first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was
impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw
faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the
wrappings—faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole.
And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the
wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.
“One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark….”
observed Golenishtchev.
“Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg you,” said Mihailov with a forced smile.
“That is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I
know that was what you meant to do.”
“I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart,” said Mihailov gloomily.
“Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think…. Your
picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it
is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is
different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to
the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to
select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched.”
“But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?”
“If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot
suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the question
arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, ‘Is it God, or is it not God?’
and the unity of the impression is destroyed.”
“Why so? I think that for educated people,” said Mihailov, “the question
cannot exist.”
Golenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by his
support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential to art.
Mihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of
his own idea.
Chapter 12
Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their
friend’s flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the artist,
walked away to another small picture.
“Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!” they
cried with one voice.
“What is it they’re so pleased with?” thought Mihailov. He had positively
forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had forgotten all
the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with that picture when
for several months it had been the one thought haunting him day and night.
He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did
not even like to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was
expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.
“Oh, that’s only an old study,” he said.
“How fine!” said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity,
falling under the spell of the picture.
Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just
dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush,
entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was
lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his
hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking
of?
The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in
Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past,
and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his
visitors away to a third picture.
But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov at that
moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money
matters.
“It is put up there to be sold,” he answered, scowling gloomily.
When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of
Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what,
though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange to say,
what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he
mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for
him. He began to look at his picture with all his own full artist vision, and
