A couple of weeks ago, we established the first methodological pillar of unspooling—literature as socio-philosophy—which holds that literature can engage with themes of social, cultural, philosophical, and theological significance.
If you missed it—don’t let its dreadfully academic title hold you back—it will deepen your appreciation and understanding of today’s thread: first methodological pillar.
Today, we’re putting that methodology to the test and unspooling Nikolai Gogol’s brilliant short story, “The Portrait” (1835), which revolves around a fascinating central theme:
what should an artist strive to achieve?
Contemporary popularity? Cross-cultural recognition? Historical relevance? Novelty? Stylistic evolution?
All this and more, no doubt. But is there anything they should strive for? What about the opposite—what types of things should an artist avoid?
You already know that “The Portrait” provides Gogol’s enlightening answers to these fascinating questions, so let’s get into it!
the art shop in the shchukin market
“The Portrait” begins with a young artist, Andrey Petrovich Chartkov, entering a rundown art shop somewhere—you guessed it—in the capital, St. Petersburg. The shop is nothing special, but the artist has learned never to pass up an opportunity for a good find.
He pokes around the shop aimlessly for a while until he uncovers a striking portrait entirely by accident. Oddly enough, for a painting of such calibre, he finds it buried behind other canvas’ and covered by a rough blanket. To find such a remarkable piece in such an unremarkable shop. It almost doesn’t feel quite right. Chartkov stands before the old portrait, transfixed:
It was an old man with a face the color of bronze, gaunt, high-cheekboned; the features seemed to have been caught at a moment of convulsive movement and bespoke an un-northern force. Fiery noon was stamped on them. He was draped in a loose Asiatic costume. Damanged and dusty though the portrait was, when he managed to clean the dust off the face, he could see the mark of a lofty artist’s work. The portrait, it seemed, was unfinished; but the force of the brush was striking. Most extraordinary of all were the eyes: in them the artist seemed to have employed all the force of his brush and all his painstaking effort. They simply stared, stared even out of the portrait itself, as if destroying its harmony by their strange aliveness. When he brought the portrait to the door, the eyes stared still more strongly. They produced almost the same impression among the people. A woman who stopped behind him exclaimed, “It’s staring, it’s staring!” and backed away. He felt some unpleasant feeling, unaccountable to himself, and put the portrait down.
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Without consciously understanding the compulsion, Chartkov purchases the portrait from the shopkeep who seems a bit too eager to see the painting into another’s possession…
With our inciting incident out of the way, Gogol goes to work fleshing out Chartkov’s character and begins laying the socio-philosophical groundwork for the story.
We learn that Chartkov is a talented painter with great potential. But, back in art school, one of his professors had warned him to “watch out” because “you’re impatient. Some one thing entices you, some one thing takes your fancy—and you occupy yourself with it, and the rest can rot, you don’t care about it, you don’t even want to look at it. Watch out you don’t turn into a fashionable painter.”
To unlock his potential, Chartkov must discover his inner spark and reveal it to the world. A task that is far easier said than done, of course.
Despite his natural ability, Chartkov is poor and unable to even afford candles to light his spartan apartment, which we also learn he has failed to pay rent for when he returns home and a policeman threatens him with eviction.
The problem with authenticity, as it turns out, is that it isn’t a reliable way to pay the bills.
It seems our young painter finds himself trapped between a rock and a hard place. And it’s easy to sympathize with him, at least for me, because of the relatability of his struggle. Many of us want to do something meaningful, to create, to express something beautiful, but the world of economics and the pressures of commerce often destroy those impulses.
Ruminating on the inherent unfairness of his predicament, Chartkov forgets about the portrait; that is, until his gaze drifts to its piercing eyes, and it’s now the world he begins to forget.
For just a moment, he thinks he sees a horrible creature emerge from the portrait “to devour him.” But when he blinks, the portrait is the same as always. His blood pressure having recovered, Chartkov approaches the painting and cleans the dust and debris from its aged frame and canvas. As he reveals its full splendor, Chartkov is even more impressed with the portrait’s lifelike qualities—especially the subject’s penetrating eyes. Even though the piece appears unfinished, it’s apparent perfection causes Chartkov to believe that it transcends art and captures the essence of something real. He finds its greatness unsettling.
Later in the evening, he crawls into bed, but he can’t stop thinking about the portrait. Like a child hiding under a blanket for protection against the boogeyman, Chartkov dares to sneak a peak at the painting from the secure confines of his bed, in an attempt to reassure himself that the painting is just a painting after all and that his mind has simply been playing tricks on him. But his worst fear appears confirmed when he looks up to find the subject’s unwavering stare meet his own with a horrifying liveliness. Getting up, he throws a bedsheet over the portrait in a desperate attempt to rid himself of those terrible eyes.
Finally able to relax, Chartkov’s thoughts return, yet again, to “the poverty and pitifulness of the artist’s lot, about the thorny path that lay before him in this world.” Lost in thought, his gaze falls idly upon the portrait once again. This time, however, the portrait’s stunning eyes seem to glow, visible even from behind the cloth; mere fabric proving no real barrier for the subject’s fearsome, otherwordly stare.
Unable to tear his eyes from the portrait, Chartkov approaches the painting cautiously, and finds, to his horror, that the bedsheet is suddenly missing. Only pale moonlight stands between himself and the portrait.
His heart went cold. And he saw: the old man stirred and suddenly leaned on the frame with both hands. Finally he propped himself on his hands and, thrusting out both legs, leaped free of the frame…
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Chartkov cowers on the floor and the figure plods toward him with thudding, deliberate steps.
And it’s in moments like these that Gogol equals the psychological tension and thrilling suspense of any modern thriller or horror novel. It’s just really great stuff. Very creepy.
As the old man from the painting approaches Chartkov, however, the figure plops down on the floor near the artist’s feet. The portrait man reaches into the depths of his ornate clothing and pulls out a large sack from which a number of smaller packets fall to the floor. Chartkov is terrified, of course, but not so much so that he doesn’t notice the distinctive jingle that each sack makes upon impacting the floor. He reaches over and picks up one of the bags and the pale moonlight from the window just bright enough for him to read: “1,000 Gold Roubles.”
Forgetting the terror which had wholly conquered him mere moments before, Chartkov pockets one of these sacks before the old man can retrieve it, and hides behind a dressing screen in the corner of the room. Just when his impromptu heist appears to go off without a hitch, Chartkov hears the portrait man hesitate. It has realized it’s a packet short... and the artist hears its plodding footsteps approach the dressing screen… and when the portrait man’s weathered feature appear around the edge of the screen, Chartkov recoils, screams, and awakens; terrified, but relieved to have evaded the portrait man.
As his mind struggles to grasp the dream’s uncanny realism, Chatrkov realizes, with horror, that he’s still standing in front of the portrait:
How he got there—that he simply could not understand. He was still more amazed that the portrait was all uncovered and there was in fact no sheet over it. In motionless fear he gazed at it and saw living, human eyes peer straight into him. Cold sweat stood out on his brow; he wanted to back away, but felt as if his feet were rooted onto the ground. And he saw—this was no longer a dream—the old man’s features move, his lips begin to stretch toward him, as if wishing to suck him out… With a scream of despair, he jumped back—and woke up.
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
This time, Chartkov wakes up in bed—maybe a moment of relief, there—and he whips around to find the portrait… exactly where he expects it, with the sheet he had draped over it still in place… that is until hands begin to tear at the sheet from behind and the portrait man begins to crawl out of the frame yet again and the painter, exasperated, crosses himself.
And he wakes up.
Again.
This time it’s for real.
Yup, that’s right; Gogol hit us with the old “dream within a dream within a dream” trick. This leaves us feeling just as helpless as Chartkov—just what the hell is going on here?!
We’re given a few tantalizing clues when Chartkov’s landlord arrives in the morning, with a policeman in tow, demanding overdue rent. As Chartkov explains he simply doesn’t have any money, the apparently clumsy policeman trips over the portrait, which issues a by-now familiar jingle. The trio is shocked to find a pouch with 1,000 gold roubles in it tucked behind the frame. It is a princely sum and far more than his rent, so Chartkov—nearly as dumbfounded as the landlord and policeman—settles up his debt and sets about wondering what to do with his newfound fortune.
With the landlord and policeman gone, Chartkov resolves to follow the advice of his teacher and vows to use the money to support himself while he nurtures his talent and attempts to capture the divine spark within.
Well, like all roads paved with good intentions, Chartkov’s leads to hell.
Instead of years of uncelebrated toil, it occurs to Chartkov that he can simply rent a swanky new apartment on the fashionable Nevsky Prospect and build a façade of success and respectability by the conspicuous grandeur of the decor and furnishings. Rather than earning a reputation, he decides to attract potential clients by advertising his services in the newspaper.
An irresistible desire was born in him to catch fame by the tail at once and show himself to the world. He could already imagine the cries: “Chartkov, Chartkov! Have you seen Chartkov’s picture? What a nimble brush he has!”
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Yup, the delusion is real at this point.
But, that doesn’t mean Chartkov’s plan isn’t successful, no, no—he rapidly establishes a local reputation for beautifully aping the hottest contemporary styles. His wealth and fame grow commensurate with the list of his many fashionable clients and popular accomplishments. Everything in his artistic life takes on a kind of automatic, mechanistic structure, and he even begins to doubt the validity of the old masters, like Raphael and Michelangelo. Perhaps such individuals were elevated by pompous aggrandizing and nothing more, he thinks, increasingly confident in his dominance of the art world.
At this point in the story, Chartkov believes he has everything figured out; the master of his domain. And as his reputation grows—and he continues to flatter himself, basking in the praise of others—so too, does the illusion which hides his own vacuousness from himself.
That is, until the day of what was supposed to be one of his crowning achievements.
Many years have passed since Chartkov took the roubles from the portrait man when he receives an invitation from the prestigious Academy of Arts to evaluate a celebrated painting by a Russian artist working in Italy.
This is a big deal. It is supposed to cement Chartkov’s status as a global authority.
The new artist is a contemporary of Chartkov’s—he’s the artist Chartkov would have been, had he taken the better path and stayed committed to developing his artistic voice. Now, after years of commercial acclaim, Chartkov’s shadow reveals the hollow truth of his empty accomplishments:
Pure, immaculate, beautiful as a bride, the artist’s creation stood before him. Modest, divine, innocent, and simple as genius, it soared above everything. It seemed that the heavenly figures, astonished to have so many eyes directed at them, shyly lowered their beautiful eyelashes. With a sense of involuntary amazement, the experts contemplated this new, unprecedented brush. Here everything seemed to have come together: the study of Raphael, reflected in the lofty nobility of the poses; the study of Correggio, breathing from the ultimate perfection of the brushwork. But most imperiously of all there was manifest the power of creation already contained in the soul of the artist himself. Every least object in the picture was pervaded with it; law and inner force were grasped in everything. Everywhere that flowing roundedness of line had been grasped which belongs to nature and is seen only by the eyes of the creative artist, and which comes out angular in an imitator. One could see how the artist had taken into his soul everything he had drawn from the external world, and from there, from the spring of his soul, had sent it forth in one harmonious, triumphant song. And it became clear even to the uninitiate what a measureless abyss separates a creation from a mere copy of nature. It is almost impossible to express the extraordinary silence that came over everyone whose eyes were fixed on the painting—not a rustle, not a sound; and the painting meanwhile appeared loftier and loftier with every minute; brightly and wonderfully it detached itself from everything, and all transformed finally into one instant—the fruit of a thought that had flown down to the artist from heaven—an instant for which the whole of human life is only a preparation. Involuntary tears were ready to flow down the faces of the visitors who surrounded the picture. It seemed that all tastes and all brazen or wrongheaded deviations of taste merged into some silent hymn to the divine work.
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
So… umm… I guess it’s good, then? It’s a good painting? Yeah, I think we can run with that.
After he leaves the Academy, Chartkov is haunted by the painting. He is tortured by his own inadequacy; his weakness; his impatience. He never paints again. He curses himself and the world. A kind of madness descends upon him and he uses his vast wealth to purchase all the great works he can find, only to destroy them with impotent ardour. A lifetime’s worth of wasted effort and unfulfilled potential is a lot of pain to deal with and Part One of “The Portrait” ends with Chartkov’s madness climatically sublimating into “a terrible illness.” His unremarked death cements his tragic fate.
wait, there’s a part two?
There sure is!
In the hands of a lesser artist, the tale would have ended here. And “The Portrait” would still be a fun, creepy story with a clear moral if it did. But, like I said last week, Gogol’s genius is best revealed in how the whole comes together to become greater than the sum of the parts. And he has a few more narrative wrinkles to throw our way, which, I think, elevate the story to true greatness.
Part Two opens at an art auction taking place a few years after Chartkov’s death. Quite a number of aristocrats and social elites have gathered—having nothing better to do with a weekday afternoon—hoping to add to their collections. One item, in particular—a portrait—attracts a tremendous crowd of onlookers. When it is placed up for sale, a cavalcade of bids rings out. Everyone wants to buy the painting. As the price increases, more and more bidders must drop out, until only two fabulously wealthy aristocrats remain. “They were excited and would probably have raised the bid impossibly,” but the auction is interrupted by “a trim man of about thirty-five with long black hair.” The man—whom Gogol identifies only as “The painter B.”—says that he has “more right to this portrait than anyone else,” which, I guess, is a good enough lede to silence the crowd and put the auction on pause.
B. explains that he has been looking for a portrait—just this portrait, he is quite sure—for years. It had been painted long ago by his father, also an artist, who had lived and worked in the seedy St. Petersburg neighbourhood of Kolomna.
Now, I haven’t mentioned it explicitly yet, but we’ve already seen a few examples in unspooling’s short life already, that essentialism—the idea that people or places have inherent traits—is a prominent feature of Gogol’s writing (although, in general, essentialism is a pretty popular narrative trope you’ve likely come across many times already). For Gogol, essentialism often manifests itself in characters and settings, which allows him to make comparative value judgements. Therefore—if you remember last week's thread—it is the essence of Vakula’s identity as a pious Russian man, that makes him the proper match for Oksana (contrasted against the intrinsic inferiority of the European-style gentlemen she is initially inclined towards). Likewise, Gogol often portrays St. Petersburg as an essentially corrupting influence in Russian life. Perhaps this is surprising, in light of his eager flight to the capital after graduating from art school in Nizhyn, but it reflects a very long history of suspicion that urban life inevitably leads to the moral decay that was very common in Russia at the time. And, no doubt, Gogol’s own experience of the capital informed his essentialist views. It’s not a philosophy that I adhere to or find particularly coherent (although “The Portrait” draws out one of the few essentialist views I hold—more on that later), but understanding how essentialism works within the story helps to explain why the portrait is haunted.
As B. tells the crowd, somehow, the painting captured some of the rotten essence of Kolomna and its less-than-respectable denizens,
“You know that part of the city which is called Kolomna… There everything is unlike the other parts of Petersburg; there is is neither capital nor province; you seem to feel, as you enter the streets of Kolomna, that all youthful desires and impulses are abandoning you. The future does not visit there, everything there is silence and retirement; everything has settled out of the movement of the capital.”
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
B. goes on like this for a few pages, providing countless extraneous little details—classic Gogol—to sketch out how nasty Kolomna is. I think we can consider the point well made: Kolomna is corrupt, many of its residents are corrupt, and any object that leaves the area, like the portrait, has the potential to spread its corrupting influence.
It’s like Kolomna is a stretch of McCarthy’s road inserted into an otherwise undestroyed landscape. The way Gogol puts it, the place is practically Mordor.
B. explains that there is a “special sort” of moneylender in Kolomna, one that is even worse than the big fish who only loan money to those in gilded carriages, never deigning to mingle with an ordinary person. The smaller Kolomna lenders are even more inhuman—“unfeeling,” as he puts it—“because they emerge in the midst of poverty and the most manifest beggarly rags.” The portrait man was one of these lenders. He was distinguished, not just by his mysterious “Asiatic” appearance (this type of racial essentialism hasn’t aged well, of course, but it gives us some understanding of the socio-cultural views of a particular historical time and place), but by the seeming unlimited nature of his funds and profits, and by the unfortunate circumstances which befell everyone who accepted a loan from him.
Again, Gogol makes sure to reinforce this point by hammering home a few pertinent examples of this, but the point should be fairly clear by now: the moneylender is an embodiment of evil and corruption.
I think the essential conflict between art and money in “The Portrait” reflects Gogol’s understanding of Christianity, which took seriously a teaching that Christians in our culture have long ignored because it’s just too goddamned inconvenient:
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is approached by a rich man who asks him how he can earn eternal life. Jesus explains that he must follow the Commandments, and the man explains that he has kept them since childhood, and Jesus responds, “Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me./And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich./And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!/For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
I think that’s probably the vibe that Gogol’s going for with “The Portrait.”
B. reveals that his father lived and worked in Kolomna as a young, struggling artist. His father “was an artist such as few are, one of those wonders that Russia alone brings forth from her inexhaustible womb, a self-taught artist who found rules and laws in his own soul, without teachers or school, driven only by his thirst for perfection, and following, for reasons perhaps unknown to himself, no path but that which his own soul indicated—one of those natural-born wonders whom contemporaries often abuse with the offensive word ‘ignoramus’ and whom the castigations of others and their own failures do not cool down but only lend new zeal and strength, so that in their souls they go far beyond the works that earned them the title of ‘ignoramus.’” Of course, it was B.’s extraordinary father who painted the titular portrait.
As B. explains, one day, the moneylender came to his father and asked him to paint his portrait. The moneylender explained that he desired some monument, some legacy, that would outlast his mortal life, and so he wanted a portrait of his likeness to grasp the eternity he knows is beyond him. B.’s father eagerly agreed, his reservations conquered by the anticipation of capturing such a unique subject. (Especially his piercing eyes)!
B. says that the portrait was going well until his father began to loathe the painting. His rendering of the subject’s eyes, which had earlier excited him, had begun to disturb him. Eventually, he threw down his brush and refused to continue. The moneylender begged him to finish the work, claiming that his ultimate fate was tied to the painting, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.
The portrait was never finished, B. explains, but, evidently, the damage had been done, because his father soon found himself becoming jealous of his talented apprentice (who, it turns out, is Chartkov from Part One). This was quite out of character for him and, obviously, we’re supposed to understand that the portrait simply has this effect on people; changing their character for the worse.
When B.’s father is asked to produce new pieces for an exhibition, he is unnerved to discover that he has painted every new figure with the moneylender’s eyes. Rather than dominating the exhibition as many had assumed, his reputation took a terrible blow. Convinced of the painting’s diabolical nature, B.’s father was literally about to hurl the canvas onto a fire, when he relinquishes it to a friend who had continuously insisted on the painting’s quality and forbidden him from destroying a work of such perfection.
It’s like that one time when Isildur could have just destroyed the One Ring and saved Frodo and the gang—and I guess all of Middle Earth—from all of their later troubles. I mean, the fire’s right there, and he’s pretty sure the painting is evil, but yeah, why don’t you go ahead and just give it to one of your homies, instead... At least it makes for a better narrative when the source of evil is left undestroyed to wreak more havoc in the world.
It didn’t take long for the portrait’s new owner to become unenthused with the great work, however, and he returned to B.’s father to tell him 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 how 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.”
Unfortunately, its whereabouts are now unknown, B. explains, with each new owner eagerly accepting it, only to dispose of it just as rapidly. As for his father, B. says that a series of unfortunate events befell him which caused him to enroll his only surviving family member, B., at the Academy of Arts, before retreating to a remote monastery, where he impresses the monks with his incredible skill and commitment.
“Finally even that became insufficent 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, at 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.”
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
B. recounts his father’s success and how he used his newfound divine enlightenment to paint a wonderful icon for his former monastery. The work is so profound that “the brothers all fell on their knees before this 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.’”
I picture these scenes like a Rocky training montage shot in reverse, with an otherwise healthy-looking man evolving into a particularly ascetic hermit.
And isn’t it incredible that Gogol kinda sorta foreshadowed his own demise with this story? No doubt, he believed that he could achieve the same breakthrough as B.’s father. There is something tragic and beautiful about that, and it lends the story an almost palpable sense of authenticity.
B. recounts, “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.”
So, it turns out that B. was the Russian artist from Italy whose painting undid Chartkov at the end of Part One.
B. states that his father had always been haunted by his unfinished portrait of the moneylender and that the rest of his life had been dedicated to undoing that evil mistake. He made B. swear an oath to track down the painting and destroy it. B. says that, for the last fifteen years, he has kept his eyes peeled for the portrait, but had never encountered a work matching his father’s description until that auction.
But, as he turns to gesture at the painting, “The Portrait” concludes with a great twist ending, “The whole crowd of his listeners instantly made the same movement, seeking the extraordinary portrait with their eyes. But to their great astonishment, it was no longer on the wall.”
the wondrous sounds of peace
Throughout “The Portrait,” we’ve seen artists attain the accomplishments that I listed at the start of this thread: contemporary popularity, cross-cultural recognition, historical relevance, novelty and stylistic evolution. And yet none of these achievements are presented by Gogol as the proper aim of an artist (it would interesting to know whether he thought it was okay for these to even be byproducts of the artistic enterprise). The story suggests that these goals are simply too worldly to represent the epitome of art. Money, perhaps the most worldly concept of all, is singled out by Gogol, in particular, for its corrupting influence. This message was a powerful critique of the predominant economic systems of Gogol’s day and, if anything, that message has only increased in power and significance given the out-of-control capitalist hellscape we find ourselves living in. (If you have any misplaced faith remaining in capitalism’s deceitful utopian promises, cherish them until we get to Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, which will gleefully destroys every shred of logic underpinning the ideology).
Unlike Gogol, I don’t find geographical, racial, or cultural essentialism very compelling, but his inherent suspicion of money’s influence on art is pretty close to my own essentialist feelings. Making art with money in mind, for money, necessarily affects that art. No doubt, artists are more inclined to see this influence as corrupting but if you’ve complained about the state of movies over the last twenty years, for example, I’d say you’ve seen the light.
Have we constructed a world in which true artistry is more suppressed than ever? This question should give us pause. We could be in a better position than at any time in the history of our species for pursuing our passions and uncovering the spark of the divine that dwells within us all. But it doesn’t feel like that’s true, at least to me. This too, should give us pause.
Like Chartkov, I don’t really know what to do about this problem, especially as a commercially unrecognized artist. From the start, I envision unspooling as the canvas on which I would attempt to uncover my divine spark. But that unspooling is also an effort to earn the capital that I need to survive suggests that it has been hopelessly corrupted from the start. But seeing as how I lack a Ring of Power, an Infinity Gauntlet, or some other omnipotent implement, I don’t see that I have much of a choice in the matter.
I hope my attempt to navigate that particular quagmire leaves me in better shape than it left him.
But, who knows?! Maybe one day I’ll immolate myself on a pyre of Shakespeare and Tolstoy…
What I do know, is that I think Gogol is right: to chase artistic greatness, one has to be aimed firmly in the right direction. Here is what B.’s father says to him at the end of “The Portrait” when he bids him farewell:
“‘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 contemtible, for the beautiful soul oof the creator shines invisibly through it, and the contempible 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 innumberable 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, 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 souls, but in the sound of prayer strives eternally toward God.”
Excerpt from “The Portrait” (1832) by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol