SOURCE: Slattery, Dennis Patrick. “Rebellious Things and Deepening Wounds in the Life of Ivan Ilych.” In The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh, pp. 157-76. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Slattery considers the literal and metaphorical significance of wounds and disease in Tolstoy's novella.

The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting room.

—Alchemical Studies, 37

With all of the various criticisms that have explored Tolstoy's masterpiece, The Death of Ivan Ilych, it is surprising that very little attention has been paid, for example, to the incarnational dimensions of the story, especially to the technically functioning body of Ivan Ilych and to the transformative power of wounding that blossoms into a deadly disease.

Not only human embodiment as a poetic image, but the images of the ordinary...