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LEO TOLSTOY’S

The Death ofIvan Ilyich

National Endowment for the Arts

READER’S GUIDE

“The goal of theartist is not to solve a questionirrefutably, but toforce people to love life in all itsinnumerable,inexhaustiblemanifestations.”

—LEO TOLSTOYfrom an 1865 letter

National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 1

No author ever wrote greater fiction than Leo Tolstoy, and he never wrote a more powerful work than The Death of IvanIlyich.This stark, compelling, and concise book deals—quiteliterally—with matters of life and death. I have read this startlingnovella at least ten times, and I never finish it without a senseof awe and wonder at how profoundly Tolstoy reveals the heights and depths of our common humanity.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Artsdesigned to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popularculture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEAreport, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among Americanadults.The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizenswith the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within theircommunities.

A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens ourimagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insightsthat somehow console and comfort us. Whether you’re a regular readeralready or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining the Big Read.

Dana GioiaChairman, National Endowment for the Arts

Preface

Leo Tolstoy, 1854

2 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts

Introduction to the Novella

Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of IvanIlyich (1886) begins at the funeral ofits title character, a 45-year-oldRussian judge whose death isannounced on the first page.

But Chapter Two’s opening wordsreveal a more alarming reality: “IvanIlyich’s life had been most simpleand commonplace—and mosthorrifying.” The omniscient narratortakes the reader back to Ivan’s happychildhood, predictable youth, andambitious adulthood. PraskovyaFedorovna falls in love with him, sohe marries her. In less than a year,his discontentment leads him toescape into work and his favoritepastime, playing cards. In time, hebuys a house, and Praskovya bears

five children, three of whom die. Heshrewdly climbs the Russian socialladder and receives an impressiveincome. The couple moves to anew city, buys a bigger house, andavoids genuine intimacy. Theycontinue their comfortable,contented lives for almost twodecades.

Then one day, Ivan Ilyich’s lifeunexpectedly changes. Whilehanging curtains in his house, hefalls off a ladder, receiving a minorbruise. Only in retrospect does thismundane moment loom as his mostperilous. An excruciating physicaldecline begins, and Russia’s mostaccomplished doctors can only offer morphine to ease his pain.

“The awful, terrible act of his dying was,he could see, reduced by those aroundhim to the level of a casual, unpleasant,almost indecorous incident…and thiswas done by that very decorum whichhe had served his whole life long.” —from The Death of Ivan Ilyich


Tolstoy’s psychological insight andvivid descriptions encourage areader’s empathy. We feel Ivan’shelpless despair, the misery of hiswife, and the apathy of his adultdaughter. But we also see thecompassion of a peasant boy and the sorrow of Ivan’s 13-year-old son, whose final gesture may triggerthe most important moment ofIvan’s life.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich transportsthe reader to 19th-century Russia, aworld that may seem remote to21st-century Americans. CertainlyTolstoy grounds his novella in aparticular social, political, andreligious context. But the universalquestions transcend time and place:

What provides true happiness?What does it mean to live a goodlife? Does God exist? If so, whywould He allow suffering? What is one’s responsibility to otherhuman beings?

Perhaps most of all, Ivan’s“commonplace” and “horrifying” life challenges us to consider ourmortality, for whether by disease,disaster, or an accidental fall, weall—like him—will die. Tolstoydoesn’t prescribe an answer for Ivan, or for us. But he does offer a work of art that he intended as “a means of communion amongpeople.” In this way, his novella can illuminate even the darkesthuman truths.

LeoTolstoy (1828–1910)

Count Lev (Leo) NikolayevichTolstoy was born in 1828 intoone of Russia’s oldest noblefamilies. After the death of bothparents before age nine, theintensely sensitive boy wasbrought up by an aunt living in Kazan, Russia. There heeventually enrolled in the university, but thinking hisprofessors incompetent, Tolstoyreturned to his estate at Yasnaya Polyana, where heunsuccessfully attempted agricultural reform. Thedisillusioned young man thenenlisted in the army, where he wrote voraciously, published his first works, and indulged ingambling sprees, drinking binges,and chronic womanizing.

After his marriage at 34 to a cheerfulyoung Sophia Andreyevna Behrs,Tolstoy’s life brimmed with the joysof family and creativity, includingthe eventual birth of 13 childrenand the writing of his epicmasterpiece, War and Peace (1863-


THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LEO TOLSTOY

1820sAlexander I dies in 1825, endinga reign that began in 1801.

Poet Alexander Pushkin beginswriting Eugene Onegin, 1825.

Decembrist Revolt fails to preventthe ascension of Alexander’sbrother Nicholas I, 1825.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy born atYasnaya Polyana, August 28,1828.

1830sA nationalist revival leads to ageneral insurrection in 1830(known as the NovemberRevolution) in Russian Poland.The uprising is defeated in 1831.

Tolstoy’s mother dies when he istwo; his father, when he is eight.

The first Russian railroad is built,connecting St. Petersburg withthe royal residence at TsarskoyeSelo, 1838.

1840sPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky born,1840. He will become one ofRussia’s greatest composers withsuch ballets as Swan Lake(1875-6) and The Nutcracker(1891-2).

Tolstoy enters Kazan University tostudy Oriental languages, 1845;moves to St. Petersburg to takelaw exams but runs up hugegambling debts, 1849.

Tolstoy among his family and guests, 1887.

69). But in 1869, Tolstoy endured amajor spiritual crisis that lastedthrough the 1870s, while he waswriting Anna Karenina (1873-77).The orderly foundation upon whichthe past sixteen years had restedseemed fatally cracked: “Is there anymeaning in my life that will not bedestroyed by my inevitablyapproaching death?”, Tolstoy askedin his Confession (1880). He couldno longer bear the burden of hisconventionally successful life, whichhe believed he had achieved at greatmoral cost, by blindly following thedictates of upper-class society.

This spiritual awakening movedTolstoy to dedicate the next twentyyears to writing religious parables,stories, and novellas, such as TheDeath of Ivan Ilyich (1886), intended

to awaken readers’ existentialconsciousness. He also wrotepowerful polemical essays exposingthe injustices of the state, ofserfdom, of the Russian OrthodoxChurch, and concerning modernmedicine, education, marriage, andsexual mores. So commanding washis moral stature that leadingstatesmen, activists, and artists fromacross the globe wrote to Tolstoyand visited him at Yasnaya Polyanain search of spiritual illumination.Some said there were two tsars inRussia’s late nineteenth century,Nikolai II and Leo Tolstoy—and


1850sTolstoy’s first publication, anautobiographical novel titledChildhood (1852), appearsanonymously.

Dostoevsky exiled by Nicholas I toSiberian prison camp, 1850-4.

Nicolas I dies; reign of AlexanderII begins, 1855.

The Crimean War—betweenRussia and the combined forcesof mostly Britain, France, and theOttoman Empire—begins, 1853.The Peace of Paris ends it, 1856.

1860sAlexander II’s emancipation ofserfs transforms the Russianeconomy, beginning a series ofreforms, 1861.

United States Civil War, 1861-65.

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables ispublished, one of Tolstoy’sfavorite novels, 1862.

Tolstoy serializes War and Peacein a Russian journal, 1863-9;published as a complete novel in1869.

1870sFranco-Prussian War begins, July1870.

Tolstoy serializes Anna Kareninain the “thick journal” The RussianHerald, 1873-7; published as acomplete novel in 1877.

Dostoevsky publishes TheBrothers Karamazov, 1880.

Tolstoy and SophiaAndreyevna Behrs ontheir 48th weddinganniversary, September23, 1910.


THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LEO TOLSTOY

1880sAlexander II is assassinated,1881; Alexander III’s rule begins.

Tolstoy begins his IntermediaryPublishing Company, throughwhich he publishes The Death ofIvan Ilyich, 1886.

Anna Akhmatova born, 1889, theRussian poet who will ultimatelybecome a voice of the peopleunder Stalin’s regime.

1890sCentral and Southwestern Russia faces severe famine and drought, 1892.

Gandhi is inspired by readingTolstoy’s “The Kingdom of God IsWithin You,” 1894.

Alexander III’s reign ends, 1894;Nicholas II’s reign will last until1917.

Russian playwright Chekhov’sThe Seagull first performed,1896.

1900sAmerican Senator WilliamJennings Bryan visits Tolstoy atYasnaya Polyana, 1903.

Russo-Japanese War in Korea,1904-5. Jack London is the onlyAmerican journalist to get nearthe front.

Tolstoy’s final masterpiece, HadjiMurád, completed in 1904.

Russia simmers as workersstorm the Winter Palace inMoscow on “Bloody Sunday,”January 5, 1905.

that Tolstoy was the more respectedof the two.

As Tolstoy’s questioning of moderncivilization deepened, he grewincreasingly estranged from his wifeover differences of lifestyle, finances,and the raising of their children.Tolstoy left his home in the middleof the night in September 1910,when he was 82, presumably toescape to a monastery. This finaleffort to find a life free of falsehoodand moral compromise ended onlyten days later, when he died ofpneumonia at the Astapova trainstation in a small rural Russian townon November 7, 1910.

Tolstoy’s life journey, like that of hissearching characters, was filled with

contradiction and the spirit ofhuman possibility. He once wrote:“Man is flowing. In him there are allpossibilities: he was stupid, now heis clever; he was evil, now he isgood, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man.”Tolstoy’s own life is a crowningillustration of these humane andinspiring words.

Tolstoy telling a story to hisgrandchildren, 1909.


Like many 19th-century Russians,Leo Tolstoy was born into theRussian Orthodox Church, but hestruggled with a search for God hiswhole life, as did many of hisfictional characters. By the early1880s, Tolstoy could no longeraccept the dogma, sacraments, orauthority of the Russian OrthodoxChurch. He was disturbed by thereligious hypocrisy of the upperclasses, as well as by their pursuit ofwealth and power. Tolstoy was alsobothered by the repressive policies of the state, especially when state-sponsored violence was justified onsupposedly Christian grounds.Tolstoy left the Church, never toreturn.

He rejected the debauchery of hisyouth and perceived that hisconventionally successful life hadcome at great moral cost. Tolstoyrepudiated his earlier literarymasterpieces and renounced hiswealth to live as a peasant, believingthat the Christian faith of theRussian peasantry was morallysuperior to that of the upper classes.That superiority is reflected in thepeasant boy, Gerasim, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

By the time Tolstoy published hisConfession and “What I Believe”(1884), he had begun to attractdisciples. His powerful 1894polemical essay, “The Kingdom ofGod Is Within You,” which laterinspired Gandhi, ultimately led toTolstoy’s excommunication from theRussian Orthodox Church in 1901.

Torrents of visitors came to YasnayaPolyana to discuss the principles ofTolstoy’s self-created religion,“Tolstoyanism,” which was based onan interpretation of the NewTestament’s Gospels without themiracles. Those principles are thathumans manifest God’s presence inthe world through selfless acts ofdevotion to others; that personalsalvation is available if one followsthis path of love; and that non-resistance is the only godly responseto evil in the world.

Tolstoy and Christianity


Tolstoy’s Russia

Modern Russian history begins inthe 18th century with Tsar Peter theGreat (1672-1725), an imposingseven-foot-tall man who sometimessettled political disagreements byhitting his opponents in the headwith a club. He just as brazenlyattempted to transform hiseconomically and politically

backward country into apowerful modern empire byWesternizing all aspects ofRussian society. A centurylater, Count Leo Tolstoy, aFrench-speaking nobleman,would become the proudbeneficiary of the modernsociety Tsar Peter created.But Tolstoy also would be

tormented by the fact that his socialpower and financial comfort werebuilt on the backs of Russia’sunderprivileged serfs, whocomprised 90 percent of thepopulation.

Tolstoy’s ambivalence about themodernization of Russia deepenedwhen the Great Reforms ofAlexander II, in the 1860s,introduced Western-style politicaland social freedoms even moreextensive than those of Peter theGreat. Moreover, an industrialrevolution similar to that of

Victorian England now took place.Young people of all classes beganmigrating from the peacefulcountryside to the bustling newcities in search of professional

Tsar Alexander II.

Tsar Peter theGreat


Card-playing A popular pastime in 19th-century Russia, bridge and whist were

especially prevalent among upper-class men. In his twenties,Tolstoy obsessively played cards, and a substantial gambling debt

even forced him to sell his family home when he was 27. In an 1890polemical essay “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?”, Tolstoy wrote:

“For people of dull, limited moral feeling, the external diversions areoften quite sufficient to blind them to the indications conscience gives

of the wrongness of their lives.” Tolstoy described card-playing in hisfiction not only to heighten the sense of social reality but also to makepsychological observations about his characters. For Ivan Ilyich card-playing is, like almost everything else he does, an empty, soul-numbinghabit, a culturally acceptable excuse to avoid honest introspection andgenuine intimacy with other people.

opportunities. Many families thatonce lived together in rural Russiabecame spread out, and the closerelationship between the serfs andtheir aristocratic masters dissolved.

While many thinkers and writersgreeted these changes enthusiastically,others, such as Tolstoy, were deeplyconcerned about the breakdown ofthe traditional Russian social fabric.Tolstoy observed the rise of a newclass of professional merchants,lawyers, and doctors, who embodiedthe Western values of materialismand individualism at the expense ofthe traditional Russian ideals ofcommunity and compassion.

It is no wonder Tolstoy loved theBritish writer Charles Dickens,whom he considered a kindred spirit in the fight to raise people’sawareness about the human costs ofmodern “progress.” Tolstoy believedthat only by vigorously casting offthe internalized falsehoods ofmodern society could Russians—orany human beings—return to theiroriginal state of natural goodness.Tolstoy’s fiction, such as AnnaKarenina and The Death of IvanIlyich, depicts a broken worldheaded for moral disaster, unlesshonest introspection and spiritualtransformation begin to occur.


“A great writer is, so tospeak,a second government.That’s why no regimeanywhere has ever loved itsgreat writers,only its minorones.” —ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

from The First Circle

Americans might take for grantedtheir democratic rights and freedomof the press, but until Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in themid-1980s, Russians knew neither.The authoritarian tsarist empire wasreplaced by an even more repressiveSoviet regime, which not onlyeliminated political and socialfreedoms but banned religion aswell. In such a country, the writerunderstandably was celebrated bythe people and feared by thegovernment as the voice of truthand the conscience of a nation.With few other outlets for openpublic debate, Russians have alwaysviewed the writer as their nationalstoryteller, social commentator,philosopher, psychologist, spiritualleader, and freedom-fighter onbehalf of the people.

One of the recurrent symbols inRussian literature and culture is theimage of the writer as a Christ-like

martyr on behalf of the people. The persistence of this symbol arisesfrom the fact that under both thetsars and the Soviets, major writerspaid with their freedoms or theirlives for what they wrote. In thenineteenth century, AlexanderPushkin, the celebrated poet andfather of modern Russian literature,was exiled by Tsar Nicholas I to theRussian South. Fyodor Dostoevskywas condemned to death and almostexecuted before the sentence wascommuted to four years of exile withhard labor in a Siberian prison camp.These experiences directly influencedhis harrowing masterpieces Notesfrom the Underground (1860) andCrime and Punishment (1866). Forhis radical religious beliefs, Tolstoywas excommunicated from theRussian Orthodox Church by TsarNicholas II. In the twentiethcentury, the Jewish writer Isaac Babel(1894-1940) was executed by theSoviet government. The poet OsipMandelshtam (1891-1938), arrestedtwice, died in a prison transit campin Siberia. Alexander Solzhenitsynspent eight years as a politicalprisoner in a Soviet labor camp,which he describes in hismonumental work ofdocumentation, The GulagArchipelago (1973-78), and his short

Tolstoy and Russian Literature

THE BIG READ 11

novel One Day in the Life of IvanDenisovich (1962).

The classic Russian writers remaininfluential in Russia today.Thousands of monuments,educational institutions, streets, andcities carry their names. An averageRussian can recite from memorypassages by favorite poets, andRussians frequently speak of theirliterary characters as if they werealive. In a sense, they are. AsRussians go through a challengingtransition from socialism tocapitalism, they still look to theirliterary classics for inspiration andanswers to that perennial Russianquestion: Kak zhit’? How to live?

If you want to read otherRussian novels, you mightenjoy:

Fathers and Sonsby Ivan Turgenev (1862)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)

Doctor Zhivagoby Boris Pasternak (1958)

PronouncingRussian NamesRussian middle names are called‘patronymics’, and they are formed from the father’s first name. It is customary inprofessional contexts to call a person byhis or her first name and patronymic, butrarely by the last name. In more intimatesurroundings—at home for instance—itis customary to use a person’s first nameonly, or the diminutive form.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (lyeff nee-kuh-LIE-uh-veech tahl-STOY)

Characters from The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Ivan Ilych Golovin (ee-VAHN ee-LEECH guh-lah-VEEN)the novel’s protagonist

Praskovya Fedorovna (prah-SKOHV-yuh FYOH-duh-ruhv-nuh) Ivan Ilyich’s wife

Vladimir Ivanovich (vlah-DEE-meer ee-VAHN-uh-veech):Ivan Ilyich’s son

Liza (LEE-zuh) Ivan Ilyich’s daughter

Fedor Petrovich (FYOH-duhr pee-TROH-veech) Liza’s fiancée

Acquaintances of Ivan Ilyich

Peter Ivanovich (PYOH-tuhr ee-VAHN-uh-veech)

Fedor Vasilievich (FYOH-duhr vah-SEE-lee-eh-veech)

Zakhar Ivanovich (zah-KHAR ee-VAHN-uh-veech)

Gerasim (gee-RAH-seem)a peasant boy who works for Ivan Ilyich

Tolstoy at his desk,1908.


Tolstoy and His Other Works

Tolstoy’s collected works fill ninetyvolumes, and they include novels,novellas, short stories, plays, essays,poetry, and thousands of pages ofdiaries and personal letters. Ineverything he wrote Tolstoy stroveto expose falsehood, celebratehuman goodness, and inspire peopleto “love life in all its innumerable,inexhaustible manifestations.”

His novels War and Peace (1863-69)and Anna Karenina (1873-77) areconsidered among the greatestcreations of world literature. Warand Peace immortalizes the quietheroism and spiritual strength of theRussian people in the years leadingup to and including Russia’s warswith Napoleon from 1805-1812. Inapproximately 1,500 pages, Tolstoymoves back and forth betweenprivate lives and public spectacles,ballrooms and battles, marriages andmassacres. No character is too smalland no subject too large for this epicmasterpiece. War and Peace inspiredthe American writer and criticHenry James to call Tolstoy “areflector as vast as a natural lake; amonster harnessed to his greatsubject—all of human life!”

While War and Peace is a grand,free-flowing celebration of life, Anna

Karenina is more like a taught stringready to snap. It is a novel less aboutlife’s infinite possibilities than aboutthe difficult choices people mustmake in a society that has lost itsspiritual moorings. Set in the decadefollowing the Great Reforms ofAlexander II, Anna Karenina reflectsTolstoy’s personal struggles withfaith and his deep mistrust ofmodern “progress.” The novel is


built on the contrast between twocouples—one doomed, the otherblessed—and their efforts to findhappiness and meaning in a coldworld consumed by falsehood,hypocrisy, and materialism.

If Anna Karenina describes man’ssearch for meaning in a morallyconfused society, then Resurrection(1902) depicts the individual’sdifficult journey back to spiritualhealth in a world that already hasfallen. In his most ideological novel,Tolstoy brilliantly combines stingingsocial commentary with astoundingpsychological realism.

Tolstoy’s final novel-masterpiece,Hadji Murád (1904), tells the storyof Russia’s imperial expansion intothe Caucasus and colonization ofChechnya—a subject as topicaltoday as in Tolstoy’s time. But thework transcends social commentaryto become a supreme artisticmeditation on the eternal humanstruggle between the forces of goodand those of violence. Hadji Murádstirs readers through powerfulunderstatement, lifelike description,and by arousing sympathy for theChechen freedom-fighter, HadjiMurád, whose innate goodness andpersonal heroism are juxtaposed

against the spiritual bankruptcy ofRussian imperial society. The entirework beautifully synthesizes Tolstoy’sbelief in the superiority of untutorednature over social artifice—a majortheme of the early novel TheCossacks (1863), The SevastopolStories (1855-56), and the shortstory “Three Deaths” (1858).

Like everything else Tolstoy wrote,Hadji Murád reveals the writer’sprofound faith in the human spiritand his unwavering commitment tothe hero he cherished above all:Truth.

“The hero of my tale,whom I love with allthe power of my soul,whom I have tried toportray in all itsbeauty, who has been, is, and will bebeautiful, is Truth.”

—LEO TOLSTOY from his 1855 short story

“Sevastopol in May”


1. Why might Tolstoy begin TheDeath of Ivan Ilyich with thefuneral of the main character?How would the effect differ ifit were told chronologically?

2. What are the comic elementsto the opening chapter, andhow do they function?

3. What is your initial impressionof Ivan’s wife? Does youropinion of her change as thestory progresses?

4. Chapter Two begins with animportant claim: “Ivan Ilyich’slife had been most simple andcommonplace—and mosthorrifying.” Why mightTolstoy consider Ivan’s “simpleand commonplace” to be“horrifying”?

5. As Ivan rises in his career, hefails in his personal life. Whatmight Tolstoy be suggestinghere? Why does Ivan find somuch pleasure in playingbridge?

6. Why does Ivan marryPraskovya Fedorovna? Whydoes their marriage deteriorate?Does either husband or wifereceive your sympathy?

7. Why do you think Ivan iscomforted by the presence of the peasant boy, Gerasim?How does his attitude contrastwith Ivan’s other visitors,especially the doctors?

8. Compare the conduct of Ivan’sdaughter with Ivan’s son. Whyis this 13-year-old boy crucialto the novella’s final chapter?

9. After three days of excruciatingphysical and mental pain, Ivanrealizes that despite a futile life,he can still make amends. Is heright? Does he accomplishthis?

10. How do you interpret the lightthat Ivan sees at the very end?What might this lightsymbolize or suggest?

11. Writer Cynthia Ozick says,“This novella is about learning,finally, that you have beenliving a lie, that you’ve failed tobe true to yourself, that you’vefailed to be true to othersaround you, and that youfailed. And it is aboutexploring the rupture of thelie.” Do you agree? Why orwhy not?

Discussion Questions


“Without my Yasnaya Polyana,it is difficult for me to imagine Russia and my relationship to her.” —LEO TOLSTOY

“Can it be that there is not room forall men on this beautiful earth underthose immeasurable starry heavens?… All that is unkind in the hearts ofmen should, one would think, vanish atcontact with Nature—that mostdirect expression of beauty andgoodness.”—LEO TOLSTOY

from his 1853 short story “The Raid”

Tolstoy’s Family Home


Additional Resources

Selected Works by Leo Tolstoy

The Sevastopol Stories (1855-56)War and Peace (1863-69)The Cossacks (1863)Anna Karenina (1873-77)The Kreutzer Sonata (1891)Resurrection (1899)Hadji Murád (1904)

Works by Tolstoy, PosthumouslyCollected

A Confession and Other ReligiousWritings (Penguin, 1987)

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (ModernLibrary, 2002)

What Is Art? (Penguin,1995)

Resources about Tolstoy andRussian History

Billington, James H. The Icon andthe Axe: An Interpretive History ofRussian Culture. 1966. New York:Vintage, 1970.

––. The Face of Russia. New York:TV Books, 1998.

Troyat, Henri. Tolstoy. 1965. Tr.from the French by NancyAmphoux. New York: Doubleday,1967.

Wilson, A.N. Tolstoy: A Biography.New York: Norton, 1988.

Web sites

Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate The Museum site for Tolstoy’s home,Yasnaya Polyanawww.russianmuseums.info/M531#web

The Russian State Library Images and biographical informationabout Leo Tolstoy. To read it in English: http://tolstoy-nasledie.ru/?lang=en

Tolstoy in hispeasant clothingduring his lateryears.

Works CitedKatz, Michael R., ed. Tolstoy's Short Fiction: Norton Critical edition. New York: Norton, 1990.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. The First Circle. Tr. Thomas P. Whitney. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968.

Tolstoy, Leo. A Confession. 1880. New York: Penguin, 1987.

----. The Jubilee edition of the Complete Collected Works of L. N. Tolstoy in 90 volumes, Vol. 5. Published in Moscow bythe Russian Academy of Sciences.

----. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. 1886. Tr. Lynn Solotaroff. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.

----. The Raid and Other Stories. Tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude. London: Oxford University Press, 1982.

----. War and Peace: Norton Critical edition, 2nd ed. Trans. and Ed. George Gibian. New York: Norton, 1996.

AcknowledgmentsDavid Kipen, NEA Director of Literature, National Reading InitiativesWriters: Andrew D. Kaufman, Lecturer and Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia, and Erika Koss for the

National Endowment for the Arts, with a preface by Dana GioiaSeries Editor: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the ArtsImage Editor: Molly Thomas-Hicks with Dan Brady for the National Endowment for the ArtsGraphic Design: Fletcher Design/Washington, DC

Image CreditsCover Portrait: John Sherffius for the Big Read. Inside Front Cover: © Bettmann/Corbis. Page 1: Caricature of Dana Gioia by JohnSherffius. Pages 2-3: Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress; book cover courtesy of Random House, Inc. Page 4: Photo courtesy ofthe Russian State Library. Page 5: Photo by S.A. Tolstaia, courtesy of the Russian State Library. Page 6: Photo by V.G. Chertkov, courtesyof the Russian State Library. Page 7: Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Page 8: Both images, courtesy of the Library of Congress. Page11: © Bettmann/Corbis. Page 12: Book covers for The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Hadji Murád, and Anna Karenina courtesy ofBarnes & Noble, Inc.; book cover for War and Peace courtesy of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.; book cover for Resurrection courtesy ofDover Publications. Page 15: Both photos, courtesy of Andrew D. Kaufman. Page 16: © Bettman/Corbis.

This publication is published by:National Endowment for the Arts • 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. • Washington, DC 20506-0001(202) 682-5400 • www.nea.gov

www.NEABigRead.org

The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supportingexcellence in the arts—both new and established—bringing the arts to allAmericans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is thenation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states,including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federalsupport for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute’smission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people toinformation and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and incoordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, andknowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professionaldevelopment.

Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world tomeaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understandingacross boundaries. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the UnitedStates, Arts Midwest’s history spans more than 25 years.

Additional support for the Big Read has also been provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

“Ivan Ilyich’s life hadbeen most simple andcommonplace—andmost horrifying.”—LEO TOLSTOY

from The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Big Read is an initiative of the NationalEndowment for the Arts designed to restore readingto the center of American culture. The NEA presentsThe Big Read in partnership with the Institute ofMuseum and Library Services and in cooperationwith Arts Midwest.

A great nation deserves great art.

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