# Pózdnyshev — The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories character guide

> Pózdnyshev in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** P ├│ zdnyshev

**First appearance:** 0059-the-kreutzer-sonata

## Snapshot

A gaunt, restless traveler on a night train who corners a stranger and confesses, with terrifying lucidity, the jealousy and violence that consumed his marriage.

## Who they are

Pózdnyshev buttonholes a fellow passenger and unspools his life story: a young man of the reforming 1850s, a husband corroded by suspicion, a man who hears music as a weapon. His confession is compulsive and self-lacerating, yet he cannot stop justifying himself even as he indicts himself. He matters because his monologue forces the reader to sit where his listener sat, unable to look away.

## In the story

### [The Kreutzer Sonata](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/chapters/the-kreutzer-sonata)

The narrator, detailing the profound hatred and cyclical passion/animosity in his marriage, his philosophical rage against societal sexual hypocrisy, and the events leading to his wife's murder.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters/posdnishev
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters