The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man (Modern Library Classics) by Leo Tolstoy (EPUB)

Description

This new edition combines Tolstoy’s most famous short tale, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, with a less well known but equally brilliant gem, Master and Man, both newly translated by Ann Pasternak Slater. Both stories confront death and the process of dying: In Ivan Ilyich, a bureaucrat looks back over his life, which suddenly seems meaningless and wasteful, while in Master and Man, a landowner and servant must each confront the value of the other as they brave a devastating snowstorm. The quintessential Tolstoyan themes of mortality, spiritual redemption, and life’s meaning are nowhere more movingly and deftly explored than in these two tales. This unique edition also includes a critical Introduction and extensive notes by Ann Pasternak Slater, a Fellow at St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Book was bent when it arrived

⭐An easy read, but a very complex message. Every time you think about Tolstoy stories you uncover new layers

⭐In the end as death approaches Ivan Ilyich gives himself credit for living a right life. That is, he considers that he has lived a life which fulfills the expectations that he has had for himself. He has after all become a successful and even influential magistrate in the judicial council. Essentially, he considers himself an ethical man. The question which which torments him, as he approaches the end of his life, is whether he led the right life. Did he lead a life that was the best possible one for him? It’s one thing to become educated, marry, have children, work hard and die. It’s quite another to choose a life which is fulfilling. “There is no explanation. Suffering, death … for what?” he asks. He becomes consumed with the question as to what is the point of his life? And he has no satisfying answers to this question. His ultimate judgment is upon himself and yet the verdict lacks clarity. Ultimately, to his colleagues the greatest importance is who will take his place upon the judicial council after he is gone. The irony is rich in this story by Tolstoy who has a gift for defning the great questions of life (How Much Land Does a Man Need?) You can never do wrong by reading Tolstoy: this is a very fine and accessible piece of writing beautiflly and lyrically translated by Ann Pasternak Slater.

⭐This review is for the Modern Library release of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and “Master and Man.”Death is obviously something that people don’t want to talk about, or even think about. We’re always afraid of dying, unless you’re someone who doesn’y really give a crap about yourself or the world. But what does this fear mean? Can there be a good side to death? What will happen to those around us once we’ve passed? These are just some of the questions that that we ask ourselves once we delve into these two short stories. In “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” a disease is killing a man of success, while in “Master and Man,” a peasant and his master are trapped in the middle of a heavy snowstorm. While both stories are different, both deal with death and what happens (and what we think) when we’re about to pass away. I won’t give much on what happens (you might know what happens in “Ilyich” just by the title, but there’s actually more to it in the story), but these short stories have to be some of the finest from Tolstoy. I don’t think I’ve ever read such powerful tales about death before. It really shows you how marvelous this author really is.A little reminder, though: “Ilyich” is a bit depressing, so don’t read it until you have the heart to.

⭐Not only are Tolstoy’s stories enjoyable with their touching detail and, do contain valuable messages, they, are also beneficial in developing our writing skills.Death of Ivan Ilych: An upper middle class man is consumed with how to deal with the prospect of his death: the increasing pain in his body, and the question of why; the self-analyzing, the self-pity, anger, to finally, the last hours–acceptance. It is a dreadfully sad and pathetic story but with a glimmer of hope. It captures the human soul.Master and Man: A landowner and his worker travel the winter countryside through a peasant area in Russia drawn by a single horse sledge. The landowner has a business deal waiting for him and time is of the essence. He believes it will come to be lucrative as he gives much thought on it. Defying the weather they end up stranded in a severe snowstorm. The next day they are discovered buried under the snow. The worker is found alive with the frozen body of the landowner on top of him. The horse too is frozen. In the end, the perceived wealth did not matter, only the life of his worker.

⭐The marvel of Tolstoy is his instinctive grasp of the desperate choices humans face in life.He has an uncanny skill in both portraying our ability to love and hate, as well as our motivations and fears. When reading his stories, I often feel myself completely succumbing to his world, as if I’ve known the characters my whole life. The deep emotional and intellectual resonance of his works stay with me long after I close the pages.Such a work is The Death of Ivan Ilych, a short story published in 1886.In it, the reader can see the roots of the moral questions that Tolstoy himself will wrestle with his whole life. The primary question being: what is a good life?For Ivan Ilych, he had answered this question by leading a life that was, “the most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible”. A dutiful Russian bureaucrat, his navigated life by relying on the good sense of society to decide what was proper. His chief pleasure came from a sense of his own power over inferiors, and secondary pleasures from playing bridge and indulging in bourgeoisie tastes at home.Yet throughout this innocent ascendance in social position, there were cracks that betrayed a denial of the truth underneath the life of “legality, correctitude, and propriety”. The truth at last manifested itself in the form of physical and psychological pain, plaguing him endlessly and making life more miserable than death. Faced with this curse and sensing death’s close presence, Ivan Ilych began to wonder, “What if my whole life had been wrong?”.Ilych looked backed at his life, and realized suddenly, “all that for which he had lived- and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death. This consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold.”The book ends without answering the question of what is the right life, and the only clue the reader is left with is the fresh and sunny image of Gerásim, a peasant in Ilych’s household. Gerásim alone sympathized with his master’s pain. Yet, his simple nature was unperturbed by the thought of death, and presumably his close relationship with nature allowed him to view it as a natural cycle.In Gerásim’s character, one can see Tolstoy’s admiration for the life-affirming powers of the countryside, which is echoed in Anna Karenina and other works.Tolstoy peeled back the layers of ordinary life to remonstrate against its lack of meaning, but because he was just as human as his characters, he could not show the path to a correct life. He leaves us with the image of Ivan Ilych screaming during his last days in anguish, encapsulating a hidden existential malaise that Tolstoy would struggle with his whole life.thelittlebirdsong.com

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