Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
Anna and Vronsky, wearying of their friend's learned loquacity, exchanged glances. Finally Vronsky, without saying anything to his host, went over to a small painting.
"Oh! How charming! What a gem—wonderful! How fascinating!" said both of them at once.
"What pleases them so?" thought Mikhaïlof. He had completely forgotten this picture, painted three years before. He had forgotten all the anguish and joy which that painting had caused him while he had been working at it day and night for days at a time—he had forgotten about it as he always forgot about his pictures when once they were finished. He did not even like to look at it, and he had brought it out only because he was expecting an Englishman who had thought of purchasing it.
"That is nothing," he said—"only an old study."
"But it is capital," replied Golenishchef, very honestly, falling under the charm of the painting.
Two children were fishing under the shade of a laburnum. The elder, all absorbed in his work, was cautiously disentangling his float from a bush. The younger one was lying in the grass, leaning his blond, frowzy head on his hand, and gazing at the water with great, pensive blue eyes. What was he thinking about?
The enthusiasm caused by this study brought back somewhat of Mikhaïlof's first emotion; but he did not love the vain memories of the past, and, therefore, pleasant as such praise was to him, he preferred to take his guests to a third painting.
But Vronsky asked him if the painting was for sale; but to Mikhaïlof, who was excited by the presence of visitors, the question of money was very distasteful.
"It was put up for sale," said he, darkly frowning.
After his visitors had gone, Mikhaïlof sat down before his painting of Christ and Pilate, and mentally reviewed all that had been said, and if not said had been understood by them. And how strange! the observations which seemed so weighty when they were present, and when he put himself on their plane of observation, now lost all significance. He began to examine his work with his artist's eye, and soon regained his full conviction of its perfection and significance, so that he could shut out all other interests and make the effort necessary for his best work.
The foreshortening in the leg of the Christ was not quite correct. He seized his palette and set himself to work, and, while he was correcting it, looked long at the figure of John, which seemed to him to show the highest degree of perfection—and yet his visitors had not even noticed it! Having corrected the leg of the Christ, he tried to give this also a few touches, but he felt too excited to do it. However, he could not work when he was cool any better than he could when he was too near the melting point or when he was too clairvoyant. It was only one step of transition from indifference to inspiration, and only when he reached this was work possible. But to-day he was too excited. He started to cover the canvas. Then he stopped, and, lifting the drapery with one hand, he smiled ecstatically, and looked for a long time at his St. John. At last, tearing himself from his contemplation, he let the curtain fall, and went home, weary but happy.
Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishchef, returning to the palazzo, were very lively and gay. They talked about Mikhaïlof and his paintings. The word talent was often heard as they talked; they meant by it an innate gift, almost physical, independent of intellect and heart, and they tried to express by it all that had been experienced by the artist. It seemed as if they needed to have a term which should express something of which they had not the slightest comprehension, but yet wanted to talk about.
"There is no denying his talent," they said, "but his talent is not sufficiently developed, because he lacks intellectual culture, a fault common to all Russian artists."
But the painting of the two boys appealed to their tastes, and again and again they recurred to it. "How charming! How natural and how simple! And he did not realize how good it was. Certainly, I must not fail to buy it," said Vronsky.