by Andrei Bitov
He already knew I existed, even though he hadn’t turned around again. I had gotten through to him. The taut thread between him and the landscape loosened and went slack. His unsteady, inspired figure, which had been clinging to the corner of the canvas, relaxed and sagged. His stool remained steady, his shoulders drooped tranquilly, his brush lodged in his palette. This was the final evening hour when the sky brightens one more time, like the candle that flares before burning out. On his canvas, dusk was already falling. He resembled a fisherman who hasn’t had a nibble all day but, at this very moment, has decided to reel in his line, still twitching the float … I had nothing to fear. My recent sensitivity balanced my effrontery.
“I didn’t disturb you?”
“You did, you did!” he responded crisply, and laid his brush aside with relief.
“Then allow me to—”
“I have, I already have.”
“I meant, to ask a question—”
“I meant nothing else.”
“Bear in mind, I’m a layman. That is, forgive—”
“I’m willing to believe you. If you weren’t, you’d see right off that I, too, am a layman.”
His pride, for which I saw no basis, offended me. But I contained myself.
“Why don’t you say something?” he said, attacking. “Or don’t you like it?”
I saw him clearly: not a man to whom you could say what you thought.
“Oh. I do. It’s a splendid view.”
“View!” He curled his lip disdainfully.
“I warned you I was a layman, you know. View, landscape—do they differ?”
“Fundamentally!” He took the bait. “The view is what you, too, will see. The landscape is what I saw. The view, strictly speaking,” and he looked at the painting and sighed, “can never be painted.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“By anyone,” he elaborated proudly. “Who has painted the snowy mountains? Or the forest?”
“Shishkin,” I said, without hesitation.
“Hardly.” Everything about him gave me to understand . . .
“I really don’t recall any successful mountains,” I said, correcting my position slightly.
“There, you see! Can you possibly paint something that’s equal to yourself, has the same significance? Who has painted the desert? The sea?”
“Ayvazovsky,” I said, of course.
“Hardly!” He was indignant. “Say Turner, and even then I’ll argue.”
“Why, what’s wrong with Turner?” I said with aplomb, unsure that I wasn’t confusing him with Teniers. Do you mean the Elder or the Younger, I wanted to ask, to impress him—but fortunately restrained myself … “But Levitan, Vasiliev? They did all right with forest, didn’t they?”
“I’m no great fan of Levitan’s … The color, you know … ” He squinted warily at his own canvas. “Storm clouds,” he said meditatively.
I looked at the sky. It was clear.
“They did all right with storm clouds. With field, but not forest. A field is already a sea. They didn’t do well with a clear sky.” He repeated my glance at the sky. “But with storm clouds, highlights, reflections … Justified abstractionism.” He pursed his lips. “Self-expression.” He scorned “self-expression,” it appeared. “No, no one painted the view! What they did succeed with, partially, wasn’t the view but the mood.”
“Impressionism?” A display of shrewdness.
“If you wish. Presentiments, premonitions … Pre-sentiment, at best. But they considered themselves objective—that is, we’re the ones who consider them realists. I mean, they were always justifying themselves. They gave the justification that things happened that way, they pled the reality of experience, even the most fleeting. Photography was vanquishing them, and they fought it.”
“Well, even I know the qualitative difference between painting and photography,” I said, slightly offended.
“Do you? Well, well … But I wasn’t abusing photography. You just thought I was. Photography did painting a service of the highest order!”
“Which service is that?” I asked, as if condescending to his orthodoxy.
“A direct service. Photography identified the things with which painting should not concern itself. Because they can be achieved mechanically, by a device. Photography was what engendered the Impressionists.”
“From their opposite?” I guessed.
“Very opposite. Photography is one thing, Cezanne is another, as a certain wonderful Georgian artist has said. Cezanne is another … ” And a small cloud of admiration and sorrow covered his brow.
I grinned. “What have the movies engendered for us?”
“That’s beyond my competence. Perhaps we should stop writing novels, eh?”
“Why, what do novels have to do with it?”
“For you, they make the point clearer. What I meant was, the landscape painter merely individualizes the view. He can’t mirror it; he can only be mirrored in it. Are ‘view’ and ‘individual’ from the same root?”
“No,” I replied, putting both Shishkin and Teniers and photography into my firmness.
“But it fits. And in my view … See? ‘View’ again … The landscape artist individualizes the view, not only in the sense that he introduces his vision and his individuality … but in the sense that the view itself, when recorded in a landscape, is obliged or forced to become partial in relation to itself, stand motionless against its will, acquire expression: light, wind, other meteorological conditions … Hm,” he said with surprise, “there’s a twist! It’s exactly the other way around in a portrait. In a portrait, to paint the model’s inner state is to equal Shishkin in taste. It would be absurd to paint a portrait of a man who was furious or sobbing or laughing.”
“Doesn’t Repin have a Cossack laughing?”{15}
“As I say. That’s a detail. That’s genre, at best. That’s character, not a portrait. A portrait is a universalization, the essence—well, the inner state. A landscape can’t be universalized. Who are you to claim an understanding of the inner state of the sea or the mountains? Now, you mention Shishkin. He’s the proof. Landscape as the portrait of a view doesn’t exist. Did Shishkin paint a portrait of a tree?”
A kind of sorrow, for which I saw no reason, creased his brow. His wretched beard quivered.
“What’s the matter?”
“Cezanne … ” He spoke as one speaks of an aching tooth.
“What about Cezanne?”
“Later, later … ” He waved me off, as if to say, “It will pass in a moment.” He looked wistfully at the easel. “Already it’s turning out badly.”
“Now, now!” I made an effort. “It’s very nice. You’ve found the only viewpoint, in my opinion.”
“You found it, too.”
“Well, that’s no great credit to me.”
“There, you see. You’re nowhere near so ignorant as you say.”
He threw me a swift glance, both murky and sly, and then regained his composure. With the squint of a master, he forced himself to apply a fuzzy little dab. Immediately the stool lurched underneath him, but he kept his balance.
Flattered, I launched into a pupil’s flattery: “Why did you decide on just that format? I’ve always wondered—”
“A window. It’s a kind of window. Painting, in my opinion, is a window. Or a mirror. A mirror’s a window, too, after all. A window through a wall—into the world. And that’s how the painting will have to hang later. On the wall.”
“I understand,” I said, although I didn’t quite. “Canvas, format, perspective, eye. The frame of the viewfinder … Choosing a viewpoint … But the point on the canvas … the point from which you began to fill it … where is it, and why?”
“Fill it!” The artist shivered with distaste. “Next you’ll say draw it!”
“All right,” I said, getting cross myself, “paint it. Can you show me the exact point from which you began to paint this canvas?”
“That’s a complicated
question. It all depends on the model. A bird, for example, you have to paint from the beak.”
“What kind of bird?”
“Birds in general … ”
“But here?” I pointed at his canvas.
“It’s already a failure,” he said evasively.
“Why a failure!” Again I had to be careful of his pride! Really very careful.
“A failure because I started from the wrong point!” he said balefully, taking down the canvas.
“From there?” I pointed toward the river.
“You guessed it.” The color showed through his gray bristly tangle. “You guessed it! I’m not an artist at all! I don’t claim to be! That’s not what I come here for!”
“What do you come for?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re too severe,” I said resentfully, “both with yourself and with me. The way you talk, nothing at all can be painted: neither landscape nor portrait … But still life?”
“That’s possible!” he exulted, all of a sudden, as though he meant to abandon landscape and undertake a still life, then and there. “Even you don’t see how right you are! A portrait is possible too. But only for the few. The geniuses! The Leonardos! Has anyone ever painted an animal?” he shot at me.
“A bird. From the beak,” I said, quoting.
“A bird is a remote creature,” he said, incomprehensibly. “Let’s take a wild beast. No one! Except perhaps Dürer. His rhinoceros. But he drew him from a grid. That time he was drawing, rather than painting. It was the first rhinoceros in Germany, perhaps in Europe. Dürer was astonished. Not as a genius, but as a normal person. It’s his astonishment that comes through. And what a draftsman he was! What draftsmen they were then! Any expedition artist … Sometimes I think they were the only artists … The ones who wanted nothing … ” He fell to muttering and forgot about me.
“Dürer,” I said, “drew a wild beast?”
“Oh, yes! He merely wanted to record it. He treated the line as a letter of the alphabet. And the result was a brilliant, apocalyptic beast!”
“Aren’t you contradicting yourself?” I said insinuatingly. “Just now it was impossible to draw a beast.”
“Not in the slightest!” he exulted, gleefully packing up his belongings. “You can draw him. You can’t paint him. Impossible. This, incidentally, is why painting became art.”
“But people do draw!”
“You aren’t a writer, by chance?”
“By chance.” A forced confession.
“Well, then. If I say to you: People do write … ?”
“Don’t you mean … can’t we conclude … that a thing you can learn isn’t art?”
“There, you see.”
“But if you study and study and study?” I said gladly.
“Not enough.”
“And if you work and work and work?”
“Even less.”
“But if you just suddenly … out of the blue … understand, as it were—”
“Get inspired?”
“All right.”
“Oh, yes!” he exulted. “Perhaps,” he sighed. “Once.”
“But what can we do?”
“God knows.”
“That’s all?”
“Not enough for you?”
“Too much for me.”
We burst out laughing, and together we descended into the ravine.
“Now, you mention genius,” he said, although I hadn’t mentioned it. I had already walked across the board, he had not. It was night in the ravine by now, and rotten wood was glimmering.
His inspired eyes twinkled pale and bold from deep in his encroaching hair. “The geniuses always painted the Madonna and Child. They succeeded with the Madonna—never with the Child. Have you noticed? Oh, it’s such a mystery! You won’t understand right off … We see the genius as an especially perfect incarnation. The ordinary person, we say, couldn’t have done it, but the genius did—a hundred percent. Horsefeathers!” (What made him fly into such a rage?) “The genius is the ultimate failure as an incarnation! Not from our point of view, naturally. From his. A failure on both the vertical and the horizontal. What a genius has behind him (and that’s where the Genius Deity is situated, after all—behind him) is immensely disproportionate to his so-called yield. (You know, on dining-hall menus they give the ‘yield’ … the percentage of meat in the hamburger?) Something we admire will be an utter dissatisfaction and unhappiness for a genius. He knows the percentage! He is incarnated to the extent that he succeeds in painting the Child. If, God forbid, we recognize a genius during his lifetime, we kill him by depriving him of this very dissatisfaction. More often, however, we simply crucify them. That’s much more rational; we inherit everything, including even the flattery of our admiration of them.”
At last he walked across the board. Am I dealing with another genius? I thought wryly. His words sounded a bit too full of suffering. But he really was a genius …
Having crossed the board as if crossing an abyss, he paused again and began rummaging in his fisherman’s bag (a gas-mask carrier; how had he kept it intact?). Of their own volition, out came a bottle of Kavkaz port (0.8 liter) and a glass (one). He offered the glass to me: “You won’t refuse?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Has it been long?”
“A while.”
“Well, that’s forgivable.”
I started to insist: “I don’t drink port—”
“Then don’t. I’m not forcing you,” he said caressingly. The glass, of itself, turned up in my hand. Suddenly I felt the heat of his mysterious power.
“You’re a genius,” I whispered.
“Genius and villainy are two things …{16} There aren’t any geniuses now. They won’t work. You can’t paint just the masterpiece you’re left with. Can’t paint ‘La Gioconda’ alone. Can’t write the selected works first, can you, now?”
“Oh, no! You’re right.”
“Overproduction is a condition of genius. Who needs Dickens’s thirtieth volume? Or Tolstoy’s ninetieth? What, hadn’t they expressed themselves in their twelfth? Wouldn’t that have been enough for us?”
“You’re exaggerating, I think?”
“Yes. But I’m not a plumber. I don’t want to say the right thing, I want to tell the truth. Is Don Quixote enough for you out of all Cervantes? Hamlet, out of all Shakespeare? … Now, you’re a professional. How many books have you really read?”
“But how many paintings have you failed to see? In the Louvre, in the Prado, in our storage vaults?”
“In our age there are books, traveling exhibitions … We have it easier, seemingly. Although paintings aren’t illustrations, to be looked at. You have to see them.”
“You have to read a book, too.”
“That’s what I’m asking. How many books have you read?”
“Well, I haven’t read Don Quixote … ”
“And Hamlet?”
“That I’ve read. Recently.”
“How old were you?”
“Forty.”
“Thank you. And the Bible?”
“Why are you interrogating me?!”
“Don’t be angry. I was even older before I got van Dyck and van Eyck straight. Learned who van Eyck was. Can you imagine?”
“The Elder or the Younger?” This was insolence.
“As if you knew!” he scowled. “You, too, know just the one and have heard of the other. And I’m not asking you what van Eyck painted! So that you won’t get tangled up in Annunciations … I thought you were a person I could talk to.”
His feelings were gravely hurt. He was disillusioned.
“All right,” I conceded. “Twenty-seven. I first read the Gospel at twenty-seven. And just Matthew, at that. I never did read the Old Testament, except for Psalms and Ecclesiastes. But I’ve kept it with me ever since.”
“You open and close it?”
“I open and close it.” I definitely liked him.
&nb
sp; “Are you a Christian?”
I pondered my answer.
“Half, then?”
“Well, except … ” I stammered. “About half.”
“But you’re not drinking? Don’t, then, I won’t be offended … Is Mozart a genius?” he asked, after partaking.
“Now there’s a genius.”
“Everything he wrote is genius?”
“Everything he wrote.”
“And you’ve listened to everything?”
“Well, not everything. But a lot. As much as I could.”
“Do you know how many of his pieces ever get performed?” I did not know. He had posed the question as a great mystery.
“Ten percent!” He could not contain his exultation.
“Really!” I was astounded.
“There! Overproduction is yet another evidence that the genius is an imperfect incarnation, this time along the horizontal. Why does he have to keep driving and driving, if he’s already fully incarnate?”
“To eat?” Here I had him. “ ‘Inspiration doesn’t sell’?”
“Hm-m, yes.” He sighed. “You know what Mozart had to pay for a new waistcoat?”
“No, I don’t.”
“A symphony!”
The night was fully dark. Here in the ravine, at any rate. We breathed in each other’s faces. We illuminated them as we lighted cigarettes. A mosquito swelled, jewel-like, on his forehead.
“May I?” I slapped his forehead.
“Thanks.”
We started climbing toward the exit, where the sky was still pale, like dilute ink.
“You should have seen that waistcoat!” he puffed, from below. “A bird of paradise! ‘Behold the lily, how she is arrayed!’ Mozart was compelled to array himself no worse … ”
“But of course … at court … ” I responded knowingly.
We came to the construction area. There, it was bald and unexpectedly light. Down below it was still night, totally dark. The scaffolded bell tower was especially bright, and the belfry even shone as if a separate light gleamed through it. “Astonishing!” I wanted to exclaim to someone, as if I’d already forgotten my new friend—
“Oh, yes!” he said to the back of my head. “Our own Russian Gothic. Non-functioning. Do you want to go inside?”