The Deathbed Repentance in Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
The Deathbed Repentance in Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Author(s): Brygida Pudełko
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Summary/Abstract: Joseph Conrad’s relation to Lev Tolstoy was complex—although he considered “Turgenev(and perhaps Tolstoy) the only two worthy” of Constance Garnett’s talent asa translator, Tolstoy’s works were judged severely by him. Conrad could not see anymerit in Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and The Kreutzer Sonata, writing ina letter to John Galsworthy of “the gratuitous atrocity” of the deathbed repentance ofIvan Ilych and “the monstrous stupidity of such thing as the Kreutzer Sonata.” Despitethis open animosity there are certain commonalities in the work of both writer’s thatthis paper seeks to explore.In “The Death of Ivan Ilych” (1886) the titular character cherishes an illusion thathe is a successful person who has achieved happiness, only to discover through histerminal illness the shallowness of this view. His pain allows him to see that his lifehas been artificial because it lacked empathy for other people. When Ilych admits tohimself that his family would be better off with him dead, he is freed from his painand in his final moments, death seems no longer frightening. Though this death canbe seen as an object lesson in the poverty of a life lived without spiritual meaning, hisfinal spoken word is “joy!”

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