Tolstoy and the famous final scene …

… The Way of All Flesh | VQR Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Because Ilyich “sees the light,” as the cliché has it, because he comes to comprehend that his existence has been in error, the story amounts to a confirmation of the Christian paradox that one must die in order to live, that one’s true life—​true because eternal—​begins at death. Scholars have noted, too, that the ending of Ivan Ilyichsmacks of Christ’s crucifixion: Ilyich’s final agonizing stretch of three days, his exacerbated inquiry, “Why, why do you torment me so horribly?” an unambiguous echo of Christ’s famous “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” Brombert skillfully shows how “the transition from chapter 6 to chapter 9 closely parallels the transition from the sixth to the ninth hour of the Crucifixion.” All this Christian special pleading makes for a convenient ending, both too hasty and too tidy. Worse, it smells suspiciously of propaganda—​the narrative tortures a man only so that he can receive the deliverance which was, we can’t help but see, a forgone conclusion. Worse still, it’s an obese bromide: One must travel through hell to reach heaven? This is what happens when the fiction writer allows himself to be breathed on by the pamphleteer.

I first read The Death of Ivan Ilyich one summer night when I was in college. It completely seized me. I noticed none of this. I was just experiencing what Ivan Ilyich was experiencing. I banged my side the next day and couldn't help thinking that maybe what happened to Ivan Ilyich was about to happen to me. Mere literary criticism in this case seems petty and jejune. Who cares?