Authors: Andrei Bitov
He stopped for breath, pleased with the way he had stated all this.
“I never thought!” He wagged his head delightedly.
“Which?”
“This is the first time I ever understood about Bruegel.”
“Yes, it’s good,” I agreed. “But what to do with a Renaissance portrait? It necessarily has distance, depth, perspective, fields and views and hills and waters—”
“That’s entirely different! What does it have in the foreground? A person, a face, an individual. Necessarily an individual! We sense this. We don’t know who he was, when he lived, what he did—but he’s an individual! Without fail. And only back there, in the distance, do we see where the individual came from, what world. It’s a separate world! The co-o-ordinate!” He always spoke that way, with an extra o. “The coordinate of the person!
…
It’s like a painting back there. The necessary window, the necessary frame for the second painting. The portrait is one thing, and the landscape is another. It’s all very separate and extremely conventional. The antiquity of it is what gives us the illusion of realism.”
I clinked glasses, completely agreeing with him.
“Stand on the seashore like Pushkin, or on the edge of the plowland, gazing into the radiant future
…
Or like today, when you came up to me, if I hadn’t ruined the view for you
…
What would you have seen and where would you have been?”
I pondered.
“Well?”
“It was as if I weren’t there.”
“See? You’re right, at last. Now we’re getting close to the truth. Where is man? who is man? and why is man? That’s what I’m concerned with, every time, when I try to reproduce what I see. I’m making contact.”
“With whom?”
“It’s obvious with whom,” he said angrily. “If only with world thought. You don’t see yourself when you look. And what you see doesn’t see itself, does it? Well, earthly creatures see in order to satisfy their daily needs. But trees, grasses, mountains, rivers? They don’t see. Haven’t you ever imagined yourself a stone or a branch? Of course you have. You’ve fastened yourself to the spot, situated yourself in space
…
And when you did this you were depressed by the meagerness of the world that fell to your lot for observation. Each time, without noticing, you continued to
see
, and even hear, as though a stone or a branch had eyes and ears. You couldn’t possibly deprive yourself of them in your imagination, it didn’t even enter your head, did it, now?”
“I haven’t imagined myself as a stone all that often, but you may be right
…
Not without eyes.”
“Imagine, what ni-i-i-ight!” He howled the word “night” in such a ghastly way
…
“What unfathomable selflessness there is in that blind, deaf, mute existence! Why, all things that exist are connected among themselves, without knowing of the connection. But we
see
it—in a unity which none of the participants in that unity knows! You come out to the shore: water splashing, sand, reeds, the forest reflected in the water—you know they don’t think as you do, of course, but you can’t even imagine how isolated the stones and waters are. For them, there is no whole! They exist entirely in themselves! Like the things in German philosophy. But there
is
a whole! That’s the paradox. You haven’t invented it, and it’s no illusion: everything we see forms a
picture.
So someone
…
No. Then the picture was
…
No. How could a separate thing, by itself, have become connected? And beauty—beauty is no illusion. Our aesthetics does not, by any means, result from the satisfaction of our vital needs. I spent a winter freezing in the tundra. Nothing out there was suited for any kind of life. I was perishing—in beauty. So
who-o-o-o
then?!” And again, he howled the word “who” in a ghastly way.
“If you mean the Creator,” I stammered, “I’m not at all opposed to—”
“Hateful man!” Pavel Petrovich snarled.
“But why? I believe, too
…
”
“Too
…
” he echoed venomously, destroying me completely. “But I don’t mean you. You’re a decent fellow, if you do think a lot of yourself.
He’s
the one I hate!”
“
Who
?”
“
Man!
Man with a capital letter
{19}
…
The crown of Creation. He gets into everything, everything’s his, everything’s for him! Why, he’s worse than any animal. Worse. Because in place of a pig’s snout he invents all kinds of diggers, from the spoon to the atom. And gobbles, gobbles, gobbles. But to stop, or look around, or notice—”
“True, true,” I nodded. “I agree with everything. But if you believe in Creation—”
Pavel Petrovich darkened. “There’s no other hypothesis.”
“—then man, too, is a creation. But in that case, for what purpose? The crown of creation—this may be something man has said of himself, although to all appearances the book wasn’t written by man, either
…
But after all, he’s even ‘in the image and likeness’—”
“My, how you pick up on things!” On his lips, this was dubious praise. “Very quick. A truly civilized man—that’s what you are!” The blood rushed to my head in an unconquerable wave of shameful recollection. It had nothing to do with Pavel Petrovich
…
In what grade had we studied the author who wrote of that “Man with a capital letter”? To wit: “
‘What will I do for the people!’ shouted Danko
{20}
…
” No. “The grass snake crawled high into the mountains
…
” Again no! “With a cry, the stormy petrel soars like black lightning, now touching her wing to the wave
…
” That was it! “The silly penguin fearfully hides his fat body in the cliffs
…
” “One-sixth of them had formed a square in the grove and were gaily playing”—no, that was already something else, more human, about monkeys
…
Anyway, our literature teacher came down sick, and the substitute from District Education was an especially prominent woman, with a monstrous bust
…
Well, it’s just that when we sat scribbling in our notebooks and she walked among the desks, first the shadow of her bosom would lean over the notebook from afar, then the bosom itself, our little head would be lost in that heaving bosom, and only with difficulty, somewhere above, could we make out the peculiar caress in her eyes and the cooing of her bosomy voice
…
This was in a year when I was still just a happy child. My brother was already studying at the university and getting
A
’s. He had splendid handwriting and exemplary lecture notes. As it turned out (this amuses me now), both he, as a sophomore or junior, and I, as a seventh- or eighth-grader, were studying the same thing, the “silly penguin.” I had peeked at his lecture notes just the night before, and they told, not for grade school but for college-level comprehension, what Gorky had meant by every animal—the penguin was a Constitutional Democrat, I think, or a Socialist Revolutionary. And now our high-bosomed substitute was asking a difficult question to awaken the initiative of the class, a “killer” question (she was probably finishing up at the same university) about these very animals, about the allegory. Well, no one knew, everyone hung back, because the question was posed in such a way that only the teacher could answer it. I, who never showed initiative, was the only one to raise my hand (which the Gospel would tell me to cut off), in order to impress her
…
I should mention that whenever she asked such a thing she had an encouraging, domineering way of saying, “Think, think!” So everyone’s thinking, and I raise my hand. She smiles indulgently, ready to hear my naive childish guess, and I blurt out, as written, the words accidentally seen and accidentally remembered—but who would have believed how fortunately! Blurt them out as my very own guess. The woman must have been surprised, but I was too embarrassed to remember her reaction very well. She went on to develop an idea “which I had suggested to her.” And then when we were all copying it down and she was pacing the aisle, my head was suddenly between her breasts. She was hugging me from behind, patting my head, and saying, “You have a good little head on your shoulders
…
a good little head
…
” But the earth did not swallow me even then, although the infrequent situations of this sort are probably the ones in which the earth does swallow people, nor did it swallow me just now, when I suddenly pulled this out from under a thick mass of subsequent shames
…
nor did it when I recounted the whole memoir to Pavel Petrovich.
My, how that story tickled him!
“No, no! You’re not hopeless at all. Not by any means,” he said, laughing. “I never guessed.”
I didn’t think I’d been drinking, but the bottle was empty.
“Well,” he declared, noting its total emptiness with gratified reproach, “I, too, give you an
A.
I don’t know how you came up with this, but you’ve managed to ask the most difficult question. You can’t imagine how I’ve struggled over this. The landscape has an answer for everything, even the purpose of man, but why ‘in His image and likeness’? No answer.”
Now he was inspecting the bottom of his glass, turning it this way and that.
“For what purpose, actually, is man created? This, too, is a very painterly question. Why are artists, too, called creators? Hyperbole, of course; ‘master’ was better
…
You can’t possibly call an artist a creator in the full sense. At best he has re-created, not created. But isn’t the Creator—although the term by no means describes Him fully—also the greatest of artists?
…
‘In the beginning was the Word.’ And strictly speaking, not even the Word, but Logos, knowledge. Then the image of the world existed prior to the world, prior to the act of creation? And it wasn’t just an image of the world, it was even divine
…
The image was God! Do you see what we’re dealing with? An
artist.
Always the image comes first, and then the painting. This is the foundation of aesthetics. But the painting, you know, is always
for
someone—for someone who’s capable of understanding or appreciating. Well, let’s concede that our appreciation doesn’t matter to Him. He’s above that
…
But no, I
don’t
believe that our appreciation doesn’t matter! Not because we’ll praise, but because we’ll understand! To be understood, to be not alone—that is the point of Creation, as also of artistic creation. He was not engaged in pure art, we must suppose. No one ever has been, if we probe deeply. Art for art’s sake is pride, humiliation more than pride
…
Everyone who creates yearns for understanding. Then isn’t it obvious? What is man’s origin, what is man for? To
see
Creation! Not only to use it and be part of it, like all God’s creatures, but to
see
it! That is, to understand and comprehend it. This, we must suppose, is the reason why He created us ‘in His image and likeness’, .. Otherwise it’s incomprehensible. Why make man ‘in His image and likeness,’ for what purpose? The Creator Himself can’t have idolized Himself, that He copied the crown of Creation from His own self?”
He upended his glass conclusively, as proof. “But for whom is a painting created? Oh, an ordinary painting?”
“The people,” I said. “People,” I elaborated, again imprecisely.
“The customer!” Pavel Petrovich cried.
“But who is the customer of God Himself?” I asked in great surprise.
“The world’s image that existed before the world? But that’s just a guess
…
It’s not right, but
…
After all, the customer comes before the artist, doesn’t he?”
He exulted as though he had supplied the answer not to me, this time, but to God Himself.
I had no reply for him. I could only nod.
“If I had been able to pose the question that way,” I said profoundly, “that’s exactly the way I would have posed it.” Privately, though, I was solving a problem: I was translating the proof of port into the proof of vodka, in order to check the vodka equivalent of the amount Pavel Petrovich had drunk. I had almost figured it out, but I wasn’t sure about the last fifty grams. Had the port been 0.75 liter or 0.8? Right in the middle of those fifty grams, as I calculated it, lay the boundary between
less
than a liter and
more
than a liter.
“There’s a very curious hypothesis about this,” Pavel Petrovich said dreamily. “Not a hypothesis, even. A myth. But I’m afraid we’re not up to it.”
Judging by the haste with which I took offense for my mental capacities, my older friend had already drunk his liter—
“You misunderstand me,” Pavel Petrovich said affectionately, reading my mind. “I meant myself, not you. My dog money’s all gone.”
How I rejoiced at this turn of events! I simply hadn’t dared to propose it myself. But
I
had money—I did! Though mine, too, was a little like “dog money.” Shoes for the baby, perhaps, or
…
I no longer remember. Who cares! I had, have, will have money! “But where will you buy it at this hour?”
“Not to worry,” Pavel Petrovich said. “This will be enough,” he said, taking a five from me. (I had pulled out three of them, all the money I had.) “This will be enough,” he said, taking the second five as well, and keeping an attentive and solicitous eye on the third one lest I drop it past my pocket.
He wasn’t staggering at all. Somehow he was even steadier on his feet, and gentler, as if the floor had become earthen. Without hurrying, he tidied everything up. He didn’t forget to turn off the muffle furnace, either; I needn’t have worried. The Saviour “not made by human hands” was put back against the wall, after first being kissed by Pavel Petrovich.