Russian Tsar Era Classics — The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Part 1, by Leo Tolstoy
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
(Part 1 of 2 — Chapters One to Four.) The novella is presented in two parts; Part 2 — Chapters Five to Twelve — follows as Episode 19 of this season.
A dramatized performance of Tolstoy's novella of a life examined at its end — the complete text in a fresh in-house English translation, performed by the KacheliTV cast.
Ivan Ilyich Golovin has done everything as it should be done: the right school, the right service, the right marriage, the right furniture. Then a trivial fall — a knock against a window-frame knob while hanging curtains in the new flat — leaves a pain in his side that will not go away. As the doctors debate kidneys and caecums, Ivan Ilyich is left alone with the one question his correct life never taught him to ask: what if my whole life has been not the right thing? Tolstoy's twelve chapters follow him from the colleagues who hear of his death and think first of promotions, through the long solitude of the sofa, to the black bag, the light, and the last hour — the most famous reckoning with a wasted life in all literature, performed here in full.
The chapters:
0:57 — Chapter One
25:47 — Chapter Two
49:28 — Chapter Three
1:11:23 — Chapter Four
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), «Смерть Ивана Ильича» — first published 1886 in «Русский вестник». Public domain. Russian text via ilibrary.ru. Fresh in-house English translation made for this production; no existing translation was used. Nothing has been cut — the novella is performed complete, all twelve chapters.
A dramatized performance by the KacheliTV cast: narrated by Felix, with Orson as Ivan Ilyich, Magnolia as Praskovya Fyodorovna, Scratch as Gerasim, Silas as Pyotr Ivanovich and Fyodor Petrovich, Amos as Fyodor Vasilyevich and Peter, Benedetto as Shebek, the doctors, and the voice of Ivan Ilyich's soul, Bruno as the brother-in-law, and Violetta as Liza.
Music: "Avian Impressions" (KacheliTV instrumental library) — opening theme, between the chapters, and closing theme. No music under the narration.
Season 147 — Russian Tsar Era Classics, Episode 4 (Part 1 of 2; Part 2 is Episode 19). The shelf so far: Lefty, by Nikolai Leskov · The Queen of Spades, by Alexander Pushkin · The Overcoat, by Nikolai Gogol · The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
