a fly on the dead

[Cathy Popkin]

I should have responded to the whole list yesterday instead of just 
emailing Evelina.  The particular description she is thinking of is from 
Turgenev's "Moi sosed Radilov" (Zapiski okhotnika).  (We had talked about 
it at some length in my Turgenev class a few years ago.)
Cathy Popkin

--On Wednesday, June 20, 2007 7:03 AM -0400 "Durkin, Andrew R." 
<durkin at INDIANA.EDU> wrote:

> I think that there is also a fly present at the scene of Andrei
> Bolkonskii's death in War and Peace.  In any case, a fly as a
> metaphor/metonym of approaching death may have been a nineteenth-century
> commonplace.   Cf. Emily Dickinson's "I heard a fly buzz when I died."
> ARDurkin
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on
> behalf of Evelina Mendelevich Sent: Tue 6/19/2007 7:14 PM
> To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
> Subject: [SEELANGS] a fly on the dead
>
>
>
> Dear Seelangers,
> I had something of a deja vu when I read the following description of
> Dignam's corpse in Joyce's Ulysses:
> "His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a
> fly walking over it up to his eye."
>
> At first I was convinced I have seen a similar description of death in
> Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich, but I was wrong. As I am struggling to
> recollect were I have seen this fly-Chekhov? Turgenev?-I seem to remember
> that the episode I have in mind involves a husband dealing with a wife's
> death. of course, I might be wrong again.
>
> Any information (the title of the story/author) will be appreciated.
>
> Thank you in advance,
> Evelina Mendelevich
>
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