Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession

I am grateful for the support and encouragement of my editor Robert Weil and his team at W. W. Norton. Also to my wife Eleo and daughter Charlotte.

Peter Carson

Peter was not well enough to write his own introduction. However, he would have been thrilled and honored that two authors to whom he was close stepped in at the final stages: Mary Beard, who wrote the introduction, and Rosamund Bartlett, who wrote A Note on the Translations.

Eleo Carson

PETER CARSON studied Russian while on national service in the British Navy at the Joint Services School for Linguists in Scotland and London. At home he spoke Russianhis mother Tatiana Staheyeff and her family escaped from Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. His working life was spent on the editorial side of publishing where for many years he was editor in chief of Penguin Books in the UK. In 1998 he was asked by Andrew Franklin to join him at Profile Books and he worked with his authors until his death in January 2013.

A professor of classics at Cambridge University, mary beard is the author of the best-selling The Fires ofVesuvius. A popular blogger and television presenter, she contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books. She lives in England.

ROSAMUND BARTLETT is a scholar, writer, and translator whose books include acclaimed biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, as well as edited volumes on Shostakovich and the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun. Her Chekhov anthology About Love and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Translation Prize, while her Chekhov: A Life in Letters is the first uncensored edition in any language. Her new translation of Anna Karenina will be published by Oxford Worlds Classics in 2014.

I

DURING A BREAK IN THE HEARING OF THE MELVINSKY case, the members of the court and the prosecutor met in Ivan Yegorovich Shebeks room in the big law courts building and began talking about the famous Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vasilyevich became heated, contending that it didnt come under their jurisdiction; Ivan Yegorovich held his ground; while Pyotr Ivanovich, not having joined in the argument at the beginning, took no part in it and was looking through the Gazette, which had just been delivered.

Gentlemen! he said. Ivan Ilyich has died.

He hasnt!

Look, read this, he said to Fyodor Vasilyevich, handing him a fresh copy which still smelled of ink.

Within a black border was printed: Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina with deep sorrow informs family and friends of the passing of her beloved spouse Ivan Ilyich Golovin, member of the Court of Justice, which took place on the 4th of February of this year 1882. The funeral will be on Friday at 1 p.m.

Ivan Ilyich was a colleague of the gentlemen meeting there and they all liked him. He had been ill for several weeks; people were saying his illness was incurable. His position had been kept for him, but there had been conjectures that, in the event of his death, Alekseyev might be appointed to his position, and either Vinnikov or Shtabel to Alekseyevs. So on hearing of Ivan Ilyichs death the first thought of each of the gentlemen meeting in the room was of the significance the death might have for the transfer or promotion of the members themselves or their friends.

Now I will probably get Shtabels or Vinnikovs position, thought Fyodor Vasilyevich. It was promised to me long ago and this promotion means a raise of eight hundred rubles, plus a private office.

Now I must ask about the transfer of my brother-in-law from Kaluga, thought Pyotr Ivanovich. My wife will be very pleased. Now she wont be able to say that Ive never done anything for her family.

I thought he wouldnt leave his bed, Pyotr Ivanovich said aloud. Such a pity.

What was actually wrong with him?

The doctors couldnt make a diagnosis. That is, they did, but different ones. When I saw him the last time, I thought he would recover.

And I didnt go and see him after the holidays. I kept meaning to.

Did he have any money?

I think his wife had a very small income. But next to nothing.

Yes, well have to go and see her. They lived a terribly long way off.

That is, a long way from you. Everythings a long way from you.

He just cant forgive me for living on the other side of the river, said Pyotr Ivanovich, smiling at Shebek. And they started talking about distances in the city, and went back into the courtroom.

Apart from the thoughts the death brought each of them about the possible moves and changes at work that might follow, the actual fact of the death of a close acquaintance evoked, as always, in all who learned of it a complacent feeling that it was he who had died, not I.

Sohes dead; but here I am still, each thought or felt. At this point his closer acquaintances, the so-called friends of Ivan Ilyich, involuntarily thought that they now needed to carry out the very tedious requirements of etiquette and go to the requiem service and pay a visit of condolence to the widow.

Closest of all were Fyodor Vasilyevich and Pyotr Ivanovich.

Pyotr Ivanovich was a friend from law school and considered himself under an obligation to Ivan Ilyich.

Having given his wife over dinner the news of Ivan Ilyichs death and his thoughts about the possibility of his brother-in-laws transfer to their district, Pyotr Ivanovich didnt lie down to have a rest but put on a formal tailcoat and drove to Ivan Ilyichs.

At the entrance to Ivan Ilyichs apartment stood a carriage and two cabs. Downstairs in the hall by the coatrack, leaning against the wall, was the brocade-covered lid of the coffin with tassels and a gold braid that had been cleaned with powder. Two ladies in black were taking off their fur coats. One of them, Ivan Ilyichs sister, he knew; the other was an unknown lady. Pyotr Ivanovichs colleague Schwarz was coming downstairs and, seeing from the top step who had come in, he winked at him as if to say, Ivan Ilyich has made a silly mess of things; you and I have done things differently.

Schwarzs face with his English side-whiskers and his whole thin figure in a tailcoat as usual had an elegant solemnity, and this solemnity, which was always at odds with Schwarzs playful character, was especially piquant here. So Pyotr Ivanovich thought.

Pyotr Ivanovich let the ladies go in front of him and slowly followed them up the stairs. Schwarz didnt come down but stayed at the top. Pyotr Ivanovich understood why: he obviously wanted to arrange where they should play vint today. The ladies went up the stairs to the widow but Schwarz, with a serious set to his strong lips and a playful look, indicated by a twitch of his eyebrows that Pyotr Ivanovich should go to the right, into the room where the corpse lay.

Pyotr Ivanovich went in, feeling, as is always the case, at a loss as to what he should do there. One thing he did know was that in these circumstances it never does any harm to cross oneself. He wasnt altogether sure whether one should also bow and so he chose a middle course: entering the room, he started to cross himself and made a kind of slight bow. Insofar as the movements of his head and hands would allow, he looked round the room at the same time. Two young men, probably nephews, one of them a gymnasium pupil, were crossing themselves as they left the room. An old woman stood motionless, and a lady with oddly arched eyebrows was saying something to her in a whisper. A church lector in a frock coat with a vigorous and decisive way to him was reading something out loudly with an expression that permitted no contradiction; the peasant manservant Gerasim, stepping lightly in front of Pyotr Ivanovich, scattered something on the ground. Seeing that, Pyotr Ivanovich at once sensed the faint smell of a decomposing body. On his last visit to Ivan Ilyich he had seen this peasant in the study; he carried out the duties of a sick-nurse, and Ivan Ilyich was especially fond of him. Pyotr Ivanovich kept crossing himself and bowing slightly in an intermediate direction between the coffin, the lector, and the icons on a table in the corner. Then, when he thought the movement of crossing himself with his hand had gone on for too long, he stopped and started to examine the dead man.