Now Ivan is dead
Amid a life of reasonable turmoil and great responsibilities for someone who has always been very afraid of being the central nerve of anything, I decided to get myself into reading some of the books that passed me by while I was preparing my path toward the mound of dirt where I now reside.
The most economical option was always buying a Kindle, which I even brought from my homeland many years ago. However, I admit that even as someone who does not put much faith in individual recycling efforts, it bothers me to be such a prolific producer of electronic waste merely because I live in a “first-world” country and have an Amazon Prime subscription.
Physical books are a pain to deal with by comparison. The ergonomics are often terrible, and it is no wonder that the cheaper the book, the more uncomfortable it is to read. And then there is the space they occupy, when the norm is to live in “cramped apartments” where space for books amounts, at most, to shelves that can hold a few paperbacks, and even that is pushing it...
However, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a paperback whose Penguin Books edition is more than appropriate for a very comfortable reading experience. And I appreciate the dichotomy between the comfort of the book itself and Tolstoy’s story about the death of the aforementioned individual.
I always want to avoid “spoilers” in these reviews, and here I think that is quite easy, not least because the story itself is not some great elaborate plot like those in other Tolstoy books I bought and have already seen are true doorstoppers. Quite the opposite.
The plot is simple: Ivan Ilyich, a high-ranking judicial official in some Russian state, has died. And his death is treated in the most bureaucratic way possible by those around him. As bureaucratic as his own life.
Ivan is a typical upper-middle-class man of the nineteenth century in Russia and the rest of Europe. A bureaucrat from the cradle, with a life that follows protocol in terms of developmental steps, especially professionally. Even in his personal life, Ivan clearly takes measures as though they were career moves, never sentimental ones.
Only the “pain” that foreshadows his death, with a wake that is also quite protocol-driven and already dissected in the book’s early chapters, brings Ivan even a drop of self-reflection. But in his complete lack of depth as a person, in direct contrast with his professional career and his personal maneuvers, this look in the mirror reaches no further than the surface of his being.
Inevitably, in a world where people like this mere columnist seem to be walking briskly toward becoming an Ivan, it is a text that leaves you quite shaken. The book’s cover invites us to reflect on Ivan’s death as observers. But I do not know who reads this book and manages to maintain such impartiality.
Because even though Ivan is an exemplary professional, a reasonable father, and even, in a certain sense, an understanding husband considering the time in which he lived, his death itself is entirely insipid. What matters now are the career moves his colleagues can make, how his wife and children will deal with the resources coming from the inheritance and a death pension, and so on.
Here, even death is purely protocol. And I do not know whether I want something like that for myself.
Especially because the deaths I have had around me were never like this. They were also more “dramatic.” The people I lost had a great impact on many people’s lives, and the effects of the early loss of those people still have significant consequences in my life and in the lives of those around me, even almost two decades after it happened.
At the same time, why want your death to be so impactful? Would it not be better to die and let people continue on their way instead of wasting away in grief?
Whether we like it or not, expectations about people’s reactions when your life ends are a battle against one’s own egocentrism. The most ironic thing is that unless one believes, and unless it is true, that after death we are still around our loved ones, or not, no dead person will witness the impact their death will have.
So all of this is merely an exercise for those who have the privilege of “life.”