to say, savages. Well, he’s of that class. He’s the son, it appears, of some
Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got
into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he’s no fool, to
educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of
culture—the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to
educate himself—a Frenchman, for instance—would have set to work to
study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historians and
philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way.
But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly
assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he’s ready. And
that’s not all—twenty years ago he would have found in that literature
traces of conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would
have perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he
comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish
matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else—
evolution, natural selection, struggle for existence—and that’s all. In my
article I’ve….”
“I tell you what,” said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging
wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least interested
in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by the idea of
assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; “I tell you what,” she said,
resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still talking away, “let’s go
and see him!”
Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But as
the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the carriage.
An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on the
front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house in the
remote suburb. On learning from the porter’s wife, who came out to them,
that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment he was in
his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards,
asking permission to see his picture.
Chapter 10
The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count
Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had
been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew into a
rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the landlady, who had
been asking for money.
“I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into details. You’re fool
enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you’re a
fool three times as foolish,” he said after a long dispute.
“Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the money….”
“Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!” Mihailov shrieked, with tears in his
voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room, the other
side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him. “Idiotic woman!” he
said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to
work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill
with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. “Oh! damn them
all!” he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for the
figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before, but he
was dissatisfied with it. “No, that one was better … where is it?” He went
back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldest little
girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them? The paper with the
discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle-
grease. Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little
away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and
gesticulated gleefully.
“That’s it! that’s it!” he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he began
rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a
shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a
prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the figure of
the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined
thing had become living, and such that it could never be changed. That
figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might
be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs,
indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of the left hand
must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown back. But in making
these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of
what concealed the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings
which hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought
out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to
him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the figure when the
cards were brought him.
“Coming, coming!”
He went in to his wife.
“Come, Sasha, don’t be cross!” he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. “You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it all
right.” And having made peace with his wife he put on an olive-green
overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards his studio. The
successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was delighted and
excited at the visit of these people of consequence, Russians, who had come
in their carriage.
Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the bottom
of his heart one conviction—that no one had ever painted a picture like it.
He did not believe that his picture was better than all the pictures of
Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey in that picture, no one
ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while,
ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people’s criticisms, whatever
they might be, had yet immense consequence in his eyes, and they agitated
him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, that
showed that the critic saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the
picture, agitated him to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his
critics a more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always
expected from them something he did not himself see in the picture. And
often in their criticisms he fancied that he had found this.
He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his excitement
he was struck by the soft light on Anna’s figure as she stood in the shade of
the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her
something, while she evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was
himself unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this
impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper who had
sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be brought out when he
wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed beforehand by
