La mort d’Ivan Ilitx

La mort d’Ivan Ilitx is the chronicle of the end of the life of a mediocre and ambitious judge, who lives trapped in the petty and dehumanized environment that he himself has built around him. In reality, Tolstoy's text is also many other things: it is an inner journey through the experiences of a man - like any of us - who realizes, perplexed, that he is not prepared to face the death that approaches unexpectedly and inexorably.

The text is so beautiful, so precious, that we cannot help but explain it and proclaim it to the world. I believe it is fair to try to bring it to the stage and resume it now, after a few years. Let me cheat a bit and borrow from Thomas Mann the text of the prologue of his Magic Mountain, it is exactly what I would like to express before showing you our work:

"We want to tell the story of Hans Castorp (in this case that of Ivan Ilyich), and not for him, but for the story itself, which we believe is very worthy of being told. This story, a long time ago, is already, so to speak, completely covered with noble historical greenery and must be narrated necessarily in the form of the most anterior past. This would be no inconvenience, but rather an advantage; because stories must be passed, and one could say that the more they are, the better for their essence and for the narrator who evokes, murmuring, the imperfect. (...) We will tell it in detail, with care and precision, because, the enjoyment or boredom of a story, perhaps have ever depended on the space and time it occupied? Without fearing the bad taste of meticulousness, rather we are of the opinion that only the meticulous is truly engaging. Therefore, the narrator will not finish Hans's (Ivan Ilyich's) story in the blink of an eye. It is better that he does not count in advance how much earthly time will slip away while he has it threaded. So, let's begin."

Thomas Mann

Oriol Broggi