Kremlin wall and the red group of houses at the entrance. We notice
again that astonishment does not exactly make one brilliant. An "Ah!" in
unison is all that escapes our lips. I believe that then I cried out
with enthusiasm, and I should have liked to take by the coat-lapels the
people who, used to the scene, were indifferently going their ways, and
to say to them: "Look, you barbarians! Do you not know what you have
here?" Vasili Blazhenny (the Basilius Cathedral)! Many times as one may
have seen the curious bit of architecture depicted and dissected, yet
when one finally stands before it and allows the gay towers, with their
green, red, blue, and yellow cupolas to make their impression, he seems
to have entered quite another world, which no longer has a single thing
in common with our Western one. A sovereign, glorying fantasy has here
been formed and created, apparently without rule, led only by the law of
variety; has made wings, doors, and windings, and in the narrowest space
unfolded a richness which strikes us dumb, much as our feeling for style
struggles against the reversal of all our national laws. One's whole
architectural sense leans towards clear relationship of parts, towards
rhythm and proportion; the artist of the Basilius Cathedral leans
towards intricacy, lack of rhythm, disproportion. He is a colorist, and
but a colorist, in contrast to our Renaissance artists, to whom the
color seems almost an injury to the delicate line. And yet in all this
gay confusion he has held fast to a fundamental feeling which in all the
variations keeps returning, as in a joint--yes, just as in the wildest
dream some guiding idea like a red thread follows through it all. This
motive--I could not help always calling it to myself the Tschibuk
motive, after the winding, pearl-set tubes of a Turkish pipe--is
carried out with every possible Indian, Persian, and Roman ingredient,
and still retains the characteristic Byzantine style. A person would
show great partiality to call this building a mad-house, as many an
artist has done. One must only be able to free himself for an hour from
the dictator of the old taste in order to be able to comprehend the
delight of Ivan the Terrible at sight of this architectural orgy. (He
gave expression to this delight by having the eyes of the architect put
out in order that he might build no second masterpiece like it.) And
then again it must be confessed that the task of uniting in narrow space
thirteen chapels with thirteen towers could not well have been solved in
any other way than in this apparently most untrammelled, fantastic one.
If this proposition be accepted, the master of Vasili Blazhenny can only
be the object of wonder.
Now Vasili Blazhenny is typical of all Moscow, the Kremlin included. It
is the spirit of curious variety, of rich fantasy, the spirit of the
South and the East which rules here. The snow one feels to be almost out
of place, so Southern is the character of the city. The Kremlin, too,
before which we now stand, is a "free-act" work of art, a piece
something like the San Marco quarter in Venice, if one thinks of the sea
as removed. For the Kremlin must not be thought of as a palace is; it is
a whole part of a city, surrounded by a wall twenty metres high, two
kilometres long, enclosing an irregular pentagon. It lies on a rather
steeply rising hill on the bank of the Moskva, and commands the whole
region round about. Its beauty is not to be enjoyed in the interior of
the many churches, palaces, and barracks, although there is enough worth
seeing there, too. It only opens up from the balcony of the Ivan Veliky
tower, or from the bastion where the colossal monument of Alexander
stands. But the most beautiful view of the whole complex is from the far
bank of the Moskva, where the high wall, with its countless towers and
cupolas, seems like the birth of an Oriental dream-fantasy. It shines
and lightens in all colors, looks into the air, and speaks kindly
greetings to all below; one could simply sit and clap one's hands for
joy. But to the Russian this little jewel-box is by no means a
plaything. On the contrary, he very respectfully bares his head and
ceases not to cross himself. For "above Moscow is only the Kremlin, and
above the Kremlin is only heaven." Within, however, the muzhik regains
his childlikeness, and when he stands before the enormous cannon--"the
Czar of Cannon," an old bronze gun--he invariably climbs upon the
pyramid of giant balls which stands before it, climbs aloft and gapes
into the yard-wide mouth of the gun. And under no circumstances does he
neglect to creep into the hole of the "Queen of the Bells," which is in
front of the Ivan Veliky, in which there is room for two hundred people.
We who are not childlike muzhiks may not allow ourselves such
diversions; we must conscientiously see all the wonders of this greatest
of all rarities, a thing which will consume at least a day. We spare the
reader our experiences. Even the treasure-chamber with the coronation
insignia and jewels big as one's fist cannot inveigle us into a
description--all that could be seen in Berlin or Vienna.
Finally, the wonderful beauty of the colossal Church of the Deliverer
must here be spoken of. The work is too unique in its nature to allow of
being passed over in silence. The church is built apart, is visible
afar, and forms the glorious completion of the Kremlin picture seen from
the Moskva. In its mighty height, with its colossal, gilded domes, of
which the middle one measures thirty metres in diameter, it lightens
like a promise of the light the gay, romantic air of the Kremlin.
Fifty-eight high reliefs in marble ornament the façade, sixty windows
give bright light to the interior, colored still more golden by the
light of countless candles. The magnificence of the central nave,
entirely of gold and marble, is simply overpowering, and the golden and
silver garments of the patriarchs would be quite unnecessary in giving
us the strongest impression of the enormous riches of the Russian
Church. Together with the Cathedral of Isaac, in St. Petersburg, this
church is well calculated to compete with St. Peter's, in Rome. But I
believe that one should refrain from the comparison. The expression
"Roma tatae!" comes from Madame de Staël, and was, within certain
bounds, approved by Moltke, who would call Moscow a Russian Rome. But I
must, with all due modesty, demur. Too many undertones vibrate in our
souls at the word "Rome" to allow us to consider any sort of comparison.
But for a Russian? Who knows where the awe of eternity touches him
deeper, before St. Peter's or before this Church of the Deliverer?
But no, such a question may not be put. Muzhik and kupetz, farmer and
small merchant, have absolutely no understanding of Rome--no beauty
impresses them, only the barbaric pomp with the costliness of the
materials. But the cultured Russian feels just as we do, and will not
seek the elements which make mighty the word "Rome" anywhere else on
earth. And those that I spoke to in Moscow itself would have given a
good deal of the peculiarity of their country for a breath of European
atmosphere. Continuity between the time of Ivan the Terrible and the
present does not exist for these nobles, lawyers, and journalists of
Moscow. They endure with polite but painful resignation our delight in
the fantasticness of their Kremlin, their churches and cloisters. It
does not flatter them in the least that they are curiosities for Western
people, like the Baschkirs and Tatars, for instance; and they will not
hear of their being condemned to continue a life in Russian style,
apart from Europe. This extreme enthusiasm for the autochthonous, which
is often enough only an antiquated product of chance, is, after all, a
romantic reaction and nothing else. It has long been proved that the
Gothic which awakened such exclusive enthusiasm in the days of the
Germanic Romance is not Gothic at all, but French. And so Russia has no
reason at all for considering her style, which is really Byzantine,
all-sufficient. Byzantine, however, is the contrast to Europe, whose
past has led by way of Rome and Wittenberg to the Paris of 1789. And so
progressive Moscow seeks freedom from Byzantium. While I was pretty
deeply imbued with things Russian, it was suggested to me to see a play
in the "Artists' Theatre," and then to say whether Moscow was really
quite Russian and Asiatic. I followed this advice and had no reason to
regret it.
XXVII
MOSCOW--_CONTINUED_
They were right in advising me to go to the theatre in order to correct
my impression that Moscow was a thorough-going Russian city. A hotel,
for instance, proves nothing at all concerning the character of a town.
It betrays at most the year of its erection, for to-day, the world over,
building is done in the recognized "modern style."[12] Even this or that
elegant street indicates nothing. There the imitation of patterns seen
elsewhere plays too great a rôle. But the theatre which is to survive
must adapt itself to the ruling taste to such an extent that it can be
considered really characteristic of it.
Now the "Artists' Theatre"--or, as it is called because of the
"secessionistic"[12] arrangement, the "Decadent Theatre"--of Moscow is
really unique, and by the preferences of the theatre public one can very
well recognize the quality and quantity of the intelligence of a city.
With respect to picturesqueness of staging, it is distinctly the
superior of the Meininger Theatre; and, as far as scenery and purity of
style are concerned, it can well compare with the most up-to-date
stages. To be sure, inquiry should not be made into the distribution of
the individual rôles; to some extent this is worse than mediocre. I saw
"Julius Cæsar" played where the conspirators seemed to feel it necessary
to yell out their plans in the night with all their might. But, in
contrast to this, the palace of the emperor was represented with a
fidelity which could not have been exceeded in Rome itself; and the same
with the Forum, and with the generals' tent at Philippi. The choruses
were simply captivating in their execution.
But more interesting to me than the play was the audience. And the
audience, composed entirely of the educated middle class, knew quite as
well how to judge what was success and what failure in the performance
as any of the better audiences of a Vienna or a Berlin theatre. And the
foyer, very appealingly decorated by the simplest artistic means with
scenes from the history of the Russian drama and with many portraits of
writers and actors, was visited and enjoyed by the audience in the
intermission. If I had not continually heard about me the sounds of a
strange speech, and had not seen here and there a Russian student
uniform, it never would have occurred to me that I was in the very heart
of Russia, so far as culture was concerned.
It was the same, too, in the families with which I spent my evenings.
If anything, only the heartiness with which one is received is
gratefully at variance with our habits of careful reserve towards
strangers. But these hearty and hospitable people who at once lead us to
the samovar are by no means backwoodsmen, but are most intimately in
touch with all the advantages of the world, and they have uncommonly
keen powers of observation. The visiting European who might think
himself in a position to act among them would quickly become aware that
the Russian writers, who astonish us by their deep psychological
insight, have not picked up their art by the wayside. It is hidden in
the most charming little formalities, which in Moscow, in particular,
simply charmed me. Nowhere the slightest cant, nowhere the slightest
false display, nowhere the forced enthusiasm for culture which makes
certain circles of our great cities so repulsive to us. Naturalness is
the pervading note in Moscow social life. But literary and art interests
are a matter of course in a society which is scarcely paralleled by the
English in its demand for reviews. To-day, of course, every other
interest is forced to the wall by politics. I have been present at
gatherings in the best circles of people of culture at which even the
young had scarcely any interest save in political questions. Even little
declamations with which the individual guests distinguished themselves
were spiced with political allusions, and were enjoyed by young and old
just because of this spice.
Yet Moscowism has, in a sense, a bad reputation. It is held to be the
embodiment of the Russian reaction against every attempt of a civilizing
nature which emanates from St. Petersburg. Of the lesser citizens, or
the old-fashioned merchants at times, this may even to-day be true. The
nobility in the Moscow government, however, the university, and the
members of the few professions such as medicine and the law, are much
less circumspect and free-minded in their political criticism than their
contemporaries in St. Petersburg, for instance. Such an opposition organ
as the _Russkiya Vyedomosti_ does not exist in St. Petersburg. There is
also, to be sure, a sharp contrast between the intelligence of Moscow
and that of official St. Petersburg; but this contrast is anything but
one between reaction and progress. It is worth while to examine it more
closely.
The present Russian régime has preserved only the despotism of the
enlightened despotism of Peter; the enlightenment has vanished. The
wisdom of the government consists solely in the obstruction of popular
education. The means to this end is the police, with their relentless
crusade against any intelligence of a trend not quite orthodox in its
attitude towards the state and the ruling spirit of the old régime in
the corruption of all the elements of the higher strata of society.
Demoralization is encouraged, so to say, by official circles. Just as
among the peasants a man caught reading his Bible is held in suspicion,
so in St. Petersburg a young man makes himself subject to the
displeasure of the authorities if he does not take his part in the
"diversions of youth." A lordly contempt for humanity is accordingly the
prerequisite for every career in that Northern Paris. The pursuit of
fortune has never a conscience, least of all where it appears in
military form. There _esprit de corps_ and dignity of position displace
to a degree of absolute hostility all morality. Elegantly and
fashionably clothed, one is always ready to wager one's life, or rather
to throw it into the balance, for the most valueless stake. One is
irreligious and anti-moral on principle, but of the strictest outward
orthodoxy and monarchical to the very marrow.
It is to this anti-moral (anti-democratic) superficial
superciliousness[13] that Moscow forms a contrast in each and every
particular. Here one is benevolent, democratic, hearty, and
intentionally modest in appearance. Here, too, there appears to be less
struggling. The kupetz (small merchant) is rich as can be, but he
lingers in his little store with narrow entrances, and never has a
thought of laying aside his caftan, the ancestral overcoat, or his high
boots, into which are stuffed the ends of his trousers. But it is not
exactly this merchant whom I should like to cite as an example of my
point, for it is just he who has brought upon Moscow the reputation for
being hostile to progress. But there is probably some connection between
the resistance which the nobility of Moscow offers to St. Petersburg
customs and the obstinate self-sufficiency of the merchant with his
old-fashioned views. Just as this kupetz does not allow himself to be
dazzled by the elegant-looking clerk of the St. Petersburg merchant, but
clings to his ancestral ways, so the Moscow nobleman is not dazzled by
the elegance of the dressy St. Petersburg officer of the guards. People
dress elegantly in Moscow, too--yes, even in the Parisian style. But the
contemptible inhumanity of the struggling official of St. Petersburg
does not appeal to the Moscowite as civilizational progress, but as a
metropolitan degeneracy to be despised. And so among the bright people
of Moscow patriarchal heartiness is preserved. It was not a matter of
pure chance that Leo Tolstoï spent so many winters in Moscow society. In
St. Petersburg he would not have stayed.
The most beautiful creation of this conscious devotion to Moscow is the
donation of a simple merchant, the possession of which any city of the
world might envy--the Tretyakov Gallery, the largest and most valuable
private collection that exists anywhere. A knowledge of it is absolutely
indispensable to the historian of modern Russian painting. The Alexander
Museum of St. Petersburg has isolated magnificent pieces of Ryepin,
Aiwasowsky, and the most beautiful sculptures of Antokolski; but it
cannot be compared with the two thousand pieces of the Tretyakov
Gallery. The founder gave, besides this invaluable collection, a
building for it, and a fund, from the interest of which, even after his
death, the collection might be augmented. Admission, of course, is free
to all; even fees for coat checks may not be collected of its visitors.
In this gallery one realizes for the first time that Russian painting is
about at par with Russian literature, that it also has its Tolstoïs,
Turgenyevs, and Dostoyevskys. Above all, there is Ilya Ryepin with a
whole collection of portraits and large genre pictures. I have tried to
sketch some of those works of art elsewhere in a special article devoted
to this greatest of Russian artists, and will not repeat myself here.
Let me only mention the portraits of Leo Tolstoï, copies of which can
now be found in the West. The poet is here depicted once behind the
plough and again barefoot in his garden, his hands in his belt, his head
thoughtfully sunk upon his breast. It is the best picture of Tolstoï
that exists. Once, while I was walking up and down in conversation with
the poet in his room at Yasnaya Polyana, I had to bite my tongue in
order to suppress the remark, "Now you look as if you had been cut from
the canvas of Ryepin." Ryepin may be compared as a portrait-painter with
the very foremost artists of all times. The strength of his characters
is simply unequalled.
But the Russians appear to me particularly great in the field of
realistic genre and of landscape painting, just as in their literature,
which never leaves the firm ground of observation; and just for that
reason it is perfectly unique in the catching of every little event, of
every feeling and atmosphere peculiar to the landscape. Among the
painters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century who already have
worked under Ryepin's influence, there is no longer any insidiousness of
coloring. Everything is seen clearly and strongly reproduced. No
Düsseldorferie and no anecdote painting. Of course, they did not shun a
subject useful in itself, and they by no means avoid a slight political
tendency. But they are no less artists because they disdain to beg of
the fanatics of "art for art's sake" the right to the name of artists by
an exclusion of all but purely neutral subjects. On the contrary, in the
naïveté in which they show themselves in their art as human beings of
their time, they let it be known that the problem "art for art's sake"
is for them without any meaning, since with them it is an axiom that
they desire to influence only through the medium of their art; and yet
they judge every work of art first of all in accordance with its
artistic qualities. Only they do not allow themselves by an apparently
neutral, but in reality a reactionary, doctrine to be hindered from the
expression of their sympathy for everything liberal, free, and human.
There is, for instance, a picture there by Doroschenko which bears the
harmless title "Everywhere is life." It might, yes, it ought really to
hang in the gallery of the Parisian, for it is a work of Christian
spirit. Convicts are feeding doves from the railroad car which is
carrying them into exile. As a painting it is excellent. The light falls
full upon the whirring pigeons in the foreground and upon the convicts
pressing their faces against the iron bars of the window of the car. One
sees through the window, and notices on the far side of the car another
barred window at which a man is standing and looking out. The interior
of the car is almost dark. The group of convicts in the foreground
consists of a young man, evidently the guilty one, and his wife, who is
following him into exile with their year-old child on her bosom. For the
sake of the child, and to please him, they are feeding the doves. A
bearded old man looks on pleased, and a dark-bearded younger man, too,
whom one might sooner believe guilty of some slight misdeed. But upon
the face of all these exiles lies so childlike a brightness, so evident
a sympathetic pleasure in the joy of the child, that one rather doubts
their guilt than the fact that they are still capable of good-natured
human feelings. And yet this picture of Christian pity has not been
bought for the Parisian. For it is well understood, in spite of its
harmless title, what its meaning is. "Everywhere is life" should read,
"Everywhere is pity, everywhere humanity, except among the police, in
the state, and in an autocracy." What guilt can these good little folk
have committed--looking there so kindly at a child that cooingly feeds
the doves--that they should be torn from their native hearth and be sent
to the icy deserts of Siberia? The young father--perhaps he went among
the people teaching that a farmer was a man as well as the policeman
(pristav). And one thinks with a shudder of the two thousand political
convicts of the year before that were sent into the department of
Irkutsk....
Such is the Russian genre. It is full of references, but is never a mere
illustration of some tendency or other. The painter does not make the
solution of his problem easy, and does not speculate on the cooperative
comprehension of the observer, who is satisfied if he finds his thoughts
indicated. No, such a Russian genre picture is perfect in the
characteristic of the heads, in perspective, in the distribution of
light and atmosphere. The purely picturesque, to be sure, is more
evident in the landscape. And in this the Russians do astonishing work.
They have the eye of the child of nature for the peculiarities of the
landscape--an eye which we in the West must train again. What west
European writer could have been in a position to write nature studies
like Leo Tolstoï's _Cossacks_, or like the "Hay Harvest" from _Anna
Karenina_? And one might also ask, What west European has so studied the
forest like Schischkin, the sea like Aiwasowsky, the river and the wind
like Levitan? There is a picture of Schischkin's in the Tretyakov
Gallery, "Morning in the Pine Forest." A family of bears busy themselves
about an enormous fallen, splintered pine. Everything is alive; the
comical little brown fellows are quite as true to nature as the moss in
the foreground and the veil of mist before the trees in the background.
Strange to say, Schischkin is stronger in his etchings than in his
oil-paintings, the colors of which are always a little too dry. But his
etchings, which I could enjoy in their first prints, thanks to the
goodness of the senator Reutern in St. Petersburg, are real treasures in
sentiment and character. He is, if one may express it so, the
psychologist of the trees. A tree on the dunes is a whole tragedy from
the lives of the pines.
Aiwasowsky, the virtuoso of the troubled sea, is more effective than the
quiet Schischkin. His storms at sea, with their transparent waves,
actually drive terror into the onlooker. The Black Sea has been the
favorite object of his pictures. There all the furies seem to be let
loose in order to frighten fisher and sailor. And these floods shine and
shimmer; they are as if covered with a transparent light. Levitan,
again, has understood the charm of the calm surface of a small body of
water as no one else. His brush is dipped in feeling. The beauty of his
pictures cannot be reproduced in words. He seems to have a special
sense-organ for the shades of the atmosphere. It is a pity that he died
so very young.
The collection of Vereschtschagin has now obtained a particularly
enhanced value because of the awful death of the master. The Tretyakov
Gallery has, with the exception of the Napoleonic pictures which
ornament the Alexander Museum, almost the whole life-work of the artist.
His work has only recently been universally appreciated. The power of
the versatile man was astonishing; his philanthropic turn of mind and
his epigrammatic spirit give spice to his pictures; but of him, first of
all, perhaps, it might be said that he used his art for purposes foreign
to it in spite of all artistic treatment. For it was seldom the artistic
problem that charmed him. Only his Oriental color studies are to a
certain extent free from ulterior purposes.