مرگ ایوان ایلیچ

This article analyzes The Last Step by Ali Mosaffa, an Iranian cinematic piece that creatively appropriates and parodies elements from James Joyce's "The Dead" and Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych". Employing a qualitative-explanatory approach, the study explores the film's intertextual relationships with the source texts, juxtaposing it with parodies of the works by Joyce and Tolstoy. The analysis not only dissects the film's playful reinterpretation of themes and motifs from these literary works but also situates this subtextual parody within the rich tapestry of Iranian culture, incorporating traditional music and architecture. Nostalgia emerges as a central theme, bridging the subtexts of the film's written, cinematic, musical, and architectural elements. The study reveals how the film, as a work in progress, establishes intricate intertextual relationships with the original stories, offering a fresh and engaging perspective on the source material. Through a nuanced exploration of parodying intertextuality, the article sheds light on the film's postmodern narrative style and its unique contribution to the cinematic landscape.

One of the persistently ubiquitous preoccupations of human beings is the concept of death and mortality; which has engaged us all with its awesome omnipresence one way or another. And the way one looks at it affects our whole life, not least our culture. Meanwhile, there are some who do not confine dying merely to the moment when one’s heart stops beating and one’s lungs cease inhaling and exhaling. John Milton and Leo Tolstoy are among those outstanding figures who have enjoyed such a transcendental outlook and have plucked its aesthetic fruits in their major work.. Considering their seminal positions in Western literature, the present paper intends to provid a close examination of how exactly these writers viewed this perennial concern, as depicted in their representative works. Reading closely Milton’s Paradise Lost and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, this article concludes that the two authors offer their own specific classification for death.