Petersburg stories portrait summary. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

The talented but poor artist Chartkov buys a portrait of an old man with his last coin, which attracted his attention in a dusty usurer's shop. At night, he sees either a dream or a nightmare, where the old man in the portrait counts a lot of money. The next morning, the artist finds a bundle of money at the portrait.

He immediately paid off all his debts, rented a luxurious apartment, bought himself new clothes and began to take orders for portraits. Now he worked only for the sake of money, and all his acquaintances began to note that his talent was gone.

And Chartkov himself hated his former friends for their success in painting and bought up their paintings in order to destroy them.

After the death of the artist, the portrait disappeared for a while, and then appeared at an auction, where its price increased greatly. But one young man told not only the story of this painting, but also the story of his father, who also suffered from this portrait.

When those present at the auction decided that the painting must be destroyed, they discovered that the portrait was gone.

Conclusion (my opinion)

A real talent does not create for material wealth, but because he wants to show people his vision of the world. When Chartkov began to write for money, he lost this gift.

The portrait is one of the most mysterious and enigmatic stories, considered by many to be classic "horror literature".

The story begins with a description of the life of Chartkov - a poor artist who has nothing to pay for renting an apartment. Despite this situation, he uses the last money to buy a portrait of a certain person in Asian clothes in a small shop.

The portrait seems terrible to him, his eyes, which seem to be alive, are especially terrible. Soon, the artist begins to have nightmares in which this old man appears. In one of these dreams, an old man came out of the frame, holding a bag of money in his hands; Chartkov manages to grab a small bundle from there.

In the morning, he discovers that the bundle of money really lies near the painting. He was able to pay off the owner of the apartment, then moved to a rich house and became a successful artist. However, his talent began to fade. When he realized this, seeing a picture of a good artist at an exhibition, he locked himself in his room and tried to create something similar, but without success.

Then he began to buy up works of art and burn them. Gradually he went mad until he died. The portrait of an Asian was soon put up for auction, where it created a stir. But suddenly someone appeared who said that he had some "special rights" to this picture. He explained what those rights were.

He was the son of the artist who once painted this portrait. And it depicts a usurer who lived not far from this artist. He was known for his unsociable and stingy character, as well as cunning - he lent money to those who wished at a small percentage, but then it turned out that the amount was significant.

Once he ordered a portrait of himself from the artist, and he gladly set to work, because he wanted to depict the “spirit of darkness” in the guise of a usurer. It turned out, however, that in the portrait, as if by themselves, the eyes appear - too realistic and terrible. The artist runs away in fear, never finishing the work.

The next day, the usurer suddenly dies, and the maid brings the portrait to the artist. He stays with him, but the artist begins to feel something is wrong. He was going to burn it, but a friend takes the picture for himself. Then, however, he passes it on to someone else. And all the owners who visited the picture, began to experience misfortune.

At the artist himself, almost all family members died at that time, except for him, the eldest son. The artist went to the monastery and repented for a long time, and ordered his son to find the painting and destroy it. And now the son, apparently, has found a portrait. But when he finishes his story and everyone turns to where the portrait hung, it turned out that he had disappeared somewhere.

Petersburg stories

"Portrait" - part of the cycle "". It included works, some of which were also based on fantasy, horror and the absurd. Here are some of them:

• "Nose";
• "Diary of a Madman";
• "Nevsky Avenue";
• "Stroller".

In all works of the cycle, the problem of the “little man” is also raised. It makes some sense. The “little” heroes of Petersburg Tales find themselves in unusual and absurd situations, and it turns out that their life in itself is a complete absurdity. The similarity of the images of the main characters is also noticeable, including the construction of surnames - they often carry a certain “mystical” meaning. Chartkov, apparently, is connected with the "devils", and Poprishchin from "Notes of a Madman" imagined that he had a special "field" in the world, that is, a higher mission.

Many carriages, droshky and carriages stood in front of the entrance of the house, in which the auction sale of the things of one of those rich art lovers who sweetly dozed off all their lives, immersed in marshmallows and cupids, who innocently passed for patrons of the arts and innocently spent for this the millions accumulated by them solid fathers, and often even their own previous works. As you know, there are no such patrons now, and our 19th century has long acquired the boring physiognomy of a banker who enjoys his millions only in the form of numbers put up on paper. The long hall was filled with the most motley crowd of visitors who swooped down like birds of prey on an untidy body. There was a whole flotilla of Russian merchants from Gostiny Dvor and even the market place, in blue German frock coats. Their appearance and facial expressions were somehow firmer, freer, and were not signified by that sugary helpfulness that is so visible in a Russian merchant when he is in his shop in front of a buyer. Here they did not at all repair, despite the fact that in the same hall there were many of those aristocrats, before whom they were ready in another place with their bows to sweep away the dust caused by their own boots. Here they were completely cheeky, touching books and pictures without ceremony, wanting to know the goodness of the goods, and boldly interrupting the price added by the connoisseur counts. There were many indispensable visitors to the auctions who decided to visit it every day instead of breakfast; aristocratic connoisseurs, who considered it their duty not to miss the opportunity to increase their collection and did not find another occupation from 12 to 1 hour; finally, those noble gentlemen, whose dresses and pockets are very thin, who come every day without any mercenary purpose, but only to see what will end up, who will give more, who will give less, who will kill whom and what will be left for whom. A lot of pictures were scattered completely to no avail; furniture was mixed with them, and books with the monograms of the former owner, who, perhaps, had no commendable curiosity to look into them. Chinese vases, marble tabletops, new and old furniture with curved lines, with vultures, sphinxes and lion's paws, gilded and ungilded, chandeliers, kenkets - everything was piled up, and not at all in the same order as in the shops. Everything was a kind of chaos of art. In general, the feeling we feel at the sight of the auction is terrible: everything in it responds with something similar to a funeral procession. The hall in which it is produced is always somehow gloomy; windows, cluttered with furniture and paintings, sparingly pour out light, silence spilled over faces, and the funeral voice of the auctioneer, tapping with a hammer and performing a funeral service for the poor, so strangely encountered here arts. All this seems to add to an even stranger unpleasantness of the impression. The auction seemed to be in full swing. A whole crowd of decent people, moving together, fussed about something vying with each other. The words "Ruble, ruble, ruble" were heard from all sides, did not give the auctioneer time to repeat the added price, which had already increased four times more than the announced one. The crowd around was bustling about the portrait, which could not but stop everyone who had any idea in painting. The artist's high brush was evident in him. The portrait, apparently, had already been restored and refurbished several times, and represented the swarthy features of some Asiatic in a wide dress, with an unusual, strange expression on his face; but most of all those who surrounded were struck by the unusual liveliness of the eyes. The more they peered into them, the more they seemed to rush inward to everyone. This oddity, this unusual focus of the artist, captured the attention of almost everyone. Many of those who have already competed for it have retreated, because the price has been unbelievably high. Only two well-known aristocrats remained, lovers of painting, who did not want to refuse such an acquisition for anything. They got excited and would probably fill the price to impossibility, if suddenly one of those who were looking at it right there did not say: Let me stop your argument for the time being. I, perhaps more than anyone else, have the right to this portrait. These words instantly drew everyone's attention to him. He was a slender man, about thirty-five, with long black curls. A pleasant face, filled with some kind of bright carelessness, showed a soul alien to all languishing worldly upheavals; in his outfit there were no pretensions to fashion: everything showed him an artist. It was, for sure, the artist B., personally known by many of those present. Strange as my words may seem to you, he continued, seeing the general attention directed at him, but if you dare to listen to a little story, perhaps you will see that I had the right to utter them. Everyone assures me that the portrait is the one I'm looking for. A very natural curiosity flared up in almost everyone's faces, and the auctioneer himself, gaping, stopped with a hammer raised in his hand, preparing to listen. At the beginning of the story, many involuntarily turned their eyes to the portrait, but then they all stared at one narrator, as his story became more entertaining. You know that part of the city, which is called Kolomna. So he began. Everything here is unlike other parts of St. Petersburg; it is neither a capital nor a province; you seem to hear, having crossed into the streets of Kolomna, how all sorts of young desires and impulses leave you. The future does not enter here, here everything is silence and resignation, everything that has settled from the metropolitan movement. Retired officials, widows, poor people who are familiar with the Senate and therefore have condemned themselves here for almost their entire lives move here to live; seasoned cooks who jostling all day in the markets, chatting nonsense with a peasant in a petty shop and taking five kopecks worth of coffee and four sugar every day, and, finally, all that category of people that can be called in one word: ashy, people who with their dress, face, hair, eyes, they have a kind of cloudy, ashy appearance, like a day when there is neither storm nor sun in the sky, but sometimes it’s just neither: fog is sown and takes away all sharpness from objects. Here you can include retired theater ushers, retired titular advisers, retired pets of Mars with a gouged eye and swollen lip. These people are completely impassive: they walk without turning their eyes to anything, they are silent, not thinking about anything. There is not much good in their room; sometimes just a damask of pure Russian vodka, which they monotonously suck all day without any strong rush in the head, excited by a strong reception, which they usually like to ask themselves Sundays a young German craftsman, this daring Meshchanskaya street, who alone owns the entire pavement when the time passed after twelve o'clock at night. Life in Kolomna is a fearful solitary one: rarely will a carriage appear, except perhaps the one in which the actors ride, which alone confuses the general silence with its thunder, ringing and rattling. It's all pedestrians; the cabman very often trudges without a rider, dragging hay for his bearded horse. You can find an apartment for five rubles a month, even with coffee in the morning. Widows receiving a pension are the most aristocratic families here; they behave well, often sweep their room, talk with friends about the high cost of beef and cabbage; they often have a young daughter, a silent, mute, sometimes pretty creature, an ugly little dog and a wall clock with a sadly tapping pendulum. Then come the actors whose salary does not allow them to leave Kolomna, the people are free, like all artists who live for pleasure. They, sitting in dressing gowns, mend a pistol, glue all sorts of gizmos useful for the house out of cardboard, play checkers and cards with a friend who has come, and so they spend the morning, doing almost the same thing in the evening, with the occasional addition of punch. After these aces and the aristocracy of Kolomna follows extraordinary fraction and trifle. It is as difficult to name them as it is to count the many insects that are born in old vinegar. There are old women here who are praying; old women who get drunk; old women who both pray and drink together; old women who make a living by incomprehensible means, like ants, carry old rags and linen with them from Kalinkin Bridge to the crowded market in order to sell it there for fifteen kopecks; in a word, often the most unfortunate remnant of humanity, for which no benevolent political economist could find means to improve its condition. For this reason I have brought them to show you how often this people is in need of seeking only sudden, temporary help, resorting to loans; and then a special kind of usurers settle among them, supplying small amounts on mortgages and at high interest. These small usurers are several times more insensitive than any big ones, because they arise in the midst of poverty and brightly displayed beggarly rags, which the rich usurer, who deals only with those who come in carriages, does not see. And that is why it is already too early Removes in their souls any feeling of humanity. Among such usurers there was one ... but it does not prevent you from saying that the incident about which I began to tell relates to the past century, namely to the reign of the late Empress Catherine II. You can understand for yourself that the very appearance of Kolomna and the life inside it had to change significantly. So, among the usurers there was one being in all respects extraordinary, who had settled for a long time in this part of the city. He walked around in a wide Asian outfit; the dark complexion of his face indicated his southern origin, but what kind of nation he was: an Indian, a Greek, a Persian, no one could say for sure about this. Tall, almost unusual growth, a swarthy, skinny, flushed face and some incomprehensibly terrible color of it, large eyes of unusual fire, overhanging thick eyebrows, distinguished him strongly and sharply from all the ashen inhabitants of the capital. His dwelling itself was not like other small wooden houses. It was a stone building, like those that the Genoese merchants had once set up to their heart's content, with irregular windows of unequal size, with iron shutters and bolts. This usurer differed from other usurers already in that he could provide any amount of money to everyone, from a poor old woman to a prodigal court noble. The most brilliant carriages often showed up in front of his house, from the windows of which the head of a luxurious secular lady sometimes looked. The rumor, as usual, spread that his iron chests were full without counting money, jewelry, diamonds and any pledges, but that, however, he did not at all have that self-interest, which is characteristic of other usurers. He gave money willingly, distributing, it seemed, very profitably the terms of payments; but by some strange arithmetic calculations he forced them to rise to exorbitant percentages. So, at least, the rumor said. But what is strangest of all, and what could not but strike many, was the strange fate of all those who received money from him: they all ended their lives in an unfortunate way. Whether it was just people's opinion, absurd superstitious rumors, or deliberately spread rumors remains unknown. But a few examples that happened in a short time before the eyes of everyone were vivid and striking. From among the then aristocracy, a young man of the best family soon drew attention to himself, having already distinguished himself in his young years in the state field, an ardent admirer of everything true, sublime, a zealot of everything that gave rise to art and the mind of a person, prophesying a patron of the arts. Soon he was worthily distinguished by the empress herself, who entrusted him with a significant position, completely in accordance with his own requirements, a place where he could do a lot for the sciences and in general for good. The young nobleman surrounded himself with artists, poets, scientists. He wanted to give everything a job, to encourage everything. He undertook many useful publications on his own account, gave many orders, announced consolation prizes, spent a lot of money on this, and finally got upset. But, full of generous movement, he did not want to lag behind his business, he looked everywhere to borrow and finally turned to a well-known usurer. Having made a significant loan from him, this man changed completely in a short time: he became a persecutor, a persecutor of a developing mind and talent. In all the writings he began to see the bad side, he interpreted every word crookedly. Then, unfortunately, the French Revolution happened. This suddenly served him as a tool for all possible vile things. He began to see in everything some kind of revolutionary direction, in everything he seemed to have hints. He became suspicious to such an extent that he finally began to suspect himself, began to compose terrible, unjust denunciations, and made a lot of unfortunate people. It goes without saying that such deeds could not fail to finally reach the throne. The magnanimous empress was horrified and, full of the nobility of the soul that adorns the crowned bearers, she uttered words that, although they could not pass on to us in all accuracy, their deep meaning was impressed in the hearts of many. The Empress noticed that it is not under monarchical rule that lofty, noble movements of the soul are oppressed, it is not there that creations of the mind, poetry and art are despised and persecuted; that, on the contrary, only monarchs were their patrons; that Shakespeares and Molières flourished under their generous protection, while Dante could not find a corner in his republican homeland; that true geniuses arise during the brilliance and power of sovereigns and states, and not during ugly political phenomena and republican terrorism, which have not yet given the world a single poet; that it is necessary to distinguish poets-artists, for they bring only peace and beautiful silence into the soul, and not excitement and grumbling; that scientists, poets and all producers of arts are pearls and diamonds in the imperial crown: with them the era of the great sovereign flaunts and receives even greater splendor. In a word, the empress, who uttered these words, was divinely beautiful at that moment. I remember that the old people could not talk about it without tears. Everyone took part in the case. To the credit of our national pride, it must be noted that in the Russian heart there always dwells a wonderful feeling to take the side of the oppressed. The grandee who deceived the power of attorney was punished approximately and removed from his place. But he read a much more terrible punishment on the faces of his compatriots. It was a resolute and universal contempt. It is impossible to tell how the vain soul suffered; pride, deceived ambition, shattered hopes - all joined together, and in fits of terrible madness and rage his life was interrupted. Another striking example also took place in the sight of everyone: of the beauties that our northern capital was not poor at that time, one won decisive superiority over all. It was some kind of wonderful fusion of our northern beauty with the beauty of noon, a diamond that rarely comes across in the world. My father confessed that he had never seen anything like it in all his life. Everything seemed to be united in her: wealth, intelligence and spiritual charm. There was a crowd of seekers, and among them the most remarkable of all was Prince R., the noblest, best of all young people, the most beautiful in face and chivalrous, generous impulses, the high ideal of novels and women, Grandison in every respect. Prince R. was passionately and madly in love; the same fiery love was his answer. But the party seemed uneven to the relatives. The family estates of the prince had not belonged to him for a long time, the surname was in disgrace, and everyone knew his bad state of affairs. Suddenly, the prince leaves the capital for a while, as if in order to improve his affairs, and after a short time is surrounded by pomp and incredible splendor. Brilliant balls and holidays make him known to the court. The beauty's father becomes supportive, and an interesting wedding takes place in the city. Where such a change and the unheard-of wealth of the groom came from, no one could surely explain this; but it was said on the side that he entered into some kind of conditions with an incomprehensible usurer and made at him a loan. Be that as it may, but the wedding occupied the whole city, and the bride and groom were the subject of general envy. Howling was known for their ardent, constant love, the long languor endured on both sides, the high merits of both. Fiery women outlined in advance the heavenly bliss that the young spouses would enjoy. But everything turned out differently. In one year there was a terrible change in her husband. The poison of suspicious jealousy, intolerance and inexhaustible whims poisoned the hitherto noble and beautiful character. He became a tyrant and tormentor of his wife and, which no one could have foreseen, resorted to the most inhuman deeds, even beatings. In one year, no one could recognize the woman who until recently shone and attracted crowds of obedient admirers. Finally, unable to endure any longer her hard fate, she was the first to talk about divorce. The husband went berserk at the mere thought of it. In the first movement of fury, he burst into her room with a knife and, no doubt, would have stabbed her right there if he had not been seized and restrained. In a fit of frenzy and despair, he turned the knife on himself and ended his life in terrible agony. In addition to these two examples, which took place in the eyes of the whole society, many were told that happened in the lower classes, which almost all had a terrible end. There an honest, sober man became a drunkard; there a merchant clerk robbed his master; there a cab driver, who had been driving honestly for several years, stabbed a rider for a penny. It is impossible that such incidents, sometimes told not without additions, did not induce a kind of involuntary horror on the modest inhabitants of Kolomna. No one doubted the presence of evil spirits in this man. It was said that he offered such conditions from which a hair stood on end and which the unfortunate man never then dared to transfer to another; that his money has a burning property, glows by itself, and bears some strange signs... in a word, there were a lot of all sorts of absurd rumors. And the remarkable thing is that all this Kolomna population, this whole world of poor old women, petty officials, petty artists and, in a word, all the small fry that we just named, agreed to endure and endure the last extreme rather than turn to a terrible usurer; they even found old women who died of hunger, who agreed to kill their bodies rather than destroy their souls. Meeting him on the street, involuntarily felt fear. The pedestrian cautiously backed away and looked back for a long time afterwards, following his exorbitant figure disappearing in the distance. tall figure. There was already so much extraordinary in one image that anyone would be forced to involuntarily ascribe to it a supernatural existence. These strong traits, embedded as deeply as they ever do in a human being; that hot bronzed complexion; this exorbitant thick eyebrows, unbearable, terrible eyes, even the widest folds of his Asiatic clothes - everything seemed to say that before the passions moving in this body, all the passions of other people were pale. Every time my father stopped motionless when he met him, and every time he could not help saying: “The devil, the perfect devil!” But I must quickly introduce you to my father, who, by the way, is the real subject of this story. My father was a remarkable man in many respects. He was an artist, of which there are few, one of those miracles that only Rus' alone spews from its unopened womb, a self-taught artist who himself found in his soul, without teachers and schools, rules and laws, carried away only by one thirst for improvement and walking, reasons, perhaps unknown to him, only one path indicated from the soul; one of those self-born miracles that contemporaries often honor with the insulting word "ignorant" and who do not cool off from blasphemy and their own failures, receive only new zeal and strength, and already far in their souls go away from those works for which they received the title of ignoramus. With a high inner instinct he sensed the presence of thought in every object; got it on its own true value the words "historical painting"; he comprehended why a simple head, a simple portrait of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Correggio can be called historical painting and why a huge picture of historical content will still be a tableau de genre, despite all the artist’s claims to historical painting. Both his inner feeling and his own conviction turned his brush towards Christian subjects, the highest and last step of the lofty. He had no ambition or irritability, so inseparable from the nature of many artists. He was a firm character, an honest, direct person, even rude, covered on the outside with a somewhat stale bark, not without some pride in his soul, speaking of people together and condescendingly and sharply. “Why look at them,” he used to say, “because I don’t work for them. I won't take my pictures into the living room, they'll put them in the church. Whoever understands me will thank me, who does not understand will still pray to God. A secular person cannot be blamed for not understanding painting; on the other hand, he understands cards, knows a lot about good wine, horses, why should a gentleman know more? Still, perhaps, as soon as he tries one and the other, and goes to be smart, then there will be no life from him! To each his own, let each do his own. For me, it’s better that person who says bluntly that he doesn’t know any sense than the one who poses as a hypocrite, says that he knows what he doesn’t know, and only spoils and spoils. He worked for a small wage, that is, for wages that he only needed to support his family and to provide him with the opportunity to work. Moreover, he never refused to help another and extend a helping hand to a poor artist; he believed in the simple, pious faith of his ancestors, and that is why, perhaps, on the faces depicted by him that high expression appeared by itself, which brilliant talents could not get to the bottom of. Finally, by the constancy of his work and the steadfastness of the path outlined for himself, he even began to gain respect from those who honored him as an ignorant and home-grown self-taught. He was constantly given orders in the church, and his work was not translated. One of the jobs occupied him greatly. I don’t remember what exactly the plot of it consisted of, I only know that it was necessary to place the spirit of darkness in the picture. For a long time he thought about what image to give him; he wanted to realize in his face all the heavy, oppressive man. With such reflections, the image of a mysterious usurer sometimes flashed through his head, and he thought involuntarily: "I wish I could write the devil from someone." Judge his astonishment when once, while working in his workshop, he heard a knock on the door, and immediately after that a terrible usurer came straight in to him. He could not help but feel some kind of internal trembling that ran involuntarily through his body. Are you an artist? he said without ceremony to my father. Artist, said the father in bewilderment, anticipating what would happen next. Good. Draw a portrait of me. I may die soon, I have no children; but I don't want to die completely, I want to live. Can you draw a portrait that is completely alive? My father thought: “What is better? He himself asks to be the devil in my picture.” I gave my word. They agreed on the time and price, and the next day, grabbing a palette and brushes, my father was already with him. High yard, dogs, iron doors and shutters, arcuate windows, chests covered with ancient carpets, and, finally, the extraordinary host himself, sitting motionless in front of him, all this made a strange impression on him. The windows, as if on purpose, were crowded and cluttered from below so that they gave i no from only one top. “Damn it, how well his face is now lit up!” he said to himself and began to write greedily, as if fearing that the happy illumination would somehow disappear. “What power!” he repeated to himself. If I even half depict him as he is now, he will kill all my saints and angels; they will turn pale before him. Which devilish power! it will simply jump out of my canvas if I am only a little true to nature. What extraordinary features! he repeated incessantly, intensifying his zeal, and he already saw for himself how certain features began to pass onto the canvas. But the more he approached them, the more he felt some kind of painful, disturbing feeling, incomprehensible to himself. However, in spite of this, he set himself to pursue with literal accuracy every imperceptible feature and expression. First of all, he took up the decoration of the eyes. There was so much power in those eyes that it seemed impossible even to think of rendering them exactly as they were in nature. However, by all means, he decided to find in them the last small feature and shade, to comprehend their secret ... But as soon as he began to enter and delve into them with a brush, such a strange disgust revived in his soul, such an incomprehensible burden that he had to give up the brush for some time and then take it up again. Finally, he could no longer endure it, he felt that those eyes pierced his soul and produced in it incomprehensible anxiety. On the next, on the third day, it was even stronger. He became afraid. He dropped the brush and flatly said that he could no longer write with it. One should have seen how the strange usurer changed at these words. He threw himself at his feet and begged him to finish the portrait, saying that his fate and existence in the world depended on this, that he had already touched his living features with his brush, that if he conveyed them correctly, his life supernatural power will remain in the portrait, that he will not die completely through this, that he must be present in the world. My father felt horror at such words: they seemed so strange and terrible to him that he threw down his brushes and palette and rushed headlong out of the room. The thought of that worried him all day and all night, and in the morning he received a portrait from the usurer, which was brought to him by some woman, the only creature who was in his service, who immediately announced that the owner did not want a portrait, did not give for it nothing and sends back. In the evening of the same day he learned that the usurer had died and that they were going to bury him according to the rites of his religion. All this seemed to him inexplicably strange. Meanwhile, from that time on, a perceptible change appeared in his character: he felt a restless, anxious state, for which he himself could not understand the reasons, and he soon performed such an act that no one could have expected from him. For some time now, the works of one of his students began to attract the attention of a small circle of connoisseurs and amateurs. My father always saw talent in him and showed him his special disposition for that. He suddenly felt envious of him. General participation and talk about it became unbearable to him. Finally, to the top of his annoyance, he learns that his student was offered to paint a picture for the newly rebuilt rich church. It blew him up. “No, I won't let the sucker triumph!” he said. It's too early, brother, he decided to put the old people in the mud! Still, thank God, I have the strength. Here we will see who will soon put someone in the mud. And a straightforward, honest-in-heart man used intrigues and intrigues, which until then he had always abhorred; finally achieved that a competition was announced for the picture and other artists could also enter with their works. After which he locked himself in his room and set about his brush with ardor. It seemed that he wanted to gather all his strength, all of himself here. And for sure, it came out one of his best works. No one doubted that he did not have the championship. The pictures were presented, and all the others appeared before her like night before day. Suddenly, one of the members present, if I am not mistaken, a spiritual person, made a remark that amazed everyone. “There is certainly a lot of talent in the artist's painting,” he said, “but there is no holiness in the faces; there is even, on the contrary, something demonic in the eyes, as if an impure feeling was leading the hand of the artist. Everyone looked and could not but be convinced of the truth of these words. My father rushed forward to his picture, as if in order to believe himself offensive remark, and saw with horror that he had given almost all the figures the eyes of a usurer. They looked so demonically crushingly that he himself shuddered involuntarily. The picture was rejected, and he had to hear, to his indescribable annoyance, that the primacy remained with his student. It was impossible to describe the fury with which he returned home. He almost killed my mother, dispersed the children, broke brushes and an easel, grabbed a portrait of a usurer from the wall, demanded a knife and ordered a fire to be lit in the fireplace, intending to cut it into pieces and burn it. This movement was caught by his friend, a painter, who, like him, was a merry fellow, always pleased with himself, not carried away by any distant desires, working cheerfully at everything that came across, and even more cheerfully taking to dinner and feasting. What are you doing, what are you going to burn? he said and went to the portrait. Have mercy, this is one of your best works. This is a moneylender who recently died; yes, this is the perfect thing. You just hit him not in the eyebrow, but in the very eyes. So eyes have never looked into life, as they look at you. But I'll see how they will look in the fire, said the father, making a movement to throw it into the fireplace. Stop, for God's sake! said the friend, holding him, give it to me, if it pricks your eyes to such an extent. The father was at first stubborn, finally agreed, and the merry fellow, extremely pleased with his acquisition, dragged the portrait with him. After his departure, my father suddenly felt calmer. It was as if a weight had been lifted from his soul along with the portrait. He himself was amazed at his malicious feeling, his envy, and the obvious change in his character. Having considered his deed, he was saddened in soul and, not without inner sorrow, said: No, it was God who punished me; my picture rightly suffered disgrace. She was plotted to destroy her brother. The demonic feeling of envy drove my brush, the demonic feeling should have been reflected in it. He immediately went to look for his former student, hugged him tightly, asked his forgiveness and tried as much as he could to make amends for his guilt before him. His works flowed again, as serenely as before; but thoughtfulness began to show more often on his face. He prayed more, was more often silent and did not express himself so sharply about people; the coarsest exterior of his character somehow softened. Soon one circumstance shocked him even more. He had not seen his comrade for a long time, who asked him for a portrait. I was about to go and visit him, when suddenly he himself unexpectedly entered his room. After a few words and questions from both sides, he said: Well, brother, it was not for nothing that you wanted to burn the portrait. Damn him, there is something strange in him ... I don’t believe in witches, but, your will: evil spirits sit in him ... How? said my father. And so that since I hung it in my room, I felt such anguish ... just as if I wanted to kill someone. In my life I did not know what insomnia was, and now I have experienced not only insomnia, but such dreams ... I myself can’t tell whether these are dreams or something else: it’s as if a brownie is strangling you, and the accursed old man keeps imagining. In a word, I cannot tell you my condition. This has never happened to me. I wandered like a madman all these days: I felt some kind of fear, an unpleasant expectation of something. I feel like I can't say anything fun to anyone and sincere word; just as if a spy was sitting next to me. And only since I gave the portrait to my nephew, who asked for it, did I feel like a stone had suddenly fallen from my shoulders: I suddenly felt cheerful, as you can see. Well, brother, you concocted the devil! During this story, my father listened to him with undistracted attention and finally asked: And now your nephew has a portrait? Where is the nephew! could not stand it, said the merry fellow, to know that the soul of the usurer himself moved into him: he jumps out of the frames, paces around the room; and what the nephew says is simply incomprehensible to the mind. I would have taken him for a madman if I had not partly experienced it myself. He sold it to some collector of paintings, and even he could not stand it and also sold it to someone. This story produced strong impression on my father. He fell into thought in earnest, fell into hypochondria, and finally became completely convinced that his brush had served as a diabolical tool, that part of the life of a usurer had indeed turned into a portrait somehow and was now disturbing people, inspiring demonic impulses, seducing the artist from the path, giving rise to terrible torments of envy, and so on and so forth. Three misfortunes that followed, three sudden death wife, daughter and young son he considered himself a heavenly punishment and decided to leave the light without fail. As soon as I was nine years old, he placed me in the Academy of Arts and, having paid off his debts, retired to a secluded monastery, where he soon took the monastic vows. There, with the severity of life, vigilant observance of all the monastic rules, he amazed all the brothers. The abbot of the monastery, having learned about the art of his brush, demanded that he write main image in church. But the humble brother flatly said that he was not worthy to take up the brush, that it was defiled, that by labor and great sacrifices he must first purify his soul in order to be worthy to begin such a work. They didn't want to force him. He himself increased for himself, as much as possible, the severity of monastic life. Finally, she, too, became insufficient for him and not quite strict. With the blessing of the abbot, he retired to the desert, to be completely alone. There he built a cell out of tree branches, ate only raw roots, dragged stones from place to place, stood from sunrise to sunset in the same place with his hands raised to heaven, continuously reading prayers. In a word, he seemed to seek out all possible degrees of patience and that incomprehensible self-sacrifice, examples of which can only be found in the lives of saints alone. Thus, for a long time, for several years, he exhausted his body, strengthening it at the same time with the life-giving power of prayer. Finally, one day he came to the monastery and said firmly to the rector: “Now I am ready. If God wills, I will do my work.” The item he took was the Nativity of Jesus. For a whole year he sat behind him, not leaving his cell, barely feeding himself harsh food, praying incessantly. After a year, the picture was ready. It was, indeed, a miracle of the brush. It is necessary to know that neither the brothers nor the rector had much knowledge in painting, but everyone was struck by the extraordinary holiness of the figures. The feeling of divine humility and meekness in the face of the Most Pure Mother, bending over the Infant, a deep mind in the eyes of the Divine Infant, as if already seeing something in the distance, the solemn silence of the kings struck by the divine miracle, bowed down at His feet, and, finally, holy, inexpressible silence embracing the whole picture, all this appeared in such a harmonious force and power of beauty that the impression was magical. All the brothers fell on their knees before the new image, and the tender rector said: “No, it is impossible for a person with the help of human art alone to produce such a picture: a holy, higher power led your brush, and the blessing of heaven rested on your labor.” At this time, I completed my studies at the Academy, received a gold medal and with it the joyful hope of traveling to Italy - the best dream of a twenty-year-old artist. I had only to say goodbye to my father, from whom I had parted for twelve years. I confess that even the very image of him has long since disappeared from my memory. I had already heard a little about the stern holiness of his life and imagined in advance to meet the callous appearance of a hermit, alien to everything in the world, except for his cell and prayer, exhausted, dried up from eternal fasting and vigil. But how amazed I was when a beautiful, almost divine old man appeared before me! And there were no traces of exhaustion on his face: it shone with the lordship of heavenly joy. A snow-white beard and thin, almost airy hair of the same silvery color scattered picturesquely over his chest and over the folds of his black cassock and fell to the very cord that girdled his wretched monastic clothes; but most of all it was amazing for me to hear from his lips such words and thoughts about art, which, I confess, I will keep in my soul for a long time and would sincerely wish that every one of my brothers did the same. I have been waiting for you, my son, he said as I approached his blessing. You will have a path along which your life will flow from now on. Your path is clear, do not deviate from it. You have a talent; talent is the most precious gift of God do not destroy it. Explore, study everything that you see, subdue everything with your brushes, but be able to find the inner thought in everything and try most of all to comprehend high secret creations. Blessed is the chosen one who owns it. He has no low object in nature. In the insignificant the artist-creator is as great as in the great; in the contemptible, he no longer has the contemptible, for the beautiful soul of the Creator shines invisibly through him, and the contemptible has already received a high expression, for it has flowed through the purgatory of his soul. A hint of a divine, heavenly paradise is contained for man in art, and for that alone it is already above all. And how many times the solemn peace is higher than any worldly excitement; how many times creation is higher than destruction; how many times an angel with pure innocence alone bright soul above all the innumerable forces and proud passions of Satan, so many times above everything that is in the world, a high creation of art. Offer everything to him and love him with all your passion. Not a passion breathing earthly lust, but a quiet heavenly passion; without it, a person has no power to rise from the earth and cannot give wonderful sounds of calm. For in order to calm and reconcile all, a high creation of art descends into the world. It cannot instill murmuring in the soul, but with resounding prayer strives eternally towards God. But there are moments, dark minutes... He stopped, and I noticed that his bright face suddenly darkened, as if some momentary cloud had come running over him. There is one incident in my life, he said. To this day, I cannot understand what was the strange image from which I wrote the image. It was definitely some kind of diabolical phenomenon. I know the light rejects the existence of the devil, and therefore I will not speak of him. But I will only say that I wrote it with disgust, I did not feel at that time any love for my work. I forcibly wanted to conquer myself and soullessly, drowning out everything, to be true to nature. It was not a creation of art, and therefore the feelings that embrace everyone when looking at it are already rebellious feelings, disturbing feelings, not the feelings of an artist, for an artist breathes peace even in anxiety. I was told that this portrait goes from hand to hand and dispels lingering impressions, engendering in the artist a feeling of envy, gloomy hatred for his brother, an evil thirst for persecution and oppression. May the Almighty protect you from these passions! There are none scarier. It is better to endure all the bitterness of possible persecution than to inflict one shadow of persecution on someone. Save the purity of your soul. Whoever has a talent in himself, he must be purer than all in soul. Much will be forgiven to another, but he will not be forgiven. A man who left the house in bright festive clothes has only to be splashed with one spot of dirt from under the wheel, and all the people have already surrounded him, pointing their fingers at him, and talking about his slovenliness, while the same people do not notice the multitude spots on other passers-by, dressed in everyday clothes. For stains are not seen on everyday clothes. He blessed me and hugged me. Never in my life have I been so exalted. Reverently, more than with the feeling of a son, I clung to his chest and kissed his scattered silver hair. A tear glistened in his eyes. Fulfill, my son, one of my requests, he told me already at the very parting. Maybe you will happen to see somewhere the portrait that I told you about. You suddenly recognize him by his unusual eyes and their unnatural expression, exterminate him by all means... You can judge for yourself whether I could not promise to fulfill such a request with an oath. In the course of fifteen whole years I did not happen to come across anything that would in any way resemble the description made by my father, when suddenly now, at an auction ... Here the artist, without finishing his speech, turned his eyes to the wall in order to look once more at the portrait. The same movement was made in an instant by the entire crowd of those who listened, looking for an unusual portrait with their eyes. But, to the greatest amazement, it was no longer on the wall. Indistinct chatter and noise ran through the whole crowd, and after that the words were clearly heard: "Stolen." Someone has already managed to pull it off, taking advantage of the attention of the listeners, carried away by the story. And for a long time all those present remained in perplexity, not knowing whether they really saw these extraordinary eyes or whether it was just a dream that appeared only for a moment to their eyes, bothered by a long examination of ancient paintings.

Part one

The young artist Chartkov enters an art shop in Schukin's yard. Among the mediocre popular prints, he discovers an old portrait. “It was an old man with a bronze-colored face, high cheekbones, stunted; the features of the face seemed to be seized in a moment of convulsive movement and did not respond to the northern force. The fiery noon was imprinted in them. He was draped in a wide Asian costume. No matter how damaged and dusty the portrait was, but when it was possible to clean the dust from it, he saw traces of the work of a high artist. The portrait, it seemed, was not finished, but the power of the brush was striking. The eyes were the most extraordinary of all... They just looked, looked even from the portrait itself, as if destroying its harmony with their strange liveliness.” Chartkov buys a portrait for two kopecks.

Chartkov, as real artist, lives in poverty, experiences financial difficulties, but resists the temptation to become a fashionable painter, preferring to develop his talent. Chartkov is always in debt for the apartment.

At home, Chartkov approaches the portrait more than once, trying to understand the secret it contains. “It was no longer a copy from nature, it was that strange liveliness that would light up the face of a dead man who had risen from the grave.” Chartkov is afraid to walk around the room, he falls asleep, in a dream he sees that the old man crawls out of his portrait, takes out bundles from the bag, and in bundles - money. Chartkov grabs one of the bundles with the inscription "1000 chervonets", doing his best to prevent the old man from noticing his movement. The artist wakes up several times, unable to return to his reality. In reality, it turns out that in his room there really is a bundle of money.

The owner of the apartment with a policeman knocks on the door, they demand the immediate payment of the debt. Chartkov pays everything in full, rents a new luxurious apartment, moves in and decides to paint fashionable portraits (in which there is not a drop of resemblance to the original, but there is only a custom-made mask). Chartkov dresses beautifully, orders a commendable article about himself in the newspaper, and soon receives the first customers - a rich lady and her daughter, whose portrait he must paint. The artist paints the girl’s face quite vividly, but the mother does not like either some yellowness of the skin, or some other “defect” that enlivens her daughter’s pretty face so much. Finally, the customers are satisfied; Chartkov receives money and flattering reviews. He has more and more clients, he draws what is required of him, embellishes faces, removes "flaws", gives them an unusual expression. Money flows like a river. Chartkov himself wonders how he could previously spend so much time working on one portrait. Now a day is enough for him to finish the picture. He is a fashionable painter; he is accepted everywhere, he is a welcome guest, he allows himself to judge other artists in society (including Raphael), they write about him in the newspapers, his savings are increasing.

The Academy of Arts invites Chartkov to express his opinion about the work of a young artist who trained in Italy. He is already preparing to casually criticize, slightly praise, casually express his own vision of the depicted subject, but the work of the young painter shocks him with his magnificent performance. Chartkov thinks about his ruined talent, about the fact that he exchanged his true purpose in life for gold. He goes home, tries to portray fallen angel, but the brush does not obey him, because the hand is already accustomed to depicting something hardened. The artist despairs, meets the eyes of the old man in the portrait. He decides that the portrait was the reason for the fact that his life has changed dramatically, and orders the portrait to be taken away.

Chartkov is overcome by envy of everyone talented painters. He buys all the best paintings, brings them home and cuts them into pieces. Attacks of rage and madness are repeated more and more often, the artist constantly sees the eyes of the old man from the portrait. Chartkov dies in terrible agony. After him, there is no fortune left: he spent everything on the beautiful canvases of other masters, which he destroyed.

Part two

The portrait is being sold at auction. For him they give a lot high price. Two rich art connoisseurs do not want to give each other an amazing picture. Suddenly, a man of about thirty-five interrupts the auction, explaining that he has been looking for this portrait for many years, and that the portrait should go to him. He tells the incredible story of painting.

Many years ago, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Kolomna, there lived a strange usurer, “an extraordinary being in all respects ... He walked in a wide Asian outfit; the dark complexion of his face indicated his southern origin, but what kind of nation he was: an Indian, a Greek, a Persian, no one could say for sure about this ... This usurer differed from other usurers already in that he could provide any amount of money to everyone, starting from a poor old woman to a wasteful court nobleman ... But what is strangest of all and what could not help but amaze many - it was a strange fate for all those who received money from him: they all ended their lives miserably.

A young man of aristocratic origin patronized people of art and went bankrupt. He applied for a loan to the Kolomna usurer and changed dramatically: he became a persecutor talented people, saw signs of an impending revolution everywhere, suspected everyone, composed unfair denunciations. Rumors about his behavior reach the Empress. He is punished and dismissed. Everyone despise him. He dies in a fit of madness and rage.

Prince R. is in love with the first beauty of St. Petersburg, she reciprocates with him. But the affairs of the prince are upset, and the girl's relatives do not accept his proposals.

The prince leaves the capital and through a short time returns a fabulously rich man (apparently, he turned to the Kolomna usurer). played magnificent wedding. But the prince becomes painfully jealous, intolerant, capricious, beats his young wife, torments her with his suspicions. The woman starts talking about divorce. The husband rushes at her with a knife, they try to keep him, he stabs himself.

father young man present at the auction, was a talented artist. On one of the canvases, he intended to depict the spirit of darkness and imagined him in no other way than in the form of a Kolomna usurer. Unexpectedly, the usurer himself comes to the artist's studio and asks to paint his portrait. Lighting is conducive to starting work, and the painter takes up the brush. The similarity is striking, but the better the details are written out, the more disgust the artist feels towards the work. He refuses to continue the portrait. The usurer throws himself on his knees in front of him, begging him to finish the picture, explaining that he will live on the portrait even after death. The artist drops his brushes and palette and runs away.

In the evening the usurer dies. The artist feels that unpleasant changes are taking place in him: he envies his talented student, deprives him of a profitable order, tries to present his picture instead of the student’s work, but the choice of the commission still falls on the student. The artist sees that on his own picture all the figures have the eyes of a usurer. He returns home in a rage, intending to burn the portrait. Fortunately, one of his friends comes to him at that moment and takes the portrait for himself. The artist immediately feels how peace of mind returns to him. He asks for forgiveness from his disciple.

Having once met his friend, he learns that the portrait brought misfortune to him, and he gave it to his nephew. He also sold the portrait from his hands, so the picture ended up in the art shop.

The artist thinks deeply about how much evil he brought to people with his work. When his son turns nine years old, he sends him to the Academy of Arts, and he himself takes the tonsure and voluntarily increases the severity of monastic life for himself. For many years he does not paint pictures, atoning for his sin. Finally, the artist dares to paint the Nativity of Jesus. This is a marvel of the brush; all the monks agree that the divine power led the hand of the artist. He meets with his son, blesses him and tells the story of the creation of the picture, warns against temptations like those that this portrait causes in people. “Save the purity of your soul. Whoever has a talent in himself, he must be purer than all in soul. Much will be forgiven to another, but he will not be forgiven. The artist bequeaths to his son to find the portrait and destroy it.

Everyone present at the auction turns to the portrait, but it is no longer on the wall. Perhaps someone managed to steal it.

Nowhere did so many people stop as in front of the picture shop in Shchukin's yard. This shop represented, for sure, the most diverse collection of curiosities: the pictures were mostly painted oil paints, covered with dark green lacquer, in dark yellow tinsel frames. Winter with white trees, a completely red evening, like the glow of a fire, a Flemish muzhik with a pipe and a broken arm, more like an Indian rooster in his cuffs than a man - these are their usual plots. To this we must add several engraved images: a portrait of Khozrev-Mirza in a ram's hat, portraits of some generals in triangular hats, with crooked noses. Moreover, the doors of such a shop are usually hung with bundles of works printed with popular prints on large sheets, which testify to the native talent of a Russian person. On one was Princess Miliktrisa Kirbityevna, on the other was the city of Jerusalem, through the houses and churches of which red paint swept without ceremony, seizing part of the land and two praying Russian peasants in mittens. There are usually few buyers of these works, but there are a lot of spectators. Some goofy lackey is probably already yawning in front of them, holding in his hand bowls with dinner from the tavern for his master, who, no doubt, will sip the soup not too hot. In front of him, no doubt, there is a soldier in an overcoat, this cavalier of the flea market, selling two penknives; an okhtenka merchant with a box filled with shoes. Everyone admires in his own way: the peasants usually poke their fingers; Cavaliers are treated seriously; footmen-boys and boy-workers laugh and tease each other with drawn caricatures; old lackeys in frieze overcoats look only to yawn somewhere; and the merchants, young Russian women, rush by instinct to hear what the people are babbling about and see what they are looking at. At this time, the young artist Chartkov, who was passing by, involuntarily stopped in front of the shop. The old greatcoat and the dainty dress showed in him that man who was devoted to his work with selflessness and did not have time to take care of his outfit, which always has a mysterious attraction for youth. He stopped in front of the shop and at first laughed inwardly at these ugly pictures. Finally, involuntary reflection took possession of him: he began to think about who would need these works. What the Russian people look at Yeruslanov Lazarevich, on ate And drank, on Thomas And Yerem, this did not seem surprising to him: the depicted objects were very accessible and understandable to the people; but where are the buyers of these motley, dirty oil paintings? who needs these Flemish peasants, these red and blue landscapes, which show some kind of claim to a somewhat higher level of art, but in which all its deep humiliation is expressed? It did not seem to be the work of a self-taught child at all. Otherwise, despite the insensible caricature of the whole, a sharp impulse would burst out in them. But here one could see simply stupidity, impotent, decrepit mediocrity, which arbitrarily entered the ranks of the arts, while its place was among the low crafts, mediocrity, which was true, however, to its vocation and introduced its craft into art itself. The same colours, the same manner, the same full, accustomed hand, which belonged rather to a crudely made automaton than to a man!... For a long time he stood in front of these dirty pictures, no longer thinking at all about them, and meanwhile the owner of the shop, a gray little man in a frieze overcoat, with a beard that had not been shaved since Sunday, he had been talking to him for a long time, haggling and agreeing on a price, not yet knowing what he liked and what he needed. I'll take a white one for these peasants and for the landscape. What a painting! Just an eye pierce; just received from the exchange; the polish hasn't dried yet. Or here is winter, take winter! Fifteen rubles! One frame is worth it. Wow, what a winter! Here the merchant gave a light click on the canvas, probably to show all the goodness of winter. Will you order them to be tied together and demolished after you? Where would you like to live? Hey kid, give me a rope. Wait, brother, not so soon, said the awakened artist, seeing that the agile merchant had begun to tie them together in earnest. He felt somewhat ashamed not to take anything, having stagnated so long in the shop, and he said: But wait, I’ll see if there’s anything here for me, and, bending down, began to get from the floor bulky, worn, dusty old paintings, piled up, which, apparently, did not enjoy any respect. There were old family portraits, whose descendants, perhaps, could not be found in the world, completely unknown images with torn canvas, frames devoid of gilding, in a word, all kinds of old rubbish. But the artist began to examine, thinking in secret: "Perhaps something will be found." He heard more than once stories about how sometimes paintings by great masters were found in the rubbish of popular sellers. The owner, seeing where he had climbed, left his fussiness and, having assumed his usual position and proper weight, again placed himself at the door, calling passers-by and pointing to the bench with one hand: “Here, father, here are the pictures! come in, come in; received from the stock exchange. He had already shouted to his heart's content, and for the most part futilely, had talked his fill with the patchwork salesman, who also stood opposite him at the door of his shop, and finally remembering that he had a buyer in his shop, turned the people's backs and went inside it. “What, father, have you chosen something?” But the artist had already stood motionless for some time in front of one portrait in large, once magnificent frames, but on which traces of gilding now shone a little. It was an old man with a bronzed face, high cheekbones, stunted; the features of the face seemed to be seized in a moment of convulsive movement and did not respond to the northern force. The fiery noon was imprinted in them. He was draped in a wide Asian costume. No matter how damaged and dusty the portrait, but when he managed to clean the dust from his face, he saw traces of the work of a high artist. The portrait, it seemed, was not finished; but the power of the brush was striking. The eyes were most extraordinary of all: it seemed that the artist used all the power of the brush and all his diligent care in them. They simply looked, looked even from the portrait itself, as if destroying its harmony with their strange liveliness. When he brought the portrait to the door, his eyes looked even stronger. They made almost the same impression among the people. The woman, who had stopped behind him, cried out: "Looks, looks," and stepped back. He felt some unpleasant, incomprehensible feeling to himself and put the portrait on the ground. Well, take a portrait! said the owner. And how much? said the artist. Yes, what is to be valued for it? three quarters, let's go! No. Well, what can you give? Two kopecks, said the artist, getting ready to go. What a price they wrapped up! Yes, you can’t buy one frame for two kopecks. It looks like you're going to buy tomorrow? Sir, lord, come back! at least think of a dime. Take it, take it, give me two kopecks. Right, for a start only, that's just the first buyer. Whereupon he made a gesture with his hand, as if to say: "So be it, the picture is gone!" Thus, Chartkov quite unexpectedly bought an old portrait and at the same time thought: “Why did I buy it? what is he to me? But there was nothing to be done. He took a two kopeck piece out of his pocket, gave it to the owner, took the portrait under his arm and dragged it with him. On the way he remembered that the two-kopeck piece he had given was his last. His thoughts were suddenly darkened; Annoyance and indifferent emptiness embraced him at that very moment. "Damn it! ugly in the world! he said with the feeling of a Russian who is doing badly. And almost mechanically he walked with quick steps, full of insensibility to everything. The red light of the evening dawn still remained in half the sky; even the houses facing the other side were slightly illuminated by its warm light; meanwhile, the already cold bluish radiance of the moon was growing stronger. Translucent light shadows fell in tails to the ground, cast by houses and the feet of pedestrians. The artist was already beginning to look, little by little, at the sky, illuminated by some kind of transparent, subtle, dubious light, and almost at the same time the words flew out of his mouth: “What a light tone!” and the words: "It's a shame, damn it!" And he, correcting the portrait, constantly moving out from under his armpits, quickened his pace. Tired and covered in sweat, he dragged himself to the Fifteenth Line on Vasilievsky Island. With difficulty and shortness of breath he climbed the stairs, doused with slops and adorned with the tracks of cats and dogs. There was no answer to his knock on the door: the man was not at home. He leaned against the window and settled down to wait patiently, until at last the footsteps of a guy in a blue shirt, his henchman, sitter, painter and floor sweeper, were heard behind him, soiling them right there with his boots. The guy was called Nikita and spent all the time outside the gate when the master was not at home. Nikita struggled for a long time to get the key into the lock hole, which was not at all noticeable because of the darkness. Finally the door was unlocked. Chartkov stepped into his antechamber, unbearably cold, as always happens with artists, which, however, they do not notice. Without giving Nikita his overcoat, he went with her into his studio, a square room, large but low, with freezing windows, lined with all sorts of artistic rubbish: pieces of plaster hands, frames covered with canvas, sketches begun and abandoned, drapery hung on chairs. He was very tired, threw off his overcoat, placed the absent-mindedly brought portrait between two small canvases and threw himself on a narrow sofa, which could not be said to be covered with leather, because the row of copper studs that once fastened it had long since remained by itself. , and the skin also remained on top by itself, so that Nikita thrust black stockings, shirts and all unwashed linen under it. After sitting and lying down as long as he could on this narrow sofa, he finally asked for a candle. There is no candle, Nikita said. How not? Why, it wasn't even yesterday, Nikita said. The artist remembered that indeed there had not yet been a candle yesterday, calmed down and fell silent. He allowed himself to be undressed and put on his heavily worn dressing gown. Yes, here's another, the owner was, said Nikita. Well, did you come for money? know, said the artist, waving his hand. Yes, he did not come alone, said Nikita. With whom? I don't know with whom ... some kind of quarterly. Why quarterly? I don't know why; says, then, that the rent has not been paid. Well, what will come of it? I don't know what will come out; he said: if he doesn’t want to, then let him, he says, move out of the apartment; both wanted to come tomorrow. Let them come, Chartkov said with sad indifference. And the inclement mood took possession of him completely. Young Chartkov was an artist with a talent that prophesied many things; in flashes and moments, his brush resounded with observation, consideration, a shrewd impulse to get closer to nature. “Look, brother,” his professor told him more than once, “you have a talent; it will be a sin if you destroy him. But you are impatient. One thing will lure you, one thing will make you fall in love with him - you are busy with him, and the rest is rubbish, you don’t care about the rest, you don’t even want to look at him. See that you do not become a fashionable painter. Even now your colors are starting to scream too brightly. Your drawing is not strict, and sometimes it is completely weak, the line is not visible; you are already chasing fashionable lighting, for what hits the first eye. Look, just get into the English genus. beware; the light is already beginning to pull you; I see sometimes a smart scarf around your neck, a hat with a gloss ... It is tempting, you can set off to write fashionable pictures, portraits for money. Why, this is where talent is ruined, not developed. Be patient. Think about all the work, drop panache let other money take them. Yours won't leave you." The professor was partly right. Sometimes, for sure, our artist wanted to show off, to flaunt, in a word, to show his youth in some places. But with all that, he could take power over himself. At times he could forget everything, taking up the brush, and tearing himself away from it in no other way than from a beautiful interrupted dream. His taste has developed noticeably. He did not yet understand the full depth of Raphael, but he was already carried away by the quick, broad brush of Guid, stopped in front of the portraits of Titian, admired the Flemings. The still darkened appearance, clothed with old pictures, did not completely disappear before him; but he already saw something in them, although inwardly he did not agree with the professor that the old masters should leave us so unattainably; it even seemed to him that the nineteenth century was in some respects considerably ahead of them, that the imitation of nature had somehow become brighter, more alive, closer now; in a word, he thought in this case as youth thinks, having already comprehended something and feeling it in a proud inner consciousness. Sometimes he felt annoyed when he saw how a visiting painter, a Frenchman or a German, sometimes not even a painter by vocation, by his habitual manner, briskness of brush and brightness of colors, made a general noise and instantly accumulated money capital for himself. This came to his mind not when, occupied with all his work, he forgot both drink, and food, and all the world, but when, at last, necessity strongly arose, when there was nothing to buy brushes and paints, when the intrusive owner came ten times a day to demand rent. Then the fate of a rich painter was enviably drawn in his hungry imagination; then even the thought ran through, which often runs through the Russian head: to drop everything and go on a spree out of grief in spite of everything. And now he was almost in that position. Yes! be patient, be patient! he said with annoyance. There is finally an end to patience. Be patient! and with what money will I have lunch tomorrow? After all, no one will lend. And if I sell all my paintings and drawings, they will give me two kopecks for everything. They are useful, of course, I feel it: each of them was undertaken for good reason, in each of them I learned something. But what's the use? etudes, attempts and everything will be etudes, attempts, and there will be no end to them. And who will buy, not knowing my name? and who needs drawings from antiques from the natural class, or my unfinished love of Psyche, or the perspective of my room, or a portrait of my Nikita, although he, really, better than portraits some fashionable painter? What, really? Why do I suffer and, like a student, delve into the alphabet, while I could shine no worse than others and be like them, with money. Having said this, the artist suddenly trembled and turned pale: someone's convulsively distorted face was looking at him, leaning out from behind a set canvas. Two terrible eyes stared directly at him, as if preparing to devour him; on his lips was written a threatening command to be silent. Frightened, he wanted to scream and call for Nikita, who had already managed to launch heroic snoring in his hall; but suddenly he stopped and laughed. The feeling of fear subsided in an instant. It was a portrait he bought, which he completely forgot about. The radiance of the moon, illuminating the room, fell on him too, and imparted to him a strange liveliness. He began to examine it and scrub it. He dipped a sponge into the water, passed it over it several times, washed off almost all the accumulated and accumulated dust and dirt from it, hung it in front of him on the wall and marveled at an even more extraordinary work: his whole face almost came to life, and his eyes looked at him in such a way that he at last he shuddered and, stepping back, said in an astonished voice: "Looking, looking with human eyes!" He suddenly came to mind a story that he had long heard from his professor, about one portrait of the famous Leonardo da Vinci, on which the great master worked for several years and still considered him unfinished and which, according to Vasari, was, however, honored by all for the most perfect and final work of art. The final thing about him was his eyes, which amazed his contemporaries; even the smallest, barely visible veins in them were not missed and attached to the canvas. But here, however, in this portrait now before him, there was something strange. It was no longer art: it even destroyed the harmony of the portrait itself. They were alive, they were human eyes! It seemed as if they had been cut from a living person and inserted here. Here there was no longer that lofty pleasure that embraces the soul when looking at the work of an artist, no matter how terrible the subject he takes; there was a kind of painful, agonizing feeling. "What is this? the artist involuntarily asked himself. After all, this, however, is nature, this is living nature; Why is this strange, unpleasant feeling? Or is a slavish, literal imitation of nature already a misdemeanor and seems like a bright, discordant cry? Or, if you take an object indifferently, insensibly, without sympathy with it, it will certainly appear only in its terrible reality, not illuminated by the light of some incomprehensible thought hidden in everything, it will appear in that reality that opens when, wanting to comprehend a beautiful person, arm yourself with an anatomical knife, cut through his insides and see a disgusting person? Why, then, is simple, low nature seen by one artist in some kind of light, and one does not feel any low impression; on the contrary, it seems as if you have enjoyed it, and after that everything flows and moves around you more calmly and evenly? And why does the same nature of another artist seem low, dirty, and by the way, he was also faithful to nature? But no, there is nothing illuminating in it. It’s the same as a view in nature: no matter how magnificent it is, everything is missing something if there is no sun in the sky. He again approached the portrait in order to examine those wonderful eyes, and noticed with horror that they were exactly looking at him. It was no longer a copy from nature, it was that strange liveliness that would light up the face of a dead man who had risen from the grave. Whether the light of the moon, carrying with it the delirium of a dream and dressing everything in other images, opposite to a positive day, or what else was the reason for this, only he suddenly, for no reason, became afraid to sit alone in a room. He quietly walked away from the portrait, turned away in the other direction and tried not to look at it, but meanwhile the eye involuntarily, of itself, looking askance, looked at him. At last he even became afraid to walk up and down the room; it seemed to him as if someone else would immediately walk behind him, and every time he looked back timidly. He was never cowardly; but his imagination and nerves were sensitive, and that evening he himself could not explain to himself his involuntary fear. He sat down in a corner, but even here it seemed to him that someone was about to glance over his shoulder at his face. Nikita's very snoring, coming from the hall, did not drive away his fear. At last, timidly, without raising his eyes, he got up from his seat, went to his room behind the screen, and got into bed. Through the cracks in the screens, he saw his room illuminated by the moon and saw a portrait hanging directly on the wall. The eyes stared still more terribly, even more significantly into him, and it seemed they did not want to look at anything else but at him. Full of a painful feeling, he decided to get out of bed, grabbed a sheet and, approaching the portrait, wrapped it all up. Having done this, he lay down in bed more calmly, began to think about poverty and the miserable fate of the artist, about thorny path coming to him in this world; meanwhile, his eyes involuntarily looked through the slit of the screen at the portrait wrapped in a sheet. The radiance of the moon intensified the whiteness of the sheet, and it seemed to him that the terrible eyes even began to shine through the canvas. With fear, he fixed his eyes more intently, as if trying to convince himself that this was nonsense. But finally, in reality... he sees, he sees clearly: the sheet is no longer there... the portrait is all open and looks past everything that is around, right into it, looks simply into it inside... His heart sank . And he sees: the old man stirred and suddenly rested against the frame with both hands. Finally, he raised himself on his hands and, sticking out both legs, jumped out of the frames ... Only empty frames were already visible through the crack of the screen. The sound of footsteps echoed through the room, finally getting closer and closer to the screens. The poor artist's heart began to beat faster. With a frightened breath, he expected that the old man was about to look at him behind the screen. And then he looked, as if behind the screen, with the same bronzed face and moving his big eyes. Chartkov tried to cry out and felt that he had no voice, he tried to move, to make some kind of movement his limbs did not move. With his mouth open and his breath stopped, he looked at this terrible phantom tall, in some kind of wide Asian cassock, and waited what he would do. The old man sat down almost at his very feet and then pulled something out from under the folds of his wide dress. It was a bag. The old man untied it and, seizing the two ends, shook it: with a dull sound, heavy bundles in the form of long columns fell to the floor; each was wrapped in blue paper, and on each was displayed: "1000 chervonny". Sticking his long, bony arms out of his wide sleeves, the old man began to unroll the bundles. Gold flashed. No matter how great was the painful feeling and unconscious fear of the artist, but he stared all the way into the gold, looking motionless as it unfolded in bony hands, shone, rang thinly and dully, and wrapped again. Then he noticed one bundle, rolled away from the others, at the very foot of his bed, in his head. He grabbed it almost convulsively and, full of fear, looked to see if the old man would notice. But the old man seemed to be very busy. He collected all his bundles, put them back into the sack, and, without looking at him, went behind the screen. Chartkov's heart was beating violently when he heard the rustle of receding footsteps resounding through the room. He clutched his bundle tighter in his hand, trembling with his whole body for it, and suddenly heard footsteps approaching the screens again, evidently the old man remembered that one bundle was missing. And now he looked at him again behind the screen. Full of despair, he squeezed the bundle in his hand with all his strength, made every effort to make a movement, cried out and woke up. Cold sweat covered him all over; his heart was beating as hard as it could beat; her chest was so tight, as if her last breath wanted to fly out of her. "Was it really a dream?" he said, taking his head with both hands, but the terrible liveliness of the phenomenon was not like a dream. Having already woken up, he saw how the old man went into the frame, even the hem of his wide clothes flashed, and his hand clearly felt that he had been holding some kind of weight a minute before. The light of the moon illuminated the room, forcing it to emerge from its dark corners where the canvas, where the plaster hand, where the drapery left on the chair, where the pantaloons and uncleaned boots. It was only then that he noticed that he was not lying in bed, but was standing on his feet right in front of the portrait. How he got here he could not understand at all. He was even more amazed that the portrait was all open and there really was no sheet on it. He looked at him with immovable fear and saw how living human eyes stared straight into him. Cold sweat broke out on his face; he wanted to move away, but he felt that his legs seemed to be rooted to the ground. And he sees: this is no longer a dream: the old man's features moved, and his lips began to stretch towards him, as if they wanted to suck him out ... With a cry of despair, he jumped back and woke up. “Was that a dream, too?” With a beating heart, he felt around him with his hands. Yes, he lies on the bed in exactly the same position as he fell asleep. There are screens before him; the sing of the month filled the room. Through the gap in the screens a portrait was visible, properly covered with a sheet, just as he himself closed it. So it was also a dream! But the clenched hand still feels as if there was something in it. The beating of the heart was strong, almost frightening; the heaviness in the chest is unbearable. He fixed his eyes on the crack and stared at the sheet. And now he clearly sees that the sheet begins to open, as if hands were floundering under it and trying to throw it off. “Lord, my God, what is this!” he cried, crossing himself desperately, and woke up. And it was also a dream! He jumped out of bed, half-witted, unconscious, and could no longer explain what was happening to him: the pressure of a nightmare or a brownie, or delirium of a fever or a living vision. Trying to calm down a bit his mental agitation and the roiling blood that was beating with a tense pulse through all his veins, he went to the window and opened the window. The cold smelling wind revived him. The moonlight still lay on the roofs and white walls of the houses, although small clouds began to cross the sky more often. Everything was quiet: from time to time the distant rattle of the cab's droshky reached the ear, who was sleeping somewhere in an invisible alley, lulled by his lazy horse, waiting for a belated rider. He stared for a long time, sticking his head out the window. The signs of the approaching dawn were already born in the sky; at last he sensed an approaching drowsiness, slammed the window, walked away, lay down in bed, and soon fell asleep like the dead, the soundest sleep. He woke up very late and felt in himself that unpleasant state that takes possession of a person after intoxication; his head hurt badly. The room was dim; an unpleasant phlegm sowed in the air and passed through the cracks of his windows, lined with paintings or primed canvas. Cloudy, dissatisfied, like a wet rooster, he sat down on his tattered sofa, not knowing himself what to do, what to do, and finally remembered his entire dream. As he remembered, this dream appeared in his imagination so painfully alive that he even began to suspect whether it was just a dream and simple delirium, whether there was something else here, whether this was a vision. Pulling back the sheet, he examined this terrible portrait in the daylight. It was as if his eyes struck with their unusual liveliness, but he did not find anything unusually terrible in them; only as if some inexplicable, unpleasant feeling remained in his soul. For all that, he still could not be completely sure that it was a dream. It seemed to him that in the midst of the dream there was some terrible fragment of reality. It seemed that even in the very look and expression of the old man something seemed to say that he had been with him that night; his hand felt the heaviness that had just been lying in itself, as if someone had snatched it from him just a minute before. It seemed to him that if he had held the bundle more firmly, it would surely have remained in his hand even after waking up. “My God, if only some of this money!” he said, sighing heavily, and in his imagination all the bundles he had seen with the tempting inscription: "1000 chervonny" began to pour out of the bag. The parcels unfolded, the gold shone, wrapped again, and he sat, staring motionlessly and senselessly his eyes into the empty air, unable to tear himself away from such an object, like a child sitting before a sweet dish and seeing, swallowing his saliva, how others eat him . At last there was a knock at the door, which made him uncomfortably awake. The owner entered with the quarter warden, whose appearance for small people, as you know, is even more unpleasant than for the rich the face of a petitioner. The owner of the small house in which Chartkov lived was one of the creatures that owners of houses usually are somewhere in the Fifteenth Line of Vasilevsky Island, on the Petersburg side or in a remote corner of Kolomna, a creation, of which there are many in Rus' and whose character is just as difficult determine how the color of a worn frock coat. In his youth he was a captain and a loudmouth; but in his old age he merged all these sharp features in himself into a kind of dull indefiniteness. He was already a widow; walked up and down the room, straightening out a tallow stub; carefully at the end of each month he visited his tenants for money; he went out into the street with a key in his hand in order to look at the roof of his house; several times drove the janitor out of his kennel, where he hid himself to sleep; one elephant, a retired man who, after all his life of tambourines and shaking on the benches, is left with only vulgar habits. If you please, look for yourself, Varukh Kuzmich, said the owner, turning to the quarterly and spreading his arms, he doesn’t pay for the apartment, he doesn’t pay. What if there is no money? Wait, I'll pay. I can’t wait, father, the owner said in an angry gesture, making a gesture with the key that he held in his hand, Potogonkin, a lieutenant colonel, has been living with me, he has been living for seven years; Anna Petrovna Bukhmisterova hires both a barn and a stable for two stalls, three servants with her, these are the kind of tenants I have. I, to tell you frankly, do not have such an institution as not to pay for an apartment. If you please, pay the money right now, and move out. Yes, if you are in order, then please pay, said the quarter warden, with a slight shake of his head and putting his finger behind the button of his uniform. Yes, how to pay? question. I don't have a penny now. In this case, satisfy Ivan Ivanovich with the products of your profession, said the quarterly, he may agree to take pictures. No, father, thanks for the pictures. It would be nice if there were pictures with a noble content, so that you could hang on the wall, at least some general with a star or Prince Kutuzov’s portrait, otherwise he painted a peasant, a peasant in a shirt, rumors that he was rubbing paint. Still with him, pigs, a portrait to draw; I'll chop his neck: he pulled all the nails out of my bolts, a swindler. Look at what objects: here he is drawing a room. It would be nice to have taken a room tidied up, tidy, and he painted it like that, with all the rubbish and squabbles that were lying around. Look how he messed up my room, if you please see for yourself. Yes, tenants live with me for seven years, colonels, Anna Petrovna Bukhmisterova ... No, I’ll tell you: there is no worse tenant than a painter: a pig lives like a pig, just God forbid. And all this had to be listened to patiently by the poor painter. The quarter warden, meanwhile, was engaged in examining paintings and sketches and immediately showed that his soul was more alive than the master's and was even not alien to artistic impressions. Heh, he said, jabbing his finger at one of the canvases, which depicted a naked woman, the subject is that... playful. And why is it so black under his nose? tobacco, or what, he fell asleep to himself? Shadow, answered this sternly and without turning his eyes on him Chartkov. Well, it could be taken somewhere else, but under the nose is too prominent, said the quarterly, and whose portrait is this? he continued, approaching the portrait of the old man, too scary. As if he really was so scary; wow, he just looks! Oh, what a Thunderbolt! Who did you write with? And this is from one ... said Chartkov and did not finish the word: a crack was heard. The quarterly shook, apparently, too tightly the frame of the portrait, thanks to the clumsy device of his police hands; the side boards broke inward, one fell to the floor, and with it fell, with a heavy clanging, a bundle in blue paper. Chartkov was struck by the inscription: "1000 chervonny". Like a madman, he rushed to pick it up, grabbed the bundle, squeezed it convulsively in his hand, which sank down from the weight. No way, the money rang, said the quarterly, who heard the knock of something falling on the floor and could not see it for the speed of movement with which Chartkov rushed to clean up. And what do you care to know what I have? And such a thing is that you now have to pay the landlord for an apartment; that you have money, but you don't want to pay, that's what. Well, I'll pay him today. Well, why didn’t you want to pay before, but you are disturbing the owner, but are you also disturbing the police? Because I did not want to touch this money; I'll pay him everything tonight and move out of the apartment tomorrow, because I don't want to stay with such a host. Well, Ivan Ivanovich, he will pay you, said the quarterly, turning to the owner. And if about the fact that you will not be properly satisfied tonight, then excuse me, mister painter. Having said this, he put on his three-cornered hat and went out into the passage, followed by the owner, holding his head down and, as it seemed, in some kind of meditation. Thank God, the devil took them away! Chartkov said when he heard the door shut in the front. He looked out into the hall, sent Nikita away to be completely alone, locked the door behind him, and, returning to his room, began to unfold the parcel with great trembling of the heart. It contained chervonets, every one of them new, hot as fire. Almost insane, he sat behind the golden heap, still asking himself if all this was a dream. There were exactly a thousand of them in the bundle; his appearance was exactly the same as he saw them in his dream. For several minutes he went over them, reviewed them, and still could not come to his senses. All the stories about treasures, caskets with hidden drawers, left by the ancestors for their ruined grandchildren, in firm confidence in the future of their squandered position, suddenly revived in his imagination. He thought like this: “Didn’t some grandfather even now come up with a gift for his grandson, enclosing it in the frame of a family portrait?” Full of romantic delirium, he even began to think whether there was some secret connection with his fate: is not the existence of the portrait connected with its own existence, and is not the very acquisition of it already some kind of predestination? He began to examine the frame of the portrait with curiosity. In one side of it was a hollowed-out chute, pushed in with a plank so deftly and inconspicuously that if the capital hand of the quarter overseer had not made a breach, the chervonets would have remained at rest until the end of the century. Looking at the portrait, he wondered again high work, unusual eye trim; they no longer seemed terrible to him, but an involuntarily unpleasant feeling still remained in his soul every time. “No,” he said to himself, “whoever grandfather you are, I will put you behind glass and make you a golden frame for it.” Here he threw his hand over the golden heap that lay before him, and his heart began to beat violently at such a touch. “What to do with them? he thought, fixing his eyes on them. Now I am provided for at least three years, I can lock myself in a room, work. On the paints now I have; for lunch, for tea, for maintenance, for an apartment; no one will interfere and annoy me now; I will buy myself an excellent dummy, I will order a plaster torso, I will shape the legs, I will place Venus, I will buy engravings from the first paintings. And if I work for three years for myself, slowly, not for sale, I will kill them all, and I can be a glorious artist. Thus he spoke at the same time as reason prompted him; but another voice was heard from within, louder and louder. And as he looked once more at the gold, twenty-two years and ardent youth spoke in him. Now in his power was everything that he had hitherto looked at with envious eyes, what he had admired from afar, swallowing his saliva. Oh, how zealous throbbed in him when he just thought about it! Put on a fashionable tailcoat, break your fast after a long fast, rent yourself a nice apartment, go to the theater at the same time, to the confectionery, to ... and so on, and, having grabbed the money, he was already on the street. First of all, he went to the tailor, dressed from head to toe, and, like a child, began to inspect himself incessantly; bought perfumes, lipsticks, hired, without bargaining, the first magnificent apartment on Nevsky Prospekt that came across, with mirrors and solid glass; I accidentally bought an expensive lorgnette in a store, I also accidentally bought an abyss of all sorts of ties, more than I needed, curled my hair at the hairdresser, rode twice around the city in a carriage for no reason, ate too much sweets in a pastry shop and went to a French restaurant, about which I had hitherto heard the same vague rumors as about the Chinese state. There he dined with his hands on his hips, casting rather proud glances at the others, and incessantly adjusting his curled curls against the mirror. There he drank a bottle of champagne, which had hitherto also been more familiar to him by ear. The wine made a little noise in his head, and he went out into the street alive, lively, according to the Russian expression: the devil is not a brother. He walked along the pavement like a gogol, pointing a lorgnette at everyone. On the bridge he noticed his former professor and darted dashing past him, as if not noticing him at all, so that the dumbfounded professor stood motionless on the bridge for a long time, making a question mark on his face. All things and everything that was: the machine tool, the canvas, the paintings were transported to a magnificent apartment that very evening. He put what was better in prominent places, what was worse he threw into a corner and walked around the magnificent rooms, constantly looking into the mirrors. An irresistible desire revived in his soul to seize glory this very hour by the tail and show himself to the world. He could already hear shouts: “Chartkov, Chartkov! Have you seen Chartkov's painting? What a quick brush Chartkov has! What a strong talent Chartkov has!” He walked around his room in an ecstatic state, rushing off God knows where. The next day, having taken a dozen chervonets, he went to one publisher of a walking newspaper, asking for generous help; was received cordially by a journalist, who called him the same hour “most honorable”, shook both hands with him, asked in detail about his name, patronymic, place of residence, and the next day an article appeared in the newspaper following the announcement of the newly invented tallow candles with the following heading: "On the extraordinary talents of Chartkov":“We are in a hurry to please the educated residents of the capital with a wonderful acquisition, one might say, in all respects. Everyone agrees that we have many of the most beautiful physiognomies and most beautiful faces, but until now there has been no means of transferring them to a miraculous canvas, for transmission to posterity; now this deficiency has been replenished: an artist has been found who combines what is needed in himself. Now the beauty can be sure that she will be conveyed with all the grace of her beauty, airy, light, charming, wonderful, like moths fluttering through spring flowers. The venerable father of the family will see himself surrounded by his family. A merchant, a warrior, a citizen, a statesman - everyone: with new zeal, he will continue his career. Hurry, hurry, come from a walk, from a walk taken to a friend, to a cousin, to a brilliant store, hurry, wherever you are. The artist's magnificent studio (Nevsky Prospekt, such and such number) is full of portraits of his brush, worthy of the Vandyks and Titians. You don’t know what to be surprised at: the fidelity and similarity with the originals, or the extraordinary brightness and freshness of the brush. Thank you artist! you took out happy ticket from the lottery. Vivat, Andrei Petrovich (the journalist apparently loved familiarity)! Glorify yourself and us. We can appreciate you. The general concourse, and with it the money, although some of our brother journalists rebel against them, will be your reward. With secret pleasure the artist read this announcement; his face beamed. They talked about him in print it was news to him; he read the lines several times. The comparison with Wandik and Titian flattered him greatly. The phrase "Vivat, Andrey Petrovich!" also liked very much; in printed form they call him by his first name and patronymic - an honor that is completely unknown to him until now. He soon began to walk around the room, ruffling his hair, then sat down on chairs, then jumped up from them and sat on the sofa, imagining every minute how he would receive visitors and visitors, approached the canvas and made a dashing brush stroke over it, trying to communicate graceful hand movements. The next day the bell rang at his door; he ran to open the door. A lady entered, led by a footman in a livery overcoat with fur, and with the lady entered a young girl of eighteen, her daughter. Are you Monsieur Chartkov? said the lady. The artist bowed. So much is written about you; your portraits, they say, are the height of perfection. Having said this, the lady pointed a lorgnette at her eye and ran quickly to inspect the walls, on which there was nothing. And where are your portraits? They took it out, said the artist, somewhat confused, I just moved to this apartment, so they are still on the road ... they have not arrived. Have you been to Italy? said the lady, pointing her lorgnette at him, finding nothing else to point him at. No, I wasn't, but I wanted to be ... however, now I've postponed it for now ... Here are the chairs, sir, are you tired? .. Thank you, I sat in the carriage for a long time. Ah, I see your work at last! said the lady, running to the opposite wall and pointing her lorgnette at his sketches, programs, perspectives and portraits standing on the floor. C "est charmant! Lise, Lise, venez ici! A room in the taste of Tenier, you see: mess, mess, a table, there is a bust on it, a hand, a palette; there is dust, you see how the dust is painted! C "est charmant! But on another canvas, a woman washing face, quelle jolie figure! Ah, man! Lise, Lise, a man in a Russian shirt! look man! So you do more than just portraits? Oh, this is nonsense ... So, naughty ... sketches ... Tell me, what is your opinion about the current portrait painters? Isn't it true that now there is no one like Titian? There is not that strength in color, there is not that ... what a pity that I cannot express to you in Russian (the lady was a lover of painting and ran around all the galleries in Italy with a lorgnette). However, Monsieur Zero... oh, how he writes! What an amazing brush! I find that he has even more expression in his faces than Titian. You don't know Monsieur Zero? Who is this Zero? asked the artist. Monsieur Zero. Ah, what a talent! he painted a portrait of her when she was only twelve years old. We need you to be with us. Lise, show him your album. You know that we have come with the intention of starting a portrait of her at once. Well, I'm ready this minute. And in an instant he moved the machine with the finished canvas, picked up the palette, fixed his eyes on the pale face of his daughter. If he were a connoisseur of human nature, he would have read on it in one minute the beginning of a childish passion for balls, the beginning of melancholy and complaints about the length of time before dinner and after dinner, the desire to run around in a new dress on festivities, heavy traces of indifferent diligence in various arts inspired by the mother to elevate the soul and feelings. But the artist saw in this delicate face only the almost porcelain transparency of the body, enticing light languor, a thin light neck and aristocratic lightness of the body, alluring for the brush. And he was already preparing in advance to triumph, to show the lightness and brilliance of his brush, which until now had dealt only with the harsh features of rough models, with strict antiques and copies of some classical masters. He already imagined in his mind how this light little face would come out. You know, said the lady with a somewhat even touching expression, I would like ... she is wearing a dress now; I confess I would not want her to be in the dress to which we are so accustomed; I would like her to be simply dressed and sit in the shade of greenery, in view of some fields, so that herds in the distance or a grove ... so that it would not be noticeable that she was going somewhere to a ball or a fashionable evening. Our balls, I confess, so kill the soul, so kill the remnants of feelings ... simplicity, simplicity so that there is more. Alas! it was written on the faces of both mother and daughter that they danced so much at balls that they both became almost wax. Chartkov set to work, seated the original, figured it all out somewhat in his head; passed through the air with a brush, mentally setting points; screwed up a few eyes, leaned back, looked from afar, and in one hour began and finished the underpainting. Satisfied with her, he began to write, the work lured him. He had already forgotten everything, he even forgot that he was in the presence of aristocratic ladies, he even began to sometimes show some artistic tricks, saying aloud different sounds, at times singing along, as happens with an artist who is immersed with all his soul in his work. Without any ceremony, with one movement of the brush, he forced the original to raise its head, which at last began to turn violently and express complete fatigue. Enough, enough for the first time, said the lady. A little more, said the forgotten artist. No, it's time! Lise, three o'clock! she said, taking out a small watch that hung on a golden chain at her sash, and cried out: Oh, how late! Just a moment, said Chartkov in the ingenuous and begging voice of a child. But the lady, it seems, was not at all in the mood to cater to his artistic needs this time, and instead promised to stay longer next time. “This, however, is annoying,” Chartkov thought to himself, “the hand has just parted.” And he remembered that no one interrupted or stopped him when he worked in his workshop on Vasilevsky Island; Nikita used to sit without shifting in one place - write as much as you like from him; he even fell asleep in the position ordered to him. And, dissatisfied, he put his brush and palette on a chair and stood vaguely in front of the canvas. A compliment from a lady of the world woke him from his sleep. He rushed quickly to the door to see them off; on the stairs he received an invitation to visit, to come to dinner next week, and with a cheerful look returned to his room. The aristocratic lady completely charmed him. Until now, he had looked at such creatures as something inaccessible, who were born only to rush in a magnificent carriage with livery footmen and a dandy coachman and cast an indifferent glance at a man wandering on foot, in a poor raincoat. And suddenly now one of these creatures entered his room; he paints a portrait, invited to dinner in an aristocratic house. An extraordinary contentment took possession of him; he was completely intoxicated and rewarded himself for this with a glorious dinner, an evening performance, and again drove around the city in a carriage without any need. During all these days, ordinary work did not go to his mind at all. He just got ready and waited for the minute when the bell would ring. At last the aristocratic lady arrived with her pale daughter. He seated them, moved the canvas forward with dexterity and pretensions to secular manners, and began to write. The sunny day and clear lighting helped him a lot. He saw in his light original a lot of things that, being caught and transferred to the canvas, could give high dignity to the portrait; he saw that something special could be done if everything was done in such finality as nature now seemed to him. His heart even began to flutter slightly when he felt that he would express something that others had not yet noticed. The work occupied him all, he immersed himself in the brush, forgetting again about aristocratic origin original. With a breath taken in, I saw how light features came out of him and this almost transparent body of a seventeen-year-old girl. He caught every shade, a slight yellowness, a barely noticeable blueness under his eyes, and was already preparing to even grab a small pimple that popped up on his forehead, when he suddenly heard his mother's voice above him. “Oh, why is that? it is not necessary, said the lady. You have too ... here, in some places ... it seems to be a little yellow and here it’s just like dark spots. The artist began to explain that these specks and yellowness are exactly played out well, that they make up pleasant and light tones of the face. But he was told that they would not form any tones and would not play out at all; and that it only seems so to him. “But let me touch a little yellow paint here in just one place,” said the artist ingenuously. But he was not allowed to do this. It was announced that only today Lise was a little undisposed, but that there was no yellowness in her, and that her face was especially striking in the freshness of the paint. Sadly, he began to smooth out what his brush had forced to appear on the canvas. Many almost imperceptible features disappeared, and with them partly the similarity also disappeared. He insensibly began to communicate to him that general coloring that is given by heart and turns even faces taken from nature into some kind of cold-ideal, visible on student programs. But the lady was pleased that the offensive coloring was completely banished. She only expressed surprise that the work was taking so long, and added that she had heard that he completed a portrait perfectly in two sittings. The artist did not find any answer to this. The ladies got up and were about to leave. He laid down his brush, led them to the door, and after that he remained vaguely in the same spot in front of his portrait for a long time. He looked at him stupidly, and meanwhile those light feminine features, those shades and airy tones that he had noticed, which his brush had mercilessly destroyed, were rushing through his head. Being all full of them, he put the portrait aside and found somewhere in his place the abandoned head of Psyche, which he had once sketched on the canvas long ago. It was a face, deftly painted, but completely ideal, cold, consisting of only common features, not taking on a living body. Having nothing to do, he now began to walk through it, recalling on it everything that he had happened to notice in the face of an aristocratic visitor. The features, shades and tones that he had captured lay down here in the purified form in which they appear when the artist, having looked at nature, already moves away from it and produces an equal creation for it. Psyche began to come to life, and the barely perceptible thought began, little by little, to clothe herself in a visible body. The type of face of a young secular girl was involuntarily communicated to Psyche, and through this she received a peculiar expression that gives her the right to name the true work. He seemed to take advantage, piecemeal and collectively, of everything that the original presented to him, and became completely attached to his work. For several days he was occupied only with her. And behind this very work, the arrival of familiar ladies found him. He did not have time to remove the picture from the machine. Both ladies let out a joyful cry of amazement and threw up their hands. Lise, Lise! Ah, how it looks! Superbe, superbe! How well you thought you dressed her in a Greek costume. Ah, what a surprise! The artist did not know how to get the ladies out of a pleasant delusion. Ashamed and bowing his head, he said quietly: This is Psyche. In the form of Psyche? C "est charmant! said the mother, smiling, and the daughter also smiled. Isn't it true, Lise, it suits you the most to be depicted as Psyche? Quelle idée délicieuse! But what a job! This is Corregge. I confess, I read I heard about you, but I didn't know that you had such a talent.No, you must certainly paint a portrait of me as well. The lady, apparently, also wanted to appear in the form of some kind of Psyche. “What should I do with them?” thought the artist. If they themselves want it, then let Psyche go for what they want, and said aloud: Take the trouble to sit down a little more, I'll touch something a little. Oh, I'm afraid you somehow don't... she looks so much like that now. But the artist realized that there were concerns about yellowness, and reassured them, saying that he would only give more brilliance and expression to the eyes. And in fairness, he was too ashamed and wanted to give at least some more resemblance to the original, so that someone would not reproach him for decided shamelessness. And indeed, the features of the pale girl finally began to emerge more clearly from the appearance of Psyche. That's enough! said the mother, who was beginning to fear that the resemblance would finally get too close. The artist was rewarded with everything: a smile, money, a compliment, a sincere handshake, an invitation to dinners; In a word, he received a thousand flattering awards. The portrait made a noise in the city. The lady showed it to her friends; everyone was amazed at the art with which the artist was able to preserve the likeness and at the same time give beauty to the original. The latter was noticed, of course, not without a slight flush of envy in his face. And the artist was suddenly besieged by works. It seemed that the whole city wanted to write with him. At the door the bell rang constantly. On the one hand, it could be good, presenting to him an endless practice with variety, with many faces. But, unfortunately, it was all a people with whom it was difficult to get along, a people hurried, busy or belonging to the world, , therefore, even busier than any other, and therefore impatient to the extreme. From all sides they only demanded that it be good and soon. The artist saw that it was absolutely impossible to finish, that everything had to be replaced by dexterity and quick briskness of the brush. Grasp only one whole, one general expression and not go deep with a brush into refined details; in a word, it was decidedly impossible to follow nature in its finality. Moreover, it must be added that all those who almost wrote had many other claims to different things. The ladies demanded that mostly only the soul and character be depicted in portraits, so that sometimes the rest was not adhered to at all, all corners were rounded, all flaws were alleviated and even, if possible, avoided altogether. In a word, so that you can stare at your face, if not completely fall in love. And as a result, when they sat down to write, they sometimes adopted such expressions that astonished the artist: she tried to portray melancholy in her face, another daydreaming, a third wanted to shrink her mouth at all costs and squeezed it to such an extent that it finally turned in one point, no more than a pinhead. And, despite all this, they demanded from him similarity and unconstrained naturalness. The men were also nothing better ladies. One demanded to be depicted in a strong, energetic turn of the head; the other with inspired eyes raised upwards; the lieutenant of the guard demanded without fail that Mars be visible in the eyes; the civil dignitary strove so that there was more directness, nobility in the face and that the hand rested on a book on which it would be written in clear words: "Always stood for the truth." At first, the artist was thrown into the sweat with such demands: all this had to be figured out, thought over, and meanwhile, very little time was given. At last he got to what was the matter, and no longer hesitated at all. Even from two, three words, he could think ahead, who wanted to portray himself with what. Who wanted Mars, he put Mars in the face; who aimed at Byron, he gave him a Byronian position and turn. Whether the ladies wanted to be Corinna, Undine, or Aspasia, he willingly agreed to everything and added from himself to everyone enough goodness, which, as you know, will not spoil anywhere and for which they sometimes forgive the artist even the most dissimilarity. Soon he himself began to marvel at the wonderful speed and briskness of his brush. And those who wrote, of course, were delighted and proclaimed him a genius. Chartkov became a fashionable painter in all respects. He began to go to dinners, accompany ladies to galleries and even to festivities, dress smartly and state publicly that an artist must belong to society, that his rank must be maintained, that artists dress like shoemakers, do not know how to behave decently, do not observe the highest tone and devoid of any education. At home, in his workshop, he brought neatness and cleanliness to the highest degree, appointed two magnificent lackeys, got smart students, changed clothes several times a day in different morning suits, curled, busied himself with improving the different manners with which to receive visitors, busied himself with decorating his appearance with all possible means in order to make her pleasant impression for ladies; in a word, it was soon impossible to recognize in him at all that modest artist who had once worked unobtrusively in his shack on Vasilyevsky Island. About artists and about art, he now spoke sharply: he argued that too much dignity was already attributed to the former artists, that all of them before Raphael painted not figures, but herrings; that the thought exists only in the imagination of the observers, as if the presence of some kind of holiness is visible in them; that Raphael himself did not even write everything well, and for many of his works fame was retained only according to legend; that Miquel-Angel is a braggart, because he only wanted to boast of his knowledge of anatomy, that there is no grace in him, and that real brilliance, strength of brush and color must be sought only now, in this century. Here, naturally, involuntarily, the matter came to oneself. No, I don't understand, he said, the strain of others to sit and pore over. This man, who spends several months working on a painting, is, to me, a worker, not an artist. I don't believe he has any talent. Genius creates boldly, quickly. Here I have, he said, usually addressing visitors, I painted this portrait in two days, this head in one day, this is in a few hours, this is in a little over an hour. No, I ... I, I confess, do not recognize as art that line after line is molded; This is a craft, not an art. So he told his visitors, and the visitors marveled at the strength and briskness of his brush, they even uttered exclamations when they heard how quickly they were produced, and then they told each other: “This is talent, true talent! Look how he talks, how his eyes sparkle! Il y a quelque chose d "extraordinaire dans toute sa figure!" The artist was flattered to hear such rumors about himself. When a printed praise of him appeared in the magazines, he rejoiced like a child, although this praise was bought by him with his own money. He carried such a printed sheet everywhere and, as if inadvertently, showed it to his acquaintances and friends, and this amused him to the point of the most ingenuous naivety. His fame grew, work and orders increased. Already he began to tire of the same portraits and faces, whose positions and turns had become memorized to him. Already without great desire he wrote and, trying to sketch out only somehow one head, and left the rest to his students to finish. Before, he still sought to give some new position, to strike with force, effect. Now that was getting boring for him. The mind is tired of inventing and thinking. It was unbearable for him, and indeed there was no time: scattered life and society, where he tried to play the role of a secular person, all this carried him away from work and thoughts. His brush grew cold and dull, and he insensibly settled into monotonous, definite, long-worn forms. The monotonous, cold, always tidied up and, so to speak, buttoned up faces of officials, military men and civilians did not offer much scope for the brush: she forgot both magnificent draperies, and strong movements, and passions. About groups, about artistic drama, there was nothing to say about her high tie. Before him were only a uniform, and a corset, and a tailcoat, before which the artist feels cold and all imagination falls. Even the most ordinary virtues were no longer visible in his works, and yet they still enjoyed fame, although true connoisseurs and artists only shrugged their shoulders, looking at his latest works. And some, who knew Chartkov before, could not understand how the talent could disappear in him, the signs of which were already bright in him at the very beginning, and they tried in vain to figure out how a talent could die out in a person, while he had just reached full development of all his powers. But the intoxicated artist did not hear these rumors. Already he began to reach the pores of the degree of mind and years; began to thicken and apparently be distributed in width. Already in newspapers and magazines he read adjectives: "our venerable Andrei Petrovich", "our honored Andrei Petrovich." Already they began to offer him places of honor in the service, invite him to exams, to committees. He was already beginning, as always happens in honorable years, to take strongly the side of Raphael and the ancient artists, not because he was completely convinced of their high dignity, but because he was stabbing young artists in the eyes with them. He already began, according to the custom of all those entering such years, to reproach the youth without exception for immorality and a bad direction of spirit. He was already beginning to believe that everything in the world is done simply, there is no inspiration from above, and everything must necessarily be subjected to one strict order of accuracy and uniformity. In a word, his life has already touched those years when everything, breathing with impulse, shrinks in a person, when a powerful bow reaches the soul more weakly and does not twine with piercing sounds around the heart, when the touch of beauty no longer turns virgin forces into fire and flame, but everything burnt-out feelings become more accessible to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its tempting music and, little by little, insensitively allow themselves to be completely lulled by it. Glory cannot give pleasure to the one who stole it and did not deserve it; it produces a constant thrill only in those who are worthy of it. And so all his feelings and impulses turned to gold. Gold became his passion, ideal, fear, pleasure, goal. Bunches of banknotes grew in chests, and like anyone who gets this terrible gift, he began to become boring, inaccessible to everything except gold, an unreasonable miser, a dissolute collector and was already ready to turn into one of those strange creatures, which many come across in our insensible world, at which a person full of life and heart looks with horror, to whom they seem to be moving stone coffins with a dead person inside instead of a heart. But one event greatly shocked and awakened his entire life structure. One day he saw a note on his desk in which the Academy of Arts asked him, as a worthy member, to come and give his opinion on a new work sent from Italy, a work of a Russian artist who had improved there. This artist was one of his former comrades, who from an early age carried a passion for art, with the fiery soul of a worker plunged into it with all his soul, broke away from friends, from relatives, from sweet habits and rushed to where, in view of the beautiful heavens the majestic hotbed of arts will sing, to that wonderful Rome, at the name of which the fiery heart of the artist beats so full and strong. There, like a hermit, he immersed himself in work and in occupations that were not entertained by anything. He didn't care if they talked about his character, about his inability to deal with people, about the failure to observe social decorum, about the humiliation that he caused the title of an artist with his meager, not smart outfit. He didn't care whether or not his brothers were angry with him. He neglected everything, he gave everything to art. He tirelessly visited galleries, stagnated for hours in front of the works of great masters, catching and pursuing a wonderful brush. He did not finish anything without not believing himself several times with these great teachers and in order not to read silent and eloquent advice to himself in their creations. He did not enter into noisy conversations and disputes; he was neither for purists nor against purists. He equally gave his due part to everything, extracting from everything only what was beautiful in him, and finally left himself only the divine Raphael as a teacher. Just as a great poet-artist, having read many different works, full of many charms and majestic beauties, finally left for himself only Homer's Iliad as a reference book, having discovered that it contains everything that you want, and that there is nothing that would not be already reflected here in such deep and great perfection. And on the other hand, he brought out of his school the majestic idea of ​​creation, the mighty beauty of thought, the high charm of the heavenly brush. Entering the hall, Chartkov already found a whole huge crowd of visitors gathered in front of the picture. The deepest silence, which rarely occurs between crowded connoisseurs, this time reigned everywhere. He hurried to assume the considerable physiognomy of a connoisseur and approached the picture; but, God, what did he see! Pure, immaculate, beautiful as a bride, stood before him the work of the artist. Modestly, divinely, innocently and simply, like a genius, it rose above everything. It seemed as if the celestial figures, amazed at so many gazes directed at them, bashfully lowered their beautiful eyelashes. With a feeling of involuntary amazement connoisseurs contemplated a new, unprecedented brush. Everything seemed to come together here: the study of Raphael, reflected in the high nobility of positions, the study of Correggia, breathing in the final perfection of the brush. The last subject in the picture was imbued with it; in everything the law is comprehended and inner strength. Everywhere this floating roundness of lines was captured, enclosed in nature, which only one eye of the artist-creator sees and which comes out at the corners of the copyist. It was evident how the artist first enclosed everything extracted from the external world into his soul and from there, from the spiritual spring, directed it with one consonant, solemn song. And it became clear even to the uninitiated what an immeasurable gulf exists between a creature and a simple copy from nature. It was almost impossible to express that extraordinary silence that involuntarily embraced everyone who fixed their eyes on the picture, not a rustle, not a sound; and the picture, meanwhile, every minute seemed higher and higher; brighter and more wonderfully separated from everything and finally turned into one moment, the fruit of a thought that had flown from heaven to the artist, a moment for which all human life is nothing but preparation. Involuntary tears were ready to roll down the faces of the visitors who surrounded the picture. It seemed that all tastes, all bold, wrong deviations of taste, merged into some kind of silent anthem. divine work. Chartkov stood motionless, with his mouth open, in front of the picture, and finally, when little by little the visitors and connoisseurs began to make noise and began to talk about the merits of the work, and when they finally turned to him with a request to declare their thoughts, he came to his senses; I wanted to take on an indifferent, ordinary air, I wanted to say the ordinary, vulgar judgment of callous artists, like the following: “Yes, of course, it’s true, talent cannot be taken away from an artist; there is something; it is clear that he wanted to express something; however, as for the main thing ... ”And after this, of course, add such praises from which no artist would be greeted. I wanted to do it, but the speech died on his lips, tears and sobs escaped discordantly in response, and he ran out of the hall like a madman. For a minute, motionless and insensible, he stood in the middle of his magnificent workshop. The whole composition, his whole life was awakened in an instant, as if youth had returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent flared up again. The bandage suddenly fell off his eyes. God! and ruin so mercilessly the best years of his youth; to exterminate, to extinguish the spark of fire, perhaps that was glimmering in the chest, perhaps now it would develop into grandeur and beauty, perhaps it would also shed tears of amazement and gratitude! And ruin it all, ruin it without any pity! It seemed as if at that moment all at once and suddenly came to life in his soul those tensions and impulses that had once been familiar to him. He grabbed the brush and approached the canvas. The sweat of effort broke out on his face; he was all turned into one desire and burned with one thought: he wanted to depict a fallen angel. This idea was most consistent with the state of his soul. But alas! his figures, poses, groups, thoughts lay down forcibly and incoherently. His brush and imagination were already too much in the same measure, and the impotent impulse to transcend the boundaries and fetters he had thrown over himself was already reeking of wrongness and error. He neglected the tedious, long ladder of gradual information and the first fundamental laws of the great future. Annoyance penetrated him. He ordered everything to be taken out of his workshop latest works, all lifeless fashionable pictures, all portraits of hussars, ladies and state councilors. He locked himself in his room alone, ordered no one to let in, and plunged into his work. Like a patient young man, like a student, he sat at his work. But how mercilessly-ungrateful was everything that came out from under his brush! At every step he was stopped by ignorance of the most primitive elements; a simple, insignificant mechanism cooled the whole impulse and stood as an impenetrable threshold for the imagination. The hand involuntarily turned to hardened forms, the hands folded in one learned manner, the head did not dare to make an unusual turn, even the very folds of the dress responded to the hardened and did not want to obey and drape in an unfamiliar position of the body. And he felt, he felt and saw it himself! “But did I really have a talent?” he finally said, “was I deceived?” And, having uttered these words, he approached his former works, which had once been worked so cleanly, so disinterestedly, there, in a poor shack on a secluded Vasilevsky Island, far away from people, abundance and all sorts of whims. He now approached them and began to carefully examine them all, and together with them all the former poor life his. “Yes,” he said desperately, “I had a talent. Everywhere, on everything, its signs and traces are visible ... " He stopped and suddenly trembled all over: his eyes met the eyes fixed fixedly on him. It was that extraordinary portrait he bought at Shchukin's yard. All the time it was closed, cluttered with other pictures, and completely out of his thoughts. Now, as if on purpose, when all the fashionable portraits and paintings that filled the workshop were taken out, he looked up along with the former works of his youth. As he recalled his whole strange story, as he remembered that in some way he, this strange portrait, was the cause of his transformation, that the treasure of money he received in such a miraculous way gave birth in him to all the vain impulses that ruined his talent, almost rage is ready was to break into his soul. At the same moment he ordered that the hated portrait be taken away. But the excitement of the soul was not appeased because of this: all the senses and the whole composition were shaken to the bottom, and he recognized that terrible torment, which, as a striking exception, sometimes appears in nature, when a weak talent tries to show itself in excess of its size and cannot show itself; that torment that in a young man gives birth to greatness, but in one who has gone beyond dreams turns into a fruitless thirst; that terrible torment that makes a person capable of terrible atrocities. He was seized with a terrible envy, envy to the point of madness. Bile appeared on his face when he saw a work that bore the stamp of talent. He gnashed his teeth and devoured him with the gaze of a basilisk. The most infernal intention that a man had ever harbored was revived in his soul, and with furious strength he rushed to carry it out. He began to buy up all the best that only art produced. Having bought the picture at a high price, he carefully brought it into his room and, with the fury of a tiger, rushed at it, tore it, tore it, cut it into pieces and trampled it underfoot, accompanying it with laughter of pleasure. The innumerable riches he had accumulated provided him with every means to satisfy this infernal desire. He untied all his golden bags and opened the chests. No monster of ignorance has ever destroyed so many beautiful works as this ferocious avenger has destroyed. At all the auctions where he showed up, everyone despaired in advance of acquiring artistic creation. It seemed as if the angry sky had deliberately sent this terrible scourge into the world, wanting to take away all its harmony from it. This terrible passion threw some kind of terrible color on him: eternal bile was present on his face. The blasphemy against the world and the denial were portrayed by itself in its features. It seemed that he personified that terrible demon, which Pushkin ideally portrayed. Except for a poisonous word and eternal censure, nothing was uttered by his mouth. Like some kind of harpy, he came across on the street, and all his even acquaintances, seeing him from afar, tried to dodge and avoid such a meeting, saying that it was enough to poison the whole day later. Fortunately for the world and the arts, such an intense and violent life could not last long: the scale of the passions was too irregular and colossal for her weak forces. Attacks of rage and insanity began to appear more often, and at last it all turned into the most terrible disease. A cruel fever, combined with the most rapid consumption, seized him so fiercely that in three days only a shadow remained of him. Added to this were all the signs of hopeless madness. Sometimes a few people could not hold him. He began to see the long-forgotten, living eyes of an extraordinary portrait, and then his fury was terrible. All the people who surrounded his bed seemed to him terrible portraits. He doubled, quadrupled in his eyes; all the walls seemed to be hung with portraits, fixing their motionless living eyes on him. Terrible portraits looked from the ceiling, from the floor, the room expanded and continued indefinitely in order to more accommodate these motionless eyes. The doctor, who had taken it upon himself to use it and had already heard a little about its strange history, tried with all his might to find a secret relationship between the ghosts he dreamed of and the events of his life, but could not manage to do anything. The patient did not understand and did not feel anything, except for his torments, and uttered only terrible cries and incomprehensible speeches. Finally, his life was interrupted in the last, already silent, outburst of suffering. His corpse was terrible. They could not find anything from his huge wealth either; but, seeing the cut pieces of those high works of art, whose price exceeded millions, they realized their terrible use.