Shannon asked:

I am writing a paper for university on Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Illyich" and I was wondering if
you had any suggestions on how Tolstoy attacks society and its hypocrisy.

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It is certainly true that Tolstoy does attack society and its hypocrisy. In philosophical terms the crux of
Tostoy's 'critique' arises from the distinction made between being and appearance. For Tolstoy,
society is a superficial place of glamour, appearances and illusion, where one loses oneself in the
reflections of other people and in other people's reflections. Finding oneself is a matter of the soul, not
so much of soul-searching, but of allowing for a soulfulness, which Tolstoy defined along fairly strict
ascetical lines. In the background is the influence of Schopenhauer, but this had waned by the time of
Ivan Ilyich.

Influencing this work is Tolstoy's love-hate relationship with Russian Orthodoxy. He was especially
taken by the devotion and piety of the Old Believers and the staretzmovement that had revitalised
monasticism at that time. While these two movements are not complimentary, they are both
anti-social. They are intent to "render unto God" rather than Caesar, and for them, as for Jesus in the
second temptation, when Satan takes him up a mountain to see the kingdoms of the world and extent
of the power that could be his, the Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar are at odds. To find
oneself, one needs to seek the realm of the Spirit. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole
world if he is to lose his very soul? — as the rhetorical question in the Gospels has it.

The story is a parable and a wake up call. It still functions just as powerfully in this regard today.

Through Ivan we are shown the vanity of the social world, constituted, governed and soaked as it is
by inauthenticity. Illness is the event that turns Ivan back to his soul-self and makes him wonder what
it is to live(section ix). This had been so obvious before he had never stopped to ask it, nor had
anyone else, nor, most likely has Tolstoy's reader, hence the parable. Reality as Ivan had known it
was "as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up." Illness leading to death is the
first authentic thing that happens in the life of Ivan Illych. But, even more darkly, an authentic relation
to oneself in the world is yet to happento those whom he leaves behind; which is the reader's own
realm, so that the story points directly at us as well, to make us question ourselves (the parable
again, typical of late Tolstoy). By contrast, authentic living (like that of Ivan's serf, who supports his
foot) is that which takes account of our mortality. The story doubles (hence its tremendous power) as
contemporary a meditation on death. It is one of the great modern meditations on death, if not the
greatest.

Tolstoy doesn't tell us how to live, or how to die. But he presents us in the most graphic terms
imaginable with the fact that these are the questions.And anything we do must begin with them.

Matthew Del Nevo

http://www.sicetnon.com