The Death of Tolstoy, Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910 The Death of Tolstoy Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910 William Nickell This book is also available as an ebook from Amazon/Kindle , iBooks , Google Ebooks , and Nook . Honorable Mention, 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures (Modern Language Association) In the middle of the night of October 28, 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the most famous man in Russia, vanished. A secular saint revered for his literary genius, pacificism, and dedication to the earth and the poor, Tolstoy had left his home in secret to embark on a final journey. His disappearance immediately became a national sensation. Two days later he was located at a monastery, but was soon gone again. When he turned up next at Astapovo, a small, remote railway station, all of Russia was following the story. As he lay dying of pneumonia, he became the hero of a national narrative of immense significance.

In The Death of Tolstoy, William Nickell describes a Russia engaged in a war of words over how this story should be told. The Orthodox Church, which had excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901, first argued that he had returned to the fold and then came out against his beliefs more vehemently than ever. Police spies sent by the state tracked his every move, fearing that his death would embolden his millions of supporters among the young, the peasantry, and the intelligentsia. Representatives of the press converged on the stationhouse at Astapovo where Tolstoy lay ill, turning his death into a feverish media event that strikingly anticipated today's no-limits coverage of celebrity lives—and deaths. Drawing on newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, police reports, secret circulars, telegrams, letters, and memoirs, Nickell shows the public spectacle of Tolstoy's last days to be a vivid reflection of a fragile, anxious empire on the eve of war and revolution. Introduction 1. The Family Crisis as a Public Event 2. Narrative Transfigurations of Tolstoy's Final Journey 3. The Media at Astapovo and the Creation of a Modern Pastoral 4.

Tolstoyan Violence upon the Funeral Rites of the State 5. On or About November 1910 Conclusion: The Posthumous Notes of Fyodor Kuzmich A Word on My Sources Notes Press Reviews The Death of Tolstoy "William Nickell describes the death drama itself as Russia's first great mass media event. The room in the stationmaster's house in Astapovo where the dying Tolstoy was lodged was the eye of a news hurricane. . . . It comes through from Nickell's account that Russians believed something died for ever at Astapovo."—James Meek, London Review of Books The Death of Tolstoy "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuing controversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works.

Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history."—2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association) Experts "The Death of Tolstoy is a highly sophisticated, richly contextualized, and—above all else—elegantly written account not only of Tolstoy's last days but also of the cult of this international celebrity author. It is more gripping than any novel or film I know on this complicated set of events. William Nickell's book is essential reading not only for those who would understand the late Tolstoy but also for those concerned with the cultural institutions of the modern world."—William Mills Todd III, Harvard College Professor and Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University "Tolstoy was the leading public figure in Russia when he died in 1910. His dramatic death produced a firestorm of commentary and discussion and not only among the cultural elite.

In this fascinating book William Nickell captures the drama of his death and explores the range of Russians' fascination with his life and that of his family. The volume is beautifully illustrated and well produced. It is also a pleasure to read."—Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University "William Nickell's account of the dramatic death of Russia's greatest literary genius is a haunting evocation of an era and the extraordinary moment that defined it. Rich in documentary detail, The Death of Tolstoy provides an intimate portrait of a private family crisis that encapsulates a public and social evolution in mores on the eve of the Russian Revolution. This is certain to be one of the most important books in Russian cultural studies this decade."—Amy Mandelker, Graduate Center of the City University of New York "William Nickell's account of Tolstoy's death, its circumstances, and its consequences is the most thorough in any language.

The story Nickell tells about the final days and death of a great writer is important in itself, but his careful charting of the reaction of family, the public in all its complex manifestations, church, and state to this death turns into a fascinating revelation of the state of Russian society just before World War I."—Donna Tussing Orwin, University of Toronto Related Resources The Death of Tolstoy: Amazon.co.uk: William Nickell: 9780801448348: Books The Death of Tolstoy Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details Publisher: Cornell University Press (10 Jun. 2010) Language: English Product Dimensions: 15.5 x 2.5 x 23.6 cm Average Customer Review: Product Description Review "William Nickell describes the death drama itself as Russia's first great mass media event.

The room in the stationmaster's house in Astapovo where the dying Tolstoy was lodged was the eye of a news hurricane. . . . It comes through from Nickell's account that Russians believed something died for ever at Astapovo." James Meek, London Review of Books" "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuingcontroversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works. Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history." 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association)" "The Death of Tolstoy is a highly sophisticated, richly contextualized, and above all else elegantly written account not only of Tolstoy's last days but also of the cult of this international celebrity author.

It is more gripping than any novel or film I know on this complicated set of events. William Nickell's book is essential reading not only for those who would understand the late Tolstoy but also for those concerned with the cultural institutions of the modern world." William Mills Todd III, Harvard College Professor and Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University" "Tolstoy was the leading public figure in Russia when he died in 1910. His dramatic death produced a firestorm of commentary and discussion and not only among the cultural elite. In this fascinating book William Nickell captures the drama of his death and explores the range of Russians' fascination with his life and that of his family. The volume is beautifully illustrated and well produced. It is also a pleasure to read." Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University" "William Nickell's account of the dramatic death of Russia's greatest literary genius is a haunting evocation of an era and the extraordinary moment that defined it. Rich in documentary detail, The Death of Tolstoyprovides anintimate portrait of a private family crisis that encapsulates a public and social evolution in moreson the eve ofthe Russian Revolution.

This is certain to be one of the most important books in Russian cultural studies this decade." Amy Mandelker, Graduate Center of the City University of New York" "William Nickell's account of Tolstoy's death, its circumstances, and its consequences is the most thorough in any language. The story Nickell tells about the final days and death of a great writer is important in itself, but his careful charting of the reaction of family, the public in all its complex manifestations, church, and state to this death turns into a fascinating revelation of the state of Russian society just before World War I." Donna Tussing Orwin, University of Toronto" "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuing controversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works.

Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history." 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association)" "William Nickell describes the death drama itself as Russia's first great mass media event. The room in the stationmaster's house in Astapovo where the dying Tolstoy was lodged was the eye of a news hurricane. . . . It comes through from Nickell's account that Russians believed something died for ever at Astapovo." James Meek, London Review of Books " "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuing controversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works.

Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history." 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association) " "The Death of Tolstoy is a highly sophisticated, richly contextualized, and above all else elegantly written account not only of Tolstoy's last days but also of the cult of this international celebrity author. It is more gripping than any novel or film I know on this complicated set of events. William Nickell's book is essential reading not only for those who would understand the late Tolstoy but also for those concerned with the cultural institutions of the modern world." William Mills Todd III, Harvard College Professor and Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University " "Tolstoy was the leading public figure in Russia when he died in 1910. His dramatic death produced a firestorm of commentary and discussion and not only among the cultural elite. In this fascinating book William Nickell captures the drama of his death and explores the range of Russians' fascination with his life and that of his family.

The volume is beautifully illustrated and well produced. It is also a pleasure to read." Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University " "William Nickell's account of the dramatic death of Russia's greatest literary genius is a haunting evocation of an era and the extraordinary moment that defined it. Rich in documentary detail, The Death of Tolstoyprovides anintimate portrait of a private family crisis that encapsulates a public and social evolution in moreson the eve ofthe Russian Revolution. This is certain to be one of the most important books in Russian cultural studies this decade." Amy Mandelker, Graduate Center of the City University of New York " William Nickell is Licker Research Chair, Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz. Customer Reviews The Death of Tolstoy: Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910 on JSTOR The Death of Tolstoy Book Description: In the middle of the night of October 28, 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the most famous man in Russia, vanished.

A secular saint revered for his literary genius, pacificism, and dedication to the earth and the poor, Tolstoy had left his home in secret to embark on a final journey. His disappearance immediately became a national sensation. Two days later he was located at a monastery, but was soon gone again. When he turned up next at Astapovo, a small, remote railway station, all of Russia was following the story. As he lay dying of pneumonia, he became the hero of a national narrative of immense significance. In The Death of Tolstoy, William Nickell describes a Russia engaged in a war of words over how this story should be told. The Orthodox Church, which had excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901, first argued that he had returned to the fold and then came out against his beliefs more vehemently than ever. Police spies sent by the state tracked his every move, fearing that his death would embolden his millions of supporters among the young, the peasantry, and the intelligentsia.

Representatives of the press converged on the stationhouse at Astapovo where Tolstoy lay ill, turning his death into a feverish media event that strikingly anticipated today's no-limits coverage of celebrity lives-and deaths. Drawing on newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, police reports, secret circulars, telegrams, letters, and memoirs, Nickell shows the public spectacle of Tolstoy's last days to be a vivid reflection of a fragile, anxious empire on the eve of war and revolution. eISBN: 978-0-8014-6255-9 YOUR INSTITUTION DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THIS BOOK ON JSTOR Try searching on JSTOR for other items related to this book. Cite this Item Introduction (pp. 1-12) In the middle of the night of October 28, 1910, Lev Tolstoy closed the door to the room where his wife of forty-eight years was sleeping, packed his things and left his home, never to return. At the age of eighty-two, the most famous living Russian embarked on a final journey that would become one of the great legends of the twentieth century.

Tolstoy had already been assigned literary immortality by his contemporaries, been called the “second tsar” because of his political influence, and given rise to a worldwide religious movement; now, in the last ten days of his life,... Cite this Item 1 The Family Crisis as a Public Event (pp. 13-54) When Lev Tolstoy left his house in October 1910, he had no destination in mind. His immediate objective was to go somewhere where he would not be found for a few days, then to head further into the “great world,” as he called it. At the nearby railway station he purchased tickets for two different destinations, hoping to cover his tracks. He had arranged to keep his daughter Aleksandra informed of his journey, on condition that she tell no one else where he was, and had told her that any telegrams received from him would be signed not with his... Cite this Item 2 Narrative Transfigurations of Tolstoy’s Final Journey (pp.

55-88) On the evening of November 4, 1910, in a state of delirium as his condition worsened, Tolstoy began to make motions on his blanket with his hands. Though he was only semiconscious at the time, those at his bedside interpreted the movements as an attempt to write—the “great writer of the Russian land” was reflexively repeating the motions that had filled so much of his life, setting forth the meditations that issued from his approaching death. This moment epitomizes the narrative dynamic of Tolstoy’s last days, when his every movement was recorded and vigorously interpreted in the Russian media.... Cite this Item 3 The Media at Astapovo and the Creation of a Modern Pastoral (pp.

89-114) The first reports of Tolstoy’s departure from Yasnaya Polyana appeared in newspapers throughout Russia on October 30, 1910: “A messenger sent from Yasnaya Polyana said that yesterday, October 28, at 5:00 in the morning, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy left his home with Doctor Makovitskii; his whereabouts have for two days been unknown.”¹ This news, first appearing as a small item, by the next day had become a national sensation; already a tremendous media celebrity, Tolstoy had given the press a story brimming with drama and mystery. Russia’s most famous person, at the age of eighty-two, had secretly left his home in... Cite this Item 4 Tolstoyan Violence upon the Funeral Rites of the State (pp. 115-142) On the morning of November 9, watching the beginning of Tolstoy’s funeral, the governor of Tula and a special agent from Petersburg were alarmed to notice the flash of a large red cloth in the crowd.

The two had been placed in charge of overseeing the funeral and were spying on the procession as Tolstoy’s body was carried from the train station at Zaseka to Yasnaya Polyana, to be certain that no “antigovernment” demonstrations accompanied it. An undercover officer was quickly dispatched to determine what the offending red material was. As it turned out, it was only a piece of... Cite this Item 5 On or About November 1910 (pp. 143-158) In 1910 the first Russian Futurist collection, Little Garden of Judges, appeared, with the participation of Kamenskii, Khlebnikov, Burlyuk, Guro, and others; two years later, in the authors’ second, more successful compilation, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, they made their famous appeal to throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy overboard from the steamship of contemporary life. At the time of Tolstoy’s death, it appeared that he had quite willingly abandoned that ship. But contemporary life would not let him go.

In March 1912, the Moscow courts heard a case against the Ding chocolate company, attempting to halt its... Cite this Item Conclusion: The Posthumous Notes of Fyodor Kuzmich (pp. 159-164) In the months following Tolstoy’s death, interest in the writer remained at a peak.¹ Publications poured off the press in response, including numerous editions of previously unpublished letters and works by Tolstoy. The most significant of these was the three-volume collection of his posthumous works edited and published by Chertkov between 1911 and 1912. Some of Tolstoy’s best work, including “Hadji Murad,” appeared for the fi rst time in these volumes. Among them was a lesser known but fascinating piece—an unfi nished frame tale entitled “The Posthumous Notes of Fyodor Kuzmich.”² It is a Tolstoyan palimpsest of sorts, with... Cite this Item A Word on My Sources (pp. 165-166) In writing this book two sources were of immense value.

The first was a 1928 publication of more than one thousand telegrams sent to and from Astapovo during Tolstoy’s eight-day stay there. This Soviet publication was overtly intended to portray the prerevolutionary excesses of church and state, which were revealed in the encrypted correspondence of security agents with their superiors. But the reproduction on the book’s inside cover of the pattern from the wallpaper in the room in which Tolstoy died demonstrated the publication’s participation in the most typical “cult” behavior, in which any relic of Tolstoy’s death might be... Home | Recent | Search | Browse | Contact | Links | Information | News | Facsimiles | Forgeries | Back TOLSTOI, Count Leo Nicolaevitch (1828-1910). Russian novelist and philosopher. Document Signed, ('Leo Tolstoy'), partially printed, and completed by hand, 2 pages folio (a little creased and worn), 1908. A receipt for a registered letter sent to Tolstoi by V Tchertkoff at Tuckton House in Christchurch, Hampshire on 21 September 1908.

Vladimir Tchertkoff (Chertkov) was a revolutionary activist who acted as Tolstoi's secretary, and was to be with him at the Astapova Railway Station when he died. He lived for a time in exile in England, establishing the Freedom Press at Tuckton House, Christchurch, which issued works of Tolstoi then banned in Russia. [No: 20076] This is the archived description of an item that has already been sold. You may search or browse current stock from the links above. A weekend in Yasnaya Polyana: A walk in Tolstoys footsteps | Russia Beyond The Headlines Here the private world of Lev Tolstoy starts Source: geophoto.ru A weekend in Yasnaya Polyana: A walk in Tolstoys footsteps Autumn is the best time to enjoy the classic Russian landscapes and to become immersed in the author’s world, which has been carefully preserved by his descendants.

September 17, 2013 Maria Afonina, RBTH Facebook How to get there + Both local and through trains from Moscow to Tula depart the Kursk station in Moscow heading south daily, and the ‘Moscow-Tula’ express departs at 18.00. You can reach Yasnaya Polyana by taking trolleybus No. 5 from Tula’s Moscow station to the ‘Pedinstitut’, from where buses Nos 114, 117, and 280 take you to the ‘Yasnaya Polyana’ stop. To the right of the bus stop there is a gate with twin white columns and the inscription ‘Yasnaya Polyana’. You will have to pass through this gate and walk around 700 m to the guard post. Buses and route taxis leave Moscow from metro stations ‘Tsarytsino’, ‘Domodedovskaya’, Prazhskaya’, ‘Akademika Yangelya Street’ to the ‘Avtovokzal’ or ‘Mosina Street’ stops in Tula.

You can take the bus or route taxi Nos 114, 117, or 280 from the ‘Mosina Street’ or ‘9 Maya/Avtovozkal’ stops to ‘Yasnaya Polyana’. To the right of the bus stop there is a gate with twin white columns and the inscription ‘Yasnaya Polyana’ and an incline from the terrace up to the hotel complex (the former recreation centre), a distance of around 800 m. Where to stay + Hotel ‘Yasnaya Polyana’ is a 20-minute walk from the estate. There are two wings, a main wing and a vip-wing. A standard double room costs 75 Euros (64.57 GBP) in the main wing and 110 Euros (94.70 GBP) in the vip-wing. ( in Russian) Saturday 09.00-10.00 Get your morning off to a delicious start by sampling the local traditional breakfast of creamy curd pudding with naturally healing strawberry jam or some comforting, homely rice porridge.

The cozy restaurant ‘Preshpekt’, which is situated in a wooden house opposite the entrance to the estate, is the perfect place to meet the locals and learn about the area first hand while you relax. The interior of ‘Preshpekt’ is adorned with woven fabrics and embroidery that complement the simple wooden interior. 10.00-13.00 As soon as you walk through the white columns at the entrance to the Estate, you become utterly absorbed by the green mass of Birches, Maples, Oaks, and of course Ash trees. Some say that the name of this location, Yasnaya Polyana is a shortened version of Yaseneva Polyana. There is also evidence the name is derived from the clear and pure Yasenko stream, which lies close to the estate. To the left of the beautiful estate is a small pond, the surface of which is covered in the delicate and fragrant yellow flowers of water lilies. After a further stroll along the seemingly endless avenue leading to Tolstoy’s house, another detour to the left leads to the bathing pool where the author’s wife Sophia, and the author himself loved to bathe.

The grounds of the estate contain stables, the Volkonsky’s house as well as apple orchards on the left hand side, an enjoyable and tasty distraction on the long walk to the house. A small road leading away from the main avenue leads to the grave of Lev Tolstoy. The grave is next to a long ravine in a silent part of the Forest of the Old Order and is fully inscribed into the natural landscape, possibly echoing the writer’s views on life and death. Returning to the road perpendicular to the main avenue you will pass the Kuzminsky’s house. Make sure you take the time to see how the beautiful façade intertwines with flowers and is fronted by beds. Walk further down the avenue to Tolstoy’s house and admire the equestrian and feminine figurines carved into the balustrade on the terrace. Take another few steps and enter the door into the private world of Lev Tolstoy. The house has been left as it was in 1910 when the author died and is open to you, however photography inside is stricly forbidden. A guide will greet you in the first room, which is lined with bookcases.

The house contains a total of 22,000 books, of which around 50% are in Russian and a little less than 39 foreign languages. A significant part of the book collection is in French, which Tolstoy studied particularly intently to aid in his preparation for writing the novel ‘War and Peace’. The walls on the staircase decorated with many large English clocks. On the right is a room, which served as a dining and guest room. The plates on the table are those from which Tolstoy’s large family would eat. There are two portraits of Tolstoy on the walls: one by the hand of I.N. Kramskoy (a second such portrait is in the Tretyakov Gallery) and an additional portrait by I.E. Repin (the artist painted around 70 portraits of the author). Many other portraits can be seen depicting the author’s daughters and his wife. There are also two grand pianos in the room as well as chairs, which would make for social gatherings of adults and children after dinner. You can visit Tolstoy’s bedroom in the museum, where a copy of Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ embellishes a simple table.

This was the book he was reading up until 1910 when he abandoned Yasnaya Polyana. You can also visit Sophia Andreyevna’s room, and the nanny’s room among others. According to one account the author fled Yasnaya Polyana because of the exorbitant numbers of visitors and all the unwanted attention paid to him. The guide is full of interesting information such as the tragic tale of a letter Tolstoy wrote to his wife asking her not to think that he had gone because he had fallen out of love with her. Tolstoy wrote that he could live in luxury no longer. The guide will then show some items used in daily life, which the author could justifiably call luxurious as well as the room in which the coffin containing his body was placed in 1910. You can walk at your leisure round the estate and the surrounding forest and its even possible to bathe in the large pond near the entrance. Souvenirs can be purchased either in the ‘Preshpekt’ restaurant, or in the souvenir shop in ‘Yasnaya Polyana’ hotel. Prices vary.

The assortment of books about Lev Tolstoy and his work include those produced by the publishing house ‘Yasnaya Polyana’, Uniquely available here. Tula gingerbread with condensed milk or jam along with a picture of the estate, (from 170 roubles) (that would be 3.33 GBP), or animals (140 roubles) (2.74 GBP) are popular souvenir choices. Widespread collectible and craft dolls are also sold, as well as musical toys and ceramic items with floral ornaments produced by sgraffito painting. 15.00-19.00 Take a relaxing stroll after dinner from ‘Yasnaya Polyana’ hotel to the opposite side to the estate. Just a ten-minute walk through the forest brings you to a river, where you can have a refreshing swim or take a picnic with you. 19.00-20.30 In ‘Yasnaya Polyana’ there is a recreation centre, screening films and shows followed by Q&A sessions with the directors-a great attraction for any film or stage fanatics. For those whose tastes crave entertainment of a more musical nature, ‘Dolche trio’ concerts are also on offer.

Performed by graduates of the Moscow conservatoire named after P.I. Tchaikovskiy who now play in the Tula Philharmonic. Education and learning are major themes here; with Under the ‘Prosveshchenie’ (Enlightenment in English) programme lectures giving people the opportunity to learn about physics, linguistics, mathematics, art, biology and history. After leaving the new recreation centre building with its white columns, you can turn left and take a walk along the only street in Yasnaya Polyana village. Sunday Sunday is an ideal day to visit Kozlova Zaseka railway station-a significant landmark, being the place where the Tolstoys collected their mail, welcomed guests and where the great Lev Tolstoy made his calls. The station dates back to the 16th century when it was part of the South Russian border fortifications on the edge of the principality of Moscow. The site became a railway station in 1868 and was named Kozlova in honour of governor Ivan Kozlov. It was from this very location that he left for the south in 1910. He fell ill and died on the way at Astapova railway station.

1910 - Old Windsorian Old Windsorian posted 20 Dec 2010, 11:45 by P Fooks London, 20th December Liberals and Tories tie in the general election and the Liberal Herbert Asquith remains in power with the backing of 42 Labour MPs and 84 Irish Nationalists. posted 20 Dec 2010, 11:44 by P Fooks London, 23rd November posted 20 Dec 2010, 11:42 by P Fooks Britain, 20th October posted 20 Dec 2010, 11:37 by P Fooks Astopovo, Ryazan, 20th November Peasants are flocking to the little railway station at Astopovo, where the author Leo Tolstoy died today after a secret flight from his family estate at Yasnaya Polyana accompanied by his daughter Tatiana. At the age of 82 he was seeking to live as a hermit, free of land he inherited as a count but which made a mockery of his later beliefs.

posted 20 Dec 2010, 11:32 by P Fooks Liverpool, January Suffragettes on hunger strike in prison are being tortured by force feeding. Lady Constance Lytton, who is in Walton jail, under an assumed name, told visitors she was allowed only four days without food before doctors began this violent treatment on her. 1-5 of 5 The Death of Tolstoy: Amazon.es: William Nickell: Libros en idiomas extranjeros Libros en idiomas extranjeros EUR 34,02 Precio final del producto Elige envÃ­os GRATIS mÃ¡s rÃ¡pidos con Amazon Premium o elige envÃ­o GRATIS en 4-5 dÃ­as SÃ³lo queda(n) 1 en stock (hay mÃ¡s unidades en camino). Vendido y enviado por Amazon. Se puede envolver para regalo. Cantidad: Para ver las direcciones, por favor Iniciar sesiÃ³n Usar esta ubicaciÃ³n: Actualizar Introduce un cÃ³digo postal vÃ¡lido.

Introduce un cÃ³digo postal vÃ¡lido. O + EUR 2,99 de gastos de envÃ­o De 2Âª mano: Bueno | Detalles Estado: De 2Âª mano: Bueno Comentario: Libro usado con algunas notas o manchas. Entrega estimada en 20 dÃ­as. AÃ±adir a la cesta AÃ±adir a la Lista de deseos Â¿Tienes uno para vender? Volver atrÃ¡s Ir adelante Escuchar Reproduciendo... Interrumpido EstÃ¡s escuchando una muestra de la ediciÃ³n de audio Audible. Ver las 3 imÃ¡genes The Death of Tolstoy (InglÃ©s) Tapa dura – 10 jun 2010 de DescripciÃ³n del producto Críticas "William Nickell describes the death drama itself as Russia's first great mass media event. The room in the stationmaster's house in Astapovo where the dying Tolstoy was lodged was the eye of a news hurricane. . . .

It comes through from Nickell's account that Russians believed something died for ever at Astapovo." James Meek, London Review of Books" "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuingcontroversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works. Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history." 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association)" "The Death of Tolstoy is a highly sophisticated, richly contextualized, and above all else elegantly written account not only of Tolstoy's last days but also of the cult of this international celebrity author. It is more gripping than any novel or film I know on this complicated set of events.

William Nickell's book is essential reading not only for those who would understand the late Tolstoy but also for those concerned with the cultural institutions of the modern world." William Mills Todd III, Harvard College Professor and Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University" "Tolstoy was the leading public figure in Russia when he died in 1910. His dramatic death produced a firestorm of commentary and discussion and not only among the cultural elite. In this fascinating book William Nickell captures the drama of his death and explores the range of Russians' fascination with his life and that of his family. The volume is beautifully illustrated and well produced. It is also a pleasure to read." Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University" "William Nickell's account of the dramatic death of Russia's greatest literary genius is a haunting evocation of an era and the extraordinary moment that defined it. Rich in documentary detail, The Death of Tolstoyprovides anintimate portrait of a private family crisis that encapsulates a public and social evolution in moreson the eve ofthe Russian Revolution.

This is certain to be one of the most important books in Russian cultural studies this decade." Amy Mandelker, Graduate Center of the City University of New York" "William Nickell's account of Tolstoy's death, its circumstances, and its consequences is the most thorough in any language. The story Nickell tells about the final days and death of a great writer is important in itself, but his careful charting of the reaction of family, the public in all its complex manifestations, church, and state to this death turns into a fascinating revelation of the state of Russian society just before World War I." Donna Tussing Orwin, University of Toronto" "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuing controversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works.

Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history." 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association)" "William Nickell describes the death drama itself as Russia's first great mass media event. The room in the stationmaster's house in Astapovo where the dying Tolstoy was lodged was the eye of a news hurricane. . . . It comes through from Nickell's account that Russians believed something died for ever at Astapovo." James Meek, London Review of Books " "The one-hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's passing provided an occasion for continuing controversy over his status as writer, spiritual leader, and moral authority. The appearance of The Death of Tolstoy could not be more timely, but it is the product of years of exhaustive research, examination of all levels of Russian life, and study of Tolstoy's life and works.

Elegantly written and quick of pace, it is more gripping than any fiction and a thorough and penetrating account of intellectual, cultural, and literary history." 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures Honorable Mention Citation (Modern Language Association) " "The Death of Tolstoy is a highly sophisticated, richly contextualized, and above all else elegantly written account not only of Tolstoy's last days but also of the cult of this international celebrity author. It is more gripping than any novel or film I know on this complicated set of events. William Nickell's book is essential reading not only for those who would understand the late Tolstoy but also for those concerned with the cultural institutions of the modern world." William Mills Todd III, Harvard College Professor and Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University " "Tolstoy was the leading public figure in Russia when he died in 1910. His dramatic death produced a firestorm of commentary and discussion and not only among the cultural elite. In this fascinating book William Nickell captures the drama of his death and explores the range of Russians' fascination with his life and that of his family.

The volume is beautifully illustrated and well produced. It is also a pleasure to read." Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University " "William Nickell's account of the dramatic death of Russia's greatest literary genius is a haunting evocation of an era and the extraordinary moment that defined it. Rich in documentary detail, The Death of Tolstoyprovides anintimate portrait of a private family crisis that encapsulates a public and social evolution in moreson the eve ofthe Russian Revolution. This is certain to be one of the most important books in Russian cultural studies this decade." Amy Mandelker, Graduate Center of the City University of New York " Reseña del editor In the middle of the night of October 28, 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the most famous man in Russia, vanished. A secular saint revered for his literary genius, pacificism, and dedication to the earth and the poor, Tolstoy had left his home in secret to embark on a final journey. His disappearance immediately became a national sensation. Two days later he was located at a monastery, but was soon gone again. When he turned up next at Astapovo, a small, remote railway station, all of Russia was following the story.

As he lay dying of pneumonia, he became the hero of a national narrative of immense significance. In The Death of Tolstoy, William Nickell describes a Russia engaged in a war of words over how this story should be told. The Orthodox Church, which had excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901, first argued that he had returned to the fold and then came out against his beliefs more vehemently than ever. Police spies sent by the state tracked his every move, fearing that his death would embolden his millions of supporters among the young, the peasantry, and the intelligentsia. Representatives of the press converged on the stationhouse at Astapovo where Tolstoy lay ill, turning his death into a feverish media event that strikingly anticipated today's no-limits coverage of celebrity lives and deaths. Drawing on newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, police reports, secret circulars, telegrams, letters, and memoirs, Nickell shows the public spectacle of Tolstoy's last days to be a vivid reflection of a fragile, anxious empire on the eve of war and revolution. " No es necesario ningÃºn dispositivo Kindle.

DescÃ¡rgate una de las apps de Kindle gratuitas para comenzar a leer libros Kindle en tu smartphone, tablet u ordenador. Apple Facing Death with Tolstoy - The New Yorker Facing Death with Tolstoy November 5, 2013 This essay is drawn from the introduction to a new translation, by Peter Carson, of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession,” which will soon be published by Liveright . Leo Tolstoy died from pneumonia, aged eighty-two, at the railway station of Astapovo, a remote Russian village, on November 7, 1910. He had left his family home on October 28, in the middle of the night, walking out on his wife of forty-eight years—the long-suffering and increasingly paranoid Sonya. “I am doing what old men of my age usually do: leaving worldly life to spend the last days of my life in solitude and quiet,” he wrote in the uncomfortably chilly letter of explanation he left for her.

In fact, there were to be very few of those “last days.” For whatever Tolstoy’s plans for the future had been (and we can now only guess at them), they were soon interrupted when he was taken ill on board a train and forced to get out at Astapovo, where the stationmaster gave him the use of his house. And there was certainly very little solitude or quiet. His death became one of the first international media “events.” It attracted to the little station not only hundreds of his admirers (and some watchful government spies) but also a Pathé News camera team, eager to catch the great man’s final moments on film, and reporters from all over the world who wired often unreliable stories back to their editors. “Tolstoy is Better … The Count Is Very Weak, but the Doctors Say There Is No Immediate Danger,” blazed a headline in the New York Times just a couple days before his death, when he was already drifting in and out of consciousness. One of the most haunting images caught on camera is of Sonya herself, peering in through the window of the room in which her sick husband lay.

She had traveled to Astapovo as soon as she heard of his illness, but the friends caring for him did not allow her in until Tolstoy was on the very point of death. This drama at the railway station unfolded more than thirty years after Tolstoy had written the novels for which he is now best known: War and Peace, completed in 1869, and Anna Karenina, completed in 1877. His popular celebrity in 1910 owed more to his political and ethical campaigning and his status as a visionary, reformer, moralist, and philosophical guru than to his talents as a writer of fiction. Vegetarian, pacifist, and enemy of private property, he was, over the last decades of his long life, a persistent critic of the Russian imperial regime (hence the government spies infiltrating the crowds at Astapovo) and of the Russian Orthodox Church. He came to favor a primitive version of Christianity based entirely on the teachings of Jesus, rejecting the dogma of Orthodoxy (hence his excommunication by church authorities in 1901). And he was a vigorous supporter of the Russian poor. He had launched welfare programs, including soup kitchens, and funded schools.

In a gesture of solidarity with the underprivileged, he renounced his aristocratic title (“Count” Leo Tolstoy) and took to wearing the characteristic dress of the peasants—though neither contemporary photographs nor the comments of eyewitnesses suggest that he ever really looked the part of an authentic laborer. It was perhaps fitting that his final days became so celebrated across the world because, throughout his life but particularly from the late 1870s on, death was another of Tolstoy’s obsessions. He had firsthand experience of death and the dying that was unusual even for a man of his era. As an active-duty soldier in 1854-55 he had witnessed the slaughter of the Crimean War, and he vividly recalled both the agonizing death of his brother Dmitry from tuberculosis in 1856 and the appalling sight—and sound—of a man being guillotined in Paris in 1857 (it was partly this experience that made him a staunch opponent of the death penalty). Of his thirteen children with Sonya, no fewer than five had died before they were ten.

But in his writing he went beyond the horrors of death to reflect on the big questions that the inevitability of death poses for our understanding of life itself: if we must die, what is the point of living? Some of his most memorable reflections on this theme are found in the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich and in the autobiographical memoir Confession. Both were written after Tolstoy had completed Anna Karenina: the novella was begun in 1882 and finished in 1886; the memoir was completed in 1882, but fell afoul of the Russian censorship efforts and was circulated only unofficially until it was published (in Russian) in Geneva in 1884. They are both powerful reminders of just how impressive Tolstoy’s writing was, even when he had turned his back on those grand Russian novels that have become his main claim to fame. And turn his back he most certainly had: “an abomination that no longer exists for me” was his description of Anna Karenina in the early 1880s.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, as its title plainly suggests, tells the story of the final months of one man: an ordinary, reasonably prosperous, and successful middle-aged Russian judge. An apparently trivial injury (he hurts his side in a fall from a chair while hanging curtains in his new apartment) quickly develops into something worse. Doctors offer all kinds of diagnoses, medicines, and guarded reassurance, but within weeks, Ivan Ilyich can see that he is a dying man, confronted with the agony, indignity, loneliness, and (in Tolstoy’s uncompromising description) foul stench of his own demise. For most of his family and colleagues, his death is an inconvenience and an embarrassment; they were, as the living usually are, relieved not to be dying themselves but simultaneously aggrieved by the reminder of their own mortality that Ivan Ilyich’s death gave them.

It is only a young servant, Gerasim, with all of Tolstoy’s favorite peasant virtues, who can look the processes of dying in the eye and care for his master with true humanity; he deals unashamedly with excrement and allows the dying man to lie in the one position in which he can find some comfort—with his legs raised, resting on Gerasim’s shoulders. Confession is in a very different style and genre of writing: it is a first-person account of Tolstoy’s own spiritual journey, from his rejection of religion as a young man, through his rediscovery of the Orthodox church in middle age, to his final rejection of the myths and falsehoods of the established church (from the Trinity to the Eucharist) while embracing the simplest moral teachings of Jesus himself. It is often taken as testimony to Tolstoy’s spiritual “crisis” after he had completed Anna Karenina, and as a crucial point in his turn from fiction to politics and philosophy. But it also confronts the fear and the inevitability of death. It is in Confession that Tolstoy tells of his experience watching an execution in Paris and discusses his own dilemmas about suicide.

And he broaches some of the major questions of the relationship between life and death that underlie the story of Ivan Ilyich: as he sums it up at one point in the memoir, “Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” It is important to remember that when Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession, preoccupied with dying as both those works are, he was still only in his fifties; he was to live another twenty-five years. Human mortality was for him, in large part, a philosophical dilemma. He also (as we see in The Death of Ivan Ilyich) relished the writer’s challenge of intimately exploring the processes of dying—when it was something he could only have observed from the perspective of the living. It was a challenge that so intrigued him that he is later supposed to have asked his friends and followers to quiz him about the experience of his own death as he was going through it. “Did human perception of life change as one approached the end?” he wanted them to inquire.

“Did one feel a progression toward something different?” Cannily foreseeing that, on his deathbed, he might be unable to voice a coherent response, he had even devised a code of eye movements to express his answers. But in their distress, those gathered around him in his final hours at Astapovo apparently forgot to pose the questions. It is a poignant irony that Tolstoy’s translator, Peter Carson, was much closer to death and dying when he was working on The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession than Tolstoy himself was at the time he was first writing them. * * * Carson was one of the finest translators there has ever been of nineteenth-century Russian literature: “I am not an expert. I merely have a good feel for it,” he once observed with typical modesty. That “feel” came partly from his family background in a social and cultural world that was in some respects not so different from Tolstoy’s own. His mother was Russian, Tatiana Petrovna Staheyeff, the daughter of an extremely wealthy commercial family.

She was not of the grand order of nobility from which Tolstoy, title or no title, originated, but her family too had turned a good deal of its substantial riches to the kind of philanthropy (founding schools, for example) that was such a major part of Tolstoy’s life’s project. When she was little more than a girl, she fled the Revolution, in 1917, first to China, where she met her part-French, part-Anglo-Irish husband, and later to England. There, soon widowed, she brought up her children—Peter Staheyeff Carson, who was born in London, in 1938, and his sister, another Tatiana—almost singlehandedly in a polyglot household where Russian, French, and English were spoken more or less interchangeably. In fact, the use of French side-by-side with Russian, so characteristic of the idiom of the Russian elite and noticeable in these works of Tolstoy (comme il faut, établissement, and so on), was very close to the idiom of Carson’s early home life.

That “feel” came also, however, from a precise attention to language that was encouraged by his classical training. As a boy Carson won a scholarship to Eton, where he specialized in Latin and Greek, and he later majored in classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was an academic background that made him particularly alert to the forms and technicalities of language and expression. He insisted, for example, that in translating this “late Tolstoy,” one should not make the mistake of imposing on it a literary, stylish rhetoric, as so many translators have done. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession were both written more simply, even awkwardly, than War and Peace or Anna Karenina, with even more frequent repetitions of the same or very similar words (in the novella, for example, the words “decorum,” “decorous,” and “indecorous” recur again and again).

Carson aimed to capture that particular side of Tolstoy’s writing, retaining the repetitions (even though the works might have read more fluently if, as he put it, he had taken “evasive action” and “smoothed things over”), and so far as possible he also retained Tolstoy’s sometimes surprising sentence structure along with his original paragraphing. He wanted the reader in English to be able to see what Tolstoy had been doing in the Russian. Carson’s main professional career, from the 1960s to 2012, was in British publishing at Penguin Books, where he ended up as editor in chief, and later at Profile Books. He had an almost unrivalled sense of what made a distinguished and sellable book. It was he, for example, who spotted the quality of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, and he brought the work of many other authors, myself included, into the world.

His own style was one of extraordinarily elegant understatement: if he tapped his fingers together and said “I don’t think so,” you knew your latest scheme was a complete no-hoper; if he twinkled and giggled a little and said of a manuscript, “It’s really rather good,” you would know you had something close to a bestseller on your hands. And his talent was based on an equally extraordinary capacity for quick and careful reading: three novels in an evening plus six new book manuscripts over a weekend were his normal regime. I suspect that his life in reading and editing gave him a sneaking sympathy for Sonya Tolstoy, who often spent her evenings copying, recopying, and tidying up Tolstoy’s manuscripts until the early hours, in addition to acting as an agent with his publishers. Carson’s translations were largely the work of his spare time. He agreed to translate The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession in 2009, when he could not possibly have known how uncomfortably relevant their themes would become to his own life—and death.

For only halfway through the translation it became clear, in early 2012, that his long-standing illness would not be curable—and that, most likely, he had only months to live. He nevertheless pushed on with the task, determined to complete what he had begun, working whenever he could, sometimes from bed as he became frailer. The final manuscript was delivered to the publisher by his wife on the day before he died in January 2013. We can hardly begin to imagine what it must have been like to translate the grim tale of Ivan Ilyich as one’s own life slipped away, but almost certainly the unsettling energy of Carson’s version has something to do with the circumstances in which it was written. Carson himself was very committed to the unusual pairing within the same volume of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession. The novella has long been a favorite among the later works of Tolstoy and has attracted a wide range of interpretations and explanations almost from the moment of its publication.

The aggressive and unforgettable “realism” of the description of Ivan Ilyich’s final illness has prompted some critics to hunt for a factual source for the story, and indeed it does seem fairly certain that Tolstoy was partly inspired by the death of a judge called Ivan Ilyich Mechnichov who worked in the town of Tula, near the Tolstoy country estate, and whose sufferings had been described to Tolstoy by the judge’s brother. Other readers—undeterred by the fact that, whatever real-life models there may have been, the story is essentially fiction—have attempted to diagnose the illness from which Ivan Ilyich was suffering, even though the elusive uncertainty about the nature of his condition is part of the point of the tale. Was it cancer of the gall bladder? Or was it cancer of the pancreas? Questions like these, as well as the lessons they might (or might not) hold for the palliative care of the dying, have insured The Death of Ivan Ilyich, alone of all Tolstoy’s works, an unlikely foothold in modern medical journals and libraries.

Much more significant have been the many discussions of the philosophical and ethical issues the story raises, in particular what in the end—after all the agony and the terror—allows Ivan Ilyich to approach death with some degree of equanimity? Or, to put it in terms of Tolstoy’s own vivid image of the process of dying, what enabled him to struggle through that black sack into which he felt he was being pushed and make his way through to the light on the other side? Tolstoy seems to offer two reasons. First, Ivan Ilyich finally came to recognize the failings of his apparently successful former life: among other things, its tawdry bourgeois aspirations, its vanity (it was, after all, a fall while hanging some curtains that led to his death), and the emptiness of his marriage. “Yes, everything was wrong,” he said to himself, “but it doesn’t matter. I can, I can do what is right. But what is right?” he asked himself, and at once fell silent.

This recognition of his errors is signaled in the narrative by two rare signs of genuine human interaction between Ivan Ilyich and his family: his wife at his bedside is caught weeping; and his young son, accidentally hit by one of Ivan Ilyich’s flailing arms, takes his father’s hand in his own and presses it to his lips, also in tears. Second, at the very end of the story, Tolstoy insists that instead of attempting to avoid his own mortality, Ivan Ilyich at last managed to look death in the eye, and that direct confrontation destroyed the terrible fear which had until then so tormented him. He searched for his old habitual fear of death and didn’t find it. Where was death? What death? There was no fear, because there was no death. Instead of death there was light. “So that’s it!” he suddenly said aloud. “Such joy!” Unlike The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Confession has had an insecure and fluctuating reputation since it was completed in 1882. In addition to the problems with Russian censors because of its attacks on the Orthodox church, Tolstoy himself changed his mind about the role and status of the memoir.

It was first intended to act as an introduction to another of his religious essays, An Investigation of Dogmatic Theology, and originally carried the title An Introduction to an Unpublished Work. It was only when the first regular edition was published outside Russia in 1884 that it was entitled Confession. And it is simply Confession, not “The Confession” or “A Confession”; as Carson was keen to emphasize, this essay is not some admission of wrongdoing (“confession” in the usual modern sense), but an account of a spiritual journey in the tradition of the Confessions of Augustine or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As such, in the late nineteenth century, it attracted considerable attention; in fact, it was one of the first of Tolstoy’s works to be translated into English (before War and Peace or Anna Karenina). But it has often seemed less appealing to modern readers.

It can seem self-indulgent in its introspection (the usual fault of spiritual autobiographies, however self-critical they set out to be); it includes some fairly austere discussion of philosophers from Socrates to Schopenhauer; and the idealization of the religious faith (and approach to death) of the Russian peasant, while touching, seems also naively romantic. Confession comes to life again if we read it alongside The Death of Ivan Ilyich rather than alongside the religious essays with which it is usually grouped. The similarities and overlaps between the two instantly catch the eye: from the discussion of the inevitability of death to the nature of human self-deception and the admiration (romantic or not) of the honorable approach to life and mortality shown by Russian peasants (in contrast to the people, as Tolstoy puts it, “in our world”; that is, among the elite). In short, the pairing encourages us to see The Death of Ivan Ilyich as a fictional exploration of the theoretical problems of religion, morality, and mortality explored autobiographically in Confession.

In other words, that question directly posed in Confession—“Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?”—is answered by the novella. Yet if Confession helps to expose the theoretical aspects of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, then the reverse is also true: The Death of Ivan Ilyich helps to expose the fictional aspects of Confession. Critics have often taken Confession as a more or less transparent account of Tolstoy’s spiritual development from his youth, and especially of the religious “crisis” he went through after finishing Anna Karenina—a crisis marked first by his turn to the Orthodox church, then by his emphatic rejection of the dogma and lies of established religion. There are certainly many overlaps between Tolstoy’s claims in Confession and what we know of his life, and of his intellectual and religious dilemmas, from other accounts.

His son Leo, for example, in his own memoir of Tolstoy’s life, The Truth About My Father (written, it is true, explicitly to defend Sonya from the attacks on her after the old man’s death), claims to recall the very moment when his father rejected the Orthodox rules on fasting: during what should have been a fast for a strict observer of such things, sitting at the dinner table with the rest of the family, who were enjoying a hearty meal, Tolstoy pushed away his “ascetic fare,” turned to one of the children, and demanded what they were eating. “Ilia, my boy,” he said, “pass me the cutlets!” His days of formal religious observance were over. It should go without saying, however, that autobiography is never quite transparent, and that first-person spiritual memoirs are always partly constructions—retrospective and simplifying fictions imposed on the confusing stream of memories and on intellectual doubts and dilemmas. In Confession Tolstoy hints at the very fictionality of his own autobiography through a series of echoes with his novels.

At one point, for example, he describes his own fantasies of suicide almost exactly as he described those of Levin in Anna Karenina; this is not only a hint that there might be something of the real Tolstoy in the fictional Levin but also that there might be something of the fictional Levin in the autobiographical Tolstoy. And we find many other close doubles between Confession and The Death of Ivan Ilyich—from the description of a dying man’s attitude toward his own at first insignificant symptoms of illness to the image of the return to childhood that is so powerful in both works. It is as if Confession reminds us of the constructed nature of its autobiographical subject by anticipating many of the fictional tropes of the novella. Tolstoy was a man who defined himself in and by writing, in an inextricable amalgam of fiction and fact. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession demand that readers reflect on what the inevitability of death means to us, and on how we shall face our own end. At Peter Carson’s funeral, the very last lines of Ivan Ilyich were read out. “It is finished!” someone said above him. He heard these words and repeated them in his heart.

“Death is finished,” he said to himself. “It is no more.” He breathed in, stopped halfway, stretched himself, and died. Carson himself might not have entirely approved of parading this alignment of literature and life which, in his own dying, he was concerned to downplay. Indeed, just three days before he died, he wrote: It is strange that I was smitten by my illness when translating Ivan Ilyich and Confession, but to be honest I do not think it has affected anything and I have no thoughts on the matter. In Carson we had a man who had no interest in publicity and would have hated the celebratory—almost narcissistic—display of dying that unfolded at Astrapovo station (Carson in fact died at home with his wife). But happily, in a sense, his “thoughts on the matter” are preserved for us, and will live on, in this fine translation. Mary Beard is a professor in classics at Cambridge and author of the blog “ A Don’s Life .” Her book “Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations” will be published in March. More:

Question: Which author died at Astapova railway station in 1910?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy