Comparison and Contrast of Rousseau Confessions and the Death of Ivan Ilyich

Rousseau and Tolstoy

A Comparison of Rousseau's Confessions and Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions opens more brazenly than the other Confessions of antiquity (those belonging to Augustine); the latter were zealously religious in nature and humbling in tone; the former were proud in tone and primarily secular. If Rousseau's Confessions can be called a celebration of a life burnished in the fires of the Romantic/Enlightenment era, Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych may be called a meditation on death -- or more accurately still it may be called a depiction of the spiritual conversion of the "natural" man, as embodied by Rousseau a century earlier. This paper will compare and contrast the two works and show how the Russian's serves as a kind of humbling argument against the self-serving ideals of the Frenchman.

The two characters present a similar outlook on life: both Rousseau in his Confessions and Ivan Ilych (at least initially) are extraordinarily boastful and filled with esteem for themselves. Yet while the fictional Russian undergoes a transformation of character, going from proud official to lamenting and selfless soul on the verge of death, the real-life Frenchman undergoes no such transformation -- but on the other hand stays cemented in his proud view of himself. (Of course, Rousseau is not given the opportunity to chronicle any such experience as the "deathbed conversion," an event that clearly distinguishes Tolstoy's novel from Rousseau's memoir.) Therefore, any comparison of the two men must at a certain point cease.

Up to that point, however, the men think in accordance with one another. Rousseau gives numerous examples of this thought, but none more eloquent than this: "I have begun on a work which is without precedent, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I propose to set before my fellow-mortals a man in all the truth of nature; and this man shall be myself" (Rousseau, 1782, p. 1). Rousseau proceeds to imagine his launch into the afterlife, Confessions in hand, all of his "virtues" and "failings" recorded therein, as though God Himself could not have done a better and more thorough job of examining his life. Here, Rousseau exalts himself at the thought of being judged by God because he believes that he has already admitted all things. However, unlike Augustine, who confesses out of contrition, Rousseau appears to confess out of pride.

Pride is surely also Ivan Ilych's predominant fault. Although Tolstoy tells us initially that Ivan Ilych was "exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe…often amusing and witty, and always good-natured, correct in his manner, and 'bon enfant'," we are not to be put off by these superfluities: indeed, Tolstoy begins to reveal the hidden character of the man in the next paragraph when he speaks of Ivan Ilych's liaisons (Tolstoy, 2001). When Tolstoy says, "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible," it must be regarded as a judgment: the ordinary "naturalness" which Rousseau exalts in his Confessions is here condemned by Tolstoy, who goes on to reveal what is at the heart of such a man. Rousseau may argue that he reveals his own heart more accurately than (it is implied) could even God Himself, but Tolstoy suggests that no man can look so boldly upon his own heart and not recoil in horror and (if his will is good) be spurred on to acts of contrition. Ivan Ilych does so as he inches closer to the Judgment that Rousseau predicts.