The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (60 page)

“The thought of it troubled him all day and all night, and in the morning he received the portrait from the moneylender, brought by some woman, the only being in his service, who announced straight away that her master did not want the portrait, would pay nothing for it, and was sending it back.
In the evening of the same day, he learned that the moneylender had died and was to be buried by the rites of his own religion.
All this seemed inexplicably strange to him.
And after that a perceptible change occurred in his character: he felt himself in an uneasy state of anxiety, the cause of which he could not understand, and soon he did something no one would have expected of him.
For some time, the works of one of his pupils had begun to attract the attention of a small circle of experts and amateurs.
My father had always seen talent in him and was particularly well-disposed toward him for that.
Suddenly he became jealous of him.
General concern and talk about the young man became unbearable to him.
Finally, to crown his vexation, he found out that his pupil had been invited to do the pictures for a rich, newly constructed church.
This made him explode.
‘No, I won’t let that greenhorn triumph!’ he said.
‘It’s too early, brother, for you to be shoving old men into the ditch!
I’m still strong, thank God.
We’ll see who shoves whom.’ And this straightforward, honorable man turned to intrigue and scheming, something he had previously always scorned; he succeeded, finally, in having a competition for the pictures announced, and other painters could also enter their works in it.
After that he shut himself in his room and ardently took up his brush.
It seemed he wanted to put his whole strength, his whole self into it.
And, indeed, it turned out to be one of his best works.
No one doubted that he would take first place.
The paintings were exhibited, and beside it all the others were as night to day.
Then suddenly one of the members present, a clergyman if I’m not mistaken, made an observation that struck everyone.
‘There is, indeed, much talent in the artist’s picture,’ he said, ‘but there is no holiness in the faces;
there is, on the contrary, something demonic in the eyes, as if the painter’s hand was guided by an unclean feeling.’ Everyone looked and could not but be convinced of the truth of these words.
My father rushed up to his picture, as if to verify this offensive observation, and saw with horror that he had given almost all the figures the moneylender’s eyes.
Their gaze was so demonically destructive that he involuntarily shuddered.
The picture was rejected, and he had to hear, to his indescribable vexation, the first place awarded to his pupil.
It is impossible to describe the rage in which he returned home.
He almost gave my mother a beating, chased the children away, broke all his brushes and his easel, snatched the portrait of the moneylender from the wall, asked for a knife, and ordered a fire made in the fireplace, intending to cut it to pieces and burn it.
At that point he was found by a friend who came into the room, himself also a painter, a happy fellow, always pleased with himself, not carried away by any far-reaching desires, who worked happily at whatever came along and was even happier to get down to dining and carousing.

“ ‘What are you doing?
What are you going to burn?’ he said, and went up to the portrait.
‘Good heavens, it’s one of your best works.
It’s that moneylender who died recently; but it’s a most perfect thing.
You simply got him, not between the eyes but right in them.
No eyes have ever stared the way you’ve made them stare.’

“ ‘And now I’ll see how they stare in the fire,’ said my father, making a move to hurl it into the fireplace.

“ ‘Stop, for God’s sake!’ said the friend, holding him back.
‘Better give it to me, if you find it such an eyesore.’

“My father resisted at first, but finally consented, and the happy fellow, extremely pleased with his acquisition, took the portrait home.

“After he left, my father suddenly felt himself more at ease.
Just as if, along with the portrait, a burden had fallen from his soul.
He was amazed himself at his wicked feeling, his envy, and the obvious change in his character.
Having considered his behavior, he was saddened at heart and said, not without inner grief:

“ ‘No, it is God punishing me.
My painting deserved to suffer disgrace.
It was intended to destroy my brother.
The demonic feeling
of envy guided my brush, and demonic feeling was bound to be reflected in it.’

“He immediately went to look for his former pupil, embraced him warmly, asked his forgiveness, and tried his best to smooth over his guilt before him.
His work again went on as serenely as before; but pensiveness now showed more often on his face.
He prayed more, was more often taciturn, and did not speak so sharply about people; the external roughness of his character somehow softened.
Soon one circumstance shook him still more.
He had not seen the friend who had begged the portrait from him for a long time.
He was just about to go and see him when the man suddenly walked into his room unexpectedly.
After a few words and questions on both sides, he said:

“ ‘Well, brother, you weren’t wrong to want to burn the portrait.
Devil take it, there’s something strange in it … I don’t believe in witches, but like it or not, there’s some unclean power sitting in it …’

“ ‘Meaning what?’ said my father.

“ ‘Meaning that once I hung it in my room, I felt such anguish as if I wanted to put a knife in somebody.
Never in my whole life have I known what insomnia is, and now I had not only insomnia but such dreams … I myself can’t tell whether they were dreams or something else—as if some evil spirit was strangling me—and the accursed old man kept appearing in them.
In short, I can’t tell you what a state I was in.
Nothing like it has ever happened to me.
I wandered about like a lunatic all those days.
I kept feeling some kind of fear, expecting something unpleasant.
I felt I couldn’t say a cheerful and sincere word to anybody: just as if some sort of spy was sitting next to me.
And it was only when I gave the portrait to my nephew, who asked for it himself, that I suddenly felt as if a weight had fallen from my shoulders: I suddenly felt cheerful, as you see me now.
Well, brother, you cooked up quite a devil!’

“My father listened to the story all the while with undivided attention, and finally said:

“ ‘And the portrait is now with your nephew?’

“ ‘My nephew, hah!
He couldn’t stand it,’ the cheerful fellow said.
‘The moneylender’s very soul must have transmigrated into it:
he jumps out of the frame, walks around the room; and what my nephew tells, the mind simply can’t grasp.
I’d have taken him for a madman if I hadn’t experienced some of it myself.
He, too, sold it to some art collector, but that one couldn’t bear it either and also unloaded it on somebody’

“This story made a strong impression on my father.
He fell to pondering seriously, lapsed into hypochondria, and in the end became fully convinced that his brush had served as a tool of the devil, that part of the moneylender’s life had indeed passed somehow into the portrait and was now troubling people, inspiring them with demonic impulses, seducing the artist from his path, generating terrible torments of envy, and so on and so forth.
Three misfortunes which befell him after that, three sudden deaths—his wife’s, his daughter’s, and his young son’s—he considered as heaven’s punishment of him, and he was absolutely resolved to leave this world.
As soon as I turned nine, he enrolled me in the Academy of Art and, after paying off his creditors, withdrew to an isolated monastery, where he was soon tonsured a monk.
There he amazed all the brothers by his strictness of life and unremitting observance of all monastery rules.
The superior of the monastery, learning of his skill with the brush, requested that he paint the central icon in the church.
But the humble brother said flatly that he was unworthy to take up his brush, that it had been defiled, that he would have to purify his soul with labors and great sacrifices before he would be worthy of setting about such a task.
They did not wish to force him.
He increased the strictness of monastery life for himself as far as possible.
Finally even that became insufficient and not strict enough for him.
With the blessing of his superior, he withdrew to the wilderness in order to be completely alone.
There he built himself a hut out of branches, ate nothing but raw roots, dragged stones on his back from one place to another, stood in one place from dawn till sunset with his arms raised to heaven, ceaselessly reciting prayers.
In short, he seemed to seek out all possible degrees of endurance and that inconceivable self-denial of which examples may be found only in the lives of the saints.
Thus for a long time, over the course of several years, he exhausted his body, strengthening it at the same time with the vivifying power of
prayer.
Finally one day he came to the monastery and said firmly to the superior, ‘Now I am ready.
God willing, I will accomplish my work.’ The subject he chose was the Nativity of Jesus.
For a whole year he sat over it without leaving his cell, barely sustaining himself with strict fare, praying ceaselessly.
At the end of a year, the picture was ready.
It was indeed a miracle of the brush.
You should know that neither the brothers nor the superior had much knowledge of painting, but everyone was struck by the extraordinary holiness of the figures; the feeling of divine humility and meekness in the face of the most pure Mother leaning over the Child, the profound intelligence in the eyes of the divine Child, as if they already perceived something in the distance, the solemn silence of the kings, struck by the divine wonder and prostrate at his feet, and, finally, the holy, inexpressible silence enveloping the whole picture—all this was expressed with such harmonious force and power of beauty that it produced a magical impression.
The brothers all fell on their knees before the new icon, and the superior, moved to tenderness, said, ‘No, it is not possible for a man, with the aid of human art only, to produce such a picture.
A higher, holy power guided your brush, and the blessing of heaven rests on your work.’

“Just then I finished my studies at the Academy, was given a gold medal and along with it the joyous hope of going to Italy—the best of dreams for a twenty-year-old painter.
It only remained for me to bid farewell to my father, from whom I had parted twelve years earlier.
I confess, even his very image had long since vanished from my memory.
I had heard something about the strict holiness of his life and imagined beforehand meeting a hermit with a hard appearance, alien to everything in the world except his cell and his prayer, wasted away, dried up with eternal watching and fasting.
What was my astonishment when there stood before me a beautiful, almost divine elder!
No traces of exhaustion were to be seen on his face; it shone with the brightness of heavenly joy.
A beard white as snow and fine, almost ethereal hair of the same silvery color flowed picturesquely down his breast and the folds of his black cassock, falling to the very rope tied around his poor monastic garb; but the most amazing thing for me was to hear from his lips such words and thoughts about art as, I confess, I shall long
bear in my soul, and I wish sincerely that every brother of mine could do likewise.

“ ‘I have been waiting for you, my son,’ he said when I approached to receive his blessing.
‘The path which your life will henceforth follow lies before you.
This path is pure, do not deviate from it.
You have talent, and talent is God’s most precious gift—do not ruin it.
Seek, study everything you see, submit everything to your brush, but learn to find the inner thought in everything, and try most of all to comprehend the lofty mystery of creation.
Blessed is the chosen one who possesses it.
No subject in nature is low for him.
In the lowly the artist-creator is as great as he is in the great; for him the contemptible is no longer contemptible, for the beautiful soul of the creator shines invisibly through it, and the contemptible is given lofty expression, for it has passed through the purgatory of his soul.
For man, art contains a hint of the divine, heavenly paradise, and this alone makes it higher than all else.
As solemn peace is higher than all worldly trouble; as creation is higher than destruction; as an angel in the pure innocence of his bright soul is higher than all the innumerable powers and proud passions of Satan—so is a lofty artistic creation higher than anything that exists in the world.
Give all in sacrifice to it and love it with all your passion.
Not passion that breathes of earthly lust, but quiet, heavenly passion, without which man is powerless to rise above the earth and is unable to give the wondrous sounds of peace.
For artistic creation comes down to earth to pacify and reconcile all people.
It cannot instill murmuring in the soul, but in the sound of prayer strives eternally toward God.
But there are moments, dark moments …’

“He paused, and I noticed that his bright countenance suddenly darkened, as if some momentary cloud passed over it.

“ ‘There was one event in my life,’ he said.
‘To this day I cannot understand what that strange image was whose portrait I painted.
It was exactly like some diabolical phenomenon.
I know the world rejects the existence of the devil, and therefore I will not speak of him.
I will say only that I painted it with loathing, that I felt no love for my work at the time.
I wanted forcefully to subject myself and to be faithful to nature, soullessly, having stifled everything.
It
was not a work of art, and therefore the feelings that overcome people as they look at it are stormy, troubling feelings—not the feelings of an artist, for an artist breathes peace even in the midst of trouble.
I have been told that this portrait keeps changing hands and spreading its tormenting impressions, producing feelings of envy in an artist, a dark hatred for his brother, a spiteful yearning to persecute and oppress.
May the Most High preserve you from such passions!
Nothing is more terrible than they.
Better to endure all the bitterness of possible persecution than cause even a shadow of persecution for someone else.
Save the purity of your soul.
He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else.
Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven.
A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes.
For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.’