| | Tolstoy Leo : Death of Ivan Ilych (Sc) (Signet Classics) |  | Author: Leo Tolstoy
Publisher: Penguin Books Australia Ltd
Category: Book
Buy Used: £1.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1331541
Media: Paperback
Pages: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
ISBN: 0451516761
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780451516763
ASIN: 0451516761
Publication Date: August 1, 1987
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships from the USA - please expect 7 - 21 business days for delivery.
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| Customer Reviews:
Excellent collection of stories about the human condition September 29, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A very good collection of short stories, worthy as an introduction to Tolstoy for those who aren't ready to tackle War and Peace or Anna Karenina. They have much to say about the human condition, the nature of love and desire, marriage, family relationships and death, and as such have relevance for readers in many countries and cultures.
Family Happiness is probably the least good of the quartet, lacking the passion and drama of the other three stories. It is a study of the changing nature of love in the marriage between a young girl and an older man (though he is only in his late 30s!).
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is one I have just read separately, so I did not re-read it in this collection. For the sake of completeness here though: this concerns the thoughts and feelings of a man towards his family and those around him as he gets progressively more ill and is then dying from a wasting disease that sounds like cancer. The opening chapters are quite light-hearted with some ruefully amusing reflections on marriage and attitudes towards ones career, but then the mood becomes much darker and he ends being cynical about his family, seeing them as wishing his death to come sooner so they can be free of the burden of caring for him.
The Kreutzer Sonata is a very powerful story about the breakdown of a marriage, with some very advanced for the time (1889) views on how marriages evolve and how couples can grow to take each other for granted and eventually become actively hostile without wanting to grow apart. Tolstoy's postscript, published following the banning of the story in Russia and elsewhere, and concerning the moral superiority of celibacy, somewhat detracts from the dramatic impact of the ending, though.
The Devil is a powerful tale about how a nobleman's passion for the object of a former fling with a peasant wife destroys his seemingly happy marriage through obsession. There are two endings, the published one where he kills himself and the alternative one where he kills the object of his obsession.
An excellent collection, some of the best Russian literature of its type.
Catastrophic November 5, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
These stories give an excellent view of Tolstoy's vision on the real nature of man, his place in our world, on sex, marriage and women, on man's ultimate destiny and on morals.
For Tolstoy, man as a species is barely more than an animal incapable of controlling his `animal passion'. More, `it is perhaps better that people should be pure animals, then they would not suffer from death and disease.'
In `The Devil', the main character commits suicide because he cannot control his sexual drive ('his swinish life'). In `The Kreutzer Sonata', the main character knows his wife `only as an animal and nothing can restrain an animal.'
To have sex is `necessary for physical health', but the solution lays in no way in marriage.
In `Family Happiness', the novelty of the first years of marriage (`the wild delight') turns into routine. Pure love for her man becomes `love for her children and the father of her children.'
But in `The Death of Ivan Ilyich', `conjugal love was in reality a very intricate and different business.' And, in `The Devil', marriage is not less than sin, `a deviation from the doctrine of Christ'.
`The Kreutzer Sonata' is not less than the killing of marriage as an institute.
For sex one needs a partner. Here, L. Tolstoy shows his serious misogyny. In `The Devil' it is crystal clear who the devil is and who constantly reminds the main character of his sexual drive. In `The Kreutzer Sonata': `that the women of our society have other interest in life than prostitutes, but I say no.'
The only solution then is chastity and celibacy, in other words the extinction of mankind. Tolstoy has absolutely no problem with this outcome, for in any case science tells us that mankind is doomed with the death of the sun!
Chastity and celibacy makes of man still more an island. In `The Death of Ivan Ilyich', the main character `cried at his awful loneliness, the cruelty of people, the cruelty and the absence of God.'
If celibacy is Tolstoy's ideal of humanity what should man do? `Family Happiness' gives us the answer: `in life there is only one certain happiness - living for others.'
As science has proven, pure altruism is a synonym for evolutionary death.
This extremely emotionally driven short stories reveal clearly Tolstoy's demons and his catastrophic vision on mankind.
Not to be missed.
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