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was a tragedy. That was the “desolation of the most profound happiness”. Romantic consciousness found its artist when the time of Historical Romanticism was long over. The drawn-out autumn of Realist Romanticism became the spring of Blok’s and Vrubel’s Symbolism, a “spring without end and without edge” – yet another perennial return of eternal symbolism. The “demonical” art was in keeping with the widely circulating ideas about art paid for with a life (the subject matter of Balzac’s “The Unknown Masterpiece” [“Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu”], Gogol’s “Portrait”, Po’s “The Oval Portrait”). When “the opinion that Vrubel was a lone genius gained currency”, and later, when “the belief of Vrubel’s artistic uniqueness was shaken” and that “his art was more often evaluated in the context of the artistic style that came to be known as Art Nouveau”48 , Vrubel remained a symbol of the artist in the most sublime sense of the word – a carrier and guardian angel of creative spirit. The visionary gift lent to nebulous poetic reveries a visual obviousness and responded to the mystical anticipation of N. Dmitrieva, op. cit., p. 9. the reality of the unreal. Timeless – that A. Blok, In Memory of Vrubel what “belong[s] to any century” – recalled [Pamyati Vrubelya], ibid, p. 154. itself in the forms of time. A. Blok, On Romanticism “I’m forever – alone! I’m forever – for [O romantizme], op. cit., p. 360. everyone!” – once an alchemist, he was F. Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 609. turning into a prophet. If not for everyone, L. Wittgenstein, Selected Works then certainly for Blok and Valery Bryusov, [Izbrannye raboty], (Moscow, 2005), pp. 217, 219. Bely and Maximilian Voloshin – for those The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine #3 (72) / 2021
Vladimir Lenyashin
esoterically minded Symbolist and post-Symbolist poets who, fancifully combining the ontological ideas of Hermetism and Gnosticism, Rudolf Steiner’s new Rosicrucianism with an anthroposophical bent and Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy, could see in Vrubel a clairvoyant artist “with an insane but blissful face. He is a messenger”49. Vrubel’s confession seemed like a sermon precisely in the same way as Wackenroder’s “Outpourings of an Art-Loving Friar” [“Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders”] was an aesthetic programme of German Romanticism. This was no accident. Russian Symbolism made an attempt to be Romanticism in its pure form – “the spirit that flows under any coagulating form and finally blows it up”50 , in order to break through, relying on the “sixth sense”, to the sole reality – the reality of other ontological worlds. They alone are what fills life, art and the world with meaning. Whereas the mainstream Symbolism in painting was oriented towards the Symbolist poetry "inexpressible in words” – “the more poetic, the more authentic”51 – Vrubel’s art became the paradigm and one of the pillars of this poetry. The tragic and luciferous symbols born from painting and which acquired their inexhaustible fullness in it alone, not only reflected esoteric philosophemes and discourses, but also pre-dated them. They bore unique non-verbal meanings that cannot be deciphered, carrying that which discovers itself. Only a thought unuttered is what is genuine in the absolute sense: “what we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence”52 . “I am forever – alone! – I am forever – for everyone!”