“Are you sure of that?”
“We are, sir. That varnish is as strong as the old Russian faith itself.”
Here he swore at those who were unable to cherish such art, gave us his hands, and said once more:
“Well, don’t grieve, then: I’ll help you, and we’ll get hold of your angel. Do you need him for long?”
“No,” we say, “just for a short time.”
“Well, then I’ll say I want to have a rich gold casing made for your sealed angel, and once they give him to me, we’ll put a substitute in his place. I’ll get started on it tomorrow.”
We thanked him, but said:
“Only don’t do anything, sir, either tomorrow or the next day.”
“Why not?” he asks.
And we reply:
“Because, sir, first of all we’ve got to have a substitute icon made, as like the real one as two drops of water, and there are no such masters here, and none to be found anywhere nearby.”
“Nonsense,” he says. “I’ll bring a painter from town myself; he paints not only copies but portraits excellently well.”
“No, sir,” we reply, “kindly don’t do that, because, first of all, improper rumors may start up through this worldly artist, and, second of all, such a painter cannot carry out the work.”
The Englishman didn’t believe it, but I stepped forward and explained the whole difference to him: that nowadays the work of worldly artists is not the same; they work in oils, but for icons the colors are delicate, being mixed with egg; in oil painting the work is done in brushstrokes and looks natural only from a distance, but here the paint is applied in thin layers and is clear even close up. Besides, a worldly artist, I say, can’t transfer the drawing satisfactorily, because they’re trained to represent the flesh of the earthly, life-loving man, while in sacred Russian icon painting there is portrayed the heavenly type of the face, concerning which a material man cannot even have any real notion.
He became interested.
“But where are there such masters,” he asked, “who still understand that special type?”
“Nowadays they are very rare,” I tell him (and at that time they lived in the strictest hiding). “In the village of Mstera there’s a certain master Khokhlov, but he’s now very advanced in years, he can’t be taken on a long journey. There are two men in Palekh; they, too, are unlikely to come, and besides that,” I say, “neither masters from Mstera nor masters from Palekh are any good for us.”
“Why is that, now?” he persists.
“Because,” I reply, “they don’t have the right knack: Mstera icons are drawn big-headed and the painting is muddy, and in Palekh icons there’s a turquoise tinge, everything tends towards pale blue.”
“In that case,” he says, “what’s to be done?”
“Myself,” I say, “I don’t know. I’ve often heard that there’s a good master in Moscow named Silachev: he’s known among our folk all over Russia, but his work is more in the style of the Novgorodians and the court painters in Moscow, while our icon is done in the Stroganov manner, with the brightest and richest colors, and only the master Sevastian from the lower Dniepr can please us, but he’s a passionate wanderer: he walks all over Russia doing work for the Old Believers, and where to look for him nobody knows.”
The Englishman listened with pleasure to all these reports of mine and smiled, and then replied:
“You’re quite astonishing people, and, listening to you, it’s even gratifying to realize that you know so well everything that touches on your ways and can even understand art.”
“Why shouldn’t we understand art, sir?” I say. “Artwork is a divine thing, and we have such fanciers from among the simplest muzhiks as can not only distinguish, for example, between different schools of icon painting—Ustiug or Novgorod, Moscow or Vologda, Siberia or Stroganov—but even within one and the same school can distinguish without error between the work of one well-known old Russian master and another.”
“Can it be?” he asks.
“Just like you telling one person’s handwriting from another’s,” I reply, “so they look and see at once who painted it: Kuzma, Andrei, or Prokofy.”
“By what signs?”
“There’s a difference in the way the outline is transferred, and in the layering, and in the highlighting of the face and garments.”
He goes on listening; and I tell him what I know about Ushakov’s work, and about Rublev’s, and about the most ancient Russian artist Paramshin, whose icons our pious tsars and princes gave to their children as blessings and instructed them in their wills to cherish these icons like the apple of their eye.18
The Englishman straightaway snatched out his notebook and asked me to repeat the name of the painter and where his works could be seen. And I reply:
“It’s no use, sir, to go looking for them: there’s no memory of them left anywhere.”
“What’s become of them?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “maybe they turned them into chibouks or traded them to the Germans for tobacco.”
“That can’t be,” he says.
“On the contrary,” I reply, “it’s quite possible, and there are examples of it: in Rome the pope in the Vatican has folding icons painted in the thirteenth century by the Russian icon painters Andrei, Sergei, and Nikita. This miniature with multiple figures is so astonishing, they say, that even the greatest foreign artists, looking at it, go into raptures over its wondrous workmanship.”
“But how did it end up in Rome?”
“Peter the Great made a gift of it to a foreign monk, and he sold it.”19
The Englishman smiled and fell to thinking, and then said softly that in England they keep every painting from generation to generation, and that makes clear who comes from which genealogy.
“Well, but with us,” I say, “there’s most likely a different education, and the connection with the traditions of our ancestors is broken, so that everything seems new, as if the whole Russian race had been hatched only yesterday by a hen in a nettle patch.”
“But if your educated ignorance is such,” he says, “then why are those who preserve a love for your own things not concerned with maintaining your native art?”
“We have no one to maintain it, my good sir,” I reply, “because in the new art schools everywhere a corruption of the senses is developed and the mind is given over to vanity. The model of lofty inspiration is lost, and everything is taken from the earth and breathes of earthly passion. Our newest artists started by portraying the warrior-angel Michael as Prince Potemkin of Taurida, and now they’ve gone so far that Christ the Savior is depicted as a Jew.20 What can be expected from such people? Their uncircumcised hearts may portray something even worse and worship it as a deity: in Egypt, after all, they worshipped a bull and a red onion; but we’re not going to bow down before strange gods, or take a Jewish face for the image of our Savior, and we even consider these portrayals, however artful they may be, as shameful ignorance, and we turn away from them, because our fathers said that ‘distraction of the eyes destroys the purity of reason, as a broken water pump spoils the water.’ ”
I finished with that and fell silent, but the Englishman says:
“Go on: I like the way you reason.”
“I’ve already said everything,” I reply, but he says:
“No, tell me what you mean by your notion of inspired representation.”
The question, my dear sirs, was quite difficult for a simple man, but, no help for it, I went ahead and told him how the starry sky is painted in Novgorod, and then I began to describe the decoration of St. Sophia in Kiev, where seven winged warrior-angels, who naturally do not resemble Potemkin, stand to the sides of the God of Sabaoth; and just below are the prophets and forefathers; on a lower level, Moses with the tables; still lower, Aaron in a miter and with a sprouting rod; then come King David in a crown, the prophet Isaiah with a scroll, Ezekiel with a shut gate, Daniel with a stone; and around all these who stand b
efore God, showing us the way to heaven, are depicted the gifts through which man can reach that glorious path, namely: a book with seven seals—the gift of wisdom; a seven-branched candelabra—the gift of reason; seven eyes—the gift of counsel; seven trumpets—the gift of fortitude; a right hand amidst seven stars—the gift of vision; seven censers—the gift of piety; seven lightning bolts—the gift of the fear of God. “There,” I say, “is an uplifting picture!”
And the Englishman replies:
“Forgive me, my good man, but I don’t understand you. Why do you consider it uplifting?”
“Because this picture says clearly to the soul what a Christian ought to pray and yearn for, in order to ascend from earth to the unutterable glory of God.”
“But,” he says, “anyone can comprehend that from the Scriptures and prayers.”
“By no means, sir,” I reply. “It is not given to everyone to comprehend the Scriptures, and the uncomprehending mind can be darkened even in prayer: a man hears the exclamation, ‘Awaiting Thy great and rich mercies,’ and immediately thinks it’s about money and starts bowing greedily. But when he sees the picture of heavenly glory before him, then he thinks on the lofty prospects of life and understands how that goal is to be reached, because here everything is simple and reasonable: a man should first pray that his soul be given the gift of the fear of God, and then it will proceed lightly from step to step, assimilating at each step the superabundance of higher gifts, and in those moments of prayer, money and all earthly glory will seem to a man no more than an abomination before the Lord.”
Here the Englishman stands up and says merrily:
“And what do you odd birds pray for?”
“We,” I reply, “pray for a Christian ending to our life and a good defense before the dread judgment seat.”
He smiled and suddenly pulled a green curtain open by a golden cord, and behind that curtain his English wife was sitting in an armchair, knitting on long needles by a candle. She was a fine, affable lady, and though she didn’t speak much of our language, she understood everything and had probably wanted to hear our conversation about religion.
And what do you think? When the curtain that hid her was pulled aside, she stood up at once, seemed to shudder, and came, the dear woman, to me and Luka, offered both hands to us muzhiks, and there were tears glistening in her eyes, and she pressed our hands and said:
“Goot people, goot Russian people!”
Luka and I kissed both her hands for those kind words, and she put her lips to our muzhik heads.
The storyteller stopped and, covering his eyes with his sleeve, wiped them discreetly, and murmured in a whisper: “A touching woman!” and with that he straightened up and went on again.
Having begun with these affectionate acts of hers, the Englishwoman said something to her husband in their language, which we didn’t understand, but we could tell by her voice that she was probably speaking on our behalf. And the Englishman—this kindness in his wife evidently pleased him—gazes at her, beaming all over with pride, and strokes his wife’s little head, and coos like a dove in his language: “Goot, goot,” or however they say it, only it’s clear that he’s praising her and confirming her in something. Then he goes to his desk, takes out two hundred-rouble bills, and says:
“Here’s money for you, Luka: go and look where you know for an artful icon painter of the kind you need, let him do what you need and also paint something of the same sort for my wife—she wants to give such an icon to our son—and my wife is giving you this money for all your trouble and expenses.”
And she smiles through her tears and says quickly:
“No, no, no: that’s from him, mine’s separate,” and so saying, she fluttered out the door and came back with a third hundred-rouble bill.
“My husband gave it to me for a dress, but I don’t want a dress, I donate it to you.”
We, naturally, started to refuse, but she wouldn’t even hear of it and ran away, and he says:
“No, don’t you dare refuse; take what she’s giving you,” and he turns away and says, “And get out, you odd birds!”
Naturally, we weren’t in the least offended by this expulsion, because, though the Englishman turned away from us, we saw that he did it to conceal the fact that he was deeply moved himself.
So it was, my dear sirs, that our own native people treated us unjustly, but the English nation comforted us and lent zeal to our souls, just as if we’d received the bath of regeneration!
Now from here on, my dear sirs, the second half of my story begins, and I’ll tell you briefly how, taking my silver-bridled Levonty, I set out after an icon painter, and what places we went to, what people we saw, what new wonders were revealed to us, and, finally, what we found, and what we lost, and what we came back with.
X
For a man going on a journey, the first thing is a companion; cold and hunger are easier with an intelligent and good comrade, and this blessing was granted me in that wonderful youth Levonty. We set out on foot, taking with us our shoulder bags and a sufficient sum of money, and to protect it and our own lives we took with us an old, short-bladed saber with a broad back, which we always carried in case of danger. We made our way like tradespeople, inventing errands at random as the supposed causes for our traveling, and all the while, naturally, with an eye on our business. At the very beginning we visited Klintsy and Zlynka, then called on some of our people in Orel, but did not obtain any useful results: nowhere did we find any good icon painters, and so we got to Moscow. But all I can say is: Woe to thee, Moscow! Woe to thee, most glorious queen of the ancient Russian people! We of the old belief were not comforted by thee either.
I’m not eager to say it, but it’s impossible to keep silent: we did not meet in Moscow the spirit we were thirsting for. We found that the old ways there no longer stood upon piety and love of the good, but only upon obstinacy, and becoming more and more convinced of it every day, Levonty and I began to be ashamed of each other, for we both saw things that were insulting to a peaceful follower of the faith, but, being ashamed in ourselves, we kept silent about it all with each other.
Naturally, we found icon painters in Moscow, and quite artful ones, but what use was that, since all these people were not of the spirit which the tradition of our forefathers tells us about? In olden times, pious painters, when taking up their holy artwork, fasted and prayed, and worked in the same way for big money or for little, as the honor of the lofty task demands. But these paint one slap, another dash, to last a short time, not for long years; they lay a weak ground of chalk, not of alabaster, and, being lazy, they flow the paint on all at once, not like in the old days, when they flowed on four or even five layers of paint, thin as water, which produced that wonderful delicacy unattainable nowadays. And, aside from carelessness in their art, they’re all of lax behavior, and boast before each other, and say anything at all to humiliate another painter; or, worse still, they band together, carry out clever deceptions, gather in pot-houses and drink and praise their own art with conceited arrogance, and blasphemously call other painters’ work “infernography,” and there are always junkmen around them, like sparrows around owls, who pass various old icons from hand to hand, alter them, substitute them, make fake boards, smoke them in chimneys, giving them a decrepit and worm-eaten look; they cast bronze folding icons from old molds and coat them with antiquated patina; they refashion copper bowls into baptismal fonts and put old-fashioned splayed eagles on them as in the time of Ivan the Terrible, and sell them to inexperienced buyers as genuine fonts from that period, though there’s countless numbers of these fonts going the rounds in Russia, and it’s all a shameless lie and deception. In a word, as swarthy Gypsies cheat each other with horses, so all these people do with holy objects, and they treat it all in such a way that you feel ashamed for them and see in it all only sin and temptation and abuse of faith. For those who have acquired the habit of this shamelessness, it’s nothing, and among Moscow fanciers there are many who
are interested in such dishonest trading and boast that so-and-so cheated so-and-so with a Deisis, and this one stuck that one with a Nicholas, or fobbed off a fake Our Lady in some scoundrelly manner: and they all cover it up, and vie with each other in how best to hoodwink the trustful inexperienced with God’s blessing, but to Levonty and me, being of simple village piety, all this seemed unbearable to such a degree that we both even felt downcast and fear came over us.
“Can it be,” we thought, “that in these times our ill-fated Old Belief has come to this?” But, though I thought that, and I could see that he harbored the same thing in his grieving heart, we didn’t reveal it to each other, and I only noticed that my youth kept seeking some solitary place.
I looked at him once and thought to myself: “What if in his confusion he decides on something improper?” So I say:
“What is it, Levonty, are you sorrowing over something?”
And he replies:
“No, uncle, it’s nothing: never mind.”
“Then let’s go to the Erivan Tavern in Bozheninova Street to chat up the icon painters. There are two who promised to come there and bring old icons. I’ve already bartered for one, and I’d like to obtain another today.”
But Levonty replies:
“No, uncle, you go by yourself, I won’t go.”
“Why won’t you?” I ask.
“I’m just not feeling myself today,” he replies.
Well, once I didn’t insist, and twice I didn’t insist, but the third time I called him again:
“Let’s go, Levontiushka, let’s go, my lad.”
And he bows meekly and pleads:
“No, dear uncle, my white dove: allow me to stay home.”
“What is it, Levonty?” I say. “You came with me as my co-worker, but you sit at home all the time. I don’t get much help from you this way, my dove.”
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 12
