The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man

by Leo Tolstoy

  Such a man was Privy Councillor5 Ilya Yefimovich Golovin, unnecessary member of various unnecessary departments.

  He had three sons. The eldest son had a career similar to his father’s but in a different ministry, and was fast approaching that point in his service that brought with it—through sheer inertia—a salary for life. The third son was a failure. He ruined his prospects in various posts and was now working on the railways, and his father and brothers, and particularly their wives, not only disliked meeting him but avoided even remembering his existence except in extreme necessity. The sister married Baron Greff, a Petersburg civil servant like his father-in-law. Ivan Ilyich was le phénix de la famille,6 as they used to say. He was not as chilly and proper as his elder brother, nor as reckless as the younger. He was the midpoint between them—bright, lively, a pleasant and respectable man. He was educated along with his younger brother in the School of Jurisprudence. The younger brother did not complete his education and was expelled in the fifth grade, but Ivan Ilyich finished creditably. Even at school he was what he remained for the rest of his life—talented, likable, cheerfully sociable, but always strictly fulfilling what he felt to be his duties. And his duties were what he thought everyone in authority over him considered to be his duties. He was not a sycophant as a child nor as a grown man, but from his earliest years was drawn—as a fly to bright light—to those in the highest circles, learned from their example, echoed their ideas about life, and established friendly relations with them. All the enthusiasms of his childhood and youth passed away leaving barely a trace; he was sensuous and vain and, toward the end of his school years, acquired liberal views, but always within well-established parameters clearly identified by his instinct for correctness.

  There were some things he did while he was at the School of Jurisprudence that had previously seemed pretty despicable to him and aroused a strong sense of self-loathing in him at the time. Subsequently, seeing comparable behavior in people of the highest standing who thought nothing of it, he began to feel that what he had done was not exactly good, but was certainly not worth remembering, and he felt no mortification when it did come to mind.

  When Ivan Ilyich graduated from the School of Jurisprudence he was qualified for the tenth class in the civil service. His father provided funds for his outfit. He ordered himself clothes from Scharmer’s, hung a medallion on his watch chain inscribed with the words respice finem, took leave of his tutor and the prince who was patron of the law school, dined with his friends at Donon’s,7 and with a fashionable new trunk, packed with linen, suits, shaving and toilet sets, and a rug, all ordered and bought from the best suppliers, left for one of the provinces, where his father had obtained a place for him as the Governor’s special assistant.

  In the province Ivan Ilyich immediately arranged as easy and pleasant a life for himself as he had enjoyed at law school. He did his job, pursued his career, and at the same time indulged himself pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally he was sent on official business to country districts, where he behaved with dignity to high and low alike, maintaining a precise and incorruptible integrity on which he could not help priding himself, fulfilling the tasks entrusted to him, chiefly in connection with the affairs of the Old Believers.8

  In spite of his youth and predisposition for lighthearted amusement, in official business he was extraordinarily reserved, formal, and even stern, but in a social setting he was often playful, witty, always good-humored, correct and bon enfant,9 as his employer and his employer’s wife said of him. For them, he was part of the family.

  There was also a liaison with one of the ladies who attached herself to the fashionable young lawyer; there was a milliner; there were drinking parties with visiting cavalry officers and visits to a certain street in the suburbs after dinner; there was, too, servility to his employer and even his employer’s wife. But all this was carried with such a tone of high propriety that none of it could be given a bad name: it all fell under the French saying, il faut que jeunesse se passe.10 Everything was done with clean hands in laundered shirts and embellished with French terms—and, above all, in the best possible company and consequently with the approval of the very best people.

  Ivan Ilyich spent five years in this service, and then a change came. New legal institutions were created, and new men were needed.

  And Ivan Ilyich became the new man.

  He was offered the post of examining magistrate,11 and took it, even though the post was in a different province and he had to abandon the relationships he had built up and create new ones. Ivan Ilyich’s friends came to see him off, a group photograph was taken, they presented him with a silver cigarette case, and he left for his new assignment.

  Ivan Ilyich the examining magistrate was just as decent and comme il faut12 as Ivan Ilyich the Governor’s assistant, just as good at separating official duties from his personal life, and just as adept at arousing widespread respect. The actual work of examining magistrate was much more attractive and interesting for him. In his previous post he had enjoyed wearing his uniform from Scharmer’s, strolling past anxious petitioners and official functionaries waiting for an audience, who enviously watched him going straight to the Governor’s office to have tea and a cigarette with him—but there were very few people who depended directly on his authority. There were only the chiefs of police and the Old Believers, when he was sent on special assignments to the rural districts. He liked to deal in a courteous and even comradely manner with these people, who did depend on him; he liked to let them feel that here he was, treating them simply and amicably when it was in his power to crush them. At that time there were few such people. But now, as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich felt that everyone, everyone without exception, the most important and self-satisfied people, all of them lay in his power. He need only write certain words on a sheet of paper with an official letterhead, and this important, self-satisfied person will be brought to him as witness or accused, and if Ivan Ilyich chooses not to ask him to sit down, he will have to stand before him to answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused his power; on the contrary, he tried to soften the way it was expressed, but the consciousness of this power and the possibility of softening it constituted the main interest and pleasure of his new post. In his actual work, that is, in the preliminary investigations, Ivan Ilyich very quickly mastered the knack of setting aside all considerations irrelevant to the official aspects of the case, reducing the most complicated matters to a formula in which only the external aspects were recorded, his personal opinion was strictly excluded, and, above all, the due formalities were observed. This was all new. And he was one of the first to apply the reformed Code of 186413 in practice.

  When he moved to the new town to take up his post as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich found himself new friends, made new contacts, established himself afresh, and assumed a slightly different manner. He set himself at a certain dignified distance from the provincial authorities, and selected the best circle among the legal and wealthy gentry living in the town. He affected a tone of light dissatisfaction with the government, moderate liberalism, and civilized public spirit. At the same time, without changing the elegance of his toilet in any way, in his new role Ivan Ilyich stopped shaving his chin and allowed his beard to grow as it pleased.

  Ivan Ilyich’s life settled into just as happy a pattern in the new town. His chosen circle, which was in opposition to the Governor, was friendly and the company was good. His salary was larger, and whist, which he now started to play, brought considerable pleasure into his life. Ivan Ilyich had the gift of playing cards good-humoredly, quickly and shrewdly assessing his hand, so that in general he was always the winner.

  After two years’ service in the new town, Ivan Ilyich met his future wife. Praskovya Feodorovna Mikhel was the most attractive, intelligent, brilliant girl in the circle frequented by Ivan Ilyich. Among the other pleasurable distractions from the labors of examining magistrate Ivan Ilyich established a light, playful relationship wit
h Praskovya Feodorovna.

  As the Governor’s special assistant Ivan Ilyich had danced; as examining magistrate this became an exception. Now his dancing implied—although I administer the reformed Code and rank fifth grade in the civil service, if it comes to dancing, watch me prove I can do that better than anyone else, too. So at the end of an evening he occasionally danced with Praskovya Feodorovna and it was mainly during these dances that he won her. She fell in love with him. Ivan Ilyich did not have a clear and distinct intention to marry, but when the girl fell in love with him, he considered the question. “And, really, why shouldn’t I marry?” he said to himself.

  The young lady came from good aristocratic stock. She was not unattractive. She brought a small property with her. Ivan Ilyich could have counted on a more dazzling match, but even this was not a bad one. He had his salary. She, he hoped, would have as much. Her birth was good. She was sweet, pretty, and eminently respectable. To say that he married because he fell in love with his fiancée and found in her an answering echo to his own view of life would be as inaccurate as to say that he married because the people in his circle approved of the match. He married for both reasons: he was pleasing himself by taking such a wife, and at the same time he was doing what his superiors thought the right thing to do.

  And Ivan Ilyich married.

  The very process of getting married, and the beginning of married life—with its marital caresses, new furniture, new crockery, new linen—passed very happily until his wife’s pregnancy. Ivan Ilyich even began to think that, far from wedlock upsetting his light, pleasant, gay manner of life, his marriage would actually intensify this congenial state of affairs—always respectable and popularly respected, the qualities Ivan Ilyich thought natural to life in general. But from the first months of his wife’s pregnancy, something new emerged. It was so unexpected and unpleasant, so burdensome and unseemly, it could hardly have been predicted and was impossible to ignore.

  For no evident reason, as it seemed to Ivan Ilyich—de gaîté de cœur,14 as he said to himself—his wife began disrupting the ease and propriety of his life. For no reason at all she became jealous, demanded his attentions, found fault with everything, and made rude, disagreeable scenes.

  At first Ivan Ilyich hoped to free himself from this unpleasant situation by the same light, proper response to life that had served him well in the past. He tried to ignore his wife’s moods, continued to live as lightly and pleasantly as before; he invited friends to his home to make up a hand of cards and tried to go out to his club or to visit his friends. But on one occasion his wife began to abuse him in such coarse language, with such energy and with such persistent aggression that Ivan Ilyich was appalled. She had evidently decided not to give up until he submitted—that is, until he stayed at home and was as dull as she was. He realized that the married state, at any rate with his wife, was not always conducive to the pleasures and proprieties of life, but, on the contrary, often disrupted them; for this reason it was imperative that he should protect himself from such disturbances. And Ivan Ilyich began searching out the means to achieve this. His official duties were the one thing that made some impression on Praskovya Feodorovna, and through his official duties and the responsibilities arising from them Ivan Ilyich began his struggle with his wife to stake out his independent world.

  With the birth of the child, the attempts to feed it and the various failures to do so, with the real and imagined illnesses of mother and child, all of which demanded his participation but none of which were in the least comprehensible to him, Ivan Ilyich’s need to create his own space outside the family became even more imperative.

  The more irritating and demanding his wife became, the more Ivan Ilyich transferred the center of gravity of his life to his official duties, and the more ambitious he became.

  Very soon, not longer than a year after his marriage, Ivan Ilyich understood that matrimony, while offering some conveniences in life, was in fact a very complicated and difficult matter and that, in order to fulfill his duty—that is, to lead a decent life that everyone approved of—he must work out a definite approach to married life, just as he had done for his official life.

  And Ivan Ilyich worked out an approach to married life. He asked no more of it than the conveniences which it was able to provide—dinner at home, a housewife, and a bed, and, above all, that propriety of external forms required by public opinion. For the rest, he looked for pleasure and good cheer, and when he found them, was very grateful. If, on the contrary, he met with antagonism and querulousness, he immediately retreated into his palisaded world of work and found his pleasure there.

  Ivan Ilyich was valued as a good colleague, and after three years was made assistant public prosecutor. The new duties, their importance, the power to bring anyone to trial and imprison him, the public attention his speeches received, the success Ivan Ilyich enjoyed in this capacity—all this attracted him further to his employment.

  More children came. His wife became even more querulous and bad tempered, but the approach Ivan Ilyich had evolved to family life made him almost impervious to her scenes.

  After seven years’ service in the same town Ivan Ilyich was transferred to a different province to take up the post of public prosecutor. They moved; money was short; and his wife took an aversion to the place where they were stationed. Although his salary was slightly higher, life was more expensive, and, apart from that, two children died, so that family life became even more disagreeable for Ivan Ilyich.

  In their new home Praskovya Feodorovna laid the blame for every mishap on her husband. Most of the subjects discussed by husband and wife, particularly the children’s upbringing, led to questions that raised memories of former quarrels, and were always apt to raise fresh quarrels. There remained only those rare periods of love that overtook the couple but did not last long. They were islands at which they anchored briefly before setting sail once again over a sea of suppressed hostility, which was expressed in mutual aloofness. This aloofness could have saddened Ivan Ilyich had he thought it should not have been so, but by now he recognized that this situation was not only normal but the very aim of his role in the family. His aim increasingly was to free himself from these unpleasantnesses, to give them a character of harmless propriety, and he achieved this by spending less and less time with his family. When that was impossible, he tried to protect himself by having outsiders present. The main thing was that Ivan Ilyich had his work. All his interest in life was focused in his work. And this interest absorbed him. The consciousness of his own power, the potential to ruin anyone he wanted to ruin, the external pomp and real importance of his entry into court and his meetings with subordinates, his success in the eyes of high and low, and, above all, his mastery in conducting affairs, of which he was well aware—all this made him happy and, along with discussions with his friends, dinners and whist, filled his life. So that, all in all, Ivan Ilyich’s life continued to pass as he thought it should: pleasantly and properly.

  So he lived another seven years. His oldest daughter was already sixteen15; another child had died, and there remained his schoolboy son, the subject of dissension. Ivan Ilyich wanted to enter him in the School of Jurisprudence, but Praskovya Feodorovna sent him to high school, purely to spite him. His daughter was educated at home and was growing up well, and the boy was not doing badly either.

  3

  Ivan Ilyich’s life continued in this way for seventeen years16 after his marriage. He was by now a public prosecutor of long standing, having declined various transfers, waiting for a more desirable post, when, quite unexpectedly, something unpleasant happened, which nearly destroyed his peaceful life altogether. He was waiting for the post of presiding judge in a university town, but somehow Hoppe sneaked ahead and got the job. Ivan Ilyich lost his temper, complained, and quarreled with Hoppe and his immediate superiors. They grew distant toward him and in the next reshuffle he was passed over again.

  This was in 1880. It was the worst year of Ivan Ilyich�
��s life. In this year it became apparent that his salary was inadequate for his way of life, and, moreover, that everyone had forgotten him. What was more, the thing that seemed to be the most massive and grave injustice, as far as he was concerned, seemed to everyone else an ordinary matter. Even his father did not consider it his duty to help him. He felt that everyone had abandoned him, considering his position with an annual salary of 3,500 rubles quite normal, even fortunate. He alone knew that, what with his sense of how he had been slighted, the iniquities that had been done to him, his wife’s endless nagging, and the debts he had started to build up, living as he did above his means—he alone knew that his position was far from normal.

  In the summer of that year, to economize, he took leave and spent the summer months with his wife at his brother-in-law’s place in the country.

  In the country, without work, Ivan Ilyich experienced not only boredom but unbearable melancholy for the first time. He decided that living like this was impossible. It was essential to take some decisive action.

  Having spent a sleepless night pacing the terrace, he made up his mind to travel to Petersburg and put pressure on the right people. He would transfer to a different ministry and punish the colleagues who failed to value him properly.

  The next day he set off for Petersburg, in spite of his wife and brother-in-law’s attempts to dissuade him.

  He traveled with a single aim: to solicit a post that would bring him an annual salary of five thousand rubles. He was no longer set on any particular ministry, type, or area of work. All he needed was a post, any post bringing five thousand rubles—in government administration, in the banks, or the railways, or in the Empress Maria’s institutions,17 or even the customs—but the five thousand rubles were imperative, and it was imperative to leave the ministry where his merits went unrecognized.