Smert Ivana Ilyicha, Leo Tolstoy - Edward Engelberg (essay date 1989)
Edward Engelberg (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: Engelberg, Edward. “Tolstoy's ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’: The Dying Life, Chekhov's ‘A Dreary Story’: The Living Death.” In The Elegiac Fictions: The Motif of the Unlived Life, pp. 87-96. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.
[In the following excerpt, Engelberg establishes parallels between Tolstoy's novella, Anton Chekhov's tale “A Dreary Story,” and Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.]
Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich preceded in date of publication Chekhov's less well-known “A Dreary Story” by three years: 1886 and 1889. Chekhov's tale has been called a response to the challenge laid down by Tolstoy's. Certainly both stories are sufficiently similar and dissimilar to be discussed together (as they have been), for each author explored a common problem from a somewhat different aperture.1 It is worth knowing that, like Chekhov's...
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