How The Death of Ivan Ilych drew on Job
A documented line of influence: Leo Tolstoy demonstrably engaged Unknown’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Job
Unknown · c. 500 BCE
BibleThe influenced
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Leo Tolstoy · 1886
The Age of the NovelRelevance
5/10
On The Death of Ivan Ilych’s page
- Ivan's question — why has this been brought on me? — is Job's question, deliberately
- Tolstoy named Job (alongside Ecclesiastes) as inspiration; Ivan's protracted suffering and his protest against its injustice mirror the older drama of unmerited pain
- Reading Job first shows you the ancient template Tolstoy compressed into one dying man's bedroom
On Job’s page
- Tolstoy named this book as an inspiration for his bleakest novella
- Ivan Ilych's long, undeserved-feeling agony — and his cry against the injustice of dying — is Job's drama rebuilt inside a 19th-century bureaucrat
- The post-conversion Tolstoy reached back to Job's challenge to divine justice and asked it again of an ordinary man