Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture

Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich might well be read as a narrative outworking of Pascal's observation that "We run heedless into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it."¹ That Ivan Ilyich, an ambitious mid-level Russian legal official, plummets into the abyss is incontestable, for the novella opens by announcing his death. What is debated is how he does so: On his deathbed does he merely resign himself to nothingness, or does he undergo some sort of religious conversion? Some scholars—call them "hermeneuts of denial"—find little or no religious significance in Ivan's death.² If some allusions are religiously suggestive, they must be interpreted and discounted in view of Tolstoy's unique, and unorthodox, religious beliefs. The story cannot, consequently, be read as a Christian narrative. Yet others—"hermeneuts of divinity"—insist Ivan's final moments are coherent only within a religious framework and insist that theological allusions render this a story of religious, if not Christian, conversion.

This essay engages René Girard and Iris Murdoch to offer a third interpretation. Playing the role of "hermeneut of mysticism," I read the novel as a story of mimetic desire and its mystical conversion. To advance this reading, I begin [End Page 215] by examining the positions associated with hermeneuts of denial and divinity to show the strengths and weaknesses of each. Next, I draw on Girard and use his theory to read Ivan Ilyich as a textbook illustration of mimetic desire, its deviations, and its potential for conversion. The result is, I believe, the first application of mimetic theory to Tolstoy's text. Murdoch augments and deepens this interpretation and helps us to frame Ivan's story as a conversion from the "existentialist" to the "mystical" hero. Although Ivan Ilyich is not conventionally religious or theological, Murdoch can help us to uncover a mystical dimension—an openness to a transcendent Good or God—that makes Ivan's deathbed conversion possible. Thus, when read with Girard and Murdoch, we discover that mimetic desire and its longing for the transcendent are the narrative thread that runs throughout the text. I conclude by suggesting how the mystical dimension found in the text warrants reading it as an invitation to spiritual transformation. More than a memento mori reminding readers that they will die, the text can be engaged as what Pierre Hadot would regard as a spiritual exercise. This leads me to suggest, in the conclusion, how we might undergo the text and allow it to "read" us and our desires. With Girard and Murdoch's help, today's readers can learn how to live anew by standing in, or narratively at, Ivan Ilyich's wake.