National Endowment for the Arts READER'S GUIDE INSTITUTE ol . ., MuseurriandLibrary SERVICES LEO TOLSTOY'S The Death of Ivan llyich The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations." —LEO TOLSTOY from an 1 865 letter Preface No author ever wrote greater fiction than Leo Tolstoy, and he never wrote a more powerful work than The Death of Ivan Wyich. This stark, compelling, and concise book deals — quite literally — with matters of life and death. I have read this startling novella at least ten times, and I never finish it without a sense of 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 Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you're a regular reader already or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining the Big Read. ^dm.^^' Dana Gioia Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts Leo Tolstoy, 1854 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ Introduction to the Novella Leo Tolstoys The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) begins at the funeral of its title character, a 45-year-old Russian judge whose death is announced on the first page. But Chapter Two's opening words reveal a more alarming reality: "Ivan Ilyichs life had been most simple and commonplace — and most horrifying." The omniscient narrator takes the reader back to Ivan's happy childhood, predictable youth, and ambitious adulthood. Praskovya Fedorovna falls in love with him, so he marries her. In less than a year, his discontentment leads him to escape into work and his favorite pastime, playing cards. In time, he buys a house, and Praskovya bears five children, three of whom die. He shrewdly climbs the Russian social ladder and receives an impressive income. The couple moves to a new city, buys a bigger house, and avoids genuine intimacy. They continue their comfortable, contented lives for almost two decades. Then one day, Ivan Ilyichs life unexpectedly changes. While hanging curtains in his house, he falls off a ladder, receiving a minor bruise. Only in retrospect does this mundane moment loom as his most, perilous. An excruciating physical decline begins, and Russia's most accomplished doctors can only offer morphine to ease his pain. 'The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those around im to the level of a casual, unpleasant, Jmost indecorous incident... and this was done by that very decorum which he had served his whole life long." — from The Death of Ivan Ilyich Tolstoys psychological insight and vivid descriptions encourage a reader's empathy. We feel Ivan's helpless despair^ the misery of his wife, and the apathy of his adult daughter. But we also see the compassion of a peasant boy and the sorrow of Ivan's 13-year-old son, whose final gesture may trigger the most important moment of Ivan's life. The Death of Ivan Ilyich transports the reader to 19th-century Russia, a world that may seem remote to 21st-century Americans. Certainly Tolstoy grounds his novella in a particular social, political, and religious context. But the universal questions transcend time and place: What provides true happiness? What does it mean to live a good life? Does God exist? If so, why would He allow suffering? What is one's responsibility to other human beings? Perhaps most of all, Ivan's "commonplace" and "horrifying" life challenges us to consider our mortality, for whether by disease, disaster, or an accidental fall, we all — like him — will die. Tolstoy doesn'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 among people." In this way, his novella can illuminate even the darkest human truths. he Dear* of N '"*f •' A "n.,/,( Leo Tolstoy (1 828-1 91 0) Count Lev (Leo) Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in 1828 into one of Russia's oldest noble families. After the death of both parents before age nine, the intensely sensitive boy was brought up by an aunt living in Kazan, Russia. There he eventually enrolled in the university, but thinking his professors incompetent, Tolstoy returned to his estate at Yasnaya Polyana, where he unsuccessfully attempted agricultural reform. The disillusioned young man then enlisted in the army, where he wrote voraciously, published his first works, and indulged in gambling sprees, drinking binges, and chronic womanizing. Tolstoy among his family and guests, 1 887. After his marriage at 34 to a cheerful young Sophia Andreyevna Behrs, Tolstoys life brimmed with the joys of family and creativity, including the eventual birth of 13 children and the writing of his epic masterpiece, War and Peace (1863- THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LEO TOLSTOY 1820s Alexander I dies in 1825, ending a reign that began in 1801. Poet Alexander Pushkin begins writing Eugene Onegin, 1825. Decembrist Revolt fails to prevent the ascension of Alexander's brother Nicholas 1, 1825. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy born at Yasnaya Polyana, August 28, 1828. 1830s A nationalist revival leads to a general insurrection in 1830 (known as the November Revolution) in Russian Poland. The uprising is defeated in 1831. Tolstoy's mother dies when he is two; his father, when he is eight. The first Russian railroad is built, connecting St. Petersburg with the royal residence atTsarskoye Selo, 1 838. 1840s Pyotr llyich Tchaikovsky bom, 1840. He will become one of Russia's greatest composers with such ballets as Swan Lake (1 875-6) and The Nutcracker (1891-2). Tolstoy enters Kazan University to study Oriental languages, 1845; moves to St. Petersburg to take law exams but runs up huge gambling debts, 1849. 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 69). But in 1869, Tolstoy endured a major spiritual crisis that lasted through the 1 870s, while he was writing Anna Karenina (1873-77). The orderly foundation upon which the past sixteen years had rested seemed fatally cracked: "Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?", Tolstoy asked in his Confession (1880). He could no longer bear the burden of his conventionally successful life, which he believed he had achieved at great moral cost, by blindly following the dictates of upper-class society. This spiritual awakening moved Tolstoy to dedicate the next twenty years to writing religious parables, stories, and novellas, such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), intended to awaken readers' existential consciousness. He also wrote powerful polemical essays exposing the injustices of the state, of serfdom, of the Russian Orthodox Church, and concerning modern medicine, education, marriage, and sexual mores. So commanding was his moral stature that leading statesmen, activists, and artists from across the globe wrote to Tolstoy and visited him at Yasnaya Polyana in search of spiritual illumination. Some said there were two tsars in Russia's late nineteenth century, Nikolai II and Leo Tolstoy — and Tolstoy and Sophia Andreyevna Behrs on their 48th wedding anniversary, September 23,1910. 1870s Tolstoy's first publication, an autobiographical novel titled Childhood (1852), appears anonymously. Dostoevsky exiled by Nicholas I to Siberian prison camp, 1850-4. Nicolas I dies; reign of Alexander II begins, 1855. The Crimean War— between Russia and the combined forces of mostly Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire — begins, 1853. The Peace of Paris ends it, 1856. Alexander IPs emancipation of serfs transforms the Russian economy, beginning a series of reforms, 1861. United States Civil War, 1 861 -65. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is published, one of Tolstoy's favorite novels, 1862. Tolstoy serializes War and Peace in a Russian journal, 1863-9; published as a complete novel in 1869. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 5 Franco-Prussian War begins, July 1870. Tolstoy serializes Anna Karenina in the "thick journal" The Russian Herald, 1873-7; published as a complete novel in 1877. Dostoevsky publishes The Brothers Karamazov, 1 880. that Tolstoy was the more t espected of the two. As Tolstoys questioning of modern civilization deepened, he grew increasingly estranged from his wife ovet differences of lifestyle, finances, and the raising of their children. Tolstoy left his home in the middle of the night in September 1910, when he was 82, presumably to escape to a monastery. This final effort to find a life free of falsehood and moral compromise ended only ten days later, when he died of pneumonia at the Astapova train station in a small rural Russian town on November 7, 1910. Tolstoy's life journey, like that of his searching characters, was filled with contradiction and the spirit of human possibility. He once wrote: "Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilities: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greamess of man." Tolstoys own life is a crowning illustration of these humane and inspiring words. Tolstoy telling a story to his grandchildren, 1909. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LEO TOLSTOY 1880s Alexander II is assassinated, 1 881 ; Alexander Ill's rule begins. Tolstoy begins his Intermediary Publishing Company, through which he publishes The Death of lvanllyich,-\8ffi. Anna Akhmatova bom, 1 889, the Russian poet who will ultimately become a voice of the people under Stalin's regime. 1890s Central and Southwestern Russia faces severe famine and drought, 1892. Gandhi is inspired by reading Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You," 1894. Alexander Ill's reign ends, 1894; Nicholas II 's reign will last until 1917. Russian playwright Chekhov's The Seagull first performed, 1896. 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 1900s American Senator William Jennings Bryan visits Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, 1903. Russo-Japanese War in Korea, 1 904-5. Jack London is the only American journalist to get near the front. Tolstoy's final masterpiece, Hadji Murad, completed in 1904. Russia simmers as workers storm the Winter Palace in Moscow on "Bloody Sunday," Januarys, 1905. Tolstoy and Christianity Like many 1 9th-century Russians, Leo Tolstoy was born into the Russian Orthodox Church, but he struggled with a search for God his whole life, as did many of his fictional characters. By the early 1880s, Tolstoy could no longer accept the dogma, sacraments, or authority of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was disturbed by the religious hypocrisy of the upper classes, as well as by their pursuit of wealth and power. Tolstoy was also bothered by the repressive policies of the state, especially when state- sponsored violence was justified on supposedly Christian grounds. Tolstoy left the Church, never to return. He rejected the debauchery of his youth and perceived that his conventionally successful life had come at great moral cost. Tolstoy repudiated his earlier literary masterpieces and renounced his wealth to live as a peasant, believing that the Christian faith of the Russian peasantry was morally superior to that of the upper classes. That superiority is reflected in the peasant boy, Gerasim, in The L Death of Ivan Ilyich. | By the time Tolstoy published his Confession and "What I Believe" (1884), he had begun to attract disciples. His powerful 1 894 polemical essay, "The Kingdom of God Is Within You," which later inspired Gandhi, ultimately led to Tolstoy's excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. Torrents of visitors came to Yasnaya Polyana to discuss the principles of Tolstoy's self-created religion, "Tolstoyanism," which was based on an interpretation of the New Testament's Gospels without the miracles. Those principles are that humans manifest God's presence in the world through selfless acts of devotion to others; that personal salvation is available if one follows this path of love; and that non- resistance is the only godly response to evil in the world. Tolstoy's Russia Tsar Peter the Great Modern Russian history begins in the 18th century with Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725), an imposing seven-foot-tall man who sometimes settled political disagreements by hitting his opponents in the head with a club. He just as brazenly attempted to transform his economically and politically backward country into a powerful modern empire by Westernizing all aspects of Russian society. A century later, Count Leo Tolstoy, a French-speaking nobleman, would become the proud beneficiary of the modern society Tsar Peter created. But Tolstoy also would be tormented by the fact that his social power and financial comfort were built on the backs of Russia's underprivileged serfs, who comprised 90 percent of the population. Tolstoys ambivalence about the modernization of Russia deepened when the Great Reforms of Alexander II, in the 1 860s, introduced Western-style political and social freedoms even more extensive than those of Peter the Great. Moreover, an industrial revolution similar to that of Tsar Alexander Victorian England now took place. Young people of all classes began migrating from the peaceful countryside to the busding new cities in search of professional 8 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for tl opportunities. Many families that once lived together in rural Russia became spread out, and the close relationship between the serfs and their aristocratic masters dissolved. While many thinkers and writers greeted these changes enthusiastically, others, such as Tolstoy, were deeply concerned about the breakdown of the traditional Russian social fabric. Tolstoy observed the rise of a new class of professional merchants, lawyers, and doctors, who embodied the Western values of materialism and individualism at the expense of the traditional Russian ideals of community and compassion. It is no wonder Tolstoy loved the British writer Charles Dickens, whom he considered a kindred spirit in the fight to raise peoples awareness about the human costs of modern "progress." Tolstoy believed that only by vigorously casting off the internalized falsehoods of modern society could Russians — or any human beings — return to their original state of natural goodness. Tolstoy's fiction, such as Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ifyich, depicts a broken world headed for moral disaster, unless honest introspection and spiritual transformation begin to occur. Card-playing yM A popular pastime in 1 9th-century Russia, bridge and whist were m especially prevalent among upper-class men. In his twenties, m Tolstoy obsessively played cards, and a substantial gambling debt m even forced him to sell his family home when he was 27. In an 1890 I polemical essay 'Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?", Tolstoy wrote: ' "For people of dull, limited moral feeling, the external diversions are often quite sufficient to blind them to the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their lives." Tolstoy described card-playing in his fiction not only to heighten the sense of social reality but also to make psychological observations about his characters. For Ivan llyich card- playing is, like almost everything else he does, an empty, soul-numbing habit, a culturally acceptable excuse to avoid honest introspection and genuine intimacy with other people. Uf Tolstoy and Russian Literature "A great writer is, so to speak, a second government. That's why no regime anywhere has ever loved its great writers, only its minor ones." —ALEXANDER SOLZHENTTSYN from The First Circle Americans might take for granted their democratic rights and freedom of the press, but until Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms in the mid-1980s, Russians knew neither. The authoritarian tsarist empire was replaced by an even more repressive Soviet regime, which not only eliminated political and social freedoms but banned religion as well. In such a country, the writer understandably was celebrated by the people and feared by the government as the voice of truth and the conscience of a nation. With few other oudets for open public debate, Russians have always viewed the writer as their national storyteller, social commentator, philosopher, psychologist, spiritual leader, and freedom-fighter on behalf of the people. One of the recurrent symbols in Russian literature and culture is the image of the writer as a Christ-like martyr on behalf of the people. The persistence of this symbol arises from the fact that under both the tsars and the Soviets, major writers paid with their freedoms or their lives for what they wrote. In the nineteenth century, Alexander Pushkin, the celebrated poet and father of modern Russian literature, was exiled by Tsar Nicholas I to the Russian South. Fyodor Dostoevsky was condemned to death and almost executed before the sentence was commuted to four years of exile with hard labor in a Siberian prison camp. These experiences direcdy influenced his harrowing masterpieces Notes from the Underground (1860) and Crime and Punishment (1866). For his radical religious beliefs, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church by Tsar Nicholas II. In the twentieth century, the Jewish writer Isaac Babel (1894-1940) was executed by the Soviet government. The poet Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938), arrested twice, died in a prison transit camp in Siberia. Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent eight years as a political prisoner in a Soviet labor camp, which he describes in his monumental work of documentation, The Gulag Archipelago (1973-78), and his short | THE BIG READ ■ National Endowment for the Arts /.'■Ui f Tolstoy at his desk, 1908. novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). The classic Russian writers remain influential in Russia today. Thousands of monuments, educational institutions, streets, and cities carry their names. An average Russian can recite from memory passages by favorite poets, and Russians frequently speak of their literary characters as if they were alive. In a sense, they are. As Russians go through a challenging transition from socialism to capitalism, they still look to their literary classics for inspiration and answers to that perennial Russian question: Kak zhit? How to live? If you want to read other Russian novels, you might enjoy: Fathers and Sons by IvanTurgenev (1862) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky ( 1 866) Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1958) Pronouncing Russian Names Russian middle names are called 'patronymics', and they are formed from the father's first name. It is customary in professional contexts to call a person by his or her first name and patronymic, but rarely by the last name. In more intimate surroundings — at home for instance — it is customary to use a person's first name only, or the diminutive form. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (lyeff nee-kuh-LIE-uh-veech tahl-STOY) Characters from The Death of Ivan llyich Ivan llych Golovin (ee-VAHN ee-LEECH guh-lah-VEEN) the novel's protagonist Praskovya Fedorovna (prah-SKOHV-yuh FYOH-duh-ruhv-nuh) Ivan llyich's wife Vladimir Ivanovich (vlah-DEE-meer ee-VAHN-uh-veech): Ivan llyich's son Liza (LEE-zuh) Ivan llyich's daughter Fedor Petrovich (FYOH-duhr pee-TROH-veech) Liza's fiancee Acquaintances of Ivan llyich 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 llyich THE BIG READ | | Tolstoy and His Other Works Tolstoys collected works fill ninety volumes, and they include novels, novellas, short stories, plays, essays, poetry, and thousands of pages of diaries and personal letters. In everything he wrote Tolstoy strove to expose falsehood, celebrate human goodness, and inspire people to "love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations." His novels War and Peace (1863-69) and Anna Karenina (1873-77) are considered among the greatest creations of world literature. War and Peace immortalizes the quiet heroism and spiritual strength of the Russian people in the years leading up to and including Russia's wars with Napoleon from 1805-1812. In approximately 1,500 pages, Tolstoy moves back and forth between private lives and public spectacles, ballrooms and battles, marriages and massacres. No character is too small and no subject too large for this epic masterpiece. War and Peace inspired the American writer and critic Henry James to call Tolstoy "a reflector as vast as a natural lake; a monster harnessed to his great subject — all of human life!" While War and Peace is a grand, free-flowing celebration of life, Anna The Kingdom of Gc Is Within You L 1 <■■ &Y9t^'*t I Karenina is more like a taught string ready to snap. It is a novel less about life's infinite possibilities than about the difficult choices people must make in a society that has lost its spiritual moorings. Set in the decade following the Great Reforms of Alexander II, Anna Karenina reflects Tolstoy's personal struggles with faith and his deep mistrust of modern "progress." The novel is 12 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts built on the contrast between two couples — one doomed, the other blessed — and their efforts to find happiness and meaning in a cold world consumed by falsehood, hypocrisy, and materialism. If Anna Karenina describes man's search for meaning in a morally confused society, then Resurrection (1902) depicts the individuals difficult journey back to spiritual health in a world that already has fallen. In his most ideological novel, Tolstoy brilliandy combines stinging social commentary with astounding psychological realism. Tolstoys final novel-masterpiece, Hadji Murdd (1904), tells the story of Russia's imperial expansion into the Caucasus and colonization of Chechnya — a subject as topical today as in Tolstoy's time. But the work transcends social commentary to become a supreme artistic meditation on the eternal human struggle between the forces of good and those of violence. Hadji Murdd stirs readers through powerful understatement, lifelike description, and by arousing sympathy for the Chechen freedom-fighter, Hadji Murad, whose innate goodness and personal heroism are juxtaposed against the spiritual bankruptcy of Russian imperial society. The entire work beautifully synthesizes Tolstoys belief in the superiority of untutored nature over social artifice — a major theme of the early novel The Cossacks (1863), The Sevastopol Stories (1855-56), and the short story "Three Deaths" (1858). Like everything else Tolstoy wrote, Hadji Murdd reveals the writer's profound faith in the human spirit and his unwavering commitment to the hero he cherished above all: Truth. "The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth." —LEO TOLSTOY from his 1855 short story "Sevastopol in May" National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 3 Discussion Questions Why might Tolstoy begin The Death of Ivan Ilyich with the funeral of the main character? How would the effect differ if it were told chronologically? What are the comic elements to the opening chapter, and how do they function? What is your initial impression of Ivan's wife? Does your opinion of her change as the story progresses? Chapter Two begins with an important claim: "Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and commonplace — and most horrifying." Why might Tolstoy consider Ivan's "simple and commonplace" to be "horrifying"? As Ivan rises in his career, he fails in his personal life. What might Tolstoy be suggesting here? Why does Ivan find so much pleasure in playing bridge? Why does Ivan marry Praskovya Fedorovna? Why does their marriage deteriorate? Does either husband or wife receive your sympathy? 7. Why do you think Ivan is comforted by the presence of the peasant boy, Gerasim? How does his attitude contrast with Ivan's other visitors, especially the doctors? 8. Compare the conduct of Ivan's daughter with Ivan's son. Why is this 13-year-old boy crucial to the novella's final chapter? 9. After three days of excruciating physical and mental pain, Ivan realizes that despite a futile life, he can still make amends. Is he right? Does he accomplish this? 10. How do you interpret the light that Ivan sees at the very end? What might this light symbolize or suggest? 1 1 . Writer Cynthia Ozick says, "This novella is about learning, finally, that you have been living a lie, that you've failed to be true to yourself, that you've failed to be true to others around you, and that you failed. And it is about exploring the rupture of the lie." Do you agree? Why or why not? | 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts W*: ■ Tolstoys Family Home a Without my Yasnaya Polyana, it is difficult for me to imagine Russia and my relationship to her." —LEO TOLSTOY '-— *?**•"- ■l 8 I IT ii II II II " ■I II ■■ ■■ ii ■ I . Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth under those immeasurable starry heavens? ... All that is unkind in the hearts of men should, one would think, vanish at contact with Nature — that most direct expression of beauty and goodness." —LEO TOLSTOY from his 1853 short story "The Raid" I I ■ & ^H National Endowment for the Axis • THE BIG READ | 5 Additional Resources Selected ^X/brks by Leo Tolstoy Web sites The Sevastopol Stories (1855-56) War and Peace (1863-69) The Cossacks (1863) Anna Karenina (1873-77) The Kreutzer Sonata (1891) Resurrection (1899) Hadji Murdd (1904) Works by Tolstoy Posthumously Collected A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin, 1987) Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Modern Library, 2002) What Is Art? (Penguin, 1 995) Resources about Tolstoy and Russian History Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. 1966. New York: Vintage, 1970. — . The Face of Russia. New York: TV Books, 1998. Troyat, Henri. Tolstoy. 1965. Tr. from the French by Nancy Amphoux. New York: Doubleday, 1967. Wilson, A.N. Tolstoy: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1988. Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate The Museum site for Tolstoys home, Yasnaya Polyana lutuw. russianmuseums. info/M531#web The Russian State Library Images and biographical information about Leo Tolstoy. To read it in English: http:lltolstoy-nasledie. ruRlang=en Tolstoy in his peasant clothing during his later years. | 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS _ . INSTITUTE ol „ .. Museum, .library SERVICES AH MIDWEST The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts — both new and established — bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nations largest annual hinder 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 federal support for the nations 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institutes mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding across boundaries. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts Midwest's history spans more than 25 years. Additional support for the Big Read has also been provided by the WK. Kellogg Foundation. Works Cited Katz, 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 Fress, 1968. Tolstoy, Leo. A Confession. 1880. New York Eenguin, 1987. — . The Jubilee edition of the Complete Collected Works ofL. N. Tolstoy in 90 volumes, Vol. 5. Fublished in Moscow by the 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 Fress, 1982. — . War and Peace. Norton Critical edition, 2nd ed. Trans, and Ed. George Gibian. New York Norton, 1996. Acknowledgments David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature, National Reading Initiatives Writers: 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 Gioia Series Editor: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts Image Editor: Molly Thomas-Hicks with Dan Brady for the National Endowment for the Arts Graphic Design: Fletcher Design/Washington, DC Image Credits Cover Portrait John Sherffius for the Big Read. Inside Front Cover: © Bettmann/Corbis. Page 1: Caricature of Dana Gioia by John Sherffius. Pages 2-3: Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress; book cover courtesy of Random House, Inc. Page 4: Photo courtesy of the Russian State Library. Page 5: Photo by S A Tolstaia, courtesy of the Russian State Library. Page 6: Photo by V.G. Chertkov, courtesy of the Russian State Library. Page 7: Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Page 8: Both images, courtesy of the Library of Congress. Page 11:© Bettmann/Corbis. Page 1 2: Book covers for The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Hadji Murdd, and Anna Karenina courtesy of Barnes & Noble, Inc.; book cover for War and Peace courtesy of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.; book cover for Resurrection courtesy of Dover Publications. Page 15: Both photos, courtesy of Andrew D. Kaufman. Page 16: © Bettman/Corbis. This publication is published by: National Endowment for the Arts • 1 100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. • Washington, DC 20506-0001 (202) 682-5400 • www.nea.gov www.NEABigRead.org ■ *-».- - . ■ NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS Ivan llyich's life had been most simple and commonplace — and most horrifying." —LEO TOLSTOY from The Death of Ivan Ilyich The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. ■•& ..INSTITUTE • •.». Museum.ndLbrary .'.•• SERVICES A great nation deserves great art.