This is the famous syllogism from Kiesewetter's
(Johann Gottfried Karl Christian
Kiesewetter, 1766-1819)Logic textbook (1791): "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal"
("Caius" is Gaius Julius Caesar). As Sergey pointed out,
this syllogism is important in Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Il'yich." But what
he forgot to mention, is that in his essay "On Annensky" (1935) Vl. Khodasevich
compares Ivan Ilyich Golovin (by the way, "Veen" seems to be a
truncated, or, rather, "beheaded," form of "Golovin," meaning both the
Tolstoy character and the real Ivan Golovin, 1816-1890, author of
"Zapiski," Leipzig, 1859, referred to by Herzen in "Byloe i Dumy") to Annensky,
whose penname (mentioned in Khodasevich's article) was "Nik. T-o" (see also
Dolinin's earlier post to Nabokv-L). But "Nikto (b)" is reversed "Botkin" (as
every List member surely knows by now)! Does it confirm that "Shade"
(Russian ten' = net, "no") = nikto (b) = Botkin
(e) = Kinbote?
Alexey Sklyarenko
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 3:31
AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] A syllogism
A syllogism: other men die; but
I
Am not another; therefore I’ll not die.
(l.213-4)
This could be a reference to Leo Tolstoy’s
“Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1886): All men die. Kay is a man. Therefore, Kay will
die. But, thinks Ivan Ilyich, I’m not Kay; therefore, that doesn’t apply to
me. What may be true about all other men, is not necessarily true about me.
The first part (about Kay) is an example of the type of syllogism called
“Barbara” and Tolstoy probably took it from some textbook on logic (Bertrand
Russell’s example of “Barbara” cited in a chapter on Aristotle: All men are
mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal), but I don’t have a
good edition of Tolstoy’s works with commentary at hand to confirm
this.
Regards,
SK
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