The Icon and the Axe

The dark thought that those within asylums are more complete human beings than those who commit them became a recurrent theme of Russian literature-from Chekhov's uncharacteristically terrifying tale Ward No. 6 to the cri de coeur of the 1960's by the dissident writer whom Soviet authorities had sent to a mental institution: Ward 7 by Valery Tarsis.

By the narrow standards of physiological realism painting was bound to be the most successful art medium, and the painters of the populist era felt generally less deeply perplexed than writers or composers. Yet the history of painting and, even more, of its impact during this period illustrates the same movement from realism to moral agony and madness that was characteristic of much populist art. The story is told succinctly in one of Garshin's short stories, "The Artists," in which an innocuous painter of idealized landscapes is contrasted with another artist, Riabinin, who seeks to render realistically the expressions of suffering on the face of workmen and finally abandons painting to become a village schoolmaster.2

The real-life counterpart of Garshin's hero was the new school of painters known as the "wanderers" (peredvizhniki). They were a kind of artistic by-product of the iconoclastic revolution. Rebelling in 1862 at the proposed subject for the painting competition in the St. Petersburg academy,

"The Entrance of Odin into Valhalla," they resolved to paint henceforth only live Russian subjects and to use a remorselessly realistic style. They accepted ostracism from the academies with populist eagerness and proved true "wanderers" in their search both for subject matter and places of exhibition.

The leader of this new school of painting was Ilya Repin, whose famous canvas of 1870-3, "Haulers on the Volga," may be regarded as the icon of populism. It presented a realistic portrayal of popular suffering in such a way as to arouse in the sensitive viewer's mind the hint of a better alternative. For behind the dark and beaten-down figures of the haulers there looms the distant, brightly colored boat itself; and, in the middle of the picture, a good-looking young boy has lifted up his head and is staring off out of the picture. To the young students who saw this picture, its meaning was clear: the boy was raising his head up in a first, subconscious act of defiance and was looking inarticulately to them, the student generation of Russia, to come and lead the suffering people to deliverance.

Recognizing the popularity of the new realistic style, the government enlisted the talents of one of Russia's best painters, Vasily Vereshchagin, to serve as official artistic chronicler of the Russo-Turkish War. But some of Vereshchagin's paintings were awesomely realistic in portraying the horrors of war and inspired emotions other than the intended one of patriotic exultation. His three-part study, "All Quiet on the Shipka," which showed a soldier gradually freezing to death, inspired Garshin to write a poem, "The Exhibition of Vereshchagin," contrasting the horror of the scene in the painting with the blase, well-dressed viewers walking past it.3

Another creative genius of the populist era, Modest Musorgsky, also tried to describe people at an art exhibition with a total realism that described the viewers as well as the paintings in his "Pictures at an Exhibition." Like Garshin's poem, Musorgsky's tone poem was part of a strange artistic quest for both realism and redemption which led to brilliant and original results.

Musorgsky was the most distinguished member of a group of musical iconoclasts known as the "mighty handful" (moguchaia kuchka), or "The Five," whose rebellion from established musical conventions almost exactly parallels that of the "wanderers" in art. This group sought to lead Russian music on a special path that would avoid sterile imitation of the West and also sought to "wander" in search of new forms of musical construction. The organizer of the group and founder of the Free Music School, which became the populist rival to the conservatory, was Mily Balakirev, a native of Nizhny Novgorod, who gathered about him a group of talented musicians influenced by the new materialism and realism of the sixties: a

chemist, Borodin; a military engineer, Cui; a naval officer, Rimsky-Korsa-kov; and Musorgsky, a young military officer who had been devouring the works of Darwin and living in a typical student commune of the sixties. The mighty handful sought a new popular style of music; and Musorgsky went far toward creating one.