Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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well acquainted
with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the worse he
found them) of looking at the works of contemporary artists with
the sole object of being in a position to say that art is a thing
of the past, and that the more one sees of the new men the more
one sees how inimitable the works of the great old masters have
remained. He expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he
saw it in the careless indifference with which they talked among
themselves, stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about
in leisurely fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture.
But in spite of this, while he was turning over his studies,
pulling up the blinds and taking off the sheet, he was in intense
excitement, especially as, in spite of his conviction that all
distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to be beasts and
fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.
"Here, if you please," he said, moving on one side with his
nimble gait and pointing to his picture, "its the exhortation to
Pilate. Matthew, chapter xxvii," he said, feeling his lips were
beginning to tremble with emotion. He moved away and stood
behind them.
For the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the
picture in silence Mihailov too gazed at it with the indifferent
eye of an outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in
anticipation that a higher, juster criticism would be uttered by
them, by those very visitors whom he had been so despising a
moment before. He forgot all he had thought about his picture
before during the three years he had been painting it; he forgot
all its qualities which had been absolutely certain to him--he
saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside eyes, and
saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilates
irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the
background the figures of Pilates retinue and the face of John
watching what was happening. Every face that, with such agony,
such blunders and corrections had grown up within him with its
special character, every face that had given him such torments
and such raptures, and all these faces so many times transposed
for the sake of the harmony of the whole, all the shades of color
and tones that he had attained with such labor--all of this
together seemed to him now, looking at it with their eyes, the
merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand times
over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of
the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded
itself to him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the
picture with their eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even
that--he distinctly saw now a mass of defects) repetition of
those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael, Rubens, and the same
soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and stale, and
positively badly painted--weak and unequal. They would be
justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the
presence of the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when
they were alone again.
The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too
intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not
agitated, he made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.
"I think Ive had the pleasure of meeting you," he said, looking
uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any
shade of their expression.
"To be sure! We met at Rossis, do you remember, at that _soiree_
when that Italian lady recited--the new Rachel?" Golenishtchev
answered easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret
from the picture and turning to the artist.
Noticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the
picture, he said:
"Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time;
and what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the
figure of Pilate. One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital
fellow, but an official through and through, who does not know
what it is hes doing. But I fancy..."
All Mihailovs mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He
tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement,
and pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of
Golenishtchevs capacity for understanding art, trifling as was
the true remark upon
Anna Karenina page 270 Anna Karenina page 272
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