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Friday, November 20 (5) - First, read "The Secrets of Leo Tolstoy." Then, read chapter 1 of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. In your notes, write about the narrator's attitude toward the way the characters are acting at Ivan's service. How is the narrator able to characterize Ivan in his absence?
Monday, November 30 (1) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА; Essential Questions for our study of the novella; By tomorrow read chapters 2-3 of the novella (pages 47-60). Chapter 2 revives Ivan. As you read, take notes on the kind of man Ivan Ilyich was. How would you characterize the relationship with his wife? What role does propriety/decorum play in Ivan's life? How do you account for the swift passage of time in places and the attention to detail in others? What does the narrator seem to be suggesting?
Tuesday, December 1 (2) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА; Tonight, read chapters 4-5 (pages 60-70). What does the narrator think of the doctor? Why is Praskovya adamant that it is Ivan's fault?
Wednesday, December 2 (3) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА; By tomorrow I'd like you to read chapters 6-7 (pages 70-76). Take notes and comment on the syllogism of Caius. Why are we unable to truly understand we are going to die? What makes us think that our lives are not like Caius's? What is it that Gerasim provides that nobody else in Ivan's life can?
Thursday, December 3 (4) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА; 'To Tolstoy'
"One peculiar feature of Tolstoy’s style is what I shall term the “groping purist.” In describing a meditation, emotion, or tangible object, Tolstoy follows the contours of the thought, the emotion, or the object until he is perfectly satisfied with his re-creation, his rendering. This involves what we might call creative repetitions, a compact series of repetitive statements, coming one immediately after the other, each more expressive, each closer to Tolstoy’s meaning. He gropes, he unwraps the verbal parcel for its inner sense, he peels the apple of the phrase, he tries to say it one way, then a better way, he gropes, he stalls, he toys, he Tolstoys with words.” - Nabokov
Friday, December 4 (5) - Paragraph hooks; Last-minute essay questions on your final essays; Over the weekend, read chapters 8-10 (pages 76-87). What is this black sack meant to represent? Respond in your notes. Do a little research into Einstein's theory of special relativity. Here's a starting point, and here's an explanation for those of you mathematically inclined. Also, if you're of a mind to and have the time, watch Professor Kagan's lectures below (from lecture 15, 36:11 to lecture 16, 13:52).
The lecture explores the question of the state of being dead.
Professor Kagan puts forward the claim that Tolstoy's character Ivan Ilych is quite the typical man in terms of his views on mortality. All of his life he has known that death is imminent but has never really believed it.
Monday, December 7 (6) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА; Finish the novella for tomorrow. How does the final chapter explain what the narrator claimed in chapter 1 (that "what needed to be done had been done, and done rightly")?
Tuesday, December 8 (1) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА
Wednesday, December 9 (2) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА and coping with life in the face of slow, inch-by-inch death
Thursday, December 10 (3) - ТОЛСТОИ, СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА, the storied self; or, how to conclude a course in literature
Over the break, I'd like you to read parts of Sheila Murnaghan's introduction to the Iliad. First, make sure you have this edition, translated by Stanley Lombardo. Then, read "The Iliad and the Trojan Legend" (xix-xxi), "Heroic Society" (xxi-xxv), "The Homeric Gods" (xxv-xxix), "The Historical Context" (xlviii-liv), and "The Poetic Tradition" (liv-lviii). Reread this webpage. Quiz on day one? Maybe.
Wishing you all a very happy Christmas and a fun time ringing in the new year. Come back to school refreshed, prepared to finish the last semester of high school strong.
Required Course Texts
Sentence Composing for College
Medea (Trans. Diane Arnson Svarlien)
Iliad (Trans. Stanley Lombardo)
The Death of Ivan Ilych (Trans. Pevear & Vokolhonsky)
What's Due?
Monday, December 7 - Senior Fall Final Essay
Click the image to read a short biography of Tolstoy.
“The past history of Ivan Ilyich’s life was most simple and ordinary and most terrible.”
The Death of Ivan Ilych Study Links
Reader's Guide from The Big Read
Tolstoy, Lessons of the Artist
Ivan Ilych Supplementary Readings
"Leo Tolstoy on Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World"
Study Links
"6 reading habits from Harvard"
Achebe, "The Truth of Fiction"
Questions for analyzing novels
Below are 5 of my annotated pages from various texts and 1 of David Foster Wallace's copy of DeLillo's Players. The pages of the texts that you will be working with most closely should look just like these.
“In reading exam papers written by misled students, of both sexes, about this or that author, I have often come across such phrases — probably recollections from more tender years of schooling — as ‘his style is simple’ or ‘his style is clear and simple’ or ‘his style is beautiful and simple’ or ‘his style is quite beautiful and simple.’ But remember that ‘simplicity’ is buncombe. No major writer is simple. The Saturday Evening Post is simple. Journalese is simple. Upton Lewis is simple. Mom is simple. Digests are simple. Damnation is simple. But Tolstoys and Melvilles are not simple... This story is Tolstoy’s most artistic, most perfect, and most sophisticated achievement... Tolstoy’s style is a marvelously complicated, ponderous achievement.”