Ivan Alekseevich Bunin INSANE ARTIST The original is here: Digital library Yabluchansky.<...>The sun was golden in the east, beyond the misty blue of distant forests, behind the white snowy lowland, which the ancient Russian city looked at from a low mountain coast.<...>It was Christmas Eve cheerful morning with light frost and hoarfrost.<...>In the old big hotel on a spacious square, against the old malls, it was quiet and empty, tidied up for the holiday.<...>But then a gentleman drove up to the porch. pince-nez, with amazed eyes, in a black velvet beret, from under which greenish curls fell, and in long doha brilliant chestnut fur. <...>- Take me to the very light number he said loudly, solemnly step following a young bellboy who was carrying his expensive foreign suitcase down a wide corridor.<...>- I artist he said, but this time I don't need a room to the north.<...> Corridor opened the door to number the first, the most honorable, consisting of an entrance hall and two spacious rooms, where the windows were, however, small and very deep, due to the thick walls. <...>Carefully dropping the suitcase on the carpet in the middle of the reception area, bellboy, a young fellow with intelligent, cheerful eyes, stopped in anticipation of a passport and orders.<...> Artist, short in stature, youthfully light in spite of his age, in a beret and a velvet jacket, walked from corner to corner and, dropping with a movement of his eyebrows pince-nez, rubbed his white, as if with alabaster hands, his pale! exhausted face. <...>Then he strangely looked at the servant with an unseeing gaze, very short-sighted and absent-minded. human. <...>I must complete the work of all my life. <...>My young friend,” he said, stretching out his hand to the bellboy and showing him two wedding rings, of which one, on the little finger, was a woman’s, “this is a ring - dying covenant! <...>- And I am this covenant I will fulfill! - the artist said menacingly.<...>Speaking and rapping words, the artist point-blank looked through pince-nez to your interlocutor.<...>On the square<...>
Mad_Artist.pdf
1In his article, the author characterizes the methodology of working with concepts at the final stage of literary education in high school, isolating two stages of the study of concepts in the story of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. The perspective of the analytical and interpretive activity of students is determined. great attention given to text analysis artwork, titles of the story, work with dictionaries. Artistic concepts are considered through the analysis of their associative links. The article presents a comparative analysis of Ivan Bunin's stories "The Mad Artist" and "Christmas" by Vladimir Nabokov. Revealing the content of the associative semantic field concept content. The concept of "Christmas" in I. Bunin's story "The Mad Artist" is considered in the context of light symbolism, which acquires a universal meaning in the short story. The article also presents various types of contextual approach to the study literary work(Vladimir Nabokov's story "Christmas", paintings by Perov, Salvador Dali dedicated to the crucifixion).
interpretation
metaphor
context
1. Bolotnova N. S. Cognitive direction in linguistic research literary text / N. S. Bolotnova // Poetic picture of the world: word and concept in lyrics silver age: mater. VII All-Russian. scientific - pract. seminar / ed. prof. N. S. Bolotnova. - Tomsk: Tomsk State. ped. un-t, 2004. - S. 7-19.
2. Bonami T.M. Artistic prose I.A. Bunin (1887–1904) / T.M. Bonami. - Vladimir, 1962. - 120 p.
3. Bunin I.A. Collected works: in 6 volumes. V.4. Works 1914–1931 / Ed.: Yu. Bondarev, O. Mikhailov, V. Rynkevich; Afterword article. and comment. A. Saakyants. - M.: Khudozh.lit., 1988. - 703 p.
4. Zusman VG Dialogue and concept in literature. Literature and music / V. G. Zusman. - Nizhny Novgorod, 2001. - S. 162.
5. Ozhegov S.I., Shvedova N.Yu. Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language: 80,000 words and phraseological expressions / Russian Academy of Sciences. Institute of the Russian Language. V.V. Vinogradov. - 4th ed., add. – M.: Azbukovnik. 1999. - 944 p.
6. Tsurkan V.V. Anthology of artistic concepts of Russian literature of the XX century. – M.: Flinta, 2013. – 356 p.
Using the example of studying the story “The Mad Artist” by I. A. Bunin in the eleventh grade, we will reveal the methodology for working with concepts in the framework of school literary education.
The story "The Mad Artist" was written by I.A. Bunin in 1921, in the first year of his stay in France after leaving Russia, the events in which shocked him and caused a sharp and unconditional denial. In the first years of his life away from his homeland, Bunin was in a state of deep depression. This state and disappointments in himself were facilitated by the difficult financial situation of the family and the events of his personal life (the death of his wife's brother, which he was acutely worried about). It is these moods of pessimism and despair that are reflected in the story "The Mad Artist".
Students are offered as homework read this work by I.A. Bunin.
The two-hour lesson on the story itself consists of several stages.
Before building student activities directly related to concepts, it is necessary to introduce them into art world Bunin's work, focusing on the plot and the psychological world of the protagonist.
First, students find in the text and read out the following portrait characteristics unnamed artist, commenting on them: “a gentleman in pince-nez, with amazed eyes, in a black velvet beret, from under which greenish curls fell, and in a long dokha of shiny chestnut fur”, “The artist, short in stature, youthfully light in spite of his age, in a beret and a velvet jacket, walked from corner to corner and, dropping pince-nez with the movement of eyebrows, rubbed his white, as if with alabaster hands, his pale, exhausted face.
- How does the world appear in the story, to which the gentleman “with astonished eyes” returned from his wanderings? How does this world meet the artist?
- What details of behavior most clearly characterize the state of the hero?
- How can you title a paragraph that begins with the words "Soon youthful strength took possession of him"?
- How does the motif of the struggle between darkness and light develop in the story? How can you explain the discrepancy between the idea and the embodiment in the work of the artist - the hero of the story?
- Do you agree with the following statements: “If the world were to split, then the crack would go through the heart of the poet” (Heinrich Heine); “Life is never beautiful: only its pictures in the purified mirror of art are beautiful” (Arthur Schopenhauer)? Match them with the content of Bunin's story.
Together with the students, we think: what is a person? What is the meaning human life? What is the relationship between the rational and the mystical, the rational and the transcendent in man? What is the life of the spirit? What is time and eternity?
These questions are necessary to immerse students in depth. short story preparing them for thoughtful work with the text of the work.
Then we pay attention to the title of the story, as it sets the vector for revealing the meaning of the concepts with which we will work further. The word "artist" is undoubtedly associated with the theme of creativity, and "insane" - with his state of mind and the world around him. The events described in the story take place even before the revolution in Russia (before and in 1916), so it is difficult to talk about the relationship between the picture of the death and destruction of the world and the events in Russia. Most likely, the story reflects the general moral and philosophical views of Bunin: the ideas of the catastrophic nature of the world and its inevitable death. In this regard, the story "The Mad Artist" is comparable to his more early story"The Gentleman from San Francisco" (1915), which has already been considered in the lessons. Ask students to look for similarities between the works. Benchmarking allows us to reveal that in both stories their hero is not called by name. In the "Mad Artist" - only one name - a certain "Ivan Matveyevich from the police." All other characters (the hotel bellhop, its owner, the shop assistant, the cabbies) are nameless. But Ivan Matveevich in the story is a passive character, and he is only mentioned in the conversation of two nameless characters - the bellhop and the owner of the hotel. We conclude with students that Bunin in this way emphasizes the idea that what happened to his hero can happen or even inevitably happen to any artist, to any artist striving for beauty and harmony. At the moment of creation, the artist, having given himself over to his idea with all his heart, “imagines himself not a slave of life, but its creator.” Reality refutes his idea, since he is powerless before it.
We invite students to reconstruct the plot of the story. An unnamed artist tries to create an "immortal thing" on Christmas Eve. He thinks "write the cave of Bethlehem, write Christmas and fill the whole picture, - and these mangers, and baby and madonna, and a lion, and a lamb, reclining nearby ... with such rejoicing of the angels, with such light that it was truly the birth of a new man ... ". Already in the second sentence of the story we meet with the word "Christmas". Of course, this is the key word of the narrative, an artistic concept, “expressoid” (V.P. Grigoriev, “overtone” (M.M. Bakhtin), “figurative-thematic knot” (A.A. Lipgart). It is the key to understanding the text Pupils look for the word "Christmas" in the text, find its connection with other words.
As noted by V.V. Tsurkan, “... an obligatory stage in the study of an artistic concept is the definition of the dictionary meaning keyword- representative and its interpretations depending on the literary text, individual author's content of the word ". We clarify with students the meaning of the word CHRISTMAS in " explanatory dictionary Russian language "S.I. Ozhegova and N.Yu. Shvedova.
Christmas
- (capital R). One of the Christian (for the Orthodox - one of the twelve main) holidays in memory of the birth of Jesus Christ (December 25 / January 7). Night service under R. Solemn service on R. On the night before Christmas or around Christmas.
- Self-birth of Jesus Christ. Great event - r. Christ. * Nativity of the Virgin - one of the twelve main Orthodox holidays in memory of the birth of the Virgin Mary - the mother of Jesus Christ (September 8/21). II gushl. Christmas, -th, -th (to 1 value). R. post. Christmas frosts. R. grandfather (the same as Santa Claus).
We conclude that speech in Bunin the story goes and about the holiday (1 meaning) and about the birth of a new person whom the artist wants to capture. Next, we try to expand the scope of dictionary meanings.
Consideration of an artistic concept necessarily includes an analysis of its associative links, revealing the content of the associative-semantic field of the concept content and the features of its representation in a work, since in a literary text “the dialogue between the author and the addressee occurs on an associative basis” .
Therefore, we ask the students: “What do you associate the word CHRISTMAS with?”
The associative string might look like this: holiday, Jesus Christ, light, joy, winter, sacrament, Christmas trees, bazaars…
Next, we invite students to find a quote-description of Christmas in the text of Bunin's story. “What a day! God, what a day! Exactly at midnight the Savior is born! Savior of the world! I will sign under the picture “Birth of a New Man!”. These are the words of an artist who suddenly beamed with delight. Pay attention to the abundance of exclamation marks that convey this delight.
Light is an important element of the semantic field associated with the word (concept) CHRISTMAS.
During the lesson, it was already said that in Bunin's story we find ourselves in the complex inner world of an elderly painter, filled with many painful contradictions. With the help of light painting, the author divides the story into two parts. We ask students to highlight them: before and after sunset. Next, we ask the question: “What is the basis of this division?”
Back to the light again. Students note that the entire first part is literally permeated with light, its dominant colors - gold, blue and white - are noble and associated with creativity: "The sun was golden in the east, beyond the misty blue distant forests, beyond the white snowy lowlands"- this is how the story begins, defining the color and light space in the work. The artist himself also strives for the sun: "Take me to the brightest room<…>The rooms were warm, cozy and calm, amber from the sun, softened by hoarfrost on the lower windows.. Sunlight is necessary for him to fulfill the covenant of his dead wife: "I have to paint the cave of Bethlehem, paint Christmas and flood the whole picture<…>such a light as to be truly the birth of a new man.". Thus, the meaning of painting a picture is to convey light, symbolizing new life. However, fate is unfavorable to the hero: exhausted by the road, he wakes up at noon. The second part of the story begins - the triumph of twilight. With the advent of the night, the artist begins to torment scary pictures of the past. Students find these descriptions very emotional, so you can ask someone to expressively read them aloud. This is important, since such reading fulfills the task of “understanding”, “final comprehension” of the text as a whole, as a meta-sense. “We went through a thousand different slingshots, did not sleep, did not eat for almost six weeks. And the sea! And crazy jocks! And this incessant fear that, you look, you will fly into the air! Having calmed down a little, the artist again yearns for light: "I need an abyss of light!"- he needs this not only to paint a picture, but also to calm the disturbed wounds. However, candlelight creates an unsettling and tense atmosphere: “The room took on a strange, festive, but also sinister look from this abundance of lights. The windows are blackened. Candles were reflected in the mirror above the sofa, casting a bright golden light on the white, serious face of the artist.. Next, we ask the students: “What color appears in the story that scares the artist?”. Of course, the guys talk about the dangerous black color, and besides, it’s night outside the windows, and the darkness frightens the artist: “Outside the windows blackened a frosty winter night<…>The artist's face became more and more painful.. And yet he overcomes his fear and takes up the brush. Further, we come with the students to the idea that in the process of working on a picture in the mind of the artist, colors associated with God, creativity, the world prevail, and the color-light space of what he represents becomes blue-gold: “The heavens, full of eternal light, shimmering with the azure of Eden and swirling with marvelous, albeit vague clouds, he dreamed<…>maiden of unspeakable beauty<…>, standing on the cloudy clubs, through the blue of the earthly distances, stretched out under it, showed the world<…>baby shining like the sun. However, the subconscious of the artist plays with him bad joke: instead of "The Birth of a New Man", the painting depicts a terrible scene from hell. We ask students to find in the text of the story a description of this scene and read it expressively. “The wild, black-and-blue sky to the zenith blazed with fires, the bloody flames of smoky, collapsing temples, palaces and dwellings. Racks, scaffolds and gallows with strangles blackened against a fiery background<…>over all this sea of fire and smoke<…>there was a huge cross with a bloody martyr crucified on it".
Next, we ask the students: “Is there a connection between color, light and inner world artist?" In the course of reflection, the guys come to the conclusion that the color and light in the picture - bloody red, black, fiery - are a kind of "guide" to the soul of the hero: after the death of his wife and child, pain and despair constantly lived in his heart, transforming into such a terrible picture in the subconscious and "escaped" to the outside. We also find confirmation of this in the Bunin researcher T. M. Bonami, who believed that the substitution occurred, since “a breakdown occurs in the artistic consciousness of the hero because there are mysterious connections between art and life, the imagination is fed by reality” . And the reality in which the artist lives is cruel, which is why the picture that has arisen on cardboard is so frightening.
Continuing the conversation, we introduce students to V. Nabokov's story "Christmas". The work is small in volume, so it can be read in the classroom. We check the perception, create a setting for the analysis of the story, ask to restore its plot plan. Next, we ask students: "What unites the stories of Bunin and Nabokov?". They will undoubtedly say that these are the themes of life and death, the motive of remembrance, the mood of the works, the image Christmas. “How does the main character perceive the preparation for this holiday?” - we ask students. They note that the main Christian holiday, Christmas, finds the hero in a depressed state. It is both joyful and at the same time reminds a person of the coming sufferings of the born Christ. The servant Ivan does not forget to bring the Christmas tree, the traditional symbol of this holiday, but Sleptsov, the main character of the story, asks to remove it, because, although implicitly, he blames the son of God for the death, considering it (death) an injustice. Perhaps the spruce is a bitter reminder of the happy moments spent with his son. On Christmas Eve, Sleptsov thinks about the death of his son, his own ("Tomorrow is Christmas ... And I'll die. Of course. It's so simple. Today ... Death"). And at the moment when it becomes “to the end understandable, to the end naked earthly life- sad to the point of horror, humiliatingly aimless, barren, devoid of miracles ... ”, Sleptsov watches how a butterfly is born in a biscuit box. "What does this indicate?" - we talk with the guys. It turns out that life is not barren and absolutely not devoid of miracles. Butterfly was not dead, she hatched from the heat. This butterfly is a continuation of the boy's life, his second birth, Christmas. This word is the title of Nabokov's story. And the title of the work, according to V.V. Tsurkan, "not only determines the perception of the text, but also sets the vector for revealing the meaning of the concept" .
So, the concept of Christmas both in Bunin's story and in Nabokov's story is filled with deep psychological content. And its semantics cannot be considered outside the mental states, experiences of the heroes of the works. Speaking about the concept of "Christmas" in the stories of Bunin and Nabokov, at this stage of the lesson we focus on the extra-textual connections of Bunin's story "The Mad Artist", on its inclusion in the communicative act, historical, cultural and social discourses. V.G. wrote about the importance of this stage. Zusman in Dialogue and Concept in Literature.
Continuing the conversation, we are trying to find out from the students if in the second part of the story “The Mad Artist”, especially in its finale, there is another symbolic image that is opposite to the image of CHRISTMAS. This is important, because in working with a separate artistic text, as noted by V.V. Tsurkan, the greatest results are brought by the conjugation of the concept dominant for the work under study with a circle of other concepts closely related to it, determined by the conceptual structure of a particular text and the author's intention, which in turn allows us to identify the features of the author's concept sphere aesthetically reflected in the work.
Therefore, it is necessary, in our opinion, to draw the attention of students to the concept of CRUCIFICATION.
Students find in the text and expressively read aloud a description of what the artist ended up depicting. "... Above the whole picture, above all this sea of fire and smoke, majestically, demonically towered a huge cross with a bloodied sufferer crucified on it, widely and obediently spreading his hands along the crossbeams. Death, in armor and a jagged crown, baring his coffin jaw, leaning forward with a run, deeply planted an iron trident under the heart of the crucified. The bottom of the picture showed a disorderly pile of the dead - and a dump, a squabble, a fight of the living, a mixture of naked bodies, hands and faces. And these faces, bristled, fanged, with eyes that rolled out of their sockets, were so vile and rude, so distorted by hatred, malice, the voluptuousness of fratricide, that they could rather be recognized as the faces of cattle, animals, devils, but not human at all..
After reading this description-prophecy, we consider with the students the paintings of Perov "The Crucifixion" and Salvador Dali's "Premonition civil war" (1936) and "Crucifixion or Hypercubic Body" (1954), "The Face of War". In the center, of course, is the figure of Christ on the cross.
How else can paintings, you can ask the students, help to better imagine the picture conceived by Bunin's hero and embodied by him? What other works of art could you include in an associative context that helps to comprehend Bunin's story?
We ask you to compare their content, composition, mood, palette with the descriptions in I. Bunin's story.
crucifixion
- See crucify.
- Cross depicting the crucified Christ. Gilded r.
Then we ask the students to highlight the semantic field for the word CRUCIFICATION. Working with the text of the story, high school students write out "darkness, death, silence, coffin, horror, cross, blood, sufferer, dead face, fear." Students also include the words “war, Iron Age, cave age". They are more connected with the fate of the crucified country, its suffering and death. Reflecting, we come with the students to the conclusion that the Gospel image of the crucified Christ echoes the image of a dying, suffering country. In terms of art, the mad artist wins: in the image crucifixion he succeeds, albeit against his own will, in expressing the truth about what is happening in Russia, about its history. Although the author accuses the character of blindness, unforgivable for the artist, the drawing he created expresses, first of all, Bunin's understanding of the events taking place in the country.
Further, it is possible to continue the conversation about the work foreign literature- about the story of Honore de Balzac " Unknown masterpiece”, about which one of the students in the class prepares additional information as homework. Despite the fact that there is no direct evidence of Bunin's acquaintance with the "Unknown Masterpiece" and the name Balzac is rarely mentioned in studies devoted to the Russian writer, the influence of the story on the analyzed story seems undeniable. For the first time, The Unknown Masterpiece was published in the newspaper L "Artiste" under the name "Maitre Frenhofer" in August 1831, later Balzac included the story in "Philosophical Studies" and "Human Comedy". The heroes of the work are three artists: fictional Frenhofer and historical Porbus and Poussin. In the text, Frenhofer appears as a true genius, "the god of painting," and the painting "La Belle Noiseza", on which he has been working for ten years now, seems to himself, to other heroes and readers, an unsurpassed masterpiece. However, when the artist finally decides to show work to colleagues, it turns out that the canvas is simply spoiled: the ingenious image that once was on it is buried under separate strokes, lines, color spots, devoid of meaning.
We draw conclusions of a methodological nature.
- Working with concepts is necessarily preceded by the stage of immersion of students in the artistic world of a literary work.
- In the organization of work with the concept, it is necessary to find the angle of its consideration (in our case, special attention was paid to color and light images).
- Working with concepts is unthinkable without updating the skills of students' comparative activity, which is based on a contextual approach to the study of a work (we note that in this case it is also possible to go beyond literature as an art form).
- The methodology for working with concepts in literature classes at school can be adapted to age characteristics students the method of interpreting concepts, established in philology (in our article, we relied on the study of V. V. Tsurkan).
Bibliographic link
Propadeeva E.N. CONCEPTS CHRISTMAS AND CRUCIFICATION IN THE LESSONS ACCORDING TO I. A. BUNIN'S STORY "MAD ARTIST" // Contemporary Issues science and education. - 2016. - No. 3.;URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=24609 (Accessed 03/10/2019). We bring to your attention the journals published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural History"
Kim Tonin(1900–1951) was born in Pyongyang. The work of this writer is one of the most interesting phenomena in Korean literature of the 1920s-1930s. At the beginning of the 20th century, he gained fame as one of the recognized masters of Korean prose. A special place in the artistic heritage of the writer belongs to short story. In 1919, Kim Tonin created the first purely literary magazine in the history of Korean literature, Creation.
Translation by Inna Tsoi
Mad Artist
Story
Guardian Spirit.
A young pine tree stands on a rock, and moss glistens under the pine tree.
Bending down, I see several orchid bushes under the rock, which bloom with yellow flowers.
Orchid leaves sway from the blows of the wind hitting the rock.
I bent down and poked at the bottom with a stick. However, there was still a meter and a half to the orchids. He shifted his gaze, and there - the gorge.
Gorge. Its entire surface is covered with pine needles. Although in some places you can see the rocks gray color You can't see the ground under the trees. If you fall in this place, you will roll over the pine needles and, probably, fall down somewhere, in some unknown ravine.
And I also have rocks behind me - high, more than six or seven meters. If you climb these rocks, then on the other side of the Muak mountain pass you can see a huge valley. Under my feet is an old rock. Below it are several bushes of orchids, even lower are two or three young pines, behind the pines there is again a rock, on the rock there are bluebell flowers, and below the rock a steep gorge begins.
In the place where the gorge ends, a part of the city's Gyeongsong Street1 can be seen above the pines. From afar, you can see cars moving back and forth along the road. Before my eyes is the same picture of a chaotic and noisy world.
But here, where I now stand, there are deaf mountains. Mountains that fully justify the name “deaf”. And the wind, and caves, and sheer cliffs, and pines - these are all deaf mountains, where you can fully feel the charm of solitude and peace.
Once on the site of this city there was a valley surrounded by dense mountains. For five centuries, the valley was leveled, plowed up and built up, and now here is the city of Gyeongsong. Now you don't know what was on the mind of the founder of the Li dynasty when he decided to build a capital in such a narrow valley. However, in the opinion of today's walker, Seoul is a city of unique beauty in the world. If you think that while living in the city, you can go out for a walk after eating, as they say, without even tying up the ribbons on your pants2, and immediately find yourself in the remote mountains, in solitude and silence, then in this respect Seoul is a unique city.
I took a look at the city with a five-hundred-year history, quietly spread out below under dark gray roofs. Grass is growing all around me. The noise of a mountain river running into a gorge, and amazing birds flying in front of me, cause delight, which travelers usually experience.
I stuck my stick into a crack in the rock. And in order not to fall and slide down head over heels, he noticed a place between a rock and a pine tree and sat down there, bent over. I wanted to smoke, but found that I did not bring tobacco with me. I thought that I would go out for a short walk, but imperceptibly, step by step, I wandered off somewhere. There is nothing to smoke.
On one side of me there are high cliffs, on the other - a blue sky, and on the very edge one can see three or four pine branches with needles. From somewhere faintly comes the smell of pine resin. The noise of the wind in the pines ... Indescribable silence and solitude. Indeed, how many people since the creation of the world have been here, in this place where I am sitting now? Am I not the very first person to step on this rock in its entire existence? Was there anyone else besides me, a fool, who was climbing the rock, trying his best to get to this place, and wasting so much energy? There are many brave souls who climb into the back mountains for the sake of adventure, but I don't think there were many who would be desperate to get to the guardian spirit itself.
There is a cave in the rock behind me.
Fearing to stumble upon snakes, I did not go inside, but rummaged around with a stick and found that three people could fit in the cave.
Is there any way to use this cave?
For five hundred years in Hanyang, this city of intriguers and conspirators, all sorts of vile performances were played out. If only these people knew about the existence of this cave, the entrance to which was cut right on the nearby street, and that it can be reached from the outskirts of the city in just half an hour, then maybe they would use it for conspiracies?
Empty dreams!
Bewitched by this deep silence, I fell deeper and deeper into joyless empty dreams, and the cave was to blame.
All kinds of conspiracies, which were accompanied by massacres, blackmail, exiles and exiles - these terrible images of the five hundred years of the Li dynasty led me to dark fantasies.
In order to quickly get rid of such bleak thoughts, I again rummaged in my pockets in search of tobacco, but it still had nowhere to come from.
I looked down again, and suddenly something flashed through the dense tops of the pines!
Looking closer, I saw a spring with spring water. The brook, peering through the gaps between the pines, apparently seeped through a crevice in the rock, and this trembling sound is certainly the sound of the wind. It cannot be that the sound of a spring gushing far below could be heard even here, in this very place.
Shouldn't I try to write a story about a spring? After all, running water is so beautiful, and its murmur is pleasant, and the taste is excellent - maybe some kind of interesting story about the stream? Wouldn't it be better to come up with another, more beautiful story than the bleak empty fantasies of conspiracies and murders that came to my mind when I saw this cave?
I pulled out a stick stuck in a crevasse in the rock. Lightly tapping it on the rock at my feet, I began to compose a story.
There lived an artist. And what was his name?
It's troublesome to come up with names, I'll take a name famous artist times of Silla and call him Solgo.4
Maybe take the time of the reign of sovereign Sejong, when the city that is seen in front of me was going through the most great time its heyday.
Hundreds of atrocities were conceived and committed here. Gyeongbokgung Palace stands there, the center of vital energy all of Hanyang. A middle-aged man with an expression of anguish on his face is hiding in a mulberry garden outside the north gate of Sinmu.
This is the artist Solgo.
Midsummer, mulberry foliage saves from hot sun rays. The air is warm - in this mulberry garden, where green leaves are overhead, and it is humid and stuffy on the ground, the artist Solgo is hiding. Judging by the little bundle the lunch is wrapped in, he intends to stay here until dinner time.
But what does he do? He just sits with a pained look, drenched in sweat.
This garden, by decree of the king, was used for breeding silkworms, and ordinary people it was forbidden to go there. For the whole day, even the shadow of a person will not flash there.
Occasionally the wind will rustle over the trees, but where Solgo is hiding, there is not the slightest movement. With every breath of breeze in the sultry air, Solgo shudders in surprise, but continues to gaze intently somewhere into the distance, as if waiting for something.
After some time, twilight, having overcome the mountain pass of Muak, descends on this city. After waiting until it gets dark, the artist quietly leaves his hiding place.
The day went by. Maybe watch again tomorrow?
Sighing heavily, the artist returned to his shack. It was almost completely dark, but in some places there were still dimly lit places. And when the artist got into the strip of light, his face appeared, and it was ugly. Few people have seen such ugliness in this world.
The nose is like a clay bottle. The eyes are like two large circles. Ears are like scoops. Mouth reminds copper pipe. Facial expression like a toad. He had such an ugly face that it would take every possible adjective to describe him. In addition, this face was so large that even from a distance one could clearly distinguish its features.
With such a face, he himself was ashamed to appear somewhere in the daylight.
Indeed, Solgo had never shown himself in public in daylight, although he was already of a conscious age.
He married early, at the age of sixteen, a girl from a noble family, who was betrothed to him by his mentor, but when she saw Solgo's face, she immediately lost consciousness and, recovering herself, hastily ran away to her home. He tried to marry again, however, his other betrothed managed to hold out for only one night, and on the second day the girl stubbornly told her parents that she was scared and she could not be near him, even if she died. So he survived the second tragedy in his personal life ...
After suffering two shocks, Solgo gradually began to shun women, and this desire became stronger every day. And then he did not want to deal with those who call themselves people at all.
In order to hide away from human eyes and devote himself entirely to painting, he left the human settlement and arranged for himself a tiny dwelling in a dense forest thicket. So he lived for almost thirty years, hiding there from people. In order to get what he needed for life or for painting, that is, every time he had to go out into the city street, he put on a large bamboo hat and also covered his face with hemp cloth.
Forty years have already passed since he began to paint pictures, thirty years since he was forced to lead the life of an ascetic and a recluse; and that masculine strength that he could not realize, living alone, accumulated in his head. Male Energy, concentrated in his brain, transmitted to his fingertips, splashed out on paper, and there were already a myriad of such drawings. Initially, he did not feel dissatisfied with his paintings.
Every time this or that picture appeared - the fruit of the talent given to him by nature, the skills acquired from the master and the male potency accumulated by him - he, appreciating it, was completely satisfied and even felt proud.
However, following the same path, in the twentieth year, the artist gradually began to feel the first sprouts of discontent in his soul. It is possible that at some point he began to think differently about the techniques of painting.
Can't you draw something else?
Mountain, sea, tree, stream, an old man with a staff in his hand. Bridge or boat with raised sails, flowers. Moon, ox, shepherd...
Has he tried to draw anything else so far?
He wanted to portray something other than these traditional landscapes, imbued with the spirit of antiquity.
I wanted to draw another face, more alive than the faces of those venerable, gray-haired elders or the faces of shepherds playing the flute. He learned this from the master. I wanted to capture a more expressive face.
And since that time, not sparing himself and using one or another traditional means and techniques of drawing, Solgo for ten years tried to convey in the drawing the expression of a living human face. However, the artist, who retired from human world and lived in complete solitude, could not remember what a person's face looked like.
The rogue faces of merchants, the impassive, inexpressive faces of passers-by, the lean faces of bird-catchers ... Only such faces he met at that time, and even now he can easily meet people with such physiognomies on the road. Isn't there a face with a different expression?
A face with a different expression!
A face with different emotions!
As this passionate desire matured and intensified in the soul of the artist, a certain memory vaguely surfaced in his head.
The expression on his mother's face.
Now it is almost completely erased from memory, but still sometimes the expression on the mother’s face, when she pressed him, a little one, to her chest and, bending down, looked at him with eyes full of tears, this memory rose from the very depths of his memory.
His mother was a rare beauty. She was so beautiful that she seemed to have taken away all the beauty for many years to come from subsequent generations.
The artist was born to this beauty after the death of her father.
A mother clutching her fatherless child to her heart. A bowed face with eyes from which no tears were allowed to flow.
As an adult, the artist saw only fright and fear on the faces of those who looked at him. Therefore, at times, with chilling sadness, he yearned for the beautiful, loving face of his mother, who looked at him with such love more than forty years ago.
He wanted to draw her face.
Tears stand in huge eyes, and yet they sparkle with joy and tenderness, and on the lips there is a hidden smile.
He wanted to capture this vision, which for a moment lit up his soul like lightning, and again eluded. The artist shunned the world and lived in constant hiding, so in his strange and bizarre soul the desire to depict this world became just as passionate. And as this desire intensified, his soul was filled with a feeling of resentment and discontent.
The artist threw away his brush and thought with a gloomy look that somewhere just at these moments, earthly women and men in their prime are having fun and joking, squeezing each other in their arms.
The artist, whose soul was in constant turmoil, became more and more capricious and fastidious day by day. He decided to paint a portrait of the most beautiful woman on earth.
At first he was going to draw just a woman with pretty face. But, not being able to see with his own eyes such a beauty up close, the artist was not able to draw what his soul demanded. In irritation, he moved the tip of the brush over the paper, and somehow imperceptibly during these fruitless efforts, his ideas about the beauty of a woman changed.
He wanted to draw the ideal beauty that he would like to see as his wife.
The world did not give him a wife.
Look, even a small insect, even a small bird, and they look for a mate, rejoice and have fun, find each other and enjoy, and here a person - the great master of everything that exists on earth - has been living without his half for fifty years now, - from these Discontent grew in his mind.
He thought that earthly people had deprived him of a couple, that earthly women did not want to come to him, and that no one would even know about him, who spent his whole life alone, when he died, and that he would perish somewhere in the mountains. . As a result, he came to the conclusion that this world is not only not worthy of regret, but, on the contrary, this ruthless world is hated by him.
Well, he himself, with the tip of his brush, will create the wife that the world has deprived him of, and he will also laugh at him.
Compared to the most beautiful woman that ever existed on this earth, the beauty created by his brush will be incomparably more beautiful. He will also laugh at earthly beauties who consider themselves irresistible, although in fact they are ugly.
He will still look with contempt on those foolish men who have married women who are not so beautiful, but believe that they are incomparable beauties in all the Celestial Empire.
He will also make those scoundrels bow before him who have four or five wives and concubines with them, enjoy and dance with pleasure.
Gorgeous! Gorgeous!
The artist first closed his eyes, then opened them, clasped his head in his hands, but no matter how hard he tried to imagine the beauty’s face, he did not succeed.
Of course, if the face is smooth, without roughness, and all its features are harmonious, then such people are usually called earthly beauties. If you paint blush or smiling eyes on such a face, it will become even more attractive. Such a face can be imagined, and it is not difficult to draw it with a brush.
But the artist, in whose memory the image of his mother and her face, as he remembered it in childhood, was imprinted in a light shadow, such beauties did not bring satisfaction.
So he suffered and tormented himself year after year.
Several years have passed since the lower part of the portrait of the beauty was painted. About the same, how to depict the upper part - the face, he had no idea.
Every time the artist entered his shack, the picture that hung at the entrance seemed to reproach him and called: “Come on, paint my face and neck.”
The picture made the artist feel embarrassed.
Previously, if there were no special cases, the artist did not go outside during the day. Now, as usual, having wrapped his face, he began to wander around the city in the daytime.
Even if on the road, but suddenly he will be lucky enough to meet an extraordinary beauty.
If even for a moment he could see a beauty he liked on the road, then maybe he would be able to clearly keep this image in his head and draw a portrait from memory ...
However, in this city, where the laws for men and women were strict, women from noble families did not appear on the street with their heads uncovered during the day. If any women met, then for the most part they were either servants or women of the lower class.
Although occasionally there were those among them who could be called attractive. However, the portrait required a woman of pure beauty. On their faces only dullness was expressed, it was impossible to catch anything else.
Having wrapped his face around, the artist wandered the streets, staggered and loitered now at the well, then at the market in the hope that many women would gather there. And if he came across at least a little attractive, he followed them and tried to study their faces, but so far he could not find a beauty who would satisfy his needs.
Maybe in the houses, in the half where women live,5 there will be a beauty that will please him? Ah, this women's room! Ladies quarters! If only for once you could see all the women from these rooms and appreciate their faces! ..
At the end of a day spent in unrest and anxiety, the artist, in search of a beauty like last hope chose the royal mulberry garden and entered there to see the faces of court ladies gathering mulberry leaves. But, unfortunately, the boldly traveled path turned out to be in vain: no one came to the garden that day.
It was the height of the silkworm breeding season, and if you decide to wait patiently and for a long time, then the day would come when the ladies of the court would appear in this garden. The artist, burning with anger and a passionate desire to paint the face of his wife, the next day again entered the garden and hid there. Hiding among the mulberry trees, he waited patiently.
Every day for a whole month, the artist, taking food with him, went to the mulberry garden. But every time he returned home in the evening, he only sighed deeply.
Not at all because he could not see the ladies of the court.
As if on the bride, which seemed to have been specially arranged for the artist, hiding in the mulberry thickets, every day women from the royal palace appeared and passed in front of him. The sleeves and hem of their dresses fluttered in the wind. They gathered in groups of several, plucked mulberry leaves and left. So in the whole month he saw forty or fifty ladies of the court.
They were all high class beauties. Compared to the women glimpsed on the road or at the well, their faces were more refined, there was no doubt about it.
But the eyes… The artist imagined them like this…
There was tenderness and joy in those eyes. They are filled to the brim with love. The court ladies did not have this. In other words, they were ordinary beauties.
The great ambitions of the artist, who wished for himself the most beautiful of all beauties, and who thereby wished to take revenge on this pitiless world for depriving him of such a woman, could not be satisfied with beauties of this kind.
Each time he returned to his shack, he sighed long and hard, and these sighs continued. whole month. He didn't go to the mulberry garden anymore.
It was one of the days when the autumn sky is transparent and gives off an amazing blue.
With soul-filled indignation and unsatisfied desire, the artist, attaching a bamboo basket to his side, went to the stream to wash rice for dinner.
But after taking a few steps, he suddenly stopped.
On a rock near the stream, which shone through the sprawling pines, he saw a girl. She sat aloof, taking in the spotted rays of the evening sunset through the pine branches, and looked down at the running stream.
How did this girl get here?
In a place quite remote from human habitation. In a place that is located too high for a person from the village to get there. In a place where there is not even a path. Until now, and even then occasionally, only a woodcutter or a shepherd came here, but so that there were traces of someone else? This has never happened here. How did this girl end up in a place like this?
The artist stopped in confusion and began to watch her from afar. And as he watched, a heavy tension gradually built up in his chest.
Step by step, trying not to make noise, he began to move forward.
The distance between them gradually decreased, and the girl's face became more and more distinct ... The blood rushed to the face of the artist.
There are few such beauties in the world. She is seventeen or eighteen years old. Her features were beautiful, but even more wonderful, surprisingly beautiful was the expression on her face.
Either the girl could not take her eyes off the running water, or she was listening to something, but one way or another, all her attention was riveted to this stream. Opening her eyes wide, as if she had forgotten how to blink, she gazed fascinated at the running stream.
Maybe in this stream she sees the dragon's palace? What does it seem like to a bent over girl with a bang, slightly fluttering from the wind and flying apart from contact with the pines? What does it seem like to a girl who has completely given herself over to contemplation, who has concentrated all her dreams, all her passion, all her delight in a charming smile shining in her eyes and on her lips?
Finally he found it! This admirable the expression on the face that for ten years the artist tried to see and find on the roads near human settlements or at the well, and even in the royal mulberry garden, but could not find it. He found this face quite unexpectedly and right here.
The artist quickened his pace. He completely forgot how terrible his face was, and did not think how scared this girl would be if she looked at him. He quickly walked towards her.
Hearing the steps of the artist, the girl raised her head easily. She looked straight at him. But the girl's wonderful gaze was directed somewhere into the boundless distance.
When the artist, with a heavy heart, not knowing what to say, made some incomprehensible sound, as if his tongue had suddenly become wooden, the girl was the first to break the silence:
What kind of place is it?
Here is a mountain that does not even have a mountain guardian spirit, and you, so young, why are you here?
Yes ... - Suddenly, the girl became sad. - Somehow I groped my way along the stream.
The artist tilted his head. I tried to move. But the girl's gaze remained motionless, as if rushing somewhere into the distance. Her eyes, although wide open, looked through him, and it was impossible to understand where her gaze was directed.
Suddenly the artist cried out loudly.
Do you see what's ahead?
I'm blind.
She was blind. Hearing how the girl answered, holding back tears, the artist came closer to her.
You can't even see what's in front of you! How did you get to this lonely place?
The girl lowered her head. She seemed to say something in response, but the artist could not catch her words. That surprisingly bewitching expression that he had seen a few minutes ago disappeared, and the artist lost interest in the blind girl.
Of course, there was no doubt that she was a rare beauty. But it was not only her beauty that struck the artist at the very first moment. He was attracted precisely by this amazing charm, which was then reflected on her face.
Poor thing. Evening is drawing near, get down and go home before it gets dark.
Having said this, the artist decided to give up on the girl. But she answered him:
Although it is dark, the twilight is still very beautiful, right?
Beautiful are beautiful...
How beautiful are they?
Golden light streams in the western mountains. There, the whole heavenly world was painted in a bright red color - and green pines, and dark blue rocks, and brown tree trunks - everything is buried in golden color ...
And what color is it - gold, bright red, green and dark blue, what are all these colors? I heard that the landscape of these mountains is very beautiful, and although I somehow got here, except for the noise of the wind and the sound of water, besides what is heard in my ear, I cannot know where and how beautiful it is.
Gradually, the girl regains her former refined expression, a wave of joy flashed in her wide-open eyes. The beautiful expression that had disappeared for a moment began to reappear.
In the end, the artist came up and sat opposite the girl.
If you go down the stream, you can see the sea, and in the depths of it - the dragon's palace. There are columns entwined with silk of seven colors, skillfully carved stone steps and bizarrely shaped stairs, bells made of gold under the roof, doorposts decorated with pearls ...
As the artist spoke, the girl's eyes became more and more brilliant every moment. Finally, the artist decided that he would return home with the girl.
I will tell you about the dragon palace. That's only if your house will not worry ...
So the artist lured the girl, and she raised her huge eyes, looked high into the sky and said that even if her parents lost such a cripple like her, they would not worry too much. And she willingly followed the artist.
My dreams, which had taken me a thousand li6, were suddenly interrupted at this point. How to continue this story?
Thoughts rush through my head. At the same time, lines from a popular song reach me from somewhere ...
I raised my head. Apparently, people are approaching from somewhere on the other side. Involuntarily listening to this loud song, I prevent myself from concentrating.
This annoying song. Damn her.
Because of this cursed song, there is no way to collect the interrupted story.
Are there stories without end? Shouldn't there be some sort of solution?
Maybe end like this: the artist took the girl with him, returned to his shack and, while telling her about the dragon's palace, painted her face and fulfilled his old dream?
Where did such a sweet ending come from? But since it turned out like this, it’s not worth starting a story!
And then what?
Then maybe we should come up with a different ending?
The artist returned home with the girl. And told her about the dragon palace. However, compared to the way the girl heard about the palace then, for the first time, now, she apparently did not feel such strong enthusiasm, and her expression was not so wonderful. The intentions of the artist burst like soap bubble. He had no choice but to leave this picture unfinished forever.
And that ending doesn't work either.
Then again...
The artist returned home with the girl. And at home, the longer he looked at her, the more she fascinated him, so that in the end he stopped finishing the picture, and the girl became his wife. The blind girl and the ugly artist lived their lives carelessly and cheerfully. The artist, who wanted a woman painted in a picture to become his wife, acquired a real beauty as his wife.
Again, not that.
Boring and primitive. Damn this song.
I got up. Having lost interest, I did not want to stay and just sit in this place. The sounds of the popular motif are still heard. I'll go where this song is not heard.
Bending down, I saw that in the distance something flashed through the pines - that same spring. I'll go down to that spring, which formed the basis of my story. Going down this steep cliff was more difficult than climbing it. When you climb a mountain, if you fall, stumbling, then at least you will end up in the same place. However, if you stumble with your foot during the descent, then you don’t know how long you will roll down. In extreme cases, you can even reach the very outskirts of Cheongundong. Moreover, that stick, which helped me when I was going up, was terribly in the way when I was going down.
It took about half a quarter of an hour to reach the spring.
And there really was a rock near the spring, on which one person could fit just fine. Maybe the artist was washing rice on this rock? Or maybe it was on it that the girl sat and indulged in dreams? I thought that there was a deep cliff under it, but it turned out that water flows there in a weak, sluggish stream, making its way from under the rock no more than a span.
The gorge itself was completely silent. Even the sound of the wind came from somewhere above, in the distance. In those ancient times, this rather gloomy gorge with pines and rocks, perhaps, brought joy to the artist.
The artist returned home with the girl.
He was in such tension, and his soul was so joyful that he did not even want to cook dinner. Entering the shack, he saw that the unfinished female portrait, who has been waiting for several years for the head to be added to him, as if he was gladly meeting him.
So, sit down there.
The prepared paints were waiting for him.
With a heart beating with excitement, ready to burst, the artist stood in front of the canvas, seated the girl so that the light fell in her direction, and, having dipped the brush, began his story.
He wanted to fulfill his old dream today, when there was still a little time before dusk. That force of the artist, which had accumulated in him all these ten years, when he only conceived his picture, but could not start work, is now completely concentrated in his hands.
And... you understand, don't you?
He looked at the girl, talked about the dragon's palace, and his hands controlled the brush with lightning speed.
In the dragon's palace precious pearl Money7 . With this pearl, you can achieve anything your heart desires. Once you pass it over your eyes, you can see the bright sun and moon.
Yes? Is there such a treasure?
Yes, there is. But only you must obey me well, and then in a few days I will take you to the palace to the dragon, where we will ask for the pearl of Mani's desires, and I will cure your eyes.
And then I, too, will be able to see the bright sun and moon?
Yes, the bright sun, and the moon, and a wonderful bright seven-color rainbow, and a beautiful grove, and a deep gorge - what only you will not see!
Oh, to get this pearl of desires as soon as possible!
Ah, amazing, beautiful expression. The artist did not miss anything from this amazing expression of admiration that appeared on the face of the girl and overwhelmed her. He transferred this expression to the canvas.
Twilight somehow imperceptibly changed into the night. The woman in the picture was not painted only pupils, everything else was completely completed.
He wanted to finish the pupils too. But it was already too dark for that, and the vitality of the whole picture depended on the pupils.
What will happen if he finishes drawing these pupils during the day, when it dawns? But one way or another, but the soul of the artist, which finally, after a long ten years, reached its cherished dream experienced an incomparable joy.
This exclamation of admiration was that exclamation of joy that is heard at the completion of a long-planned task. But along with the ensuing calm in the soul of the artist, other feelings awakened - tension and passion.
In order to better see the girl’s face in the impenetrable darkness, the artist sat down at her knees so close that he almost touched them. He calmed down a little and almost completed the picture, but because he smelled the girl’s body and felt her closeness with all his gut, his nerves tensed to the limit. Gradually, his whole body began to shake. In this darkness, the delightfully sparkling huge eyes of the girl and her lips, quivering with passionate desire, completely captured the consciousness of the artist ...
During the day, the artist and the blind girl were no longer strangers to each other.
Today I'll draw the pupils.
The artist, who lived a bachelor life for thirty years and ate alone for thirty years, for the first time had breakfast not alone, but with a blind girl. He sat down again in front of the picture.
What about the dragon palace?
The girl's eyes sparkled with joy. However, those eyes, the brilliance of which he enjoyed as an artist, did not sparkle like yesterday.
Of course, the second such beautiful eyes not in the world. But now they were the eyes of a woman longing for love. These were the eyes of a woman, the passionate and loving eyes of a girl who in the past endured insults for her injury, and now she has freed herself from this oppressive feeling and for the first time since yesterday night has known what the “spring of life” is.
Dragon Palace?
Let's quickly go to the dragon's palace, find the pearl of desires there, and you will open my eyes. I want to quickly open my eyes, look at this bright world, and on you ... Will you get it for me?
Yes, how can I not get it, I'll get it. This seven-color bright…
Rather, I want to look at the seven colors.
Of course of course. In the meantime, think and imagine it now in your head.
Yes, but I want to see it as soon as possible...
You bend down and see that the picture standing at its knees is just waiting for its pupils.
But what was reflected in the eyes of the blind girl, although it was beautiful, still could not express anything but love and passion. Those eyes weren't worth the dedication of ten years.
Come on, think of the dragon palace!
What if I'm going to think? You really need to see it with your eyes.
Yes, at least try to think.
If you have an idea about this, then thoughts arise, don't they?
Think like you thought yesterday!
In the end, irritation appeared in the artist.
Come on dragon palace! Dragon Palace!
Think of the dragon palace! So what is the palace like?
Seven colors and bright.
Yes, what else?
And also golden columns, no, columns woven from silk. And green pearls...
Green is not pearl! Green is jade!
Green either the roof or the doors.
Eh, fool!
The artist with his huge hands tightly grabbed the shoulders of the blind girl. Grabbed and began to shake them.
Come on again, carefully. Dragon Palace?
Palace in the depths of the sea...
The artist could not restrain himself and hit the girl on the cheek. The girl shook with fear and fright.
Where else can you find such a fool? Look - so these sick eyes do not even know how to blink, and everyone is looking somewhere into the void. The artist looked into these empty eyes, and discontent and annoyance more and more seized him. He grabbed the blind girl by the throat.
Oh you fool! Idiot! Cripple!
Grasping her by the throat, he began to shake her, constantly showering curses that came to his mind, and unleashing all his anger on her. When he saw that something like a feeling of resentment and bitterness arose in her eyes, which were clouded, like those of a sick person, he began to shake her harder. He suddenly let go of her. The body of a blind girl became too heavy ...
The girl slipped out of the hands of the artist and fell on her back. Falling, she hit the ink pot, and it overturned. Droplets of mascara rolled down from the ink pot onto the girl's face.
Frightened, the artist tried to shake her, but the blind girl no longer belonged to this world.
The artist did not know what to do. He tossed about in complete confusion and suddenly involuntarily glanced at his picture, and ... Oh! With a cry, he fell.
Pupils somehow imperceptibly managed to appear on the face that looked at him from the picture. The artist came to his senses, got up and looked at the picture again: pupils were completely drawn near the eyes.
But the way the pupils were drawn made the artist sit up again, and he could not move from his seat. The eyes of a blind girl looked at him, in which the same expression of despair was reflected when the artist grabbed her by the throat!
These were the same pupils as then, at that moment.
There was nothing strange in the fact that a blind girl fell and hit the ink pot, and there was nothing strange in the fact that when the ink pot tipped over, drops of ink splashed out of it, but how did these drops fall in such a miraculous way? How did it happen so amazingly that even irises appeared around the eyes due to spreading mascara, while at first only pupils appeared, and even then because droplets of mascara fell there? On the one hand - a dead girl, on the other - a finished portrait. The artist just sat with an absent look and could no longer get rid of the small trembling beating him.
A few days later, inside the city fortress, a crazy old man appeared, who, with a gloomy face, wandered around the city, holding a very strange portrait of a woman in his hands. No one knew where he came from, and no one knew about his past. The old man must have treasured this portrait very much, because he resisted with all his might that people looked at the picture, and immediately ran away.
So he wandered for several years, and once in a strong snowstorm he lay down on stones and died. Even dying, he continued to press this single portrait to his chest.
Old artist! I mourn your sad fate. I lowered the stick into the water, wiggled it a little more, and slowly got up.
Looking up, I saw that the summer evening sunset was already dancing over the snow-white series of mountains and a mountain bird was flying south over this ancient gorge.
1 One of the old names for Seoul.
2 In traditional Korean clothing, men's pants were tied at the bottom with ribbons.
3 One of the old names for Seoul.
4 The biography of the artist Solgo is included in “Samguk Sagi” - “Historical Records of the Three States” by Kim Pusik (1075–1151), in the book. 48th: Solgo is from Silla. From birth, he had neither funds nor service, so there is no record of his pedigree left. From birth, he already knew how to draw well. Once upon a time, he painted an old pine tree on the wall of the Hwangnyeong Temple. There were scales and cracks on the trunk, and the branches with needles curved like a bowl. Crows, falcons, swallows and sparrows, seeing a pine from afar, flew towards it, but, having flown close, helplessly stopped and fell. Years passed, the colors darkened. The monks of the temple touched up the tree with red and green paints, but the birds no longer flew. The portraits of the Bodhisattva in the temple of Punghwansa from Gyeongju and in the temple of Tangseok from Jinju are creations of his brush. People say that it is written in the spirit.
5 Cor. unban- in traditional Korean houses, the inside of the house, female half. According to Korean law, the entrance to unban outsiders were prohibited. Even the authorities had no right to enter there to arrest the owner of the house.
6 A measure of length equal to 0.576 km.
7 In Buddhist traditions, this was the name of a precious pearl, with the help of which a person could fulfill all his desires. According to other legends, this pearl is in the Dragon's mouth.
Translation I. V. Tsoi
Inna Valerianovna Tsoi was born in 1973 in Leningrad. Graduated from the Department of Korean Philology of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. Candidate philological sciences. The dissertation was devoted to the work of the writer Kim Tonin (1900–1951). Scientific interests: modern Korean literature, culture and linguoculturology. She worked as a teacher in the Republic of Korea: from 2003 to 2004 at the University of Foreign Languages "Hanguk", from 2004 to 2006 - at the University of Hallim. Currently he teaches at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at St. Petersburg State University. Author of more than 10 scientific publications.
When asked about the analysis of Bunin's work "The Mad Artist", where to start, it does not come to mind at all, given by the author European the best answer is And I would read the book first.
Answer from Rain.[guru]
Answer a few questions:
Answer from Kavkaz Center[guru]
I would take it from here. This is for teachers.
What is a person? What is the value, meaning, content of human life? What is the relationship between the rational and the mystical, the rational and the transcendent in man? What is the life of the spirit? What is time and eternity? . Each cultural epoch, each thinker and artist offer their own versions of the answers to these questions. The way people feel and think turn of XIX and XX centuries, turns out to be unusually close to us today, at the beginning of the XXI century.
And then answer questions and that's it.
MAD ARTIST": CONTEXT APPROACH
The lesson on the story “The Mad Artist” is built in a fundamentally different way: it is a problem analysis using the techniques of the contextual approach.
Bunin's researchers call the year 1920 "silent". The first year in a foreign land, in exile, is the year of the writer's silence. One can only guess what mental anguish he experienced. But gradually Bunin returns to creativity. The Artist and the World, the purpose and essence of artistic creativity - these are the problems that concern a mature and already experienced writer. Students are invited to read the 1921 short story "The Mad Artist" in advance, answer a series of questions and complete assignments. Discussing them will serve as the basis of the lesson. The last of the tasks can be individual or offered to a group of students, at the discretion of the teacher.
1. After reading the story, how did you discover the meaning of its title?
2. How does the world appear to which the gentleman “with astonished eyes” returned from his wanderings? How does this world meet the artist?
3. What details of behavior most clearly characterize the state of the hero?
4. How can you title a paragraph that begins with the words “Soon youthful strength took possession of him”?
5. “In the first half of the 1920s, the struggle between two principles was stronger than ever in Bunin's work: darkness and light,” writes researcher Anna Saakyants. How does the motif of the struggle between darkness and light develop in the story? How can you explain the discrepancy between the idea and the embodiment in the work of the artist - the hero of the story?
6. Do you agree with the statements below? Match them with the content of Bunin's story. “If the world split, then the crack would pass through the heart of the poet” (Heinrich Heine). “Life is never beautiful: only its pictures in the purified mirror of art are beautiful” (Arthur Schopenhauer).
7. Find and examine reproductions of paintings: Raphael. "Sistine Madonna" ; Erich Enge. "Desecration of Democracy"; Salvador Dali. "Premonition of Civil War", "The Face of War", "Christ of Saint Juan de la Cruz". How do paintings help to better present the picture conceived by Bunin's hero and embodied by him? (Compare their content, composition, mood, palette with Bunin's descriptions.) What other works of art could you include in an associative context that helps comprehend Bunin's story?
Such lessons help to form and consolidate such skills of students as identifying the features of the writer's style, determining the universal content of works, correlating works various kinds arts.
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Genius and madness go hand in hand. Gifted people perceive the world a little differently, and their creation sometimes faces the unknown, the forbidden and the mysterious. Perhaps this is what distinguishes their work and makes it truly brilliant.
website remembered a few amazing artists who suffered from mental disorders in different years of their lives, which, however, could not prevent them from leaving behind real masterpieces.
Mikhail Vrubel
Mikhail Vrubel, Lilac (1900)
They don’t even try to copy the special aesthetics of his paintings - Vrubel’s work was so original. Madness overtook him adulthood- the first signs of the disease appeared when the artist was 46 years old. Family grief contributed to this - Mikhail had a son with a cleft lip, and after 2 years the child died. The attacks of violence that began alternated with absolute apathy; relatives were forced to place him in a hospital, where he died a few years later.
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch, "The Scream" (1893)
The painting "The Scream" was painted in several versions, each of which was made different techniques. There is a version that this picture is the fruit of a mental disorder. It is assumed that the artist suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. "Scream" Munch rewrote four times until he was treated in the clinic. This case was not the only time when Munch found himself with a mental disorder in the hospital.
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night (1889)
The extraordinary painting of Van Gogh reflects the spiritual quest and torment that tormented him all his life. Now experts find it difficult to say what mental illness tormented the artist - schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but he ended up in the clinic more than once. The illness eventually led him to commit suicide at age 36. His brother Theo, by the way, also died in a lunatic asylum.
Pavel Fedotov
Pavel Fedotov, Major's Matchmaking (1848)
Not everyone knows that the author of genre satirical painting died in a psychiatric hospital. He was so loved by contemporaries and admirers that many fussed about him, the king himself allocated funds for his maintenance. But, unfortunately, they could not help him - there was no adequate treatment for schizophrenia at that time. The artist died very young - at 37 years old.
Camille Claudel
Camille Claudel, "Waltz" (1893)
In her youth, the sculptor girl was very pretty and unusually talented. Master Auguste Rodin could not help but pay attention to her. The insane connection between the student and the master exhausted both - Rodin could not leave his common-law wife, with whom he had lived for many years. In the end, they broke up with Claudel, and she was never able to recover from the breakup. Since 1905, she began violent seizures, and she spent 30 years in a psychiatric hospital.
Francois Lemoine
François Lemoine, "Time guarding the Truth from Falsehood and Envy" (1737)
Physical overwork from hard work, constant court intrigues of envious people in Versailles and the death of his beloved wife affected the artist's health and drove him to madness. As a result, in June 1737, a few hours after finishing work on the next painting, Time Protecting Truth from Lies and Envy, during a paranoid attack, Lemoine committed suicide by stabbing himself with nine stabs of a dagger.
Louis Wayne
One of recent works Wayne (presented chronologically), clearly illustrating mental disorders artist
Louis was most inspired by cats, to which he attributed human behavior in his cartoons. Wayne was considered a strange person. Gradually, his eccentricity turned into a serious mental illness that began to progress over the years. In 1924, Louis was committed to a psychiatric hospital after he pushed one of his sisters down the stairs. A year later, he was discovered by the press and transferred to Napsbury Hospital in London. This clinic was relatively cozy, there was a garden and a whole cattery, and Wayne spent his last years. Although the disease progressed, his gentle nature returned to him and he continued to paint. Its main theme is cats - for a long time remained unchanged until it was finally supplanted by fractal-like patterns.
