Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 140
1045 words | Chapter 140
Mihailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of
Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work.
From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially
Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty.
It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her
characteristic beauty. “One needs to know and love her as I have loved
her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul,” Vronsky
thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself
learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so
true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.
“I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,” he
said of his own portrait of her, “and he just looked and painted it.
That’s where technique comes in.”
“That will come,” was the consoling reassurance given him by
Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what was most
important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev’s
faith in Vronsky’s talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky’s
sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that
the praise and support must be mutual.
In another man’s house, and especially in Vronsky’s palazzo, Mihailov
was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved
with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to
people he did not respect. He called Vronsky “your excellency,” and
notwithstanding Anna’s and Vronsky’s invitations, he would never stay
to dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more
friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her
portrait. Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously
interested to know the artist’s opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev
never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into
Mihailov. But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them. Anna was
aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided
conversation with her. Vronsky’s talk about his painting he met with
stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown
Vronsky’s picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev’s
conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him.
Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were,
hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him
better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were
left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up
coming. Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that
had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous
of Vronsky.
“Not envious, let us say, since he has _talent_; but it annoys him that
a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you know they
all detest a title), can, without any particular trouble, do as well,
if not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And more
than all, it’s a question of culture, which he is without.”
Vronsky defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed
it, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure
to be envious.
Anna’s portrait—the same subject painted from nature both by him and by
Mihailov—ought to have shown Vronsky the difference between him and
Mihailov; but he did not see it. Only after Mihailov’s portrait was
painted he left off painting his portrait of Anna, deciding that it was
now not needed. His picture of mediæval life he went on with. And he
himself, and Golenishtchev, and still more Anna, thought it very good,
because it was far more like the celebrated pictures they knew than
Mihailov’s picture.
Mihailov meanwhile, although Anna’s portrait greatly fascinated him,
was even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he
had no longer to listen to Golenishtchev’s disquisitions upon art, and
could forget about Vronsky’s painting. He knew that Vronsky could not
be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and
all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was
distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a
big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll
and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover
caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just
such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of
Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both
pitiable and offensive.
Vronsky’s interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last long.
He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture.
The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its
defects, inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on
with it. The same experience befell him as Golenishtchev, who felt that
he had nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory
that his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and
collecting materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but
Vronsky was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more
incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without
explanation or apology, he simply ceased working at painting.
But without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who
wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably
tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively
old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the
broken plaster on the cornices became so disagreeably obvious, and the
everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and
the German traveler became so wearisome, that they had to make some
change. They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg
Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother,
while Anna meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on
Vronsky’s great family estate.
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