#22: It’s Not About The Curtains

Lessons from a Wasted Life

“Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” 

Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a story about a high-court judge facing his own mortality. Illyich is described as a conventionally successful man in his mid-forties who did his best to move through life “pleasantly and properly.” Every aspect of his life -- his career, his marriage, his social connections -- was approved of by his peers, and was devoid of authenticity or passion. One example was his marriage: 

“Ivan Ilyich had at first no definite intention of marrying, but when the girl fell in love with him he said to himself: ‘Really, why shouldn't I marry?’ 

“Praskovya Fedorovna came from a respectable family, was not bad looking, and possessed some little property. Ivan might have aspired to a more brilliant match, but this was good enough. He had his salary, and she, he hoped, would have an equal income. She was well connected, and was a sweet, pretty, and thoroughly correct young woman. To say that Ivan Ilyich married because he fell in love with Praskovya Fedorovna and found that she sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect as to say that he married because his social circle approved of the match. He was swayed by both these considerations: the marriage gave him personal satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates.

So Ivan Ilyich got married.”

But to Ivan’s disappointment, marriage and family life interfered with the pleasant and comfortable existence he’d been enjoying. In response to conflicts with his wife and the demands of his children he took solace in his work, and spent more and more time climbing the professional and social ladder. The higher he climbed the more he spent upgrading his lifestyle, which kept the family financially stressed. After a promotion at work he purchased what he felt to be a dream house, and it gave him temporary pleasure:

“In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes—all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional.”

Ivan and his wife were able to maintain reasonable moods and dispositions so long as they had something to do - like purchasing new furniture to complete a room in the house, or showing off their home to well regarded people in society. So life moved on as Ivan wanted it to - “easily, pleasantly, and decorously”.

All this changed as a pain in Ivan’s side, which he first dismissed as an inconsequential bruise, grew more and more painful. He had suffered the injury while hanging a new curtain. In response to the increased pain, he became increasingly irritable, taking his anger out on his wife and children with bursts of rage at the dinner table. This behavior fed the resentment that his wife felt for him. 

“Having come to the conclusion that her husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the more she hated her husband. She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him to die because then his salary would cease. And this irritated her against him still more. She considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because not even his death could save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden exasperation of hers increased his irritation also.”

As Ivan’s health deteriorated, he found it increasingly difficult to manipulate his circumstances as he’d managed to do throughout his adult life. His pain grew deeper and less bearable, a wretched taste in his mouth grew increasingly disgusting, and he lost strength and energy.

It finally became clear, first to his wife and friends and finally to him, that he was dying, and that it was only a matter of time. And this realization pitched Ivan into unbearable psychological suffering. He couldn’t accept or understand the truth. As his condition worsened, he struggled with thoughts about how he’d lived his life, and wondered how someone like him could suffer such a random and miserable death at age 45. It had become apparent that he was a burden to his wife and children, and that they supported him only to the degree that seemed appropriate to the rest of society. Their lack of true love was exposed during his time of greatest need.

Gerasim, Ivan’s young servant, was Ivan’s only source of relief as his health deteriorated. Gerasim is the perfect contrast to Ivan - young, healthy, vibrant, compassionate, and he’s the only major character in the story who isn’t motivated by vanity and shallow materialism. To provide relief, Gerasim often supported the weight of Ivan’s legs on his sturdy shoulders for hours at a time.

“He felt comforted when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night long) and refused to go to bed, saying: ‘Don't you worry, Ivan Ilyich. I'll get sleep enough later on,’ or when he suddenly became familiar and exclaimed: ‘If you weren't sick it would be another matter, but as it is, why should I grudge a little trouble?’ Gerasim alone did not lie; everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master. Once when Ivan Ilyich was sending him away he even said straight out: ‘We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?’—expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came.”

At first Ivan refused to accept the fact that he hadn’t lived well. Finally, as he recounted his life from his deathbed, he realized he’d wasted his precious years.

“His marriage, a mere accident, then the disenchantment that followed it, his wife's bad breath and the sensuality and hypocrisy: then that deadly official life and those preoccupations about money, a year of it, and two, and ten, and twenty, and always the same thing. And the longer it lasted the more deadly it became. ‘It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.’”

After three days of screaming in agonizing pain, and a touching moment with his youngest son, Ivan died. 

***

I’ve read and I think profited from traditional “self-help” books that feature an author giving direct advice about how to live well. But modern self-help books don’t offer the kind of insights or sense of urgency found in The Death of Ivan Illych. The story serves as a cautionary tale of the most powerful kind - a dreadful read about not living well that compels a reader to take inventory of his own life.

As I re-read this short novel last month, my interpretation of our current situation began to change. The coronavirus pandemic changed our lives drastically. The change has been a painful process, and the discomfort is compounded by fear about health and economic turmoil. But this sudden interruption also serves as an opportunity. Here is the most sad and painful realization Ivan Illyich experienced as he died:

“It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.”

When things are humming along “normally,” it’s easy to become consumed with the kinds of comfortable distractions that characterized Ivan Illyich’s life, and to prioritize the wrong things as a result. I’m trying to view the pandemic not only as a scary and uncomfortable burden, but also as an opportunity to identify any “false” aspects in my own life that resemble Ivan Illyich’s. If I find it necessary, I’ll do my best to change course.