VI ARTIST AND PROFESSOR—ILYA RYEPIN

Should some one assert that there is a great artist in a European capital, honored by an entire nation as its very greatest master, yet, nevertheless, not even known by name among the great European public, we should shake our heads unbelievingly, for such a phenomenon is impossible in our age of railroads and printer's-ink. And yet this assertion would be literally true. There is such a great artist living in a city of a million inhabitants, and recognized by millions, yet of his works even art-students outside of Russia have seen but one or two. To make this even more incomprehensible, it should be stated that this artist had attained renown in his country not merely a few years ago, but has created masterpiece after masterpiece for more than thirty years; indeed, his first picture at the world's fair in Vienna in 1873 was generally recognized as startling. Nevertheless, the name of the master has long been forgotten on our side of the Vistula; it may be because no one found it to his interest to advertise him and thus to create competition for others, but more probably because Russia[Pg 45] is a separate world and isolates itself from the rest of Europe with almost barbaric insolence.

There is, however, some advantage for Russia in this isolation from the "rotten West." They are not obliged to pass through all the various phases of our so-called art movement, and therefore are not carried from one extreme to the other, but calmly pursue their own quiet way. They also had the good-fortune, while the rest of Europe was in a state of conflict over unfruitful theories, to possess really great creative artists, always the best antidote against doctrinarianism. When the one-sided, methodically proletarian naturalism reigned in the West, itself a protest against the shallow idealistic formalism of the preceding decades, Russian literature possessed its greatest realistic poets, Tolsto?, Turgenyev, Dostoyevski, who never overlooked the inner process, the true themes of poetical creation, for the sake of outward appearances, and have thereby created that incomparable, physiological realism that we still lack. And because their great realists were poets, great poets and geniuses, they felt no need of a new drawing-room art, which of necessity goes to the other extreme, the romantic, aristocratic, catholic. They had no Zola, and therefore they needed no Maeterlinck. And it was exactly so with their painting. Their great artists did not lose themselves, like Manet and his school, in problems purely of light and air without poetical contents; hence to rediscover poetry and to save it for art[Pg 46] there was no need for Preraphaelites or Decadents. The great painter is artist, man, and poet, a phenomenon like Leo Tolsto?, therefore the few symbolists who believe they must imitate European fashions make no headway against them.

Imitators can only exist among imitators, by the side of nature's imitators, imitators of Raphael's predecessors.

A single true artist frightens away all the ghosts of the night, and thus decadence plays an insignificant r?le alongside of Tolsto? and Ryepin, whether it be the decadent literature of Huysmans and Maeterlinck, or the decadence of the Neoromanticists and of the Neoidealists.

It is time, however, to speak of the artist himself, an artist of sixty, still in the fulness of power, who, besides wielding the brush, occupies a professor's chair at the St. Petersburg Academy. I have just called him professor. He is more than that, he is, like Leo Tolsto?, a revolutionist, the terrible accuser of the two diabolical forces that keep the nation in its course, the church and the despotism of government. But, to the honor of the Russian dynasty be it said, this artist, acknowledged to be the greatest of his country, was never "induced" to cast aside the criticism of the prevailing system he made by his painting and to engage in the decorative court art. His so-called nihilist pictures, reproduction of which has been prohibited by the police, are for the most part in the possession of grand-dukes,[Pg 47] and, notwithstanding his undisguised opinions, he was intrusted with the painting of the imperial council representing the Czar in the midst of his councillors. The czars have always been more liberal than their administrators. Nicholas I. prized Gogol's "Revizor" above all else, and Nicholas II. is the greatest admirer of Tolsto?. And so Ryepin may paint whatever and however he will. And we shall see that he makes proper use of this opportunity. He is Russian, and nothing but Russian. At twenty-two he received for his work, "The Awakening of Jairus's Little Daughter," an academic prize and a travelling fellowship for a number of years. But before the expiration of the appointed time spent by him in Berlin and Paris he returned to Russia, and produced in 1873 his "Burlaks" (barge-towers), which attracted great attention at the Vienna exposition. The thirty years that have passed since then have detracted nothing from the painting. How far surpassed do Manet's "revolutionizing" works already appear to us, and still how indelibly fresh these "barge-towers." That is so. The reason is simple—it is no painting of theory but of nature represented as the individual sees it, the masterly impression of an artist, the most concentrated effect of landscape, light, and action. The purely technical problem is subordinated to the whole, to the unity of action and mood, solved naturally and easily. The problem of the artist to tell us what we cannot forget, to give us something of[Pg 48] his soul, his sentiments, his thoughts, is of first importance, just as geniuses of all ages cared less to be thought masters of technique than to win friends, fellow-thinkers, and comrades, to share their joys and feelings. From the purely technical stand-point, where is there a painting that presents in a more masterly manner the glimmer of sunlight on the surface of a broad stream—as in this case—and where, nevertheless, the landscape is treated merely as the background? And again, where is the action of twelve men wearily plodding onward, drawing with rhythmic step the boat against the stream, seized more forcibly, more suggestively than in this plaintive song of the Russian people's soul?

The youth of barely twenty-four years had at one leap placed himself at the head of all contemporary artists. Analogies between him and the artistic career and method of Leo Tolsto? force themselves on us again and again. Tolsto?'s Sketches from the Caucasus, Sevastopol, Cossacks, are his early works, yet they are the most wonderful that the entire prose of all literature can show. And so it is in this lifelike picture of a twenty-four-year-old youth. Had we no other work of his than the "Barge-towers," we should yet see in him a great master. It is but necessary to look at the feet of these twelve wretched toilers to realize with wonder the characterization, the full measure of which is given only to genius. How they strain against the ground and almost dig into the rock! How the bodies are bent[Pg 49] forward in the broad belt that holds the tow-line! What an old, sad melody is this to which these bare-footed men keep step as they struggle up along the stream? In all his barefoot stories of the ancient sorrow of the steppe children, Gorki has not painted with greater insight. A sorrowful picture for all its sunshine, and the more sorrowful because no tendency is made evident. It means seeing, seeing with the eyes and with the heart, and, therefore, it is art.

It would be wrong, however, to say that Ryepin—in his works as a whole if not in a given instance—has introduced a "tendency" in his choice of solely sorrowful subjects. Such is not the case. There is nothing more exuberant, more convulsing than his large painting, "Cossacks Preparing a Humorous Reply to a Threatening Letter of Mohammed III." The answer could not have been very respectful. That may be seen from the sarcastic expression of the intelligent scribe as well as from the effect that his wit has on the martial environment. A be-mustached old fellow in a white lamb-skin cap holds his big belly for laughing; another almost falls over backward, his bald pate quite jumping out of the canvas. One snaps his fingers; another, old and toothless, grins with joy; a third pounds with clinched fist on the almost bare back of his neighbor; another shuts his right eye as if perceiving a doubtful odor; one with a great tooth-gap shouts aloud, while others smile in quiet joy through the smoke of their short pipes. All these are crowded around a [Pg 50]primitive wooden table scarcely a metre wide; twenty figures, a natural group, one head hiding another, and with all you have an unobstructed view of the camp lying bright in the sunshine and dust and full of horses and men. The effect of the picture is so overpowering that at the mere recollection of it you can scarcely refrain from joining in the hearty laughter of these sturdy, untutored natures. In the entire range of modern painting there is no other picture so full of the strong joy of living.

"The Village Procession," preserved in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow—the finest collection of the master's works—is not gloomy like the mournful song of the "Barge-towers," nor exuberant with serf arrogance and vitality like the Cossack camp, but a fragment of the colorless Russian national life as it really is, a sorrowful human document for the thoughtful observer alone. Tattered muzhiks in fur coats are carrying on poles a heavy sacred image, and behind them crowds the village populace with flags and crucifixes. I will not again emphasize how masterfully everything is noted here, from the gold border of the sacred image to the last bit of dusty sunshine on the village street. Absolute mastery is self-evident in Ryepin's work. We are again attracted in this picture by the great intensity of mood. What harmony there is in it—the mounted gendarme who pitilessly strikes with his knout into the peasant group to make room for the priests and the local officials; the half-idiotic, greasy [Pg 51]sexton; the well-fed, bearded priest; the crowd of the abandoned, the crippled, and the maimed, the brutalized peasants, the old women. A long procession of folly, brutality, official darkness, ignorance; a chapter from the might of darkness; the crucifix misused as an aid to the knout, a symbol of the Russian régime that could not be held up to scorn more passionately by any demagogue; and yet only a street-scene which would hardly strike the Moscow merchant when strolling in the gallery of a Sunday, because of its freedom from any "tendency."

Then comes a work of an entirely different character, a tragedy of Shakespearean force, a painting that is red on red. Ivan the Terrible holds in his arms the son he has just stricken to death with his heavy staff. It is a horrible scene from which one turns because of the almost unbearable misery depicted there, and yet you return to it again and again. So great is the conception, so wonderful the insight, so incomparable the technique. The madman, whom a nation of slaves endures as its master, is at last overtaken by Nemesis, and he is truly an object for pity as he crouches on the ground with the body of his dying son in his arms. He would stanch the blood that is streaming from the gaping wound to the red carpet. He kisses the hair where but a moment before his club had struck. The tears flow from his horrified eyes, and their terror is augmented, for at this last and perhaps first caress of[Pg 52] the terrible father a happy smile plays on the face of the dying son. He had killed his son! Nothing can save him! He the Czar of Moscow, the master of the Kremlin, can do nothing. He draws his son to himself, presses him to his breast, to his lips. What had he done in his anger, that anger so often a source of joy to him when he struck others less near to him and for which he had been lauded by his servile courtiers, since the Czar must be stern, a terrible and unrelenting master?

Shakespeare has nothing more thrilling than this single work, its effect so tragic because the artist has succeeded in awakening our pity for this fiend, pity which is the deliverance from hatred and resentment. The pity that seizes us is identical with the awe of the deepest faith, the feeling of Christian forgiveness. We can have no resentment towards this sorrow-crushed old man with the torn, thin, white hair. And we can never quite forget the look in these glassy old eyes from which the bitter tears are gushing, the first that the monster had ever shed. And how the picture is painted, the red of the blood contrasting with the red of the Persian rug and the green-red of the tapestry. Nothing else is seen on the floor except an overturned chair. The figures of the father, and of the son raising himself for the last time, alone in all the vast space, hold the gaze of the spectator. With this painting hanging in the ruler's palace the death-sentence would never be signed again.

[Pg 53]

Still another ghastly picture shows that the artist, like all great masters, is not held back by affectation and feels equal to any emergency. It represents Sophia, the sister of Peter the Great, who from her prison is made to witness the hanging of her faithful "streltzy" (sharp-shooters) before her windows. It was a brotherly mark of consideration shown her by the Czar. The resemblance of the princess to her brother is striking; but the expression of pain, anger, and fear on the stony face turned green and yellow is really terrifying. But it is also characteristic of the great master to have chosen just that incident in the life of the great Czar.

In general it must be said that for a professor in the imperial academy the choice of historical subjects is curious enough. It certainly does not indicate loyalty.

I could not if I would discuss in detail the fruits of thirty years of the artist's activity. Besides, mere words cannot give an adequate idea of the beauty of his works. But there is one thing that may be accomplished by the description of his most important painting—namely, the refutation of the absurd notion that the artist and his art can become important only when they are entirely indifferent to the joys and sorrows of their fellow-men and concern solely the solution of artistic problems. The doctrine of art for art's sake has no more determined opponents than the great artists of our time, and among them also Ryepin in the front rank. He is[Pg 54] willing to subscribe to it just as far as every artist must seek to influence only by means of his own peculiar art; yet he rejects the absurdity that it is immaterial for the greatness of the artist whether he depicts the essence of a great, rich, and deep mind or only that of a commonplace mind. According to him only a great man that is a warm-hearted, upright, and courageous man can become a great artist; and he regards it as the first duty of such to share the life of their fellow-men, to honor the man even in the humblest fellow-being, and to strengthen with all their might the call for freedom and humanity as long as it remains unheeded by the powerful. Just like Tolsto?, he has only a deep contempt for the exalted decadents who, with their exclusive and affected morality, would attack nations fighting for their freedom. Like every independent thinker, he is disgusted with the modern epidemic of individualism, and his sympathies belong to the progressive movement derided by the fools of fashion. To be sure, that does not make him greater as artist, for artistic greatness has absolutely nothing to do with party affiliations; neither does it make him less, for his artistic achievements are not at all lessened by his giving us sentiments as well as images. But if a humane, altruistic, cultured man who finds joy in progress stands ethically higher than the exclusive, narrow-minded reactionary or self-sufficient, surfeited decadent, then Ryepin is worth more than the idols of snobs. And not as[Pg 55] man only; he also stands higher as artist, for he gives expression with at least the same mastery, and, in truth, with an incomparably greater mastery, to the ideals of a more noble, greater, and richer mind. The belief that participation in the struggles and movements of the day affects the artist unfavorably is ridiculed by him; the contrary is true in his case. It has given him an abundance of striking themes as well as the duel and nihilist cycles.

I will pass by the duel cycle culminating in the powerfully portrayed suffering of the repenting victor. For us the nihilist cycle is more interesting, more Russian. "Nihilist" is, by-the-way, an abominable name for those noble young men and women who, staking their lives, go out among the common people to redeem them from their greatest enemies—ignorance and immorality. The real nihilists in Russia are those of the government who are not held back even by murder when it is of service to the system, the cynics with the motto, "Après nous le déluge"; surely not these noble-hearted dreamers who throw down the gauntlet to the all-powerful Holy Synod and to the not less powerful holy knout.

At the time when the "well-disposed" portion of Russian society had turned away in honor from the Russian youth because a few fanatics had believed that they could more quickly attain their aims by the propaganda of action than by the fully as [Pg 56]dangerous and difficult work among the people, Ryepin painted his cycle which explains why among the young people there were a few who resorted to murder. Who does not know from the Russian novels those meetings of youths who spent half the night at the steaming samovar discussing the liberation of the people and the struggle against despotism, in debates that have no other result than a heavy head and an indefinite desire for self-sacrifice? The cycle begins with such a discussion. Men and women students are gathered together, unmistakably Russian, all of them, Slavic types, the women with short hair, the men mostly bearded and with long hair. In the smoky room, imperfectly lighted by the lamp, they are listening to a fiery young orator. We find this young man again as village teacher in the second picture. He had gone among the people. In one of the following pictures he has already been informed against, and the police search through his books and find forbidden literature. The police spy and informer, who triumphantly brings the package to light, is pictured to his very finger-tips as the gentleman that he is. In still another picture the young martyr is already sitting between gendarmes on his way to Siberia; and in the last he returns home old and broken, recognized with difficulty by his family, whom he surprises in the simple room. One may see this cycle in the Tretyakov Gallery, and copies of it in the possession of a few private individuals, persons in high authority, who are above fear of the[Pg 57] police; and one is reminded of the saying so often heard in Russia, "We are governed by the scoundrels, and our upright men are languishing in the prisons." The nihilist has the features of Dostoyevski who was so broken in Siberia that he thanked the Czar, on his return, for his well-deserved punishment, and who had become a mystic and a reactionary. In another picture a young nihilist on his way to the scaffold is being offered the consolation of religion by the priest, but he harshly motions him back.

All these pictures are homely in their treatment. The poverty of the interior, the inspired faces of the noble dreamers, and the brutal and stupid faces of the authorities speak for themselves clearly enough, and no theatrical effects of composition are necessary to impart the proper mood to the observer. On the contrary, it is just this discretion, the almost Uhde-like simplicity that is so effective. Yet Pobydonostzev and Plehve will scarcely thank the artist for these works that for generations will awaken hatred against the system among all better-informed young men. However, their reproduction is prohibited.

On the other hand, the drawings which Ryepin made for popular Russian literature are circulated by hundreds of thousands among the people. It is an undertaking initiated by Leo Tolsto? with the aid of several philanthropists, for combating bad popular literature. It is under the excellent [Pg 58]management of Gorbunov in Moscow. There are annually placed among the people about two millions of books, ranging in price from one to twenty kopeks. It may be taken for granted that the men who enjoy Tolsto?'s confidence will not be a party to barbarism. The foremost artists supply the sketches for the title-pages, among them Ryepin, the fiery Tolsto?an. Ryepin's admiration for the great poet of the Russian soil is also evident from his numerous pictures of Tolsto?. He has painted the saint of Yasnaya Polyana at least a dozen times—at his working-table; in the park reclining under a tree and reading after his swim; a bare-footed disciple of Kneipp; or following the plough, with flowing beard, his powerful hand resting on the plough-handle. All are masterly portraits, and, above all things, they reflect the all-embracing kindness that shines in the blue eyes of the poet—eyes that one can never forget when their kindly light has once shone upon him.

Public opinion in Russia has been particularly engrossed with a recent picture which furnishes much food for reflection. Two young people, a student clad in the Russian student uniform and a young gentlewoman with hat and muff, step out hand-in-hand from a rock right into the raging sea. What is the meaning of it? The triumphant young faces, the outstretched arms of the student exclude the thought of suicide. It has been suggested that it is an illustration of the Russian saying, "To the [Pg 59]courageous the sea is only knee-deep." But in that case it would mean, "Have courage, young people; do not fear the conflict; for you the sea is only knee-deep." But it could also be interpreted, "Madmen, what are you doing? Do you not see that this is the terrible, relentless sea into which you would step?" In that case it would be a warning intended for the Russian youth, revolutionary throughout, who would dare anything. This much is certain: the greatest Russian painter, and one of the greatest of contemporary painters, is on the side of these young people, and his heart is with them even though he may doubt, as many another, the success of the heroic self-sacrifice. The noble ideals of youth cannot conquer this sea of ignorance and slave-misery. Great and immeasurable as is the Russian nation, nothing can help the country. It must and will collapse within itself, and then will come the hour of release for all, whether noble or poor, to whom the Ryepins and the Leo Tolsto?s have dedicated their incomparably great works. Perhaps this hour is nearer than is suspected. Russian soil is already groaning under the March storms which precede every spring.