Schwartz

Who He Is

Schwartz is a colleague of Pyotr Ivanovich and of Ivan Ilyich Golovin at the Judicial Chamber, appearing on stage only in chapter I and remembered in a sentence in chapter IV. At the wake, the narrator shows him through the eyes of Pyotr Ivanovich: English-style sideburns, a thin figure in a tailcoat, an elegant solemnity that contradicts his playful character and that, there, takes on a special piquancy. He says nothing in direct speech: he speaks with winks, eyebrows and glances, and the narrator translates what they say.

Trajectory

In chapter I he comes down the stairs of the dead man's house, sees Pyotr Ivanovich come in, stops and winks at him, as if to say that Ivan Ilyich made a poor arrangement and that the two of them are better off. He stays at the top of the stairs to arrange where they will play Vint that night, and with a movement of his eyebrows points Pyotr to the dead man's room. Then he waits for him in the anteroom, legs apart, toying with his top hat behind his back, and his clean, elegant figure refreshes Pyotr: that man is above dejection and is not overcome by sad impressions. When the widow announces the mass, he bows in an indefinite way, neither accepting nor refusing. On seeing Pyotr led away by the widow, he winks at him sadly: there goes the vint; they will find another partner, or play five-handed once he is free. Shortly afterward, in the pink room, when fear takes hold of Pyotr Ivanovich, it is Schwartz's face that confirms the customary idea:

In chapter IV, with Ivan Ilyich already ill, his colleagues make light of his suspicions, and what irritates him most is Schwartz, for his liveliness, his jesting and his comme il faut, which recall Ivan Ilyich himself ten years before.

Themes Embodied

Schwartz embodies Appearance and Reality in its purest state: a form without any shaking within, a tailcoat solemnity in the service of a man who thinks about cards before a coffin. That is why he works as a mirror in the two chapters where he appears: in chapter I Pyotr Ivanovich measures himself against him so as not to be overcome, and in chapter IV Ivan Ilyich sees himself in him as he was ten years earlier. He is what Ivan Ilyich once was, and what the illness takes from him.

The text gives him no thoughts: what he wants is the game, what he fears does not appear, what he knows is that he is above it all. The reading that reduces him to cynicism runs into a detail in chapter I: the wink about the postponed vint is sad, and the narrator chooses the word. His decorum includes a gesture of regret, of exactly the size the situation calls for, and it is this, and not a lack of regret, that makes him the portrait of comme il faut that chapter IV names.

Relationships

• Pyotr Ivanovich: the colleague with whom he arranges the vint and on whom he leans against dejection (chapter I).
• Ivan Ilyich Golovin: the dead man of chapter I and the sick man who gets irritated with him in chapter IV.