Novelat “Vdekja e Ivan Iliçit” dhe “Ç’i mban gjallë njerëzit” të L.N. Tolstoit janë një paraqitje mjeshtërore e gjendjes shpirtërore të individit. “Vdekja e Ivan Iliçit” është për Tolstoin një simbol që paraqet një analizë psikologjike dhe filozofike të jetës dhe të vdekjes. Këto novela mund t’i quajmë pa ngurrim si perlat e letërsisë klasike.

Ivan Iliç, një gjykatës rus, duke parandier vdekjen, i rrëfehet vetvetes, paraqet gjithë etapat e jetës së tij të qendërzuara mbi fanitjet dhe sigurinë iluzore që ai shpresonte të siguronte për vetveten dhe për të tjerët në emër të drejtësisë. Po kështu edhe novela tjetër është një himn mbi jetën dhe dashurinë

Simplesmente incrível. ( )

Bleak Classic Brilliance

I have to admit it took me a while to warm up to this, before it utterly chilled me. Beautiful, heartbreaking writing charting the life, death, and regrets of one man performed wonderfully by Simon Prebble.

As someone with chronic conditions and a lot of pain, this definitely hits different.

Just awfully well observed humanity in its crumbling. ( )

There were a couple wryly funny moments, and the "moral of the story" is good and all, but I was completely bored while reading this. ( )

Over this past year, I’ve had a goal of reading more classics, and one of the ones that I put on my TBR list this past month was The Death of Ivan Illych. I was excited to read another Leo Tolstoy book—it’s probably been a good 15 years since I read anything he wrote, and what I remember of his stories is that they were pretty good.

Since this is a reasonably short story, divided into chapters, I didn’t find it a difficult read. It was a bit slower than some books I’ve read, but that’s to be expected. I really enjoyed a few observations through the story—for example, one man sat down “on a low ottoman with deranged springs which yielded spasmodically under his weight.” (That description tickled my funny bone!) I also got a good chuckle out of a relatively dry observation in chapter two about how governments reward people for faithful service by giving them fictitious jobs (“and by no means fictitious thousands”).

The story itself wasn’t all that striking, I found. It’s the story of a man dying from some sort of illness—likely cancer—and how he came to realize that he had, in effect, wasted his entire life. I did appreciate the inference that if we pour into others and have a relationship with God, we will have a much happier end—even if we do end up with broken health at the end of our lives.

This story wasn’t nearly as memorable as some of the other Tolstoy stories I remember hearing or reading over the years, but I’m glad to be back in a space where I’m excited about reading his stories, and I’m looking forward to the next story I read from his pen! ( )