What It Is
The house that Ivan Ilyich Golovin sets up alone in the new city, in chapter III, and above all the drawing room: wallpaper, old furniture bought cheaply that gives everything a noble air, bronzes, Japanese plates on the walls, the pink chintz on which he consulted a colleague, the albums arranged with love. It is the pride of his life, the place where he falls from the ladder, the screen that hides the idea of death and, at the wake, the setting in which the living fulfill decorum.
Where It Appears
In chapter I, Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina leads Pyotr Ivanovich into the room lined with pink chintz; he sits on a low ottoman with broken springs, which rebels beneath him each time he gets up to free the widow's mantilla lace from the table, and he recalls that Ivan Ilyich had consulted him about that very chintz. In the dining room next door, the clock that the dead man bought at a bric-a-brac shop and was so fond of.
In chapter III Ivan Ilyich finds the apartment, sees to every detail himself, falls from the little ladder while hanging the curtains (The Fall and the Curtain), and everyone finds the house charming. The narrator says what it was:
В сущности же, было то самое, что бывает у всех не совсем богатых людей, но таких, которые хотят быть похожими на богатых и потому только похожи друг на друга, In truth, it was exactly what one finds in the homes of all people who are not very rich, but who want to look like the rich, and so only look like one another.
Once it is finished, the house irritates him over any stain on the tablecloth or broken curtain cord, because he put so much work into it; and the family, without agreeing, keeps away the poor relatives who used to come to the room of the Japanese plates.
In chapter VI, looking for screens against death, he enters the room, notices a scratch on the lacquered table, traces the cause to the bent bronze ornament of an album, is irritated by the carelessness of his daughter, Lisa, and of her friends, and decides to move the albums around. While he argues with his wife and daughter he does not think of death, until his wife speaks of him hurting himself again:
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 awful, and how stupid!
In chapter VII the lie around him reduces death to the level of visits, curtains and the sturgeon at dinner, and in chapter VIII the sick man's room is always the same, with the same paintings, curtains, wallpaper and bottles.
What It Means
The room is Appearance and Reality made into an object: Ivan Ilyich takes it to be unique, and it is the same as that of everyone who wants to look rich. It serves as the setting for the decorum of the living in chapter I, where the rebellious ottoman is the only thing in the room that does not obey, and as a screen in chapter VI, where arranging an album makes one forget death for a few minutes.
The book shows the room twice from the same point: the object Ivan Ilyich chose with care. The chintz on which he consulted Pyotr Ivanovich in chapter I and the album he composed with love in chapter VI are the proofs of a taste that the narrator of chapter III has already said is not his own but that of the class he imitates. Two readings of his care fit the text. In one, it is vanity, that of the social joys which chapter III calls the joys of vanity. In the other, it is the only place where he puts work and affection outside the service, and that is why the scratch on the table wounds him so much. Both end in the same sentence of chapter VI: losing one's life over a curtain is horrible and stupid.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Appearance and Reality.
- Themes of the work: Appearance and Reality, Truth and Lies.
- Characters: Ivan Ilyich Golovin, Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina, Pyotr Ivanovich, Lisa.
- Neighboring symbols: the fall and the curtain, because the fall happens while the room is being set up; the vint, the other decorous pleasure of the new house.