A treatise on the life and death of Ivan Ilyich

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Any words or expressions I could write would detract from the feeling I got when I read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leon Tolstoy. The central theme of this short novel by the Russian writer is death. But don't be fooled into thinking that the book is easy to read because it's only 66 pages long. It's difficult to digest. The only certainty we have in life is that we are born and that we die. But when it comes to death, we are not prepared to deal with it.

Death. But what is death? Religions have their own theories about death. But the real truth is that we don't really like to think about it. We spend our lives forgetting about it. But suddenly, it appears. I remember my grandmother saying: death is a mystery. So it is. It is precisely this mystery that torture us when we stop to reflect on death. That's why it's more comforting not to think too much about it.

So what can we say about this novel by Tolstoy? Written in 1886, this is a work that speaks of the common man, of the banality of existence, of how he, the central character of this work, makes life mechanical and bureaucratic. He is a bureaucrat and spends his existence living this way, without any great dreams or aspirations.

Well, let's get to the plot. He's a law judge who applies the law bureaucratically, so as not to get involved in the issues. Just operating the law. Apparently happy and fulfilled in this way as a young man - he really believes he has achieved success - he also decides to marry a woman, whom he doesn't love that much, and who also lives an average life with him. Everything in life becomes so-so. Until the day this coexistence becomes unbearable and lasts for 20 years, until his death. The fact is that the work makes us reflect on why people become so comfortable with life, with the way they live and with the people around them, that they give up feeling pleasure, love and the will to live.

That's basically what the book is about, the life and death of Ivan Ilyich, a bureaucratic and even boring man who dies of an undiagnosed illness.

But what else is there in this novel to be so renowned and to have become a classic of Russian and world literature literature, and to stand out in Tolstoy's oeuvre?

So let's get down to it: what this work and makes it a punch in the gut for those who read it is precisely the way how death, something that is inevitable and that we human beings are the only beings on earth to be aware of it, is portrayed.

An apparently happy life in his youth. An unbearable life after a few years of marriage, in which the main character preferred to spend more time at work than at home. A total disconnection from his children. And, at the age of 45, he dies, aware that he was dying. And then I ask myself: what about what he lived? And what did he love? And what did he know of life?

In Before I Leave, the author, a nurse, recounts the common regrets of terminally ill patients. Many of these regrets are directly related to something they didn't do. You didn't have the courage to do something, you didn't love more, you didn't have an experience... That feeling of not having lived the way you would have liked must be very painful. And that's exactly what this book is about.

Ivan Ilyich, on the verge of death realizes that his life should have been different. And this feeling gives the emptiness in the character. Among the many things he observes at that moment is that he didn't want to die and that he should have spent more time with his children. children. Painfully, he also notices people's reactions to his death. his death.

Having said all that, I confess that it wasn't an easy read for me. A small book that was very difficult to to digest. And you, what was your perception of Tolstoy's novel? What did you found? Let me know in the comments and I'll see if you also got punched in the stomach, just like me.