Perfect versus completed Balzac is an unknown masterpiece. An unknown masterpiece of European culture

Honore de Balzac

An unknown masterpiece

I. Gillette

Depressed by poverty and surprised at that moment by his own audacity, the poor newcomer would not have dared to go to the artist, to whom we owe the beautiful portrait of Henry IV, if an unexpected chance had not come to his aid. An old man came up the stairs. By his strange suit, by his magnificent lace collar, by his important, confident gait, the young man guessed that this was either a patron or a friend of the master, and, taking a step back to give him his place, he began to examine him with curiosity, hoping to find in him the kindness of an artist or the courtesy characteristic of lovers of art - but in the old man’s face there was something devilish and something else elusive, peculiar, so attractive to the artist. Imagine a high, convex forehead with a receding hairline, overhanging a small, flat, upturned nose, like Rabelais or Socrates; lips mocking and wrinkled; short, haughtily raised chin; gray pointed beard; green, the color of sea water, eyes that seemed to have faded with age, but, judging by the pearlescent tints of the whites, were still sometimes capable of casting a magnetic glance in a moment of anger or delight. However, this face seemed faded not so much from old age as from those thoughts that wear out both soul and body. The eyelashes had already fallen out, and sparse hairs were barely noticeable on the brow ridges. Place this head against a frail and weak body, border it with lace, sparkling white and amazing in its fine jewelry workmanship, throw a heavy gold chain over the old man’s black camisole, and you will get an imperfect image of this man, to whom the dim lighting of the staircase gave a fantastic shade. You would say that this is a portrait by Rembrandt, leaving its frame and moving silently in the semi-darkness so beloved by the great artist. The old man cast a penetrating glance at the young man, knocked three times and spoke to the sickly man of about forty who opened the door.

I. Gillette

At the end of 1612, on a cold December morning, a young man, very lightly dressed, walked back and forth past the door of a house located on the Rue des Grandes Augustins in Paris. Having had enough of this, like an indecisive lover who does not dare to appear before the first beloved in his life, no matter how accessible she may be, the young man finally crossed the threshold of the door and asked if Master Francois Porbus (Porbus - Francois Porbus the Younger (1570-1622) ) is a Flemish artist who lived and worked in Paris.).
Having received an affirmative answer from the old woman who was sweeping the entryway, the young man began to slowly rise, stopping at each step, just like a new courtier, preoccupied with the thought of what kind of reception the king would give him. Climbing up the spiral staircase, the young man stood on the landing, still not daring to touch the fancy knocker that adorned the door of the workshop, where the painter of Henry IV, forgotten by Marie de Medici for the sake of Rubens, was probably working at that hour.
The young man experienced that strong feeling which must have made the hearts of great artists beat when, full of youthful ardor and love of art, they approached a man of genius or a great work. Human feelings have a time of first flowering, generated by noble impulses, gradually weakening, when happiness becomes only a memory, and glory a lie. Among the short-lived emotions of the heart, nothing is more reminiscent of love than the young passion of an artist tasting the first wonderful torments on the path of fame and misfortune - a passion full of courage and timidity, vague faith and inevitable disappointments. Anyone who, during the years of lack of money and the first creative ideas, did not feel awe when meeting a great master, will always be missing one string in the soul, some kind of brush stroke, some feeling in creativity, some elusive poetic shade. Some self-satisfied braggarts, who believed in their future too early, seem smart people only to fools. In this regard, everything spoke in favor of the unknown young man, if talent is measured by those manifestations of initial timidity, by that inexplicable shyness that people created for fame easily lose, constantly revolving in the field of art, just as beautiful women lose timidity, constantly practicing coquetry . The habit of success drowns out doubts, and shyness is, perhaps, one of the types of doubts.
Depressed by poverty and surprised at that moment by his own audacity, the poor newcomer would not have dared to go to the artist, to whom we owe the beautiful portrait of Henry IV, if an unexpected chance had not come to his aid. An old man came up the stairs. By his strange suit, by his magnificent lace collar, by his important, confident gait, the young man guessed that this was either a patron or a friend of the master, and, taking a step back to give him his place, he began to examine him with curiosity, hoping to find in him the kindness of an artist or the courtesy characteristic of art lovers - but in the old man’s face there was something devilish and something else elusive, peculiar, so attractive to the artist. Imagine a high, convex forehead with a receding hairline, overhanging a small, flat, upturned nose, like Rabelais or Socrates; lips mocking and wrinkled; short, haughtily raised chin; gray pointed beard; green, the color of sea water, eyes that seemed to have faded with age, but, judging by the pearlescent tints of the whites, were still sometimes capable of casting a magnetic glance in a moment of anger or delight. However, this face seemed faded not so much from old age as from those thoughts that wear out both soul and body. The eyelashes had already fallen out, and sparse hairs were barely noticeable on the brow ridges. Place this head against a frail and weak body, border it with lace, sparkling white and amazing in its fine jewelry workmanship, throw a heavy gold chain over the old man’s black camisole, and you will get an imperfect image of this man, to whom the dim lighting of the staircase gave a fantastic shade. You would say that this is a portrait by Rembrandt, leaving its frame and moving silently in the semi-darkness so beloved by the great artist.
The old man cast a penetrating glance at the young man, knocked three times and said to the sickly man of about forty who opened the door:
- Good afternoon, master.
Porbus bowed politely; he let the young man in, believing that he had come with the old man, and no longer paid any attention to him, especially since the newcomer froze in admiration, like all born artists who first entered the workshop, where they can spy on some techniques of art. An open window, pierced in the vault, illuminated the room of Master Porbus. The light was concentrated on the easel with the canvas attached to it, where only three or four white brushstrokes were laid, and did not reach the corners of this vast room, in which darkness reigned; but whimsical reflections either lit up silvery sparkles in the brown semi-darkness on the protuberances of the Reitar cuirass hanging on the wall, or outlined in a sharp stripe the polished carved cornice of an ancient cabinet filled with rare dishes, or dotted with shiny dots the pimply surface of some old curtains made of gold brocade, selected by large folds that probably served as a model for some kind of painting.
Plaster casts of naked muscles, fragments and torsos of ancient goddesses, lovingly polished with the kisses of centuries, cluttered the shelves and consoles.
Countless sketches and sketches, made with three pencils, sanguine or a pen, covered the walls to the ceiling. Boxes of paints, bottles of oils and essences, overturned benches left only a narrow passage to get to the high window; the light from it fell directly on Porbus’s pale face and on the bare, ivory-colored skull of a strange man. The young man’s attention was absorbed only by one picture, already famous even in those troubled, troubled times, so that stubborn people came to see it, to whom we owe the preservation of the sacred fire in the days of timelessness. This beautiful page of art depicted Mary of Egypt intending to pay for the passage in a boat. The masterpiece intended for Marie de Medici was subsequently sold by her in times of need.
“I like your saint,” the old man said to Porbus, “I would pay you ten gold crowns above what the queen gives, but try to compete with her... damn it!”
- Do you like this thing?
- Hehe, do you like it? - the old man muttered. - Yes and no. Your woman is well built, but she is not alive. All of you, artists, just need to draw the figure correctly, so that everything is in place according to the laws of anatomy. You paint a linear drawing with flesh-tone paint, previously compiled on your palette, while trying to make one side darker than the other - and therefore only that from time to time you look at a naked woman standing on the table in front of you, you believe that you are reproducing nature, you imagine that you are artists and that you have stolen a secret from God... Brrr!
To be a great poet, it is not enough to know syntax perfectly and not make mistakes in the language! Look at your saint, Porbus! At first glance, she seems charming, but, looking at her longer, you notice that she has grown to the canvas and that it would be impossible to walk around her.
This is only a silhouette that has one front side, only a cut-out image, the likeness of a woman that could neither turn nor change position, I do not feel the air between these hands and the background of the picture; lacks space and depth; and yet the laws of distance are fully adhered to, the aerial perspective is observed exactly; but, notwithstanding all these laudable efforts, I cannot believe that this beautiful body was animated by the warm breath of life; It seems to me that if I put my hand on this round breast, I will feel that it is cold, like marble! No, my friend, blood does not flow in this ivory-colored body, life does not spread like purple dew through the veins and veins intertwined in a mesh under the amber transparency of the skin on the temples and chest. This place is breathing, well, but another is completely motionless, life and death are fighting in every particle of the picture; here you can feel a woman, there a statue, and then a corpse. Your creation is imperfect. You managed to breathe only part of your soul into your favorite creation. The torch of Prometheus died out more than once in your hands, and the heavenly fire did not touch many places in your picture.
- But why, dear teacher? - Porbus said respectfully to the old man, while the young man could barely restrain himself from attacking him with his fists.
- And that’s why! - said the old man. “You wavered between two systems, between drawing and paint, between the phlegmatic pettiness, the harsh precision of the old German masters and the dazzling passion, the blissful generosity of the Italian artists. You wanted to imitate Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht Durer and Paolo Veronese at the same time. Of course, it was a magnificent claim. But what happened? You have achieved neither the harsh charm of dryness nor the illusion of chiaroscuro. Just as molten copper breaks through a form that is too fragile, so here are the rich and golden tones of Titian breaking through the strict outline of Albrecht Durer into which you squeezed them.
Elsewhere the design held up and withstood the magnificent exuberance of the Venetian palette. The face has neither the perfection of design nor the perfection of color, and it bears traces of your unfortunate indecision. Since you did not feel sufficient strength to fuse both competing styles of writing on the fire of your genius, then you had to decisively choose one or the other in order to achieve at least that unity that reproduces one of the characteristics of living nature. You are truthful only in the middle parts; the contours are incorrect, they don’t round out, and you don’t expect anything beyond them. “There is truth here,” said the old man, pointing to the saint’s chest. “And then here,” he continued, marking the point where the shoulder ended in the picture. “But here,” he said, again returning to the middle of his chest, “everything is wrong here... Let’s leave any analysis, otherwise you will come to despair...”
The old man sat down on a bench, rested his head on his hands and fell silent.
“Master,” Porbus told him, “I still studied this breast on a naked body a lot, but, unfortunately for us, nature gives rise to such impressions that seem incredible on canvas...
— The task of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. You are not a pathetic copyist, but a poet! - the old man exclaimed vividly, interrupting Porbus with an imperious gesture. “Otherwise the sculptor would have done his job by removing the plaster mold from the woman.” Well, then try, remove the plaster mold from your beloved’s hand and place it in front of you - you will not see the slightest resemblance, it will be the hand of a corpse, and you will have to turn to a sculptor who, without giving an exact copy, will convey movement and life. We must grasp the soul, the meaning, the characteristic appearance of things and beings. Impression!
Impression! But they are only accidents of life, and not life itself! The hand, since I took this example, the hand not only forms a part of the human body - it expresses and continues the thought that needs to be grasped and conveyed. Neither the artist, nor the poet, nor the sculptor should separate the impression from the cause, since they are inseparable - one in the other. This is the true goal of the struggle. Many artists win instinctively, without knowing about this task of art. You draw a woman, but you don't see her. This is not the way to snatch a secret from nature. You are reproducing, without realizing it, the same model that you copied from your teacher. You do not know the form closely enough; you do not follow it lovingly and persistently enough in all its turns and digressions. Beauty is strict and capricious, it is not given so easily, you need to wait for the favorable hour, track it down and, grabbing it, hold it tightly in order to force it to surrender.
The form is Proteus, much more elusive and rich in tricks than the Proteus in myth! Only after a long struggle can she be forced to show herself in her true form. You are all content with the first form in which she agrees to appear to you, or, at most, the second or third; This is not how winning fighters act. These inflexible artists do not allow themselves to be deceived by all sorts of twists and turns and persist until they force nature to show itself completely naked, in its true essence. This is what Raphael did,” said the old man, taking off his black velvet cap from his head to express his admiration for the king of art. “Raphael’s great superiority is a consequence of his ability to feel deeply, which in him seems to break the form. The form in his creations is the same as it should be for us, only an intermediary for the transmission of ideas, sensations, and versatile poetry. Every image is a whole world - it is a portrait, the model of which was a majestic vision, illuminated by light, indicated to us by an inner voice and appearing before us without coverings, if the heavenly finger shows us expressive means, the source of which is the entire past life. You clothe your women in elegant clothing of flesh, decorate them with a beautiful cloak of curls, but where is the blood flowing through the veins, generating calm or passion and producing a very special visual impression? Your saint is a brunette, but these colors, my poor Porbus, were taken from a blonde! That is why the faces you have created are just painted ghosts that you pass in a line before our eyes - and this is what you call painting and art!
Just because you have made something more reminiscent of a woman than a house, you imagine that you have achieved your goal, and, proud of the fact that you have no need for inscriptions on your images - currus venustus<Прекрасная колесница (лат.).>or pulcher homo<Красивый человек (лат.).>, - like the first painters, you imagine yourself to be amazing artists!.. Ha ha...
No, you have not achieved this yet, my dear comrades, you will have to draw a lot of pencils, paint a lot of canvases, before you become artists.
Quite rightly, the woman holds her head in this way, she lifts her skirt in this way, the weariness in her eyes glows with such submissive tenderness, the fluttering shadow of her eyelashes trembles just like that on her cheeks. All this is true - and not true! What is missing here? A trifle, but this trifle is everything. You grasp the appearance of life, but do not express its overflowing excess; you do not express what, perhaps, is the soul and what, like a cloud, envelops the surface of bodies; in other words, you do not express that blooming charm of life that was captured by Titian and Raphael. Starting from the highest point of your achievements and moving further, you can perhaps create a beautiful painting, but you get tired too soon. Ordinary people are delighted, but the true expert smiles. About Mabuse! (Mabuse is a Dutch artist Jan Gossaert (70s of the 15th century - 30s of the 16th century), he received the nickname “Mabuse” after the name of his one city.) exclaimed this strange man. “Oh, my teacher, you are a thief, you took your life with you!.. With all that,” the old man continued, “this canvas is better than the canvases of the insolent Rubens with mountains of Flemish meat sprinkled with rouge, with streams of red hair and flashy colors.” At least you have here color, feeling and design - the three essential parts of Art.
“But this saint is delightful, sir!” - the young man exclaimed loudly, awakening from deep reverie. - In both faces, in the face of the saint and in the face of the boatman, one can feel the subtlety of artistic design, unknown to Italian masters. I do not know of any of them who could have invented such an expression of indecision in a boatman.
- Is this your young man? - Porbus asked the old man.
“Alas, teacher, forgive me for my insolence,” answered the newcomer, blushing.
“I am unknown, I paint by desire, and I arrived only recently in this city, the source of all knowledge.”
- Get to work! Porbus told him, handing him a red pencil and paper.
The unknown young man copied the figure of Mary with quick strokes.
“Wow!” exclaimed the old man. - Your name? The young man signed under the drawing:
"Nicolas Poussin"<Никола Пуссен (1594-1665) — знаменитый французский художник.>“Not bad for a beginner,” said the strange old man who reasoned so madly. “I see that we can talk about painting in front of you.” I do not blame you for admiring Saint Porbus. For everyone, this thing is a great work, and only those who are privy to the innermost secrets of art know what its flaws are. But since you are worthy of being taught a lesson and are able to understand, I will now show you what a trifle is required to complete this picture. Look with all your eyes and pay full attention. Perhaps you will never have another opportunity to learn like this. Give me your palette, Porbus.
Porbus went to get a palette and brushes. The old man, impulsively rolling up his sleeves, stuck his thumb into the hole of the motley palette, laden with paints, which Porbus handed him; he almost snatched a handful of brushes of different sizes from his hands, and suddenly the old man’s wedge-trimmed beard began to move menacingly, expressing with its movements the anxiety of a passionate fantasy.
Picking up the paint with his brush, he grumbled through his teeth:
- These tones should be thrown out the window along with their compiler, they are disgustingly harsh and false - how to write with this?
Then, with feverish speed, he dipped the tips of his brushes into various colors, sometimes running through the entire gamut more quickly than a church organist running across the keys during the Easter hymn O filii<О сыны (лат.).>.
Porbus and Poussin stood on both sides of the canvas, immersed in deep contemplation.
“You see, young man,” said the old man, without turning around, “you see how, with the help of two or three strokes and one bluish-transparent stroke, it was possible to get air to blow around the head of this poor saint, who must have been completely out of breath.” and died in such a stuffy atmosphere.
Look how these folds sway now and how it has become clear that the breeze is playing with them! Before it seemed like it was starched linen pinned with pins. Do you notice how faithfully this light reflection, which I just placed on my chest, conveys the velvety elasticity of a girl’s skin, and how these mixed tones - red-brown and burnt sienna - spread warmth throughout this large shaded space, gray and cold, where the blood froze , instead of moving? Young man. young man, no teacher can teach you what I am showing you now! Only Mabuse knew the secret of how to give life to figures. Mabuse counted only one student - me. I didn’t have any at all, and I’m old. You're smart enough to understand the rest of what I'm hinting at.
Saying this, the old eccentric meanwhile corrected different parts of the picture: he applied two strokes here, one there, and each time so appropriately that a new painting appeared, a painting saturated with light. He worked so passionately, so furiously, that sweat beaded on his bare scalp; he acted so quickly, with such sharp, impatient movements, that it seemed to the young Poussin as if a demon had taken possession of this strange man and was moving his hand against his will according to his whim. The supernatural shine of the eyes, the convulsive movements of the hand, as if overcoming resistance, gave some credibility to this thought, so tempting for youthful fantasy.
The old man continued his work, saying:
- Pow! Pow! Pow! That's how it smears, young man! Here, my little brushstrokes, revive these icy tones. Come on! So so so! - he said, reviving those parts that he pointed out as lifeless, eliminating the inconsistency in the physique with a few spots of color and restoring the unity of tone that would correspond to the ardent Egyptian woman. “You see, honey, only the last strokes matter.” Porbus put hundreds of them, but I put only one. No one will thank you for what lies below. Remember this well!
Finally this demon stopped and, turning to Porbus and Poussin, who were speechless with admiration, said to them:
- This thing is still far from my “Beautiful Noiseza”, but you can put your name behind such a work. Yes, I would sign this picture,” he added, getting up to get a mirror into which he began to examine it. “Now let’s go have breakfast,” he said. - I ask you both to come to me. I will treat you to smoked ham and good wine. Hehe, despite the bad times, we'll talk about painting. We still mean something! “Here is a young man not without abilities,” he added, hitting Nicolas Poussin on the shoulder.
Here, noticing the Norman's pitiful jacket, the old man pulled out a leather wallet from behind his sash, rummaged in it, took out two gold pieces and, handing them to Poussin, said:
- I'm buying your drawing.
“Take it,” said Porbus to Poussin, seeing that he shuddered and blushed with shame, because the pride of a poor man began to speak in the young artist. - Take it, his purse is stuffed tighter than the king’s!
The three of them left the workshop and, talking about art, reached a beautiful wooden house located not far from the Pont Saint-Michel, which delighted Poussin with its decorations, door knocker, window frames and arabesques. The future artist suddenly found himself in a reception room, near a blazing fireplace, near a table laden with delicious dishes, and, by incredible happiness, in the company of two great artists, so pleasant to deal with.
“Young man,” Porbus said to the newcomer, seeing him staring at one of the paintings, “don’t look too closely at this painting, otherwise you will fall into despair.”
It was “Adam” - a painting painted by Mabuse to free himself from prison, where his creditors had kept him for so long. The whole figure of Adam was truly filled with such a powerful reality that from that moment Poussin began to understand the true meaning of the old man’s unclear words. And he looked at the picture with a look of satisfaction, but without much enthusiasm, as if thinking:
“I write better.”
“There is life in it,” he said, “my poor teacher has surpassed himself here, but in the depths of the picture he has not quite achieved truthfulness.” The man himself is quite alive, he is about to get up and approach us. But the air we breathe, the sky we see, the wind we feel is not there! And the man here is only a man. Meanwhile, in this one person, who had just emerged from the hands of God, something divine should have been felt, but that is what is missing. Mabuse himself sadly admitted this when he was not drunk.
Poussin looked with restless curiosity first at the old man and then at Porbus.
He approached the latter, probably intending to ask the name of the owner of the house; but the artist, with a mysterious look, put his finger to his lips, and the young man, keenly interested, remained silent, hoping sooner or later, from some accidentally dropped words, to guess the name of the owner, undoubtedly a rich man and brilliant with talents, as was sufficiently evidenced by the respect shown to him Porbus, and those wonderful works that filled the room.
Seeing a magnificent portrait of a woman on a dark oak panel, Poussin exclaimed:
- What a wonderful Giorgione!
- No! - the old man objected. — Here is one of my early things.
- Lord, that means I’m visiting the god of painting himself! - said Poussin innocently.
The elder smiled like a man who had long been accustomed to this kind of praise.
“Frenhofer, my teacher,” said Porbus, “will you give me a little of your good Rhine money?”
“Two barrels,” answered the old man, “one as a reward for the pleasure I received this morning from your beautiful sinner, and the other as a sign of friendship.”
“Ah, if it weren’t for my constant illnesses,” Porbus continued, “and if you had allowed me to look at your “Beautiful Noiseza,” I would have created a tall, large, heartfelt work and painted the figures in human height.
- Show me my work?! - the old man exclaimed in great excitement. - No no! I still have to complete it. Yesterday in the evening,” said the old man, “I thought that I had finished my Noiseza.” Her eyes seemed moist to me and her body animated. Her braids twisted. She was breathing! Although I have found a way to depict the bulges and roundness of nature on a flat canvas, this morning, in the light, I realized my mistake. Ah, to achieve final success, I thoroughly studied the great masters of color, I dismantled, I examined layer by layer the paintings of Titian himself, the king of light. I, just like this greatest artist, applied the initial drawing of the face with light and bold strokes, because the shadow is only an accident, remember this, my boy. Then I returned to my work and with the help of penumbra and transparent tones, which I gradually thickened , conveyed shadows, even black, to the deepest; after all, with ordinary artists, nature in those places where a shadow falls on it seems to consist of a different substance than in illuminated places - it is wood, bronze, anything, just not a shadowed body.
One feels that if the figures changed their position, the shadowed places would not appear and would not be illuminated. I have avoided this mistake, into which many famous artists have fallen, and under the thickest shadow I feel real whiteness. I did not outline the figure with sharp contours, like many ignorant artists who imagine that they write correctly only because they write out each line smoothly and carefully, and I did not expose the smallest anatomical details, because the human body does not end with lines. In this respect, sculptors are closer to the truth than we artists. Nature consists of a series of roundnesses, turning into one another. Strictly speaking, the drawing does not exist! Don't laugh, young man.
No matter how strange these words may seem to you, someday you will understand their meaning. A line is a way by which a person is aware of the effect of lighting on the appearance of an object. But in nature, where everything is convex, there are no lines: only modeling creates a drawing, that is, highlighting an object in the environment where it exists. Only the distribution of light gives visibility to bodies! Therefore, I did not give hard outlines, I hid the outlines with a light haze of light and warm halftones, so that it would be impossible for me to point with my finger exactly the place where the outline meets the background. Up close, this work seems shaggy, as if it lacks precision, but if you step back two steps, then everything immediately becomes stable, definite and distinct, bodies move, forms become convex, you can feel the air. And yet I am still not satisfied, I am tormented by doubts. Perhaps it was not necessary to draw a single line; perhaps it was better to start the figure from the middle, starting with the most illuminated protuberances first, and then move on to the darker parts. Isn’t this how the sun, the divine painter of the world, works? Oh nature, nature! who ever managed to catch your elusive form? But here you go - excessive knowledge, just like ignorance, leads to denial.
I doubt my work.
The old man paused, then began again:
“It’s been ten years now, young man, that I’ve been working.” But what do ten short years mean when it comes to mastering living nature! We do not know how much time the ruler Pygmalion spent creating the only statue that came to life.
The old man fell into deep thought and, fixing his eyes on one point, mechanically twirled the knife in his hands.
“He’s talking to his spirit,” Porbus said in a low voice.
At these words, Nicolas Poussin was seized with an inexplicable artistic curiosity. The old man with colorless eyes, focused on something and numb, became for Poussin a being superior to man, appeared before him as a bizarre genius living in an unknown sphere. It awakened a thousand vague thoughts in my soul. The phenomena of spiritual life reflected in such a witchcraft influence cannot be determined precisely, just as it is impossible to convey the excitement that a song evokes that reminds the heart of an exile of his homeland.
This old man's frank contempt for the best endeavors of art, his manners, the respect with which Porbus treated him, his work, so long hidden, work carried out at the cost of great patience and, obviously, brilliant, judging by the sketch of the head of the Virgin, which caused such open admiration of the young Poussin was beautiful even when compared with “Adam” by Mabuse, testifying to the powerful brush of one of the great rulers of art - everything in this old man went beyond the limits of human nature. In this supernatural creature, the ardent imagination of Nicolas Poussin clearly, palpably imagined only one thing: that it was the perfect image of a born artist, one of those crazy souls who are given so much power and who too often abuse it, taking away the cold minds of ordinary people and even lovers of art along a thousand rocky roads, where they will not find anything, while this soul with white wings, mad in its whims, sees there entire epics, palaces, creations of art. A creature by nature mocking and kind, rich and poor! Thus, for the Poussin enthusiast, this old man was suddenly transformed into art itself, art with all its secrets, impulses and dreams.
“Yes, dear Porbus,” Frenhofer spoke again, “I have not yet met an impeccable beauty, a body whose contours would be of perfect beauty, and the color of the skin... But where can I find her alive,” he said, interrupting himself, - this unattainable Venus of the ancients? We search for her so greedily, but we barely find only scattered particles of her beauty! Ah, to see for one moment, just once, a divinely beautiful nature, the perfection of beauty, in a word - an ideal, I would give all my fortune. I would follow you into the afterlife, oh heavenly beauty! Like Orpheus, I would descend into the hell of art to bring life from there.
“We can leave,” Porbus said to Poussin, “he no longer hears or sees us.”
“Let’s go to his workshop,” answered the admiring young man.
- Oh, the old reiter prudently closed the entrance there. His treasures are very well guarded, and we cannot penetrate there. You were not the first to have such a thought and such a desire; I have already tried to penetrate the secret.
- So there is a secret here?
“Yes,” answered Porbus. “Old Frenhofer is the only one Mabuse wanted to take as his student.” Frenhofer became his friend, savior, father, spent most of his wealth to satisfy his passions, and in return Mabuse gave him the secret of relief, his ability to give figures that extraordinary vitality, that naturalness, over which we struggle so hopelessly - while Mabuse mastered this skill so completely that when he happened to drink away the patterned silk fabric in which he was to wear to attend the solemn exit of Charles the Fifth, Mabuse accompanied his patron there in clothes made of paper painted to look like silk. The extraordinary splendor of Mabuse's costume attracted the attention of the emperor himself, who, by expressing admiration for this to the old drunkard's benefactor, thereby contributed to the discovery of the deception.
Frenhofer is a man with a passion for our art, his views are broader and higher than those of other artists. He thought deeply about colors, about the absolute truthfulness of lines, but reached the point where he began to doubt even the subject of his thoughts. In a moment of despair, he argued that drawing did not exist, that only geometric shapes could be conveyed with lines. This is completely false because you can create an image using only lines and black spots, which have no color. This proves that our art is composed, like nature itself, of many elements: in the drawing there is a skeleton, color is life, but life without a skeleton is something more imperfect than a skeleton without life. And, finally, the most important thing: practice and observation are everything for an artist, and when reason and poetry do not get along with the brush, then a person comes to doubt, like our old man, a skilled artist, but equally crazy. An excellent painter, he had the misfortune of being born rich, which allowed him to indulge in reflection. Don't imitate him! Work! Artists must reason only with a brush in their hands.
- We'll get into this room! - Poussin exclaimed, no longer listening to Porbus, ready to do anything for the sake of his bold idea.
Porbus smiled, seeing the enthusiasm of the young stranger, and parted with him, inviting him to come to him.
Nicolas Poussin walked slowly back to the Rue de la Harpe and, without noticing it, passed by the modest hotel in which he lived. Hastily climbing the pathetic staircase, he entered a room located at the very top, under a roof with projecting wooden rafters - a simple and light cover for old Parisian houses. At the dim and only window of this room, Poussin saw a girl who, when the door creaked, jumped up in a fit of love - she recognized the artist by the way he grabbed the door handle.
- What happened to you? - said the girl.
“What happened to me, to me,” he shouted, gasping with joy, “is that I felt like an artist!” Until now I doubted myself, but this morning I believed in myself. I can become great! Yes, Gillette, we will be rich and happy! These brushes will bring us gold!
But suddenly he fell silent. His serious and energetic face lost its expression of joy when he compared his enormous hopes with his pitiful means. The walls were covered with smooth wallpaper, dotted with pencil sketches. It was impossible to find four clean canvases with him. Paints were very expensive at that time, and the poor man’s palette was almost empty. Living in such poverty, he was and recognized himself as the owner of incredible spiritual wealth, an all-consuming genius, overflowing. Attracted to Paris by an acquaintance of a nobleman, or rather, by his own talent, Poussin accidentally met here his beloved, noble and generous, like all those women who go to suffering, linking their fate with great people, sharing poverty with them, trying understand their whims, remain steadfast in the trials of poverty and in love - just as others fearlessly rush in pursuit of luxury and flaunt their insensibility. The smile that wandered across Gillette’s lips gilded this attic closet and competed with the shine of the sun. After all, the sun did not always shine, she was always here, giving all her spiritual strength to passion, attached to her happiness and her suffering, consoling a brilliant man who, before mastering art, rushed into the world of love.
- Come to me, Gillette, listen.
Obediently and joyfully, the girl jumped onto the artist’s lap. Everything about her was charm and loveliness, she was as beautiful as spring, and endowed with all the treasures of feminine beauty, illuminated by the light of her pure soul. “Oh God,” he exclaimed, “I will never dare to tell her...
- Some kind of secret? she asked. - Well, speak up! -Poussin was deep in thought. - Why are you silent?
- Gillette, my dear!
- Oh, do you need anything from me?
- Yes…
“If you want me to pose for you again, like that time,” she said, pouting her lips, “then I will never agree, because in these moments your eyes don’t tell me anything anymore.” You don’t think about me at all, even though you look at me...
“Would you rather have another woman pose for me?”
- Maybe, but only, of course, the ugliest one.
“Well, what if, for the sake of my future fame,” Poussin continued seriously, “in order to help me become a great artist, you had to pose in front of another?”
- Do you want to test me? - she said. “You know very well that I won’t.”
Poussin dropped his head on his chest, like a man struck by too much joy or unbearable grief.
“Listen,” said Gillette, tugging at Poussin by the sleeve of his worn jacket, “I told you, Nick, that I was ready to sacrifice my life for you, but I never promised you, while I was alive, to give up my love...
- Give up love?! - exclaimed Poussin.
“After all, if I show myself in this form to another, you will stop loving me.” Yes, I myself will consider myself unworthy of you. Obeying your whims is quite natural and simple, isn’t it? Despite everything, I fulfill your will with joy and even pride. But for someone else... What disgusting!
- Sorry, dear Gillette! - said the artist, throwing himself on his knees. - Yes, it’s better for me to keep your love than to become famous. You are dearer to me than wealth and fame! So throw away my brushes, burn all the sketches. I made a mistake! My calling is to love you. I'm not an artist, I'm a lover. May art and all its secrets perish!
She admired her lover, joyful, delighted. She ruled, she instinctively realized that art was forgotten for her sake and thrown at her feet.
“Still, this artist is quite an old man,” said Poussin, “he will see in you only a beautiful form.” Your beauty is so perfect!
- What won’t you do for love! - she exclaimed, already ready to sacrifice her scrupulousness in order to reward her lover for all the sacrifices he makes for her. “But then I will die,” she continued. - Oh, to die for you! Yes, that's great! But you will forget me... Oh, what a bad idea you came up with!
“I came up with this, but I love you,” he said with some remorse in his voice. “But that means I’m a scoundrel.”
- Let's consult with Uncle Arduin! - she said.
- Oh, no! Let this remain a secret between us.
“Well, okay, I’ll go, but don’t come with me,” she said. “Stay behind the door, with your dagger at the ready.” If I scream, run in and kill the artist.
Poussin pressed Gillette to his chest, completely absorbed in the thought of art.
“He doesn’t love me anymore,” thought Gillette, left alone.
She already regretted her agreement. But soon she was seized by a horror more cruel than this regret. She tried to push away the terrible thought that arose in her mind. It seemed to her that she herself loved the artist less since she suspected that he was less worthy of respect.
II. Catherine Lesko

Three months after his meeting with Poussin, Porbus came to visit Master Frenhofer. The old man was in the grip of that deep and sudden despair, the cause of which, according to medical mathematicians, is poor digestion, wind, heat or swelling in the epigastric region, and according to spiritualists - the imperfection of our spiritual nature. The old man simply got tired finishing his mysterious painting. He sat wearily in a spacious carved oak armchair, upholstered in black leather, and, without changing his melancholy pose, looked at Porbus the way a man who has already become accustomed to melancholy looks.
“Well, teacher,” Porbus told him, “the ultramarine you went to Bruges for turned out to be bad?” Or were you unable to grind our new white? Or did you get the wrong oil? Or are the brushes not flexible?
- Alas! - exclaimed the old man. “It seemed to me at one time that my work was finished, but I was probably mistaken in some particulars, and I will not rest until I find out everything.” I decided to take a trip, I’m going to go to Turkey, Greece, Asia, to find a model there and compare my picture with different types of female beauty. Maybe, up there, I have, he said with a smile of satisfaction, “living beauty itself.” Sometimes I’m even afraid that some breath will awaken this woman and she will disappear...
Then he suddenly stood up, as if preparing to set off. “Wow,” exclaimed Porbus, “I came in time to save you from travel expenses and hardships.”
- How so? - Frenhofer asked in surprise.
“It turns out that a woman of incomparable, impeccable beauty loves young Poussin. But only, dear teacher, if he agrees to let her come to you, then you, in any case, will have to show us your canvas.
The old man stood rooted to the spot, frozen in amazement, “How?!” - he finally exclaimed sadly. — Show my creation, my wife? Tear the veil with which I chastely covered my happiness? But that would be disgusting obscenity! For ten years now I have been living the same life with this woman, she is mine and only mine, she loves me. Didn’t she smile at me with every new highlight I put on? She has a soul, I gave her this soul. This woman would blush if anyone but me looked at her. Show her?! But what husband or lover is so base as to expose his wife to disgrace? When you paint a picture for the court, you do not put your whole soul into it, you sell only painted mannequins to the court nobles. My painting is not painting, it is the feeling itself, the passion itself! Born in my workshop, the beautiful Noiseza must remain there, maintaining chastity, and can only leave there dressed.
Poetry and woman appear naked only before their lover. Do we know the model of Raphael or the appearance of Angelica, recreated by Ariosto, Beatrice, recreated by Dante? No! Only an image of these women has reached us. Well, my work, which I keep upstairs behind strong locks, is an exception in our art. This is not a painting, this is a woman - a woman with whom I cry, laugh, talk and think. Do you want me to immediately part with my ten years of happiness as easily as throwing off a cloak? So that I suddenly stop being a father, a lover and a god! This woman is not just a creation, she is a creation. Let your young man come, I will give him my treasures, paintings by Correggio himself, Michelangelo, Titian, I will kiss his footprints in the dust; but to make him your rival is such a shame! Haha, I'm even more of a lover than an artist. Yes, I have the strength to burn my beautiful Noiseza with my last breath; but should I allow a strange man, a young man, an artist to look at her? - No! No! I will kill the next day whoever defiles her with his gaze! I would have killed you at that very moment, you, my friend, if you had not kneeled before her. So do you really want me to expose my idol to the cold gaze and reckless criticism of fools! Oh! Love is a mystery, love is alive only deep in the heart, and everything perishes when a man says even to his friend: this is the one I love...
The old man seemed to look younger: his eyes lit up and became animated, his pale cheeks were covered with a bright blush. His hands were shaking. Porbus, surprised by the passionate force with which these words were spoken, did not know how to react to such unusual but deep feelings. Is Frenhofer sane, or is he insane? Was he possessed by the imagination of an artist, or were the thoughts he expressed the result of excessive fanaticism that arises when a person harbors a large work within himself? Is there any hope of reaching an agreement with an eccentric obsessed with such an absurd passion?
Overwhelmed by all these thoughts, Porbus said to the old man:
- But here it’s a woman for a woman! Doesn't Poussin leave his mistress before your eyes?
- What a mistress! - Frenhofer objected. - Sooner or later she will cheat on him. Mine will always be faithful to me.
“Well,” said Porbus, “let’s talk no more about this.” But before you manage to meet, even in Asia, a woman as impeccably beautiful as the one I’m talking about, you may die without finishing your picture.
“Oh, it’s over,” Frenhofer said. - Anyone who looked at her would see a woman lying under the canopy on a velvet bed. Near the woman is a golden tripod spilling incense. You would have a desire to take hold of the cord holding up the curtain; it would seem to you that you see the breast of the beautiful courtesan Catherine Lescaut, nicknamed “Beautiful Noiseza,” breathing. Still, I would like to make sure...
“Then go to Asia,” answered Porbus, noticing some hesitation in Frenhofer’s gaze.
And Porbus was already heading towards the doors.
At that moment, Gillette and Nicolas Poussin approached Frenhofer’s home.
Just as she was preparing to enter, the girl released her hand from the artist’s and stepped back, as if overcome by a sudden premonition.
- But why am I coming here? - She asked her lover with concern in her voice, fixing her eyes on him.
“Gillette, I left you to decide for yourself and I want to obey you in everything.” You are my conscience and my glory. Come home, I might feel happier than if you...
“Can I decide anything when you talk to me like that?” No, I'm becoming just a child. Let’s go,” she continued, apparently making a huge effort on herself, “if our love perishes and I cruelly repent of my action, then still won’t your glory be a reward for the fact that I submitted to your desires?.. Let’s go in!” I will still live, since a memory of me remains on your palette.
Opening the door, the lovers met Porbus, and he, struck by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were full of tears, grabbed her hand, led her, all trembling, to the old man and said:
- Here she is! Isn't it worth all the masterpieces in the world?
Frenhofer shuddered. Before him, in an ingenuously simple pose, stood Gillette, like a young Georgian girl, timid and innocent, kidnapped by robbers and taken by them to a slave trader. A bashful blush filled her face, she lowered her eyes, her hands drooped, it seemed she was losing strength, and her tears were a silent reproach to the violence against her modesty. At that moment, Poussin cursed himself in despair for having removed this treasure from his closet.
The lover got the better of the artist, and thousands of painful doubts crept into Poussin’s heart when he saw how the old man’s eyes became younger, how he, according to the habit of artists, so to speak, undressed the girl with his gaze, guessing everything in her physique, right down to the most intimate. The young artist then knew the cruel jealousy of true love.
- Gillette, let's get out of here! - he exclaimed. At this exclamation, at this cry, his beloved joyfully raised her eyes, saw his face and rushed into his arms.
- And that means you love me! - she answered, bursting into tears.
Having shown so much courage when it was necessary to hide her suffering, she now did not find the strength in herself to hide her joy.
“Oh, give her to me for a moment,” said the old artist, “and you will compare her with my Catherine.” Yes I agree!
In Frenhofer's exclamation one could still feel the love for the likeness of a woman he had created. One would think that he was proud of the beauty of his Noiseza and was anticipating the victory that his creation would win over a living girl.
- Take him at his word! - said Porbus, clapping Poussin on the shoulder. “The flowers of love are short-lived, the fruits of art are immortal.”
- Am I really just a woman for him? - Gillette answered, looking carefully at Poussin and Porbus.
She proudly raised her head and cast a sparkling glance at Frenhofer, but suddenly noticed that her lover was admiring the painting, which on his first visit he mistook for a work by Giorgione, and then Gillette decided:
- Oh, let's go upstairs. He never looked at me like that.
“Old man,” said Poussin, brought out of his reverie by Gillette’s voice, “do you see this dagger?” He will pierce your heart at the first complaint of this girl, I will set your house on fire, so that no one will come out of it. Do you understand me?
Nicolas Poussin was gloomy. His speech sounded menacing. The words of the young artist, and especially the gesture with which they were accompanied, reassured Gillette, and she almost forgave him for sacrificing her to art and his glorious future.
Porbus and Poussin stood at the door of the workshop and silently looked at each other. At first, the author of Mary of Egypt allowed himself to make some comments: “Ah, she is undressing... He tells her to turn to the light!.. He compares her...” - but soon he fell silent, seeing deep sadness on Poussin’s face; although in old age artists are already alien to such prejudices, insignificant in comparison with art, nevertheless Porbus admired Poussin: he was so sweet and naive. Squeezing the handle of the dagger, the young man put his ear almost close to the door. Standing here in the shadows, both of them looked like conspirators waiting for the right time to kill the tyrant.
- Come in, come in! - the old man told them, beaming with happiness. “My work is perfect, and now I can proudly show it off.” The artist, paints, brushes, canvas and light will never create a rival for my Catherine Lescaut, the beautiful courtesan.
Seized by impatient curiosity, Porbus and Poussin ran out into the middle of the spacious workshop, where everything was in disarray and covered with dust, where paintings hung here and there on the walls. Both of them stopped first in front of a human-sized image of a half-naked woman, which delighted them.
“Oh, don’t pay attention to this thing,” said Frenhofer, “I made sketches to study the pose, the picture is worth nothing.” And here are my delusions,” he continued, showing the artists the wonderful compositions hung all over the walls.
At these words, Porbus and Poussin, amazed at Frenhofer's contempt for such paintings, began to look for the portrait in question, but could not find it.
- Look! - said the old man, whose hair was disheveled, his face was burning with some kind of supernatural animation, his eyes were sparkling, and his chest was heaving convulsively, like that of a young man intoxicated with love. - Yeah! - he exclaimed, - you didn’t expect such perfection? There is a woman in front of you, and you are looking for a painting. There is so much depth in this canvas, the air is so faithfully conveyed that you cannot distinguish it from the air you breathe. Where is the art? It's gone, gone. Here is the girl's body. Isn’t the coloring, the living outlines, where the air comes into contact with the body and, as it were, enveloping it, correctly captured? Do not objects represent the same phenomenon in the atmosphere as fish in water?
Consider how the outlines stand out from the background. Don't you think that you can cover this waist with your hand? Yes, it’s not for nothing that I spent seven years studying what impression is created when light rays combine with objects. And this hair - how saturated with light it is! But she sighed, it seems!.. These breasts... look! Oh, who wouldn’t kneel before her? The body is trembling! She'll get up now, wait...
- Do you see anything? - Poussin asked Porbus.
- No. And you?
- Nothing…
Leaving the old man to admire, both artists began to check whether the light, falling directly on the canvas that Frenhofer showed them, did not destroy all the effects. They examined the picture, moving away to the right, to the left, now standing opposite, now bending over, now straightening up.
“Yes, yes, this is a painting,” Frenhofer told them, mistaken about the purpose of such a thorough examination. - Look, here is the frame, the easel, and finally here are my paints and brushes...
And, grabbing one of the brushes, he innocently showed it to the artists.
“The old landsknecht is laughing at us,” said Poussin, approaching the so-called painting again. “I see here only a chaotic combination of strokes, outlined by many strange lines, forming, as it were, a fence of paints.”
“We’re wrong, look!” Porbus objected. Approaching closer, they noticed in the corner of the picture the tip of a bare leg, standing out from the chaos of colors, tones, indefinite shades, forming a kind of shapeless nebula - the tip of a lovely leg, a living leg. They were stunned with amazement at this fragment, which had survived the incredible, slow, gradual destruction.
The leg in the picture made the same impression as the torso of some Venus made of Parian marble among the ruins of a burnt city.
- There is a woman hidden under this! - exclaimed Porbus, pointing out to Poussin the layers of paints that the old artist had laid one on top of the other in order to complete the picture.
Both artists involuntarily turned towards Frenhofer, beginning to comprehend, although still vaguely, the ecstasy in which he lived.
“He believes what he says,” said Porbus.
“Yes, my friend,” answered the old man, coming to his senses, “you need to believe.”
You have to believe in art and you have to get used to your work in order to create such a work. Some of these patches of shadow took a lot out of me. Look, here, on the cheek, under the eye, lies a light penumbra, which in nature, if you pay attention to it, will seem almost indescribable to you. And what do you think, didn’t this effect cost me incredible amounts of work? And then, my dear Porbus, look more closely at my work, and you will better understand what I told you about roundness and contours.
Look closely at the lighting on the chest and notice how, with the help of a series of highlights and convex, densely applied strokes, I managed to concentrate real light here, combining it with the brilliant whiteness of the illuminated body, and how, on the contrary, removing the bulges and roughness of the paint, constantly smoothing out the contours of my figure where it is immersed in twilight, I achieved that I completely destroyed the drawing and all artificiality and gave the lines of the body the roundness that exists in nature. Come closer, you will see the texture better. You can't see her from a distance. Here, I think, she is very worthy of attention.
And with the tip of his brush he pointed out to the artists a thick layer of light paint...
Porbus patted the old man on the shoulder and, turning to Poussin, said:
- Do you know that we consider him a truly great artist?
“He is more of a poet than an artist,” said Poussin seriously.
“Here,” Porbus continued, touching the painting, “our art on earth ends...
“And, starting from here, it gets lost in the sky,” said Poussin.
- How many experienced pleasures are on this canvas! Absorbed in his thoughts, the old man did not listen to the artists: he smiled at an imaginary woman.
“But sooner or later he will notice that there is nothing on his canvas!” - exclaimed Poussin.
— Is there nothing on my canvas? - asked Frenhofer, looking alternately at the artist and at the imaginary painting.
- What have you done! - Porbus turned to Poussin. The old man grabbed the young man’s hand with force and said to him:
“You don’t see anything, you redneck, robber, nonentity, trash!”
Why did you come here?.. My good Porbus,” he continued, turning to the artist, “and you, you, too, mock me? Answer! I am your friend.
Tell me, maybe I ruined my painting?
Porbus, hesitating, did not dare to answer, but such severe anxiety was etched on the old man’s pale face that Porbus pointed to the canvas and said:
- See for yourself!
Frenhofer looked at his painting for a while and suddenly began to stagger.
- Nothing! Absolutely nothing! And I worked for ten years! He sat down and cried.
- So, I'm a fool, a madman! I have neither talent nor abilities, I am only a rich man who lives uselessly in the world. And, therefore, nothing was created by me!
He looked at his painting through tears. Suddenly he stood up proudly and looked at both artists with a sparkling gaze.
- I swear by the flesh and blood of Christ, you are simply envious! You want to convince me that the painting is damaged in order to steal it from me! But I, I see her,” he shouted, “she is wonderfully beautiful!”
At that moment Poussin heard the cry of Gillette, forgotten in the corner.
- What's wrong with you, my angel? - the artist-turned-lover asked her.
“Kill me,” she said. “To still love you would be shameful, because I despise you.” I admire you, and you disgust me. I love you and, it seems to me, I already hate you.
While Poussin listened to Gillette, Frenhofer closed his Catherine with green serge as calmly and carefully as a jeweler closes his drawers, believing that he is dealing with clever thieves. He looked at both artists with a gloomy gaze, full of contempt and distrust, then silently, with some kind of convulsive haste, escorted them out the door of the workshop and said to them on the threshold of his house:
- Goodbye, my dears!
Such a farewell brought melancholy to both artists.
The next day, Porbus, worried about Frenhofer, went to visit him again and learned that the old man had died that night, having burned all his paintings.
Paris, February 1832

An unknown masterpiece of European culture

Balzac has a short story “The Unknown Masterpiece” - a story about an artist; old man Frenhofer is a collective image of a painting genius. There was no such painter in reality; Balzac created an ideal creator, put into his mouth manifestos that were radically superior to everything that was later said in avant-garde circles; Frenhofer (that is, the author himself, Balzac) actually invented a new art.

He was the first to talk about the synthesis of drawing and painting, light and color, space and object; He was the first to express a simple, but such an impossibly daring idea: art must form an autonomous reality separate from reality. And when this happens, the reality of art will influence the reality of life and transform it. In all previous eras it was believed that art is a reflection of life. Options are possible: idealization, mirror image, critical reflection - but the secondary position in relation to reality, fixed by Plato, has never been questioned. The fact that beauty is divided into disciplines: painting, sculpture, poetry, music is due precisely to the fact that art performs a kind of service function in relation to life, and is required in one area or another. But when art becomes comprehensive, its service role will go away.

The synthesis of arts is an attempt to change its status. The synthesis of all arts is the main idea of the avant-garde; In fact, the avant-garde artists replaced religion with art. The idea of a synthesis of arts was prepared for a long time - Goethe wrote about the luminosity of color, something about the synthesis of arts can be found in Wölfflin; In general, German enlightenment poses the problem of synthesis. But it is one thing to pose a problem; it is quite another thing to propose a practical solution. Balzac, who himself was a genius (true, in literature, but this is almost the same thing - a good writer draws with words), described the genius of painting and his method of work; method - that is, how exactly the strokes must be laid so that the desired synthesis appears. Evidence has been preserved: when Cezanne was read a couple of paragraphs from “The Unknown Masterpiece” (Emile Bernard read it to him), Cezanne couldn’t even find words from excitement; he just pressed his hand to his chest - he wanted to show that the story was written specifically about him.

It was precisely Cézanne who arranged his strokes in this way - he would hit the brush in one place, then in another, and then oh-he was there, in the corner of the canvas, to create the impression of a moving air mass, thick air filled with color; It was Cezanne who took every stain extremely responsibly - there were unpainted centimeters left on his canvases: he complained that he did not know what color to put on this piece of canvas. This happened because Cezanne demanded several functions from a colored stroke at once: to convey color, to record spatial distance, to become an element in the construction of a general building of atmosphere.

And listening to Bernard read to him a description of Frenhofer’s work (selectively touching different parts of the canvas with a brush: “Pow! Pow! My brushstrokes! That’s how it’s done, young man!”) - Cezanne went into a frenzy, it turns out that he is on the right path: after all That's exactly how he worked.

Every stroke of Cézanne is a synthesis of color and light, a synthesis of space and object - it turns out that Balzac foresaw this synthesis. The space is the South, Italy, blue air, perspective, invented by Paolo Uccello. The object is the North, Germany, Durer's corrosive drawing, piercing line, scientific analysis. North and South were disintegrating politically, religious wars cemented the disintegration: the South was Catholic, the North was Protestant. These are two different aesthetics and two dissimilar styles of reasoning. To merge the South and the North together has been the dream of every politician since the time of Charlemagne, and the age-old political drama of Europe is that they tried to piece together the Carolingian heritage that was falling apart, but the stubborn inheritance fell apart and did not obey the political will; Otto, Henry the Birdcatcher, Charles the Fifth of Habsburg, Napoleon, de Gaulle's project of the United States of Europe - all this was started for the sake of the great plan of unification, for the sake of the synthesis of space and object, South and North.

But if politicians did it clumsily, and sometimes even monstrously, then the artist is obliged to show a solution on a different level. Through the mouth of Frenhofer, a reproach was formulated against European art of the time, which immediately followed the Renaissance. It was a time without a clear program: the Holy Roman Empire was disintegrating into national states, the unified plan of the Renaissance died. The didactics of the Renaissance were replaced by mannered genre scenes. Art historians sometimes call “mannerism” an intermediate style between the Renaissance and Baroque, and sometimes call baroque a kind of mannerism that has developed to a national scale.

It was a demi-season, eclectic era; Europe was looking for itself. Addressed to French art, Frenhofer's reproach applies to all inter-mental European art as a whole - it is a diagnosis. “You wavered between two systems, between drawing and paint, between the phlegmatic pettiness, the cruel precision of the old German masters and the dazzling passion and benevolent generosity of the Italian artists. What happened? You have achieved neither the stern charm of dryness nor the illusion of chiaroscuro.” And further Frenhofer develops the idea of synthesis - which he gleaned from his teacher, the mysterious Mabuse; the artist Mabuse allegedly possessed the secret of the synthesis of North and South (“Oh Mabuse, great teacher, you have stolen my heart!”).

Mabuse is the nickname of the real-life artist Jan Gossaert, a classical Burgundian painter and student of Gerard David. Balzac deliberately leaves us such a precise address of his utopia - he gives ideal painting a specific registration. All that remains is to trace exactly where Balzac is pointing. Generally speaking, art history, like the Old Testament, has the quality of representing the entire chronology of humanity. Without missing a single minute. “Abraham begat Isaac,” and so on throughout all generations and tribes - we can easily reach the Virgin Mary; in art history it’s exactly the same; you have to be careful not to miss anything. Jan Gossard, nicknamed Mabuse, studied with Gerard David, who studied with Hans Memling, the great artist from Bruges, and Hans Memling was a student of the incomparable Roger van der Weyden, and Roger with Robert Campin; this list of names is perhaps the most significant in the history of world art.

Suffice it to say that without Roger van der Weyden, who raised the artists of the Italian Renaissance by personal example, the Italian Quattrocento would have been different. All of the artists listed above are sometimes referred to as “early Netherlandish masters” - this is an inaccurate designation: no Netherlands existed at that time; the mentioned masters are citizens of the Duchy of Burgundy, a powerful state that united the lands of modern France (Burgundy), modern Netherlands and Belgium, as well as northern Germany (Friesland). The aesthetic views of these people, their style of writing, the figurative structure of their works do not at all relate to Dutch painting (speaking of Dutch painting, we involuntarily imagine the school of Rembrandt or Vermeer); but in this case the aesthetic principles are completely different, completely different from the later art of Holland.

The Duchy of Burgundy, which arose at the end of the 14th century, united the South and North of Europe, united the traditions of France and Holland in the most natural way - accordingly, the art of medieval Burgundy was the desired synthesis that Balzac’s character speaks of. It was a combination of generous color and dry form; a combination of an endless sunny perspective and a laconic, strong-willed characterization of the character. The heroes of Burgundian painting, as a rule, are people of the knightly class and their ladies; artists describe the life of the ceremonial court - and the court of Burgundy at that time surpassed the court of France in pomp and wealth. The basis for the emergence of the Duchy of Burgundy was a feat of chivalry: in the Battle of Poitiers, the son of the French King John II, 14-year-old Philip, did not leave his father in a moment of mortal danger. They fought on foot, surrounded by horsemen; The two of them were left alone - the older brothers and seneschals fled.

The teenager stood behind his father, shielding his father from the treacherous blow, and, looking around, warned: “Sovereign Father, danger is on the right! Sovereign Father, danger is on the left!” This great episode of history (captured, by the way, by Delacroix - see the painting “The Battle of Poitiers”) became the reason that Philip the Brave, the youngest of four sons, who could not have gotten the crown, was allocated a dukedom. Burgundy was given to apanage (that is, to free administration until Philip's dynasty was interrupted). This is how a territory separate from France was formed, and this is how a state arose that quickly became the most powerful in central Europe. By the time Philip's grandson, Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, became a rival of Louis XI of France and began arguing over who should own Burgundy, France, or vice versa, Burgundy's superiority had become apparent in many respects. The fact that the duchy owed its emergence to the feat of chivalry made the code of chivalry a state ideology. This is a very strange phenomenon for feudal Europe, and even more so for the absolutist Europe that was then emerging. The hierarchy of relations between the vassal nobility and the king (monarch - and barons, tsar - and boyars), which was the main plot of other European courts, was replaced in Burgundy by knightly etiquette. The expansion of territories due to successful marriages, freedom and wealth of craft guilds - all this distinguished Burgundy among those countries that seized lands at the cost of the abundant blood of vassals, whose rights were rendered insignificant in the conditions of the Hundred Years War.

Burgundy maneuvered in the Hundred Years' War, joining first one or the other warring side, and often took the side of the British; the same tactics - which allowed the duchy to grow and maintain independence - were adopted by the cities of the duchy itself, which demanded as many rights for themselves and their guilds as the cities of neighboring states had never dreamed of. The formal administrative center of the duchy was in Dijon, but the courtly court traveled, often changing capitals, creating a cultural center in Dijon, Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, and Antwerp. This does not mean that the intellectual center is constantly shifting - so, soon after the collapse of the Duchy of Burgundy, it was no longer Brussels, Antwerp or Bruges that became such a center of attraction for the arts, but Lyon became such, which for some time became a haven of humanistic knowledge. François Rabelais, Bonaventure Deperrier and others sought refuge in Lyon, humanists who fled from Paris grouped around the strange court of Margarine of Navarre. Different cities successively became new centers of gravity: the intellectual geography of Europe is saturated. But in this case we are talking about something else; The Duchy of Burgundy, which combined the traditions of Latin courtliness and Dutch pedantry, revealed the synthesis that Frenhofer was worried about; hence the spatial movements of the yard.

The sought-after unity of personalism and public morality, colorfulness and linearity was inherent in Burgundian culture simply by the fact of the emergence of this strange country; it was a very mobile culture. A special combination of courtly southern lightness, inherited from the French component of culture, and northern severity arose - this gave an amazing result in the fine arts.

The artist of the Duchy of Burgundy - he, of course, was an artist of the court, but there was no constant court; the structure of relations was more reminiscent of the relationships within the Italian city-states of that time than, for example, the Escorial of Madrid or the court of London. Van Eyck worked in Ghent, Menling in Bruges, van der Weyden spent his life traveling, changing cities; there is a definition given by the historian Huizinga: “Franco-Brussels culture” - among other things, this combination symbolizes a kind of flexibility in relations with the cultural pattern. The culture of such a symbiotic country naturally combined the incongruous and achieved what Balzac’s hero dreamed of.

We can say that in such art the quintessence of European consciousness was revealed. Burgundian painting is easy to distinguish from others. You find yourself in a hall with Burgundian masters, and your perception is heightened: this happens, for example, in unexpectedly bright light: you suddenly see objects clearly; this happens when reading a very clear philosophical text, when the author finds simple words to denote concepts. You enter a room with paintings by Robert Campin, Roger van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling - and you get the feeling that you are being told only the essential, sometimes unpleasant and prickly, but something that is absolutely necessary to know.

In Burgundian painting, the concept of “duty” is extremely strong, probably inherited from the code of chivalry. What an Italian, Dutch, or German artist might not notice (wrinkles, puffiness, curvature, etc.) a Burgundian will place in a prominent place. Sharp edges, prickly plastic, precise details - there is not a single line that was not thought out to the end. The theme of Saint Sebastian is loved for the penetration of pain: Memling painted the execution of the saint with the same cruelty as Goya depicted the “Execution of May 3rd”: the torturers shoot from bows at point-blank range. They shoot, choosing a place where to shoot the arrow. And such a penetrating and corrosive attitude towards the subject is the main characteristic of Burgundian art. The characters' gazes are intent and extended, stretching through the picture to the subject of study; the gestures are swift and grasping, the blades of the swords are narrow and sharpened. High cheekbones, aquiline noses, long prehensile fingers. From prickly views - attention to detail; Burgundian painting is picky about shades of thought and nuances of mood. It’s not enough for them to say in general; for these painters, they have to tell everything very precisely.

In such an atmosphere, a pictorial language is born, which has become the quintessence of the European worldview - it was Burgundy that invented oil painting. Only this technique can convey the nuances of feelings. The point is not in detailed drawing: a small detail can be painted with tempera, but the vibration of mood, the transition of emotion can only be depicted with oil paints. Oil painting gives what a complex phrase with adverbial phrases gives in literature: you can add, strengthen, clarify what is said.

A complex letter appeared, in several layers; speech was made extremely difficult; over bright underpainting they began to paint with glazes (i.e., transparent layers). So in the fifteenth century in Burgundy, based on the synthesis of Northern and Southern Europe, a sophisticated language of art arose, oil painting, without which it is impossible to imagine a sophisticated European consciousness. The van Eyck brothers invented the oil painting technique - they began to dilute the pigment with linseed oil. Previously, the paint was opaque and opaque; the color could be bright, but was never complex; after Van Eyck, European affirmation ceased to be declarative and became thoughtful and multivariate. The technique of oil painting personifies university and cathedral Europe; in its complexity, oil painting is similar to the scientific debate of the scholastics. Just as universities learned the order of discussing a problem, so the artist’s statement acquired internal logic and mandatory development: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Painting with oil paints assumed a sequence: definition of the topic, premise, main thesis, development, counter-argumentation, generalization, conclusion.

This became possible only when a transparent paint substance appeared. Oil painting was borrowed from Burgundy and transported to Italy by the Sicilian master Antonello de Messina, who spent several years in Burgundy and then worked in Venice. The technique of oil painting was adopted by the masters of the Italian Quattrocento; oil painting supplanted fresco and tempera and changed Venetian and Florentine painting. Without the technique of oil painting there would have been no complex and meaningful Leonardo; only oil made his sfumato possible.

All the complexity of European painting - and European fine art is valuable precisely because of the complexity of expression - is possible only thanks to the technique of the Van Eyck brothers. Neither Rembrandt's twilight nor Caravaggio's tenebroso would have been possible in a different technique - just as the free style of Erasmus would have been impossible without the rules of university discussion (by the way, Erasmus of Rotterdam worked on the territory of the Duchy of Burgundy). It is appropriate to note here that the first thing that modern glamorous fine art abandoned was oil painting: complexity and ambiguity have become a burden for fashion. In those years, oil painting symbolized the rise of Europe and the acquisition of its own language.

Decisive for the aesthetics of the Renaissance was the stay of Roger van der Weyden at the Ferrara court in Northern Italy. Duke Lionello de Este, the ruler of Ferrara, gathered the greatest masters of the century - Roger van der Weyden was called from Burgundy. He was older than his colleagues Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini and Cosimo Turo, who worked there; Van der Weyden's influence on the Italians was devastating - he instilled a special intonation into the Italian Renaissance. This is a firm, slightly dry, reserved manner that avoids unnecessarily loud phrases; This is the calm speech of a strong man who does not need to raise his voice - but builds up the tension with inexorable consistency. The manner of Roger van der Weyden is what Van Gogh tried to convey in his characterization of the early masters when he wrote: “It’s amazing how you can remain cool while experiencing such passion and tension of all your strength.”

Select Italian masters learned this from Roger. The clenched passion of Andrea Mantegna, the suppressed hysteria of Cosimo Turo, the dry pathos of Bellini - they learned this from the chivalrous van der Weyden; and these are the properties of the knightly Burgundian culture. The combination of exquisite (complex, sophisticated knowledge) and hysterical experience is a very strange combination. Usually the earnestness of religious art presupposes directness of expression, laconicism of writing; the icon of the Savior, the Ardent Eye, shows us the face of the Savior, who looks directly and fiercely, the Madonna Misericordia (Slavic equivalent: Our Lady of Tenderness) covers the suffering with the heavenly oriflamme (Russian sound: the intercession of the Virgin Mary) humbly and quietly. But the Burgundian saints and martyrs of Mantegna experience faith as a personal feat, surrendering to faith with a passion that borders on ecstasy. This is not mannerism, not posing, this is just a knightly ritual that has become sacred; a combination of heavenly love and earthly love, which is natural for knightly ethics - (see Pushkin: “He tied a rosary around his neck instead of a scarf”).

Burgundian plastic art does not contrast these two principles Aphrodita Urania - Aphrodita Pandemos, but finds unity purely natural. The cult of the Beautiful Lady also embodies religious ecstasy; lady of the heart - represents the Mother of God; courtly love is secular ritual and prayer, all together. This is extremely important for the aesthetics of Burgundy, the knightly culture of the Middle Ages, which stepped towards humanism; we are accustomed to drawing the path of European humanism from Antiquity to the Italian Renaissance and from there, through Protestantism, to the Enlightenment; but the Duchy of Burgundy exists in parallel with Medici Florence - the history of Burgundy is just as wonderful and just as short; this bright flash - like the Venetian Republic, like Florence Medici - is a kind of cultural experiment.

Burgundian art was gothic and sensual at the same time, religious and at the same time courtly. Gothic denies the natural principle, Gothic strives upward, pierces the sky with cathedral spiers, Gothic heroes are made of veins and duty, flesh and joy do not exist. And the Burgundian heroes are special - their passion is both earthly and ecstatic. If we convey the essence of the Burgundian manner in one sentence, we must say this: this is the experience of the religious principle as a personal sensory experience, this is secular religiosity, that is, what is characteristic of the code of chivalry. Passion for the Mother of God as the Lady of the Heart - it was this code of chivalry that formed the basis of the aesthetic canons of the Burgundian artistic language.

Looking at the paintings of the Burgundian masters, it seems that during these years a special breed of people was bred in the center of Europe - however, we are not surprised at the special plasticity of the Venetians in Tintoretto’s paintings, the rounded lines of the figures and the viscous color scheme of the air; so why not see in the paintings of Burgundian artists their extraordinary cultural hybrid in every gesture, in the plasticity of the characters. This is how ascetic faces arose, typical of the paintings of Dirk Bouts or Hans Memling - somewhat elongated faces, with deeply sunken, earnest eyes; long necks, Elgreek proportions of elongated bodies.

What has been said in no way means idealization; the Burgundians had much less of it than their Italian colleagues; When drawing their patrons, Robert Campin and Roger van der Weyden gave them credit in all respects. The chivalry of the Burgundian court (the main order of knightly valor - the Order of the Golden Fleece - was established here in 1430), the independent position of the duchy - was supported by intrigue; the policy of maneuvering does not promote moral behavior.

Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the British to be martyred. Van der Weyden left to his descendants a portrait of Duke Philip the Good, who founded the Order of the Golden Fleece and betrayed the Maid of Orleans - before us is a neat man, pale from moral insignificance, thinking to himself that he is a demiurge. Van der Weyden, anticipating Francisco Goya or George Grosz, wrote mercilessly and caustically. But the essence of his art remained the same, whether he painted a saint or a high-ranking scoundrel. The fusion of the sensual and the southern and northern cultural principles, strange for us today, was, in essence, nothing more than that very “European idea” for the sake of which Europe united every time. When the Duchy of Burgundy collapsed and the national arts were formed, which we know today as Dutch and Flemish, they could no longer demonstrate this synthesis. After the death of Charles the Bold, the Netherlands went to Spain, Louis XI of France returned the Burgundian lands to the French crown. Flemish and Dutch art, which arose from the ruins of Burgundy, in principle rejected the Burgundian aesthetics. Butcher shops, fish rows, fat beauties and bold paintings of the Flemish masters are the direct opposite of Hans Memling, Dirk Bouts and Roger van der Weyden.

It is amazing that the same grapevine grows in the same place, but the wine is completely different. Balzac's hero Frenhofer speaks extremely unflatteringly about the paintings of the Flemish Rubens: “...the canvases of that impudent Rubens with mountains of Flemish meat, sprinkled with blush, streams of red hair and flashy colors.” Among other things, this phrase is curious because Balzac in it differentiates his aesthetics from the aesthetics of Rubens; although it is customary to compare them. It has become commonplace to liken Balzac's exuberant, generous writing to Rubens' exuberant painting test; Balzac, however, thought differently - for him Rubens was too carnal and material - Balzac wrote thought; generous, juicy, bright - but thought, not flesh. And in this he is a student of the Burgundian school - a student of van der Weyden, but not of Rubens.

Culture, however, has the ability to preserve its gene pool for a long time - thus, the phenomenology of the spirit of Burgundy survived within the Dutch and Flemish cultures; the phenomenon of the work of Hieronymus Bosch, born at the end of the Duchy of Burgundy, shows us the same striking combination of aesthetics of the North and South; but it is even more shocking when you think about the heritage of a Flemish by birth, but a Burgundian by spirit - Bruegel.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, an artist of the North, but with such a sonorous southern palette, the heir of the Burgundian Bosch and in terms of composition the direct heir of the Lehmbruck brothers (Burgundian miniaturists) and the undoubted successor of the plastic arts of Hans Memling - Pieter Bruegel represents a striking example of how a cultural paradigm, once revealed , appears again and again. And the phenomenon of the brilliant Vincent Van Gogh, who re-synthesized the South and the North, should be considered a completely incredible return of the idea of Burgundian culture. Burgundian culture awoke in him, in a Dutchman who moved to the south of France, organically combining the strict severity of the Netherlands and the blue air of a southern perspective. It seems incredible that the painter, who began his work with dark colors and rigid generalized forms, moved on to a sparkling palette and swirling strokes; This transition is explained by the influence of impressionism (that is, a trend that was fashionable in those years).

But the fact of the matter is that Van Gogh became interested in impressionism for a short time; fashion touched him tangentially; he abandoned both the techniques of pointillism and the fractional brushstroke of impressionism - almost instantly: this technique occupied him exactly for the duration of his stay in Paris. The Arles period is something else; colors unprecedented for pastel impressionism, expressive forms incredible for impressionism. Moreover - and this is important - the Dutch period seems to have been latently resurrected: in the latest canvases (they are sometimes called the “return of the Northern style”) the style of the Dutch period is resurrected - but inextricably with the southern dynamics and flavor. This fusion is nothing more than the “gene of Burgundy” - Van Gogh resurrected in his work that organic fusion of the North and South of Europe, which gave the Duchy of Burgundy in the 15th century.

Yes, the Duchy of Burgundy no longer exists, united Europe, as usual, is ending another project - another fiasco, but the cultural genetic memory lives on. At the end of Balzac’s “The Unknown Masterpiece” there is a disappointing diagnosis of the state of modern Europe; both in relation to the avant-garde, and in relation to a possible synthesis of the arts, and, in fact, European unity - there are no prospects in sight.

It turns out that the efforts of synthesis are fruitless. The novella ends with admirers of the brilliant Frenhofer receiving an invitation to the genius’s workshop - finally they will be able to see the masterpiece that the master has been painting for many years and hides from view. A great painter who discovered the secret of the synthesis of light and color, space and object, line and paint (and we will substitute here: North and South, freedom and order, etc.) - he has been painting a beautiful woman, a symbol of harmony, for several years. Visitors are waiting to see the beauty itself. Now they are already in the studio, the artist tears the curtain off the painting, and the audience sees nothing - only spots, only an absurd jumble of colors, meaningless combinations, chaotic abstraction. It seems that there is a beauty hidden under this colorful mess, but the artist, in the course of his fanatical and senseless work, simply covered her up and destroyed her anthropomorphic features.

The artist worked earnestly - but did the exact opposite of his plan. Isn’t this how European anthropomorphic art destroyed itself? These pages can be considered a prediction of the future: this is exactly what happened with Western art, which sought synthesis and, as a result of the search, destroyed the human image, the very idea for which the work was carried out. Anthropomorphic art was swept away by abstraction in the twentieth century - humanism was forced out of creativity during the synthesis of arts, the avant-garde did not spare tradition, and since tradition was associated with the phenomenon of man, therefore they did not spare the image of man.

Balzac foresaw this process of dehumanization of art, dehumanization.

The systematic decomposition of the general language into the functions of speech gradually led to the fact that a separate linguistic exercise became more important than the content of speech. It naturally happened that the integral human image in Europe of recent centuries is embodied only by dictatorships - in colossal statues and propaganda posters; and the creativity of democracies cannot create the image of a person. We find an expression of freedom in the jokes of Oberiuts, in fragmentary remarks of conceptualism, in the deliberate understatement of abstraction - but, have mercy, this is spiritual - the desire to create an integral world, that’s why it’s important, that’s why it’s interesting! But there is no whole world.

One can also consider that Balzac's novella describes the futility of European political unification, the constant failure of the Ghibelline party; Europe, forever doomed to attempts at unification and always falling apart, like the ancient Sisyphus, makes an endless climb up the mountain and always goes down, defeated. In this case, the mishmash of colors on the canvas is a portrait of the beauty of Europe, who was defeated in her attempts to connect the incompatible, who lost herself. Europe exists, but at the same time, it is not there - it is constantly hiding. It can also be assumed that Balzac created the image of eidos - that is, that ideal synthesis of essences that Plato talks about; eidos is the unity of meaning.

We know what God looked like - Michelangelo painted his portrait; we know what Christ looked like - there are thousands of images; but we don’t know what eidos looks like - so Balzac offers a possible option. And the fact that the eidos is not clearly visible to us, Plato, in fact, warned about this: we are given only a shadow on the wall of a cave - a shadow from great achievements that take place outside of our consciousness and existence.

What has been said should not, however, sound overly pessimistic. Europe is a fragile organism, and at the same time an incredibly resilient organism; she has died many times already, and her art has already fallen into decline more than once. At the end of “The Unknown Masterpiece,” the insane Frenhofer suddenly realized that there was nothing on the canvas - “and I worked for ten years!” - dies, first burning all his paintings. But is burning paintings something out of the ordinary? You won't be surprised by burning paintings in Europe. Sandro Botticelli burned his paintings at the “bonfire of vanities” in Florence; paintings of “degenerate art” were burned in the squares of Munich and Berlin; In the fire of Florence, Michelangelo's fresco "The Battle of Cascina" was destroyed, and Leonardo's sculpture melted. Icons were torn out of their frames and burned by iconoclasts and revolutionaries; The figurative art has been abandoned so many times that it only gives hope to those who resurrect the image. Europe was devastated by the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, religious wars, civil wars of the twentieth century, which grew into world wars - Europe is no stranger to perishing and rising from the ashes, this is its usual occupation.

Europe's mortal disease is its permanent condition, it is its unique health. Europe itself is that same failed synthesis of arts and crafts, philosophical concepts and political projects, which - like Frenhofer's painting - sometimes seems like an inarticulate absurdity, an absurdity, a semantic mess - but suddenly a diamond of thought sparkles in this brew, and Kant or Descartes is born. Be that as it may, human history probably does not know a better artist than Frenhofer - and just because we do not understand his plan, it does not follow that this plan is bad. Yes, on Frenhofer’s canvas, visitors saw a meaningless combination of spots; but even on Cezanne’s canvases they saw a meaningless combination of spots. They say that “a fool is not shown half the work”; it is quite possible that Frenhofer showed the audience just an unfinished canvas - reserve your judgment: some time will pass and the master will complete his masterpiece.

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Philosophical studies. “The Unknown Masterpiece” (1830) is dedicated to the relationship between the truth of life and the truth of art. Particularly important are the positions of the artists Porbus (Francois Porbus the Younger (1570-1620) - a Flemish artist who worked in Paris) and Frenhofer - a person fictitious by the author. The clash of their positions reveals Balzac's attitude to creativity. Frenhofer states: “The task of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. Otherwise, the sculptor would have done his job by making a plaster copy of the woman. We must grasp soul, meaning, movement and life.” Frenhofer himself sets an impossible goal that is contrary to true art: he wants to create a living woman on canvas with the help of paints. It even seems to him that she is smiling at him, that she - his Beautiful Noiseza - is breathing, her entire appearance, physical and spiritual, surpasses the appearance of a real person. However, this ideal and perfectly executed creature is seen only by Frenhofer himself, and his students, including Porbus, in the corner of the picture saw “the tip of a bare leg, standing out from the chaos of colors, tones, indefinite shades, forming a kind of shapeless nebula - the tip of a lovely leg, living leg." Infatuation, on the one hand, with form, and on the other, with the desire to put art above reality and replace reality with it, led the brilliant artist to disaster. Balzac himself, not accepting either subjectivity or copying in art, is convinced that it should express nature, capture its soul and meaning.

The author called the philosophical story “Shagreen Skin” (1831) “the formula of our present century, our life, our egoism,” he wrote that everything in it is “a myth and a symbol.” The French word le chagrin itself can be translated as “shagreen” (shagreen skin), but it has a homonym hardly unknown to Balzac: le chagrin - “sadness, grief.” And this is important: the fantastic, all-powerful shagreen skin, having given the hero relief from poverty, was in fact the cause of even greater grief. It destroyed the ability for creative daring, the desire to enjoy life, the feeling of compassion that unites a person with his own kind, and ultimately destroyed the spirituality of the one who possesses it. That is why Balzac forced the rich banker Taillefer, having committed murder, to be one of the first to greet Raphael de Valentin with the words: “You are ours. The words: “The French are equal before the law” are now for him the lie with which the charter begins. He will not obey the laws, but the laws will obey him.” These words truly contain the “formula” of life in France in the 19th century. Depicting the rebirth of Raphael de Valentin after receiving millions, Balzac, using the conventions acceptable in the philosophical genre, creates an almost fantastic picture of the existence of a man who has become a servant of his wealth, turned into an automaton. The combination of philosophical fiction and the depiction of reality in the forms of life itself constitutes the artistic specificity of the story. Connecting the life of his hero with fantastic shagreen skin, Balzac, for example, describes with medical precision the physical suffering of Raphael, who was sick with tuberculosis. In “Shagreen Skin,” Balzac presents a fantastic incident as the quintessence of the laws of his time and, with its help, discovers the main social engine of society - monetary interest, which destroys personality. This purpose is also served by the antithesis of two female images - Polina, who was the embodiment of the feeling of kindness, selfless love, and Theodora, in the image of this heroine the soullessness, narcissism, ambition, vanity and deadening boredom inherent in society are emphasized, created by the world of money, which everyone can give, except life and a loving human heart. One of the important figures in the story is the antiquarian, who reveals to Raphael the “secret of human life.” According to him, and they reflect Balzac’s judgments, which will be directly embodied in his novels, human life can be defined by the verbs “to desire”, “to be able” and “to know”. “To desire burns us,” he says, “and to be able destroys us, but to know gives our weak body the opportunity to forever remain in a calm state.” All young ambitious people, scientists and poets are in a state of “desire” - Rastignac, Chardon, Sechard, Valentin; The state of “being able” is achieved only by those who have a strong will and know how to adapt to a society where everything is bought and sold. Only Rastignac himself becomes a minister, a peer, and marries the heiress of millions. Chardon temporarily manages to achieve what he wants with the help of the escaped convict Vautrin; Raphael de Valentin receives the destructive, but omnipotent shagreen skin, which acts like Vautrin: it makes it possible to join the benefits of society, but for this it requires submission and life. Those in a position to “know” are those who, despising the suffering of others, managed to acquire millions - this is the antique dealer and moneylender Gobsek himself. They turned into servants of their treasures, into people like automata: the automatic repetition of their thoughts and actions is emphasized by the author. If, like the old Baron Nucingen, they suddenly find themselves obsessed with desires not related to the accumulation of money (the passion for the courtesan Esther - the novel “The Splendor and Poverty of Courtesans” (“Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes”), then they become figures both sinister and comic, because leave their social role.

In 1832, Balzac wrote a short story, “The Unknown Masterpiece,” which later, when developing the concept of “The Human Comedy,” he would combine with “Shagreen Skin” in one cycle, “Philosophical Etudes.” I want to draw your attention to this story, because in it Balzac expresses very interesting opinions about the principles of art in general and fine art in particular. The debate in this story is around the problem of reflecting reality in art. Its hero, a brilliant artist, old man Frenhofer, opposes blind imitation of nature. Frenhofer sees the principle of imitation in following “external features” - and he rejects it, contrasting it with the principle of “expression of the essence”: “Our goal is to capture the meaning, the essence of things and people.”

It is not difficult to see that, although the story formally takes place in the 17th century, it touches on problems that are very relevant to the state of art at the time when Balzac created his story, and, moreover, problems relating to the art of Balzac himself. Frenhofer attacks the principle of describing external features, little things, but we already know that for Balzac’s creative principle all these little things, precisely these seemingly random external features, were of fundamental importance. Frenhofer dismisses little things as accidents - for Balzac himself, just at this moment coming close to the gigantic plan of the “Human Comedy”, the category of chance seems to lose its meaning - for him every little thing is valuable precisely because it helps to deeper reveal the essence of the phenomenon. Having realized this, we will understand that the true hidden interlocutor and ideological opponent of Frenhofer in the story is Balzac himself. True, both of them - both the fictional hero and his real creator - the writer Balzac - ultimately strive for the same goal: when Frenhofer demands “to give the fullness of life, overflowing,” this is undoubtedly what Balzac himself says . But they have different views on the means of achieving and expressing this completeness.

Frenhofer's principle - to depict not random features, but the essence - would seem impossible to refute. This is the very essence of all true art, including realistic art. But the early realist Balzac insists on the artist's right to depict “details.” And therefore he forces his hero-opponent from this starting point to come to creative ruin. Let's see how this happens.

Frenhofer is a convinced preacher and defender of the intuitive principle of creativity; he is an apostle of an art that is fundamentally subjective and irrational, not recognizing the rights of reason. Frenhofer is, of course, a type of romantic, it was they who defended the reckless nature of art, it was they who saw “whole epics, magic castles” where “cold-minded philistines” were bored. And by the way, it was they who reproached Balzac for the mundane, for his attention to “external features, trifles, random manifestations of life.” It turns out that in this “philosophical study”, deliberately transferred to the 17th century, deliberately pitting a real historical figure - Poussin - against a fictitious person (which creates the effect of “timelessness” and “universality”), it turns out that behind this lies a completely relevant and personal aesthetic controversy!

Balzac is far from categorically and unconditionally rejecting the intuitive principle of art, defended by his antagonist in the story. However, trying to understand the logic of such a principle, where it ultimately leads, he discovers on this path not only the possibility of new victories for art, but also very serious dangers.

Explaining and developing more specifically his creative principles, Balzac's Frenhofer expresses views that are certainly unusual not only for the 17th century, but even for the first third of the 18th century. However, these views may already seem familiar to you and me. Here Frenhofer speaks about the fine arts, about painting and sculpture: “The human body is not limited by lines. In this sense, sculptures can come closer to the truth than we artists can. Strictly speaking, drawing does not exist... A line is only a means through which a person perceives the reflection of light on an object, but lines do not exist in nature, in which everything has volume; "to draw means to sculpt, that is, to separate an object from the environment in which it is located."

This is the same principle that at the end of the 19th century. Rodin was guided in his work when he set himself the goal of involving the surrounding light atmosphere in his sculptural images; for Rodin, it is “the reflection of light on an object” that is one of the very essential components of the internal form of an object; Rodin, in other words, took into account not only his own plasticity of the sculptural image, but also its interaction with the light environment. Balzac here clearly anticipates much later forms of fine art. It is no coincidence, apparently, that the figure of Balzac interested Rodin so much, and he erected a wonderful monument to him, on the base of which there is the inscription: “To Balzac - from Rodin.”

But that is not all. Frenhofer continues to develop his thoughts further. What follows is a fantastically accurate description of the principles and techniques of those French artists of the last third of the 19th century who became known as the Impressionists. This description is so accurate that there is a temptation to assume that Monet, Renoir, Pizarro, and Signac simply “came out of Balzac.” But this is already a matter for art history. You and I can only note that here too Balzac reveals a brilliant insight; in any case, it is not surprising that the technique of pictorial impressionism first took shape not just anywhere, but in France, if it was already described by French writers in 1832.

However, that's not all. So far these were all theoretical arguments of Frenhofer, and one could only assume that, following them, the artist could create such wonderful sculptures and canvases, which later turned out to be Rodin’s sculptures and Impressionist paintings.

But the plot of Balzac's story is structured in such a way that we do not see our own creations of such a brilliant artist until the very end of the story, although the writer increasingly sharpens our interest in them. We can say that this plot is built on mystery - we are told that Frenhofer is a brilliant artist who can even afford to dismissively call Rubens “a mountain of Flemish meat” - this man, for whom there are almost no authorities in the past and present, works For many years now he has been working on his main painting, the masterpiece of his life, a portrait of a beautiful woman, in which everything earthly and heavenly beauty will be embodied, which will become the pinnacle, the limit of pictorial art. Naturally, we, along with Poussin, are increasingly looking forward to getting to know this masterpiece.

And finally, we, along with Poussin and his friend the artist Porbus, are allowed into the holy of holies. The blanket is thrown back in front of us. The following scene follows: Poussin is at a loss, he has not yet realized what is happening. He says: “I see only a disorderly heap of colors, intersected by a whole network of strange lines - it forms a continuous painted surface.”

Porbus is the first to recover. “There is a woman hidden under all this,” exclaimed Porbus, pointing to Poussin the layers of paint that the old man was putting one on top of the other, thinking that he was improving his work. And so, when, having gotten rid of his obsession, Poussin dares to tell Frenhofer to his face the cruel but irrefutable truth: “There is nothing here!” - Frenhofer frantically shouts: “You don’t see anything, you dork, you ignoramus, you idiot, you nonentity! Why did you come here?” - And “crying” he continues: “I see her!” he shouted. “She is divinely beautiful!”

How does this scene resemble the debates of the 20th century, debates in front of paintings “with a disorderly heap of colors, with a network of strange lines, with a continuous painted surface”? There, too, people often said that they didn’t see anything, while others told them that they were ignoramuses and fools. And there, too, the artists irrefutably stood their ground - but I see her, and she is beautiful!

Balzac turned out to be a seer here too; he also anticipated the tragedy of abstract, non-objective art (in that part, of course, where it was a true attempt at searching, and not charlatanism - where the artist was really convinced that he saw beauty in it).

And now we must realize that these Balzacian insights are not only not accidental, but are clearly connected with each other, and this connection is cause-and-effect: one is generated by the other, comes out of the other, and what is most striking is that the logic of Frenhofer’s principles appears before us in the plot of the story in the same sequence in which they were later repeated in the real history of art. Balzac, I repeat, caught some very significant trends in the logic of subjective art - he, as it were, charted the path from romanticism through impressionism to abstractionism. Balzac clearly saw the internal logic here in the fact that the principle of subjective self-expression underlying romantic art inevitably gravitates towards a purely formal principle. The Romantics themselves still strived to express nature, that is, not to one form. But departure from reality, from imitation of nature - if this principle is strictly and unswervingly followed - is always fraught, according to Balzac, with the danger of losing nature itself, that is, the content in art, and bringing to the fore a purely formal principle. And then the artist may one day find himself at such a point that, in pursuit of the most accurate form to express his subjective view of nature, his consciousness will completely submit only to the form, and where he himself sees a beautiful woman, all others will see only "a disorderly jumble of colors." And so Frenhofer dies, burning down his entire studio. And Porbus, looking at his unknown masterpiece, sums it up sadly: “Here before us is the limit of human art on earth.”

Half a century later, Emile Zola would capture exactly the same process in his novel “Creativity.” The main character of this novel is also an artist, and he too will exhaust and burn himself in a vain attempt to create the perfect portrait of a beautiful woman. He, too, will become more and more entangled in the networks of formal principle and will also reach the limit beyond which madness begins. But Zola will already rely on the real experience of art - the prototype of his hero will be Claude Monet, i.e. the most consistent and perfect representative of impressionism in painting. But Balzac anticipated such logic and model of artistic thinking long before Monet, Zola, and especially abstract art.

Of course, for Balzac Frenhofer was only a utopia, a fantasy, a game of the mind. There was, of course, nothing like this in the history of art before Balzac and during Balzac’s time. But how deeply it was necessary to understand the essence of art in general and the logic of romantic art in particular in order to draw almost visible pictures of what was to happen almost a century later! But recently, one American follower, in her book on the interaction of literature and music, showed that in his philosophical study “Gambara” Balzac similarly anticipated the music of Wagner with its dissonances and the atonal music of Schoenberg. And I repeat, Balzac sees this logic precisely in the fact that the romantics rely too one-sidedly only on the intuitive, irrational side of art, fundamentally neglecting both reason and real life. Then, sooner or later, they are in danger of becoming entangled in the networks of a purely formal search, and this struggle will be fruitless and will lead art to a dead end, to nothing.

Porbus says about Frenhofer: “He indulged in long and deep thoughts about colors, about the perfect fidelity of lines, but he searched so much that he finally began to doubt the very purpose of his search.” This is a very accurate and capacious formula! Balzac here warns against the danger of formal self-exhaustion that threatens subjective art.

Reason and feeling are secondary, they should not argue with the brush, says Balzac, they should not precede the work of the brush, they should not, so to speak, deliberately set it up for anything, that is, confuse it. The only thing that matters to you is the object you are observing and the brush you are using. Reflection should not precede the act of creativity, it can, at best, accompany it (if you think, then only with a brush in your hand). It is, of course, possible, from the point of view of the psychology of art, to find serious objections to such a principle as the other extreme. But it is important for us now to note that this is, of course, although emphatically, a polemically pointed program of realistic, objective art, relying only on observation and work.