Portraits without Frames
Page 14
to your heart’s content . . .”
Sokolov kept his silence.
He got ready to die.
His life had prepared him to die.
But death took its time.
And in the end, they let him go.
He lived a few years longer,
then died of cancer.
How can anyone say that cancer
does not stem from stress—
from someone’s nerve cells
being subjected too long
to pressure
of a kind
man
simply cannot withstand?
Translated by Irina Mashinski
SERGEY KONYONKOV (1874–1971), a well-known sculptor, was sometimes called “the Russian Rodin.” Born into a peasant family, he graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1897. He supported both the 1905 and the 1917 revolutions. In 1923, however, he and his wife traveled to New York to take part in an exhibition of Russian and Soviet art. Rather than staying for a few months, Konyonkov remained there for the next twenty-two years. Much of the work he created during this period is on biblical themes—images from the Apocalypse and portrayals of the prophets, of Christ, and of the apostles. In 1945, under direct orders from Stalin, a ship was sent to New York to bring Konyonkov back to the Soviet Union. He was given a large studio on Gorky Street in the center of Moscow and received many prestigious Soviet awards—the golden star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, the Order of Lenin, and the title People’s Artist of the USSR.
SERGEY TIMOFEYEVICH KONYONKOV
A peasant from Smolensk,
he could almost
be an apostle.
He speaks little,
almost reluctantly,
but as he listens
to you, he is also
listening to himself.
“You’re sitting in an armchair
I made from a log
I picked up in the woods
near Golitsyno.”
A long pause,
punctuated by noises
from Tverskoy Boulevard.
“Long ago, I don’t remember when,
but long ago,
I thought this was a swan,
but it turned out to be my granny.
Transfiguration—it happens
quite often
if you keep working.”
Then, without warning,
Sergey Timofeyevich leaves.
A minute later
I hear hammering—
doubled and tripled
by a booming echo—
from his workshop.
And while he works,
Margarita Ivanovna
regales us with tales
from her husband’s life.
The text of these tales
has been planed and polished
down to the last comment
and digression.
But the tales are still interesting
if you have any interest
in the man at their center.
Konyonkov returns, pale
yet radiant. He sits in silence,
listening to himself.
Maybe it’s time for us to leave?
“No, stay a while.”
We do not say a word—we see
the master is coming round
after an encounter
with a vision. He’s coming
down to earth. We feel this
and start gossiping again—
about this, about that,
about friends, about foes.
Konyonkov stays sternly
silent, and if he begins
to speak, keeps it short.
He says a word or two
about his dislikes
but doesn’t explain
or elaborate.
He prefers
simply to mispronounce
certain surnames:
“Gerasimov!
Manizer!
Vuchetich!”*
1990
Translated by Boris Dralyuk
*The painter Aleksandr Mikhailovich Gerasimov and the sculptors Matvey Genrikhovich Manizer and Yevgeny Viktorovich Vuchetich were prominent “official” artists of the Soviet Union, who all received multiple Stalin Prizes and held important posts in the Russian Academy of Arts.
VLADIMIR FAVORSKY (1886–1964), a leading graphic artist, painter, engraver, muralist, and teacher, was born in Moscow. His father was a member of the Duma (the Russian parliament introduced in 1906 and dissolved in 1917), and his mother, Olga Vladimirovna Sherwood, belonged to a prominent family of architects and artists of English descent. Favorsky received his education in Munich and Moscow, was active in the avant-garde movement of the 1920s, and designed the artwork for many popular editions of Pushkin, Shakespeare, Dante, and others. Ozerov singles out his portrait of Dostoyevsky (1929), as well as his illustrations for the biblical Book of Ruth (1925) and Mikhail Prishvin’s novel Jen Sheng: The Root of Life (1933), an international success in the 1930s.
VLADIMIR ANDREYEVICH FAVORSKY
At the Fashion House on Sretenka Street—
corner of Maly Golovin, no. 1:
Favorsky.
He was quiet, plunged in thought.
He looked so depressed
I didn’t dare approach him.
But I could guess
why he was so depressed.
Or at least I thought I could.
To paint on a wall
must, after all,
be very different
from painting on paper
or carving woodblocks.
This narrow street—
house after house—
was living its measured,
mundane, and busy life,
cajoling passersby:
“Go, go! Get moving!”
The building is chestnut-brown,
almost terra-cotta;
I called it a house with a suntan.
Favorsky had painted the murals in 1935.
First I had seen the sketches—
and then there the women were,
up on the walls,
each in her proper place.
And for a while
people were able to stop and look
to escape their fatigue.
Sretenka is a canyon
too narrow for such a river of people,
which spills out into the side streets
and into Sukharevskaya Square,
over which still looms
the shadow of the tower
built by order of Peter the Great
and razed by Kaganovich.*
Favorsky—what a name!
To me, this master’s woodprints
were as refreshing
as winter frost on pines.
Over the years
his engravings
imprinted themselves on me:
a flock of birds in the air,
Prince Igor’s host on the march,
Pushkin in his student days,
donkeys in Samarkand,
the frontispiece to the Book of Ruth,
Dostoyevsky with his manuscript,
Prishvin’s Jen Sheng—
all these, together with the texts,
are now imprinted in my memory,
in my blood.
And so, a decree from on high:
they sent out house painters,
who clambered about
for a long time
with their brushes,
and painted all the walls
one official color,
because the formalist
Favorsky
had touched them with his brush.
“Formalist” was a dirty word.
It was better to do the work of the devil
than be a formalist.
Today, of course, Favorsky’s every touch
on paper or wood,
on text
ile or clay
is prized throughout the world.
The gleaming Fashion House
lost its charm overnight, devalued;
now it looks hunched and stooped.
The women vanished from its walls
like ghosts.
And suddenly I dared to speak:
“I’m so very sorry, Vladimir Andreyevich!”
Favorsky looked up, startled.
“It’s not the walls they’ve painted over,
it’s me. My own self.
They’ve wiped me out.”
Then he held out his hand,
the hand of a master.
And I could feel
the strength
still there in that hand.
I accompanied Favorsky
from Sretenka to Izmaylovo,
without saying a word.
And then Vladimir Andreyevich
looked at me intently
and said, rather loudly:
“I’m going in now. I want to work.”
Translated by Boris Dralyuk
*The Sukharev Tower, one of Moscow’s landmarks, called the “Bride of Ivan the Great,” was built in 1701 and demolished in 1934 on the orders of Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalin’s closest associates.
FYODOR KONSTANTINOV (1910–1997), a student of Vladimir Favorsky at the Moscow Art Institute, was an accomplished engraver, known for his portraits of Mozart, Paganini, Wagner, Verdi, and the poet Sergey Yesenin. He also illustrated the works of many classic Russian and other authors.
FYODOR DENISOVICH KONSTANTINOV
Like the sculptor Anna Golubkina,
he wasn’t from overseas
or from the backwoods,
but from Zaraysk.*
I had the good luck
to see him at work.
A silly thing to say—
no one ever
saw him any other way.
Focused, passionate, tireless,
he had the brawn of a small-town carpenter,
the dexterity of a master joiner
who could guess the breed and age
of a tree blindfolded, by touch,
and the endurance of a rugged tar extractor,
and the meditative patience of an icon painter.
A piece of boxwood, gripped in a vise,
waits on the workbench for his knife.
He must be as precise as a sniper,
as a surgeon;
after all, boxwood isn’t paper.
In the evening, a smooth piece of boxwood—
come morning, a tableau vivant:
gentle waves of bluish pink snow,
the upturned fretsaw
of a faraway forest,
and sleighs, far-flying sleighs.
Who’s in them? Pushkin or Gogol,
Nekrasov or Koltsov?†
Look long enough—and we’ll see!
“Oh, what do I know? Decide for yourself . . .”
While the sleighs will fly away,
they will fly away of their own accord
from under the studio’s roof.
“What a day it’s been!
I worked well—but not enough,”
Fyodor Denisovich says quietly.
He’s silent for a long time,
then suddenly begins
a conversation we have had before,
and more than once.
“And I keep thinking: Who will continue my work?
Whom will I tell my secrets to?
To whom will I pass down the keys?
Think what Favorsky did for me—
he helped me to understand, he gave me direction.
Eternal thanks to dear Vladimir Andreyevich.”
I answer after a pause, and with pain.
I’ve witnessed Fyodor Denisovich
yearning for students for a quarter of a century.
Nobody, nobody here is in the least bit bothered.
What I am saying is monstrous—but true.
Konstantinov spoke at the Academy of Arts—
a dense blanket of silence.
He spoke at the Union of Artists—
a grave peace, if not the peace of the grave.
He spoke at the Ministry of Culture—
not a word, only indifference.
And last, he spoke at the Cultural Foundation—
promises, smiles, and no action.
A few lone pens—three, five, perhaps ten,
your humble servant among them—
wrote about this.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
So—should we allow the flame to fade?
Should the younger tribe
never encounter the charm of woodcuts?
Should we allow the art
of Pavlov‡ and Favorsky
to die out?
Let them both disappear
up the chimney of oblivion?
Let the sands bury them?
To be altogether forgotten,
like the secrets of Cremona’s violin makers?
Another evening,
I climb up to Konstantinov’s top-floor flat.
“Fyodor Denisovich!” “Here!” he responds
from the dense forest of his Moscow building.
It’s warm in the workshop.
There’s a fresh engraving on the table:
the sea, a high wave
crested with foam,
white as the flower
of a Zaraysk apple tree.
Translated by Boris Dralyuk
*Anna Golubkina, the first major Russian woman sculptor, was born into a family of peasant Old Believers in Zaraysk, in central Russia. She studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg as well as at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and worked as an assistant to Auguste Rodin. She embraced the Revolution of 1917 but recoiled from the Bolsheviks’ violence and only reluctantly agreed to work for the government, teaching at the Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vkhutemas) in Moscow.
†Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was an influential mid-nineteenth-century Russian poet, critic, and editor; he was best known for his civic verse, which promoted liberal, reformist ideas and expressed deep sympathy for the lower classes. The poet Alexey Vasilievich Koltsov, who was born into a cattle merchant’s family in 1809 and died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three, wrote simple, songlike poems in praise of peasant life, which earned him comparisons to Robert Burns.
‡Like Favorsky, Nikolay Pavlov was a well-known Soviet-era artist and engraver.
MIKHAIL NESTEROV (1862–1942) was a painter and illustrator. His canvases depicting seekers and dreamers, otherworldly adolescent boys, and wistful young women set against the lyrical Russian landscape were widely admired. He was one of the founders of the World of Art movement, which brought together some of the most exciting and innovative artists of the late Russian Empire. Nesterov suffered a number of personal tragedies, including the death of his wife in childbirth, which deepened his religious beliefs. He never accepted the Revolution, but he remained in Russia, concentrating on portraiture. In 1938 he was arrested and spent two weeks in jail, while his son-in-law was accused of espionage and executed, and his daughter was sent to the Gulag. Then the regime relented: in 1941 Nesterov received the Order of Stalin and, shortly before his death, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. To the end of his life, Nesterov maintained his artistic integrity. For younger artists, he represented a direct link to the great prerevolutionary innovators of Russian art.
MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH NESTEROV
The exhibition hall on Kuznetsky
is all set for the gala opening.
The crowds are pouring in,
the lights blazing, photographers
and movie men at the ready.
Up on the walls
the paintings shout, rhapsodize, call out:
a lilac bush, Pushkin, Lermontov,
the artist’s wife, his daughter, his relatives;
tables l
aden with delicacies;
horses, bulls, clusters of grapes;
meat stalls, vegetable stalls.
The artist is full of joy.
His luscious brushwork
is enamored of life—
who could it be,
but Pyotr Konchalovsky?*
Happy, colorful, sated, sumptuous,
exuberant—a magnet to the Soviet elite.
Everything is ready
but the organizers are holding back.
They’re waiting for someone,
they keep eyeing the entrance.
People are darting back and forth
between the artist and the main door.
“Not here yet! No, still not here!”
What are people to do?
The artist looks weary.
The scheduled speakers look weary.
Who are they waiting for?
This is how people wait
for members of the high command,
for members of the party’s Central Committee
(the index finger points skyward).
Yet it’s not quite that simple—
I sense not obsequiousness
but respect. Fear, perhaps,
but it seems more like awe.
And then, it’s as if a breeze sweeps
from the entrance to the foyer,
from the foyer to the exhibition rooms:
“He’s come!” “Here he is!” “At last!”
Here he is, flinging off his coat,
handing over his cane, taking off his hat.
Nesterov comes into the hall.
Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov himself!
People try to support him by the elbow,
but he pushes them off. “No, gentlemen,
I’ll manage on my own two feet!”
He walks energetically, looking straight ahead,
raising a chin
sharpened to a pointed beard.
His face is composed not of lines
but of arrows cast by his eyes,
which are wide-open, bright, and large.
The arrows point down
when he’s disappointed—
and up
when he cheers up again.
Artists offer him their hands in greeting, ladies too,
but he doesn’t shake them.
He turns brusquely and coolly to the canvases.
Down to business!
He walks ahead, Konchalovsky at his side,
while journalists, friends, and biographers
follow behind.
“What can I say, dear friend?
It may be a daring idea,