Anna Karenina
interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already,
had not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the immense
significance Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit.
And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get,
hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched
first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures.
As he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what
to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a
stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon
it the unoccupied mass of desires which demanded satisfaction.
He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for
imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for
an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting
to select—religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting—he set to
work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired
by anyone of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of
knowing nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired
directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is
painted will belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of
this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly
from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and
easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting
something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to
imitate.
More than any other style he liked the French—graceful and
effective—and in that style he began to paint Anna’s portrait in
Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to everyone who
saw it, extremely successful.
Chapter 9
The old neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and frescoes
on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff
curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open
fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception rooms, hung with
pictures—this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had
moved into it, to confirm in Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was
not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an
enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who
had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake
of the woman he loved.
The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo was
completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev, made
acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he was
satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an
Italian professor of painting, and studied mediæval Italian life.
Mediæval Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that he even wore a hat and
flung a cloak over his shoulder in the mediæval style, which, indeed,
was extremely becoming to him.
“Here we live, and know nothing of what’s going on,” Vronsky said to
Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. “Have you seen
Mihailov’s picture?” he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had
received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist,
living in the very same town, and just finishing a picture which had
long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand. The article
reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an
artist be left without encouragement and support.
“I’ve seen it,” answered Golenishtchev. “Of course, he’s not without
talent, but it’s all in a wrong direction. It’s all the
Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious painting.”
“What is the subject of the picture?” asked Anna.
“Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the
realism of the new school.”
And the question of the subject of the picture having brought him to
one of his favorite theories, Golenishtchev launched forth into a
disquisition on it.
“I can’t understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. Christ
always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great masters. And
therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a revolutionist or a
sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a Franklin, a Charlotte
Corday, but not Christ. They take the very figure which cannot be taken
for their art, and then....”
“And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?” asked Vronsky,
thinking that, as a Russian Mæcenas, it was his duty to assist the
artist regardless of whether the picture were good or bad.
“I should say not. He’s a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you ever
seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he doesn’t
care about painting any more portraits, and so very likely he is in
want. I maintain that....”
“Couldn’t we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?” said
Vronsky.
“Why mine?” said Anna. “After yours I don’t want another portrait.
Better have one of Annie” (so she called her baby girl). “Here she is,”
she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian nurse, who
was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing
unnoticed at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was
painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna’s
life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and
mediævalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid
of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly
gracious and condescending both to her and her little son. Vronsky,
too, glanced out of the window and into Anna’s eyes, and, turning at
once to Golenishtchev, he said:
“Do you know this Mihailov?”
“I have met him. But he’s a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You
know, one of those uncouth new people one’s so often coming across
nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared
_d’emblée_ in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In
former days,” said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to
observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, “in former days
the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of
religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle
came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born
free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of
morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up
directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.
Well, he’s of that class. He’s the son, it appears, of some Moscow
butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the
academy and made his reputation he tried, as he’s no fool, to educate
himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of
culture—the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to
educate himself—a Frenchman, for instance—would have set to work to
study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historians
and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in
his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of
negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of
negation, and he’s ready. And that’s not all—twenty years ago he would
have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with
the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that
there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in
which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it
is stated baldly that there is nothing else—evolution, natural
selection, struggle for existence—and that’s all. In my article
I’ve....”
“I tell you what,” said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging
wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least
interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by
the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; “I tell you
what,” she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still
talking away, “let’s go and see him!”
Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But as
the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the
carriage.
An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on the
front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house
in the remote suburb. On learning from the porter’s wife, who came out
to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that
moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her
to him with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.
Chapter 10
The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count
Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had
been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew
into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the
landlady, who had been asking for money.
“I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into details. You’re
fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in
Italian you’re a fool three times as foolish,” he said after a long
dispute.
“Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the money....”
“Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!” Mihailov shrieked, with tears in
his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room,
the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him.
“Idiotic woman!” he said to himself, sat down to the table, and,
opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a
sketch he had begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill
with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. “Oh! damn
them all!” he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for
the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before,
but he was dissatisfied with it. “No, that one was better ... where is
it?” He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her,
asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had
given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it
was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch,
laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes,
he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated
gleefully.
“That’s it! that’s it!” he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he
began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of
a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a
prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the
figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a
lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never
be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably
defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the
requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put
differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered;
the hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he
was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed
the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which
hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought
out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly
come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the
figure when the cards were brought him.
“Coming, coming!”
He went in to his wife.
“Come, Sasha, don’t be cross!” he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. “You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it