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    The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Unavailable
    The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Unavailable
    The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Ebook566 pages10 hours

    The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    By Leo Tolstoi and David Goldfarb

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories, by Elizabeth Gaskell, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics  series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.

    Chief among Tolstoy’s shorter works is The Death of Ivan Ilych, a masterful meditation on the act of dying. The first major fictional work published by Tolstoy after a mid-life psychological crisis, this novella reflects the author’s struggle to find meaning in life, a challenge Tolstoy resolved by developing a religious philosophy based on brotherly love, mutual support, and charity. These guiding principles are the dominant moral themes in The Death of Ivan Ilych, an account of the spiritual conversion of a judge—an ordinary, unthinking, vulgar man—in the face of his terrible fear about death.

    Also included in this volume are Family Happiness, an early work that traces the arc of a marriage; The Kreutzer Sonata, a frank tale of sexual love that shocked readers when it first appeared; and Hadji Murád, Tolstoy’s final masterpiece about power politics, intrigue, and colonial conquest.

    David Goldfarb teaches Polish, Russian, and Comparative Literature at Barnard College and Columbia University. He has written about Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Mikhail Lermontov, and Nikolai Gogol.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411432079
    Unavailable
    The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Author

    Leo Tolstoi

    Leo Tolstoy grew up in Russia, raised by a elderly aunt and educated by French tutors while studying at Kazen University before giving up on his education and volunteering for military duty. When writing his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy drew upon his diaries for material. At eighty-two, while away from home, he suffered from declining health and died in Astapovo, Riazan in 1910.

    Read more from Leo Tolstoi

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    Reviews for The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Exquisitely crafted short stories. One of a small list of books i'll re-read. Ivan Ilych doesn't waste a word in illuminating the soul's contents. Brilliant flashes of humor throughout lighten the agony.
    • 4/5
      Includes Family Happiness, The Death of Ivan Illych, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Master and Man. Together they present a soulful look at 19th century Russia and explore the ideas of love, sacrifice, redemption and eudaimonia.
    • 5/5
      Reading this short novel reminded me of some of the existentialist works that I have read and studied over the years. Tolstoy's meditation on the death of an everyman, a bureaucrat whose life was anything but uncommon. Effortlessly, Tolstoy examines life’s shallow exteriors as well as its inner workings. And in the quotidian details of a life we see pageant of folly. Only slowly does wisdom emerge not like a dull moral lesson, but heavy, as if from a downpour, with all the weight, shine and freshness of real life. We see, vividly, Ivan Ilych’s errors until one day we realize that someone is looking at us as if we were a character in The Death of Ivan Ilych. This is a small book with a large impact on the reader. It is one that has not lost its power more than a century after its first appearance. In addition to The Death of Ivan Ilych this volume also includes the stories: The Kreutzer Sonata, Hadji Murad, and Family Happiness.
    • 4/5
      This particular volume contains three of Tolstoy’s shorter works: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Happy Ever After, and The Cossacks. A common theme that I found within them was a growing dissatisfaction by the protagonist with living according to the norms of their particular culture. At some point the central character in each story awakened to the fact that they were living a life that, while full of material goods, was empty morally and/or spiritually. The way in which this realization was addressed differed in each story, and each of the protagonists found themselves at a destination that was unique when compared to the others. And while I found this particular theme “connecting” the stories, they were each very unique stories in and of themselves. I found The Death of Ivan Ilyich to be enthralling from start to finish. As a teaser to encourage you to read the story I’ll share the mindset of Ilyich’s wife after he dies. She laments that his mournful wailing over the final three days of his life was virtually unbearable for her to endure, without displaying even the least amount of compassion for the pain her husband was suffering through. I have not read Tolstoy much, nor for a long time, but taking in this easy-to-read collection is spurring me on to dig into his work anew.
    • 3/5
      There are obviously a lot of books called 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories.' The volume I read had Ivan, The Cossacks, and Happily Ever After (aka Family Happiness.) There's not too much to say- it seems that if you've read any Tolstoy, you know the general thrust; depressing, but with at least apparently uplifting endings in which characters come to do and feel the right thing. DII and Cossacks are both great (four stars each), but if I was going to read one, it'd be the Cossacks. HEA is pretty dull (two stars), although important for Tolstoy's biography according to the introduction. So if you care about that sort of thing, you'll get something out of it.
      As a side note, the translation is a little strange (minus one star). Translation-ese is rarely good prose, but it can be (e.g., the older translations of Proust). Edmonds seems to have gone for transparency here, with no concern for the language. Which is fine, except that having read Pevear & Volokhonsky's War and Peace, I know that it can be done better. So you should read the Cossacks, but maybe in a different translation.

      In sum: 4 4 3 - 1 = 10. 10/3 = roughly three.
    • 4/5
      A short story about life and death and the mental suffering that results at the end of a life lived without meaning. For a book written in the 1800's, I found this to be still relevant today. It is the very common story of a man who throws himself into his work when he finds himself dissatisfied with his home life. His focus becomes about upward mobility but as he reflects at the end of his life "It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up." A very short read, if you haven't read this classic yet it is worth the day to do it.
    • 4/5
      This one was recommended to me by a friend who has since passed away. He reminisced on this as the book that changed the way he looked at life. I read it shortly after he passed away, to feel a bit closer and to help me through the grieving process. It was a good one but definitely quite depressing.
    • 4/5
      The chronology of this is wonderful. It begins with the end, making the reader question why we should care, and then builds up, creating this flawed but sympathetic character going through life crises most of us can empathize with, before...A phenomenal ending that couldn't have gone any other way.
    • 5/5
      Wow... This is such an unpleasant and disturbing read. In the Keutzer Sonata we've come lightyears, it would seem, from the Tolstoy I thought I knew. The Death of Ivan Ilych is as brilliant as anything else, but the Keutzer Sonata is the taint of Tolstoy's entire career in my opinion. Brilliant, in purely aesthetical terms, as always with Tolstoy, but the beliefs espoused in this novella (obviously Tolstoy's own) is so far removed from todays and seem so harsh and unrelenting that it becomes almost unbearable. I don't know what to think of it all. I loved Ivan Ilych so much that I would like to give it something beyond perfection, but felt so repulsed by the sonata that it rocked the entire pedestal upon which I had placed Tolstoy. It might just keel over...
    • 4/5
      this is a book i tried to read many years ago...i only made it halfway through the first story ("Family Happiness") before i quit and decided i hated it...so i just gave it another chance and made it through this time...which was a good thing, i guess...i still didn't like "Family Happiness" but the other three stories ("The Death and Ivan Ilych," "The Kreutzer Sonata," and "Master and Man") were pretty good...i gave it 3.5 stars, and if it weren't for the one story dragging it down i might've given it 4 stars...
    • 5/5
      A great collection from a master prose stylist. These stories are part of why I love to read.
    • 4/5
      The writing and the characters were so precise. Tolstoy's negative views of life and overall relationships was quite distressing. My copy (1960) included also Family Happiness, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Master and Man.