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A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of brutal, physiological vitality, and that is the America that I have really loved and love. But a good half of it is a country of boredom, emptiness, monotony, brainless production, and brainless consumption, and this is the American inferno.
nice
[...] In his youth he was both a captain and a loudmouth, he was also employed in civilian business, he was a master at giving a good flogging, he was both quick and efficient, and a dandy, and stupid; but in his old age he had merged all these vivid peculiarities within himself into a kind of dim indefiniteness. He was already a widower, already retired; he no longer played the dandy, or boasted, or got into fights; he only loved to drink tea and chatter all kinds of nonsense while drinking it; he would walk around his room and trim the tallow candle-end; precisely at the end of each month he would call on his tenants for the rent; he would go out into the street with a key in his hand in order to look at the roof of his building; he would chase the yard sweeper several times out of his kennel, where he would hide in order to sleep—in short, he was a retired person who, after a wild life and a bumpy ride with post-horses, has nothing left but banal habits.
The artist wordlessly saw his guests out and was left in unpleasant reflections. In his cramped garret no one had interrupted him when he sat at his work, commissioned by no one. With vexation he set aside the portrait he had begun and wanted to take up his other unfinished works. But how could it be possible to replace thoughts and feelings that have penetrated to the soul with new ones that the imagination has not yet managed to fall in love with? Throwing his brush aside, he left the house.
Quickly he dressed his Psyche in the clothing of the nineteenth century; he slightly touched the eyes and lips, made the hair somewhat lighter, and gave the portrait to his visitors. He was rewarded with a bundle of banknotes and an affectionate smile of gratitude.
But the artist stood as if rooted to the spot. His conscience was tormenting him; he was overcome by that fastidious, mistrustful fear for his unsullied name that is felt by a youth who carries in his soul the nobility of talent, a fear that forces him, if not to destroy, then at least to hide from the world those works in which he himself sees imperfection, a fear that forces him to prefer enduring the contempt of the whole crowd rather than the contempt of a true connoisseur. It seemed to him that a terrible judge was standing before his painting and, shaking his head, reproaching him for shamelessness and lack of talent. What wouldn’t he give to get it back! He wanted to run after the lady, tear the portrait from her hands, rip it up and stomp on it, but how could he do it? Where should he go? He didn’t even know his visitor’s name.
But from that time a happy change took place in his life. He expected his name to be covered in infamy, but it turned out quite the contrary. The lady who had commissioned the portrait went into raptures about this extraordinary artist, and our Chertkov’s studio filled with visitors wishing to double, and if possible increase tenfold, their own images. But the fresh, still innocent Chertkov, who felt in his soul that he was unworthy of taking on such an extraordinary task, in order to somewhat make amends and atone for his crime, decided to take up his work with all possible diligence, to double the exertion of his powers, which was the only thing that would produce miracles. But his intentions met with unforeseen obstacles. The visitors whose portraits he was painting were for the most part impatient, busy people in a hurry, and therefore, as soon as his brush began to create something a bit out of the ordinary, a new visitor would burst in and display his head in a most pompous way, burning with the desire to see it on canvas as soon as possible, and the artist would hurry to finish his work quickly.
His time was finally so filled up that he could not spend a single minute in reflection; and inspiration, continually destroyed at its very birth, finally got out of the habit of visiting him. Finally, in order to make his work go faster, he began to confine himself to well-known, defined, monotonous, long worn-out forms. Soon his portraits resembled those family depictions by the old artists, which are so often encountered in all the lands of Europe and in all corners of the world, where the ladies are depicted with their arms folded on their breasts and holding flowers in their hands, and the cavaliers in uniform with one hand tucked inside their jackets. Sometimes he wished to offer a new, not yet hackneyed posture that would be distinguished by originality and lack of constraint, but, alas! All that is unconstrained and easy is obtained by the poet and artist only in a most constrained way, and is the fruit of great exertions. In order to offer a new, bold expression, to grasp a new secret in painting, he would have to think for a long time, turning his eyes away from everything that surrounded him, flying away from everything worldly and from life. But he didn’t have time for this, and besides he was too exhausted by his daily work to be ready to receive inspiration; and the world he was using as a model to paint his works was too ordinary and monotonous to stimulate and stir his imagination. The deeply pondering and at the same time motionless face of the director of a department; the face of an Uhlan cavalry captain, handsome but always of the same type; the pale face of a St. Petersburg beauty with its forced smile; and many others that were just too ordinary—that is what appeared in turn every day before our painter. It seemed that his very brush had finally taken on the insipidity and lack of energy that marked his originals.
The banknotes and gold that constantly flashed before him finally put the virginal impulses of his soul to sleep. He shamelessly profited by the weakness of people who, in exchange for an extra feature of beauty added by the artist to their images, were ready to forgive him all his deficiencies, even if that beauty damaged the resemblance itself.
But the self-satisfied artist did not hear this talk and gloried in his universal fame, throwing his gold coins around and beginning to believe that everything on earth is ordinary and simple, that there is no such thing as a revelation from on high, and that everything must of necessity be subsumed under a strict order of tidiness and monotony. His life was reaching the years when everything that breathes of impulse begins to shrink within a person, when the powerful violin bow reaches the soul more faintly and does not twine about the heart with piercing sounds, when contact with beauty no longer transforms virginal powers into fire and flame, but all the burned-out feelings become more open to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its alluring music, and little by little, imperceptibly, allow it to put them completely to sleep. Fame cannot satiate and give enjoyment to one who has stolen it and not earned it; it produces a constant excitement only in one who is worthy of it. And so all his feelings and impulses turned toward gold. Gold became his passion, his ideal, his terror, his enjoyment, and his goal. Bundles of banknotes grew in his chests. And like everyone who is given this terrible gift, he became boring, closed to everything and indifferent to everything. It seemed that he was ready to turn into one of those strange creatures who are sometimes encountered in the world, at whom a person full of energy and passion looks with horror, and who seem to him like living bodies that contain corpses within themselves. But a certain event powerfully shook him and gave his life a completely different turn.
Pure, unsullied, beautiful as a bride, the artist’s work stood before him. And if only the slightest desire to shine, if only a perhaps excusable vanity, if only a thought of showing itself off to the mob had been evident there—no, not a one! It rose up humbly. It was simple, innocent, and divine, like talent, like genius. The amazingly beautiful figures grouped themselves without constraint, freely, without touching the canvas, and, amazed by so many gazes directed at them, seemed to bashfully lower their beautiful eyelashes. In the divine features of the faces breathed those secret phenomena that the soul cannot, does not, know how to recount to another person; that which was expressed lay inexpressibly on them; and all this was tossed onto the canvas so easily, so humbly and freely, that it seemed to be the fruit of the artist’s momentary inspiration, a thought that had suddenly dawned upon him. The whole painting was—an instant, but an instant for which a whole human life is nothing but preparation. Involuntary tears were ready to roll down the faces of the visitors surrounding the painting. It seemed that all tastes, all bold, irregular deviations of taste, were merged into a silent hymn to the divine work. Motionless, with mouth open, Chertkov stood in front of the painting, and finally, when the visitors and experts began little by little to stir and to discuss the merits of the work, and when they finally turned to him and asked him to make his thoughts known, he regained consciousness. He wanted to assume an ordinary, indifferent air, wanted to offer the usual sort of banal opinion that stale, hard-hearted artists express: that the work was good and the artist’s talent was evident, but that one would wish for the idea and the finishing to be better executed in many places—but the words died on his lips, tears and sobs broke out discordantly in answer, and like a madman he ran out of the hall.
Lieutenant Pirogov made up his mind not to abandon his quest, despite the fact that the German woman had given him an explicit rebuff. He could not understand how it was possible to resist him, all the more since his amiability and brilliant rank gave him full rights to her attention. One must, however, say that Schiller’s wife, for all her comeliness, was very stupid. But stupidity is a particularly charming feature in a pretty wife. At least I’ve known many husbands who are enraptured by the stupidity of their wives and see in it all the signs of an infantile innocence. Beauty works perfect miracles. All spiritual defects in a beautiful woman, instead of evoking revulsion, become unusually attractive; in these women, vice itself breathes with comeliness; but let beauty disappear—and the woman must be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire if not love then at least respect. But for all her stupidity, Schiller’s wife was always true to her obligations, and therefore it was fairly difficult for Pirogov to succeed in his bold undertaking. But there is always a certain enjoyment involved in overcoming obstacles, and the blonde became more interesting to him from day to day. He began to come quite frequently to inquire about his spurs, so that Schiller finally got sick of it. He made every effort to finish making the spurs as soon as possible. Finally they were ready.
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In the German cities he was somewhat struck by the strange formation of the German’s body, deprived of the shapely harmony of beauty, the feeling for which is innate to the Italian breast; the German language also struck unpleasantly on his musical ear. But already he saw the French border before him, and his heart shuddered. The fluttering sounds of the fashionable European language caressed and kissed his hearing. With secret pleasure he caught their slippery rustle, which back in Italy had seemed to him something lofty, purified of all convulsive movements of the kind that accompany the powerful languages of the southern people, who do not know how to keep themselves within bounds. An even greater impression was made on him by a particular sort of woman—ethereal and fluttering. He was struck by this evanescent creature with her barely defined ethereal forms, with her small foot, with her slender airy figure, with the responsive fire in her gazes, and with her ethereal, almost unarticulated speeches. He awaited Paris with impatience, populated it with towers, palaces, created his own image of it, and finally, with trembling heart, he caught sight of the imminent signs of the capital city: glued-up posters, gigantic letters, multiplying post chaises, omnibuses… finally the houses of the faubourg began to fly by.
i just really like the way this is all written