Who He Is
Ivan Ilyich Golovin is the man whose death gives the novella its title: a member of the Judicial Chamber, dead at forty-five on February 4, 1882, according to the death notice that colleagues read in the newspaper in ch. I. Son of a privy councillor of Petersburg, second of three brothers, educated at the School of Jurisprudence, he moves from official for special assignments to examining magistrate, assistant prosecutor, and prosecutor (ch. II) and, after the difficult year of 1880, to a post paying five thousand rubles in the Ministry of Justice (ch. III). He is married to Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina and is the father of Lisa and Vasya. The book shows him twice: first dead, in the coffin of ch. I, through the eyes of Pyotr Ivanovich; then alive, from the start of his career to the final cry, from ch. II to ch. XII. The yardstick with which he measures everything fits in two words that the narrator repeats: life should run in an agreeable and decorous way.
The Russian has приятно и прилично (agreeable and decorous, our translation), and the second word returns in ch. VIII, in the decorous lie that the family does not dare to break in front of him.
Trajectory
In ch. I he appears only as a body, thinner, handsomer, and more significant than he was alive, and his face says two things to whoever looks at it:
На лице было выражение того, что то, что нужно было сделать, сделано, и сделано правильно. Кроме того, в этом выражении был еще упрек или напоминание живым., The face wore the look that what needed doing had been done, and done correctly. Besides, that look carried a reproach, or a reminder, to the living.
In ch. II the narrator goes back to the beginning and gives the verdict before the biography:
Прошедшая история жизни Ивана Ильича была самая простая и обыкновенная и самая ужасная, The past history of Ivan Ilyich's life was the simplest, most ordinary, and most terrible.
Already at school he is what he will be all his life: capable, cheerful, sociable, and rigorous about what he considers his duty, and duty is what the best-placed people consider duty. The narrator gives the image that guides him:
он, как муха к свету, тянулся к наивысше поставленным в свете людям, усваивал себе их приемы, их взгляды на жизнь и с ними устанавливал дружеские отношения, he, like a fly to light, was drawn to the most highly placed people in society, adopted their manners and their views of life, and established friendly relations with them.
The acts of his youth that disgusted him are not judged again; they are forgotten when he sees well-placed people doing the same:
он не то что признал их хорошими, но совершенно забыл их и нисколько не огорчался воспоминаниями о них, not that he considered them good, but he completely forgot them and was not in the least distressed by memories of them.
On leaving school he carries on his watch chain a small medal inscribed respice finem (look to the end). As an examining magistrate he discovers the taste for power, which he never abuses, and the technique of reducing any case to paperwork. The marriage to Praskovya Fyodorovna brings together his two measures:
Иван Ильич женился по обоим соображениям: он делал приятное для себя, приобретая такую жену, и вместе с тем делал то, что наивысше поставленные люди считали правильным., Ivan Ilyich married for both reasons: he did something agreeable for himself in acquiring such a wife, and at the same time did what the most highly placed people considered correct.
When his wife, during her first pregnancy, begins to demand attention and make scenes, he concludes that married life disturbs the agreeable and the decorous, and he protects himself from it with work; over seventeen years of transfers and promotions, the couple loses three children.
In ch. III, passed over twice in 1880, he feels for the first time an unbearable anguish far from work, goes to Petersburg, and returns with the post paying five thousand rubles. He sets up the new house on his own (The Decorated Room) and, while showing the upholsterer how he wants the drapery, falls from the stepladder (The Fall and the Curtain):
Раз он влез на лесенку, чтобы показать непонимающему обойщику, как он хочет драпировать, оступился и упал, но, как сильный и ловкий человек, удержался, только боком стукнулся об ручку рамы., Once he climbed a stepladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he wanted the drapery; he missed his footing and fell, but, as a strong and agile man, he caught himself, only striking his side against the handle of the window frame.
The fall does not weigh on him. Life runs light again, and the office requires excluding everything that is alive:
Во всем этом надо было уметь исключать все то сырое, жизненное, что всегда нарушает правильность течения служебных дел, In all of this one had to know how to exclude everything raw and living, which always disturbs the regularity of official business.
The only joy he holds to be true is a card game (Vint):
Радости служебные были радости самолюбия; радости общественные были радости тщеславия; но настоящие радости Ивана Ильича были радости игры в винт., The joys of service were joys of self-love; social joys were joys of vanity; but Ivan Ilyich's true joys were the joys of playing vint.
In ch. IV the strange taste in his mouth and the weight in his side spoil his mood and the family's table. The famous doctor treats him as he used to treat defendants, and Ivan Ilyich recognizes it:
Все было точно так же, как в суде. Как он в суде делал вид над подсудимыми, так точно над ним знаменитый доктор делал тоже вид., It was all exactly as in court. Just as he used to put on an air before the defendants, so the famous doctor put on an air before him.
He starts living on medicines and on listening to the pain, consults other doctors, and, one night at vint, loses at Slam without caring about his partner's suffering. In ch. V his brother-in-law's look leads him to the mirror, and alone at night he understands:
Не в слепой кишке, не в почке дело, а в жизни и… смерти. Да, жизнь была и вот уходит, уходит, и я не могу удержать ее., Not the appendix, not the kidney; the matter is life and... death. Yes, life existed, and now it is going away, going away, and I cannot hold it back.
In ch. VI he cannot apply to himself the syllogism he learned at school:
Тот пример силлогизма, которому он учился в логике Кизеветера: Кай — человек, люди смертны, потому Кай смертен, казался ему во всю его жизнь правильным только по отношению к Каю, но никак не к нему, That example of syllogism he studied in Kiesewetter's logic, Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had all his life seemed correct only in relation to Caius, and in no way to him.
He looks for the screens he had before, the court and the drawing room, and the pain goes right through them. Before the curtain, he reaches the conclusion that horrifies him:
И правда, что здесь, на этой гардине, я, как на штурме, потерял жизнь. Неужели? Как ужасно и как глупо!, And it is true that here, on this curtain, I lost my life as in an assault. Can it be? How horrible, and how stupid!
In ch. VII, in the third month, the torment is everyone's lie and, along with it, the wish to be consoled like a child, which he hides when his colleague Shebek comes to visit him:
Главное мучение Ивана Ильича была ложь, — та, всеми почему-то признанная ложь, что он только болен, а не умирает, Ivan Ilyich's main torment was the lie, that lie accepted by everyone for some reason, that he was merely ill and not dying.
хотелось того, чтоб его, как дитя больное, пожалел бы кто-нибудь. Ему хотелось, чтоб его приласкали, поцеловали, поплакали бы над ним, как ласкают и утешают детей., He wanted someone to feel sorry for him, as for a sick child. He wanted to be caressed, kissed, and wept over, as children are caressed and comforted.
Only Gerasim relieves him, holding his legs (The Legs on Gerasim's Shoulders).
In ch. VIII the whole day belongs to doctors, and in the evening the family, which he himself had encouraged to take the box, goes to see Sarah Bernhardt. In ch. IX opium pushes him into a black sack (The Black Bag), he weeps over cruelty and the absence of God, the voice of the soul asks him whether he lived well and pleasantly, and he dismisses the only hypothesis that would explain the horror:
«Может быть, я жил не так, как должно?» — приходило ему вдруг в голову. «Но как же не так, когда я делал все как следует?», Could it be that I have not lived as I should? it suddenly came into his head. But how could that be, when I did everything as I ought? he said to himself.
In ch. X, with his face turned to the back of the sofa, he lives only on memory, which runs back to childhood (The Light):
Одна точка светлая там, назади, в начале жизни, а потом все чернее и чернее и все быстрее и быстрее., One bright point back there, at the beginning of life, and then everything blacker and blacker, and faster and faster.
In ch. XI, before the sleepy face of Gerasim, the hypothesis he had dismissed imposes itself:
а что, как и в самом деле вся моя жизнь, сознательная жизнь, была «не то», and what if, in fact, my whole life, my conscious life, was «not that»?
He agrees to confess and take communion at his wife's request, and feels relief and hope; her question, whether he is not better, gives him back his hatred. In ch. XII he screams for three days, held in the black sack by the conviction that his life was good:
Пролезть же ему мешает признанье того, что жизнь его была хорошая., What keeps him from getting through is the acknowledgment that his life was good.
At the end of the third day his son kisses his hand, he feels pity for the boy and his wife, tries to ask forgiveness, and says another word:
Он хотел сказать еще «прости», но сказал «пропусти», и, не в силах уже будучи поправиться, махнул рукою, зная, что поймет тот, кому надо, He wanted to say "forgive" again, but said "let it pass," and, unable to correct himself any longer, waved his hand, knowing that the one who needed to understand would understand.
He then looks for the fear of death and does not find it:
Он искал своего прежнего привычного страха смерти и не находил его. Где она? Какая смерть? Страха никакого не было, потому что и смерти не было. Вместо смерти был свет., He looked for his former, habitual fear of death, and did not find it. Where is it? What death? There was no fear at all, because there was no death either. Instead of death, there was light.
Themes Embodied
Ivan Ilyich embodies a life conducted entirely by an outside yardstick, and that is why he is the best judge of others and the worst of himself. The technique he learns as an examining magistrate and masters in ch. III, separating the case from what is alive, is the same one the doctor uses on him in ch. IV, and the defense that holds him in the black sack in ch. XII is the memory of having done everything as one should, that is, as the people above taught. The book lets him attribute the illness to a fall while hanging curtains, the most characteristic gesture of the life he led, and lets him get through only when his attention leaves him and goes to his son and wife.
Up to ch. IX he wants only one thing: to live as before, well and pleasantly. What he fears is not only the pain but the question of the voice of the soul, because answering that he lived wrongly would oblige him to judge his life by a criterion he does not have. What he knows is always technical: he reads the doctor's air of importance because he wore it in court, he knows the family lies because he lied his whole life in the name of decorum. Where he is mistaken is in thinking that correctness keeps him safe, and the text shows the error from the medal of ch. II, which tells someone who never looks to look to the end.
The novella is the story of his Death, but the movement that organizes it is that of Truth and Lies: first he lies to others and to himself, then he suffers the lies of others, and finally he stops lying to himself, in ch. XI and ch. XII. The question of the Meaning of Life arises only in that third stage.
Divergent Readings
The text supports two readings of his guilt. In one, Ivan Ilyich is the ordinary man, and the horror lies in what his life has in common with others: the narrator calls his life the simplest, most common, and most terrible in ch. II, the colleagues of ch. I live the same way, and his house, in ch. III, is the same as that of everyone who wants to look rich. In the other, he answers for what he stifled: in ch. XI he himself admits that the almost imperceptible impulses against what the people above called good, which he pushed away, might have been the true thing, and in ch. IX he refuses the question the voice of the soul puts to him. The first reading makes the book a portrait of a class; the second, the case of a man who had the choice before him and turned it away. The outcome of ch. XII fits both, because the passage comes when he lets go of justification, not when he is acquitted.
The weight of the communion in ch. XI also diverges. Read as a stage, it brings relief and hope and prepares the light of the next chapter; read as one more screen, the hope it brings returns at once to the appendix and the proposed operation, and what undoes it is a question from his wife. The text records both and does not order them.
Relationships
- Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina: the wife he married for agreeableness and correctness (ch. II), from whom he protected himself with work, and for whom he feels pity on the last day (ch. XII).
- Gerasim: the footman, the only one who does not lie and the only one with whom he feels at ease (ch. VII); before his face arises the suspicion of ch. XI.
- Pyotr Ivanovich: the colleague from the School of Jurisprudence and vint partner, who attends the wake (ch. I) and to whom he turns because of a doctor friend (ch. V).
- Schwartz: the colleague who, in ch. IV, reminds him of himself ten years earlier.
- Lisa: the daughter, whose courtship with Petrishchev her father favors (ch. III) and who goes to the theater while he gets worse (ch. VIII).
- Vasya: the schoolboy son, the only one in the family who, in his eyes, understands and feels pity (ch. VIII), and who kisses his hand at the end (ch. XII).