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Lawyers and Literature
Ivan Ilych and the Well-Worn Path
Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of
Ivan Ilych," in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
95-155 (New York: New American Library, 1960)
Tolstoy's fictional lawyer, Ivan Ilych, presents a psycho-literary
case story of a lawyer who set out with high hopes, followed the well-worn
path, devoted his life to success, and is up-ended by bitter disappointment
and failure. Consider Ronald Sampson's observation that: "Whereas
we accept our own routine existences with unreflecting equanimity, the
mirror which Ivan Ilych holds up reflects a picture from which we shrink
with fear and revulsion." [Ronald Sampson, The
Psychology of Power 126 (New York: Vintage Books, 1968)]
James Boyd White argues that there is a way of reading texts
like "The Death of Ivan Ilych" so they can be "put to
work" in our own lives. White contends there is "a way of
engaging the mind with a text, and learning from it . . . ." [James
Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning 5 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1984)]. "[O]ne element in the relationship
between reader and writer is a kind of negotiation in which the reader
constantly asks himself what this text is asking him to assent to and
to become and whether or not he wishes to acquiesce."
[16]. A text, argues White, "teaches us how it should be
'read' . . . it teaches us how it should be understood and lived
with, and this in turn teaches us much about what kind of life we can
and ought to have, who we can and ought to be."
[ix-x]
How are we to read "The Death of Ivan Ilych" in the way White
suggests?
What kept Ilych on the well-worn path? By well-worn path,
I mean that Ilych's life is not a mystery to us. His motivations and
ways of engaging the world are all too familiar to us. Ilych lived a
a life we can understand, a life not unlike the lives we see lived around
us. Ilych adopted and accepted well-defined roles, a strong sense of
career/work, compartmentalization of his professional work life and
his life at home. Ronald Sampson notes that "throughout his professional
life [Ilych] had assumed the lawyer's functionary pose to his clients."
And when Ilych becomes ill "the doctor assumes his ‘doctor-patient'
relationship, and his wife the understanding tolerantly affectionate
marital role. All alike share in the falsity that accompanies the etiquette
of middle-class relations." Sampson notes that as "a commonplace
man" Ilych "puts his petty pleasures and ambitions before
the question of the meaning of his life." [Sampson,
at 138 ]. Sampson contends that Ilych had a capacity "for
comfortable adjustment and elasticity of conscience, with antennae so
delicately and quickly attuned to sensing the currents of dominant opinion,
Ivan Ilych was admirably equipped to rise in the world and advance his
career; and this Ivan Ilych was most anxious to do."
[127] To follow the well-worn path, in Sampson's view, is to
let our "petty pleasures" consume us.
Ilych had, in his professional life as lawyer/bureaucrat
a way of honing in on problems and making sure that he consider nothing
but the case before him. He had
a method of eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal
aspect of the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to
a form in which it would be presented on paper only in its externals,
completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter, while above
all observing every prescribed formality. [107-108]
Is this a description of a good lawyer at work? Or, is there reason
to be suspicious of this description of lawyering?
Sculpting unwieldy human problems into legal shape is what lawyers get
paid to do. Ilych used his self-limiting vision of work both to make
life more comfortable and to insure his success. [Seymour Wishman, in his autobiography of lawyering, describes
a similar narrowing of vision. See Seymour Wishman, Confessions of
a Criminal Lawyer (New York: Penguin Books, 1982). On the moral
implications of Seymour Wishman's intentionally narrow vision, see James
R. Elkins, The Moral Labyrinth of Zealous Advocacy, 21 Cap. U. L. Rev.
735, 764-768 (1992)
How do you respond to Ilych's studied efforts to separate
his personal and professional life?
In official matters, despite his youth and taste for frivolous gaiety,
he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe; but in
society he was often amusing and witty, and always good-natured, correct
in his manner, and bon enfant, as the governor and his wife--with
whom he was like one of the family--used to say of him.
[109]
Ilych has a strong sense of his own rectitude, pursues his legal career
with dedication, and does not let his personal and family life interfere
with his law work.
Ivan Ilych possessed this capacity to separate his real life from
the official side of affairs and not mix the two, in the highest degree,
and by long practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such a
pitch that sometimes, in the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow
himself to let the human and official relations mingle. He let himself
do this just because he felt that he could at any time he chose resume
the strictly official attitude again and drop the human relation.
And he did it all easily, pleasantly, correctly, and even artistically.
[117-118]
Compartmentalization allows him to do what his official duties require
and ignore everything else. Simply put, Ilych makes an art of official
aloofness, convincing himself and others that his compartmentalization
of personal and professional life has been successful.
What brings about Ilych's "fall"? Ilych asks: "What
if my whole life has really been wrong?" [152].
How is it possible to pose such a question about one's own life? Aren't
there times when we have no chance but to pose the question and deal
with the fall-out that results?
 Ilych's response
is instructive:
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. [152]
"Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done," it suddenly
occurred to him. "But how could that be, when I did everything
properly?" [148]
Ronald Sampson
makes the following the psychological point about "The Death
of Ivan Ilych":
Each man [and woman] has an inner self which exists, however weakly,
and tries to be heard and to influence conduct. Failure occurs because
of the external pressures which make it impossible for the individual
to act up to the demands of the ideal self without arousing acute
fears or putting beyond reach keenly desired pleasures. In the grip
of the ensuing conflict, the individual is subjected to powerful
temptation to deceive himself as to his real situation and his duties
in that situation. . . . [T]he conflict appears on the surface to
be resolved in the most comfortable and inexpensive fashion. But
the resolution of the conflict is a false one; and therefore unconsciously
it continues the more fiercely for being repressed.
[Ronald V. Sampson, The Psychology of Power 139 (New York:
Vintage Books, 1968) (1966)].
Notes
 G.H. Perris, in ""Leo Tolstoy as Writer," in G.K. Chesterton, G.H. Parris & Edward Garnett, Leo Tolstoy (London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1903) notes that "The Death of Ivan Ilych" is
"the most powerful of all his [Tolstoy's works."
Supplemental Reading: Paul Gewitz, A Lawyer's
Death, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 2053 (1987) (reflecting on Tolstoy's "The
Death of Ivan Ilych" and the compartmentalization of our lives
into professional and private realms); Ronald V. Sampson, The Psychology
of Power 129-139 (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) (1966)
"The Death of Ivan Ilych": A Commentary Outline
"The Death of Ivan Ilych" is a
widely used reference for those who work with or write about dying:
[Aging,
Death and Bereavement] [Death:
A Reading List]. The narrative can also be found as
assigned reading in literature, philosophy, religious studies, and medical
humanities courses. See: Links to Courses
"There is an urgency about storytelling in the wake of death which cannot be the urgency of a race against time - for the time of that life has been forever cancelled - but is somehow the urgency of report, and of reparation. Giving an account can help to settle accounts. An urge emerges to display to ourselves and to others what we should have said--yet surely couldn't have said, and anyway didn't - before the central narrative was over." [Joseph Brooker, What We Talk About When We Talk About Death,
27 Cardozo L. Rev. 847 (2005)]
On self-deception: [Archaeology
of Criticism: Self-Deception, James R. Elkins, West Virginia University]
[Helplessness,
Confusion, Self-Deception, and Non-Existence]
For further reading, see: Daniel Goleman,
Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1985); Shelley Taylor,
Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind
(New York: Basic Books, 1989); Todd S. Sloan, Deciding: Self-Deception
in Life Choices (1987); Gardner Murphy, Outgrowing Self-Deception
(1975); Villy Sørenson, Tutelary Tales 1-24 (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1988); "Self-Deception and Autobiography: Reflections
on Speer's Inside the Third Reich," in Stanley Hauerwas, Truthfulness
& Tragedy 82-98 (1977); "The Allegory of the Cave," in Plato, The
Republic, Book VII (Jowett transl.)
There is a story by Katherine Anne Porter, "The Jilting of Granny Weathall," which you might want to read in conjunction with Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych."
 Essays and Tolstoy Resources
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Wikipedia
Professors Discuss "The Death of Ivan Ilych" [audio]
Stories and Living a Life
reference to reading "The Death of Ivan Ilych," by Robert Coles, author of
The Call of Stories:
Teaching and the Moral Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1989)
Great Books Index
online versions of Tolstoy's books
Religious
Studies and Life Stories
narrative description of an introduction to religion course
Tolstoy Studies Journal Tolstoy Foundation
Alexander II and His Times
A Narrative History of Russia in the Age of
Alexander II, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky
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