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44th out of 1,186 books
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879 voters
The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
Murder, greed, lust, vanity, love - four of Tolstoy's most famous and essential stories in one volume!!
Family happiness -- The death of Ivan Illych -- The Kreutzer sonata -- Master and man
Family happiness -- The death of Ivan Illych -- The Kreutzer sonata -- Master and man
Paperback, 304 pages
Published
April 1st 2003
by Signet Classics
(first published 1886)
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you're all excited about someone new only to discover that the beatles are their all-time favorite band. and it all starts to unravel, eh? the beatles are the most popular pop/rock band of all time, wildly innovative, probably wrote more great songs than any other band... but your all-time favorite band? dull dull dull. i think i'd even take someone who champions rush or the eagl- (no, not the eagles. any other band but the eagles, steve miller, or aerosmith) over the beatles just because it's m...more
Tolstoy kept it very fucking real. I find that "the Russians" material is generally surprisingly relevant for this day and age, even as early as Turgenev, and this is no exception. The first story in this collection, Family Happiness, is a bit slow and maybe the least accessible of the bunch. Still, the topic of filial life is examined in an interesting, if slightly depressing way. Everything after is gold. The kreutzner sonata is dark and examines aspects of the female condition and the male ps...more
It's been too long since my last Russian novel, and my brother's suggestion that I try Ivan Ilyich was a welcome push back into the wonderful world of Tolstoy. In addition to the title story, this collection also included Family Happiness and The Cossacks, and they were all very enjoyable.
Family Happiness was an intriguing, if rather depressing and pessimistic, study of the disintegration of a marriage. The moral of the story seems to be that romantic love has the shelf life of a banana; and th...more
Family Happiness was an intriguing, if rather depressing and pessimistic, study of the disintegration of a marriage. The moral of the story seems to be that romantic love has the shelf life of a banana; and th...more
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Once again, I bump into my own technological idiocy, for if I knew how to do it, I would download the link to the review of this book by my goodreads friend Brian, because he really says all one needs to say (which is that the translation is great, the stories are great, Tolstoy is great), and that's probably what everyone would say (save for the stupid and stubborn), but he says it in a way that is so worth reading, a way that includes allusions to masturbation, Marisa Tomei and The Eagles, but...more
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Family Happiness: Well-written but trite. Still a pleasant reading experience. Such a view of marriage is very depressing though.
The Death of Ivan Ilych: Very thought-provoking, especially in the context of the literature of contemporary Russian intelligentsia. Easily the best of the bunch.
The Kreutzer Sonata: Another story where somebody is a psychologically disturbed douchebag, and tries to redeem themselves by coming up with an extensive new system of morality that justifies their actions. Pe...more
The Death of Ivan Ilych: Very thought-provoking, especially in the context of the literature of contemporary Russian intelligentsia. Easily the best of the bunch.
The Kreutzer Sonata: Another story where somebody is a psychologically disturbed douchebag, and tries to redeem themselves by coming up with an extensive new system of morality that justifies their actions. Pe...more
"Death of Ivan Ilych" is one of the best short stories I have ever read. In only about 100 pages, Tolstoy describes the facing of death by Ivan Ilych, who basically has lived as any other ordinary man. The story shows how once joyous and happy moments can seem worthless and fruitless moments when one is staring at death. Through this story, Tolstoy makes us look back to our life and look for anything extraordinary we have done. He makes us wonder whether doing everything that we think we "ought...more
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The story "The Death of Ivan Ilych" is one of my favorite stories ever written. Everything about it is so true. Tolstoy had that knack of speaking plain truth about subjects like death and war that we almost instinctively idealize for ourselves in our thoughts and writings, so that the simple truth, when we read it, hits us like a powerful revelation. This narrative of one man's journey from a busy, full middle class life into sickness and then his final slide into death is like death itself, bo...more
What a brutal read. The great Russian novelists had a way of attacking psychological phenomena without any frill or pretense. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" strips bare a typical, mundane life by methodically removing each meaningless layer until the reader is left with the same terrible realization of the protagonist: that there is nothing more than this.
Tolstoy doesn't guide you toward any interpretation or offer a soothing moral. This is a story that treats death as starkly and unromantically as...more
Tolstoy doesn't guide you toward any interpretation or offer a soothing moral. This is a story that treats death as starkly and unromantically as...more
One of my favorite aspects of Tolstoy's writing is his ability to create such deep, fully formed characters (the reason Anna Karenina is so bloody long). In The Death of Ivan Ilyich his attention is focused so sharply on Ivan, and specifically on his inner life, that the character nearly takes on a physical presence. Despite the title, the novella is much more of a meditation on life than death, as - in his dying days - Ivan begins to live for the first time. It is very beautiful and poetic, per...more
"The previous history of Ivan Ilych was the simplest, the most ordinary, and the most awful."
Brilliant. Tolstoy tackles raw emotion in a powerful, tasteful form. I put off reading this one for quite some time out of fear but I should have known that I could trust Tolstoy. This masterpiece compels you to examine the baseness of empty, materialistic values and reminds us to take heed in the way we choose to live our lives ... to be able to discern what is right from what is merely acceptable and c...more
Brilliant. Tolstoy tackles raw emotion in a powerful, tasteful form. I put off reading this one for quite some time out of fear but I should have known that I could trust Tolstoy. This masterpiece compels you to examine the baseness of empty, materialistic values and reminds us to take heed in the way we choose to live our lives ... to be able to discern what is right from what is merely acceptable and c...more
This little book contains four incredible masterpieces of short fiction. This is a great place to start if you haven't read any Tolstoy. After this intro, my next steps will be Anna Karenina and then War & Peace.
It's hard to praise one story more than another in this brief collection. Each one could stand individually as one of the greatest short stories ever written. "Family Happiness" is a heart-wrenching story about the difficulty of being true to one's self, of forgiveness, and of love;...more
It's hard to praise one story more than another in this brief collection. Each one could stand individually as one of the greatest short stories ever written. "Family Happiness" is a heart-wrenching story about the difficulty of being true to one's self, of forgiveness, and of love;...more
I read this collection in parallel with A Confession and Other Religious Writings. The change in style or at least underlying moral scope is evident in some of these works, compared with his two heavy novels earlier in his career. The two Caucasian tales "The Prisoner…" and "Hadji Murat" are both very detailed culturally and nearly documentary in detail, right down to the appended glossary of Caucasian terms. I didn't particularly enjoy these as I did the similar Gogol and Lermontov stories of t...more
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wow. subtle but not... and one of those books that became more cherished upon completion. conceptually, the full effect of this story did not consciously amalgamate until the last few pages - and even then, not completely until the last two words - rather like putting the lid on a jar, the contents within did not become contents until the lid was sealed. read a bit like jane austin meets dostoyevsky (weird combo, right?) but with more hope than most russian literature that i have been exposed to...more
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This is the first book I have read of Toltstoy, and I have to say I love it. I think his genius lies with describing the fullness of human experience in all its complexity. From the different stages and trials of love in Family Happiness, to realizing your life has been worthless in the coarse of your terminal illness and the redemption in finding God in death in The Death of Ivan Ilych, to lust of one partner and the subsequent deadly jealous rage of the other in Kreutzer Sonata, to the downfal...more
There are obviously a lot of books called 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories.' The volume I read had Ivan, The Cossacks, and Happily Ever After (aka Family Happiness.) There's not too much to say- it seems that if you've read any Tolstoy, you know the general thrust; depressing, but with at least apparently uplifting endings in which characters come to do and feel the right thing. DII and Cossacks are both great (four stars each), but if I was going to read one, it'd be the Cossacks. HE...more
An astonishingly bleak book. It tells of the life and death of an utterly insignificant man and how his proprietary marriage, his petty hobbies, his self involved family and his meaningless job all fall away to reveal a life devoid of meaning and lasting worth.
It even questions what a life is actually for anyway - he dies in a godless and joyless world, with the cold certainty that his intense, prolonged and indecorous suffering is both purposeless and random. In what was my favourite line from...more
It even questions what a life is actually for anyway - he dies in a godless and joyless world, with the cold certainty that his intense, prolonged and indecorous suffering is both purposeless and random. In what was my favourite line from...more
Excellent collection of Tolstoy's stories. "Family Happiness" and "Master and Man" were a bit slower than the other two -- "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and "The Kreutzer Sonata" -- but still well-worth the time invested. Many themes emerged in these works -- prominently death, love, the meaning of life, murder, forgiveness and greed, among other things. Though short stories they deal with hefty moral, philosophical and psychological issues. Despite the weight of the themes, however, Tolstoy tackles...more
These may not be "Anna Karenina" by any means, but they are amongst Tolstoy's better work in my opinion. They are certainly worth checking out, especially for people who are unfamiliar with Tolstoy's shorter work (this being a relative term). "The Kreutzer Sonata" was a bit much of a moral tract as opposed to a story for my tastes, but I found the other stories to be very fine indeed.
I read this book some time ago, but the current discussion on WAR AND PEACE prompted me to read more Tolstoy, so I decided to reread some of his stories. Beautiful writing. I think "The Death of Ivan Ilych" in my favorite story in this volume.
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I am just about done with the first story in this collection, Family Happiness, which is truly masterful, and though written at a different point in time, I found many of the themes and behaviors still hold very truly today.
For some reason, I'm reluctant to bestow 5 stars on short story collections that have been cobbled together by persons other than the author. That said, this and Chekhov's set probably deserve it.
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My first experience in reading Tolstoy and was really struck with the conciseness and vividry of his story telling. Some of these stories were written in middle of his career and others were written late in his life after his conversion Christianity. Tolstoy is more famous for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina but much more attention should be given to his short fiction. The recent translation of Pevear and Volokhonsky gives Toltoy justice with the simplicity of the language. Every sto...more
I read The Death of Ivan Illyich not only because it is the work of brilliant Leo Tolstoy, a genius whose every prose cuts through my heart, but also because Dr. Wayne Dyer once said that reading this book at 19 completely changed his thinking. As if that were not enough, I fondly remember how my mom read this book as part of an English class assignment in college; she went to college at the same time as me (I was so proud of her, by the way), and Tolstoy even had my mom talking about this book...more
Death and status are the dominant themes in these stories, and the world doesn't seem to have changed since they were written.
Q: How did the Russian author commit suicide?
A: He jumped off of one of his novels.
Russian author Leo Tolstoy is deservedly considered one of the world's greatest writers. This collection of eleven of his short stories would be a great introduction to Tolstoy's amazing talent for those who might be put off or intimidated by his very lengthy but more famous works like Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Here is a short summary of all eleven stories. Obviously, spoilers follow:
The Prisoner of the Cau...more
A: He jumped off of one of his novels.
Russian author Leo Tolstoy is deservedly considered one of the world's greatest writers. This collection of eleven of his short stories would be a great introduction to Tolstoy's amazing talent for those who might be put off or intimidated by his very lengthy but more famous works like Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Here is a short summary of all eleven stories. Obviously, spoilers follow:
The Prisoner of the Cau...more
Let me put get the usual sobriquets out of the way: this is a brilliant story. Tolstoy masterfully telescopes the life of a man from his colleagues and work life down to his household concerns and pastimes then down to his wife and daughter then his son. Finally, Tolstoy brings us into the very essence of a man’s soul as his life slowly circles the drain.
There’s pathos, insight and understanding of the man.
This is my first foray into Tolstoy and once I realized - about 85% of the way through th...more
There’s pathos, insight and understanding of the man.
This is my first foray into Tolstoy and once I realized - about 85% of the way through th...more
Some of these stories are perfect, the writing as good as the writing in Tolstoy’s great novels; others are merely very good. None is merely okay and all are ambitious. The title story shows you how a family and community respond to an individual’s death in ways both poignant and sad, beginning with colleagues mulling the potential benefits the death might bring to their careers and continuing with the widow’s melodramatically self-serving grief. Two stories, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "...more
Although this is a short read of about 60 pages it was a fantastic read starting off with the post-death of Ivan, and then going from his beginnings to the moment of his death. Before Ivan became sick he found himself in a constant search for more money, status, and power. Due to these influences he pushed himself away from his wife and created two seperate lives for himself, one being his professinal life in law and the other as his personal life with his family. The main quest in his life befo...more
1. Prisoner of Caucasus - simple narrative about a soldier who is captured, befriended, recaptured, then escapes.
2. Diary of a Mad Man - A man seeking the purpose of life finds the Bible, and in it, reason to eschew profit in order to help his fellow man. More like diary of a Non-mad man. I think a few good ol' boys could benefit from reading this one.
3. Death of Ivan Ilyich - Story of a dying man, in a fashion closer to what I would expect of Tolstoy.
4. Kreutzer Sonata - Devilish tale of a murd...more
2. Diary of a Mad Man - A man seeking the purpose of life finds the Bible, and in it, reason to eschew profit in order to help his fellow man. More like diary of a Non-mad man. I think a few good ol' boys could benefit from reading this one.
3. Death of Ivan Ilyich - Story of a dying man, in a fashion closer to what I would expect of Tolstoy.
4. Kreutzer Sonata - Devilish tale of a murd...more
A few comments, having just finished "The Death of Ivan Ilyich."
First, I was struck by the parallels between this and Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
More significantly, "Ivan Ilyich" rather wonderfully distinguishes between what Tolstoy repeatedly refers to as the flow of life -- the daily phenomenal world of cause and effect which we all inhabit day after day, year in year out, wherein without consciously realizing it we tend to claim personal credit for all our accomplishments and seek to assign exte...more
First, I was struck by the parallels between this and Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
More significantly, "Ivan Ilyich" rather wonderfully distinguishes between what Tolstoy repeatedly refers to as the flow of life -- the daily phenomenal world of cause and effect which we all inhabit day after day, year in year out, wherein without consciously realizing it we tend to claim personal credit for all our accomplishments and seek to assign exte...more
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Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider To...more
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“No hay felicidad en la existencia, no hay más que relámpagos de felicidad.”
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“And what was worst of all was that *It* drew his attention to itself not in order to make him take some action but only that he should look at *It*, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly.
And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations -- new screens -- and new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It* penetrated them and nothing could veil *It*.”
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And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations -- new screens -- and new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It* penetrated them and nothing could veil *It*.”
Feb 02, 2010 09:31pm
Jan 11, 2011 02:26pm