The life of the world happens in accordance with someone's will—someone achieves his purpose with this life of the whole world and with our lives. To have a hope of understanding the meaning of that will, one must first fulfill it—do what is wanted of us. But if I won't do what is wanted of me, then I will never understand either what is wanted of me or even less what is wanted of us all and of the whole world.

Wonderful translation of two penetrating looks into despair, faith, and finding meaning in one's life. ( )

My 4th Tolstoy book; part of the reading list for Progressive Christianity Class at FUMC-Evanston. Read it before I finished re-reading "Confessions" by same author. Brought to mind the YouTube video by Steven Mackay re the death of his mother: She invited him to come because she planned to die that day. He went, took his computer and spent the day with her composing the song which accompanies his video. His wife joined them with an evening meal about 6 p.m. His mother died shortly thereafter. Second thoughts: When facing my mother's imminent demise, I was determined to act in such a way as to have no regrets about my integrity or my treatment of her. While I haven't always lived in such a way that I have no regrets, that has been my general aim.

This is a well-planned and executed translation and companioning of Tolstoy's novella and his non-fiction Confession. Although the introduction and notes on the translation lean one towards such a conclusion, that it does what it says it will do makes it all the more satisfying. The novella focuses on vanity and death while Confession documents Tolstoy's grappling with the meaning of life. I am drawn to Proverbs 19:3 by this book: "The foolishness of a man twists his way, And his heart frets against the Lord."

I could hear Hemingway denouncing Fitzgerald for exposing his personal weaknesses in The Crack Up. Yet at the same time, it was interesting to read the inner ruminations of a literary great. That Tolstoy finds solace in aspects of Christianity should not take away from the different approaches to thinking about life and its meaning that he outlines for those who may be navel-gazing such topics. I couldn't help but think of my own way of, I suppose, finding peace in the way of Larry in Maugham's The Razor's Edge, in that I believe that without faith, there is no point. So without faith, life is meaningless. My thoughts here echo Tolstoy's in that he looks for a rational explanation but finds only 0=0, which is no explanation at all. Looking beyond the rational seems to be key, and reconsidering my own philosophical meanderings in the light Tolstoy's confessing was certainly food for thought.

This is an excellent pairing of the works of a master, post the glory days of Anna Karenina (which he later regarded as an abomination). ( )

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession
Leo Tolstoy
translated by Peter Carson
September 23, 2014

The power of this translation supposedly comes from the fact that the translator was facing his own death as he was completing it. The prose is very clear, and compelling, but the emotion is all from Tolstoy. The first part is the novella about the lawyer/judge/bureaucrat, his death in agony, probably with pancreatic or colon cancer from the descriptions, but misdiagnosed as a an appendix that is occluded, or some other nonsense. He sees several physicians in the early stages of his disease, who have different diagnoses, and later takes comfort only in the ministrations of Gerasim, a peasant who has a matter of fact attitude to his death.

The second book is a fragment of an autobiography, as Tolstoy reveals the road of his doubt at the university, and his later conversion to faith. His ultimate question is "Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn't be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?" He quotes Schopenhauer extensively, "No will, no idea, no world". He returns, at the end of this fragment, to religion, finding both truth and falsehood in its teachings, and ending in a dream, of many cords supporting him over the abyss, one by one breaking, until a single cord of faith holds him steady. ( )