What It Is
The light (свет) that runs through the life of Ivan Ilyich Golovin at four points: the well-placed society toward which he flies like a moth, in chapter II, because in Russian the same word means both light and fashionable society; the light missing from his eyes when he falls ill, in chapter V; the luminous point of childhood, in chapter X; and the light that takes the place of death, in chapter XII.
Where It Appears
In chapter II, as a boy and a young man, he takes his bearings from the best-placed people:
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 moth to light, was drawn to the best-placed people in society, adopted their manners and their views of life, and formed friendships with them.
In chapter V the brother-in-law tells his sister that Ivan Ilyich is a dead man, that there is no light in his eyes, and at night the sick man himself says the same thing in another way:
То свет был, а теперь мрак. То я здесь был, а теперь туда! Куда?, There was light, and now there is darkness. I was here, and now I am going there! Where?
In chapter X, turned toward the back of the sofa, he lives on memory, and his whole life turns into a line that darkens:
Одна точка светлая там, назади, в начале жизни, а потом все чернее и чернее и все быстрее и быстрее., One bright point there, behind, at the beginning of life, and then everything blacker and blacker and faster and faster.
In chapter XII, as he falls into the hole of the black bag (The Black Bag), something shines at the bottom; at that same moment his son, Vasya, kisses his hand, and he feels pity for the boy and for his wife. Then he searches for his old fear of death:
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 searched for his usual fear of death, the one from before, and could not find it. Where is it? What death? There was no fear at all, because there was no death either. In place of death there was light.
He says aloud: so that is it! What joy!
What It Means
The light is the measure of where Ivan Ilyich places life. In chapter II it lies outside him, in the society he adjusts to; in chapter V it is missing from his eyes; in chapter X it exists only behind him, in childhood; in chapter XII it returns, and it returns in the exact place where he had expected death. The movement is that of the Meaning of Life: the life that rose in the eyes of society and sank inside ends with the light found below, at the bottom of the hole.
The book brings the light back only after two gestures: the fall into the hole, which is ceasing to defend oneself, and the pity of the son and the wife, which is ceasing to think of oneself. Two readings of the ending fit the text. In one, the light is religious, and the communion of chapter XI prepares it, even though the hope it brings comes undone. In the other, it is the moral discovery of chapter XII itself: the light comes when attention passes from the self to others, and the text places both things in the same instant. In both, what ends is fear, and with it death, as Ivan Ilyich repeats to himself when someone beside him says that it is over.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Death, Meaning of Life.
- Themes of the work: Death, Meaning of Life.
- Characters: Ivan Ilyich Golovin, Vasya.
- Neighboring symbols: the black bag, from whose depths the light shines.