Reading Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich in Russian

Reading Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich in Russian –

Written in simple and sometimes shockingly blunt prose, Tolstoy’s timeless novella is a masterpiece of his later work, combining relentless psychological observation with moral and spiritual urgency in its depiction of the death of an ordinary man, a certain Ivan Ilyich – a court official, husband, and father. Ivan Ilych is perfectly ordinary in the sense that his lifelong pursuit of outward decency in his work and family life – even home decor! – has obscured from him all deeper questions of life’s meaning – questions he must suddenly come to terms with as he confronts his own mortality. Alongside this existential struggle, Tolstoy – with both compassion and clinical objectivity – documents dying as a physical and psychological process, involving both loneliness and despair, unrelenting suffering, and unexpected glimmers of comfort, human contact, and hope. Ultimately, Tolstoy suggests that a life dominated by the conventions of the world as we know it is somehow deeply wrong – but that every life has the capacity for redemption, even at the very end.

Designed to help students of Russian begin to enjoy real Russian literature in the original without constantly reaching for a dictionary, this parallel-text edition features a new translation made specifically for this purpose, as well as detailed Russian vocabulary notes, including all the important forms you need (especially aspectual pairs and conjugation types for all verbs). The original Russian text is marked for stress, but is otherwise unedited and unsimplified.

About the Author…

Originally from Franklin, Tennessee, Mark Pettus holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University. Altogether, he’s spent around six years living, studying, and working in Russia. Today he is a lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton. Mark is the author of the Russian Through Propaganda textbook series (Books 1 and 2), and its continuation, Russian Through Poems and Paintings (Books 3 and 4). He is now working on additional books for students of Russian, including the Reading Russian series of which the present volume is a part.