husband her shawl gets caught on a piece of article of furniture, and he tries to remain attentive whilst attempting to sit down quietly on a noisy pouffe. Keeping up appearances seems to matter more to these people than compassion. Too, the account of Ivan's early life revealing his growing obsession with materialism, is treated lightly. The pernickety concern for the effects in his new habitation call to heed the snobbery of Mr.Pooter, the eponymous hero of The Diary of a Nobody.

'Sometimes he even had moments of absent-mindedness during the court sessions and would consider whether he should take direct or curved cornices for his defunction. He was so interested in it all that he often did things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains.' (Chapter iii)

This obsession with the trivialities of life is shown to be literally responsible for his downfall, to be redeemed only at his last jiff.

One of the powerful images of approaching decease Tolstoy employs in The Expiry of Ivan Ilyich is the feeling of beingness in a railway carriage 'when one thinks one is going backwards while one is really going frontwards and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.' Tolstoy met his own expiry in 1910 at the age of 82. He died on a cot in a remote railway station.

David Timson

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