You know, one of those savage new people one is forever coming across nowadays;one of those freethinkers, you know, who are reared d'emblee in theories of atheism, negation, and materialism. In former days,' said Golenishchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, `in former days the freethinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of native freethinker who grows up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grows up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, a savage.
Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he's no fool, to educate himself.
And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of culture - the magazines.
In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself - a Frenchman, for instance - would have set to work to study all the classics: theologians and tragedians and historians and philosophers, and, you see, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he's all set. And that's not all - twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else; just evolution, natural selection, the struggle for existence - and that's all. In my article I've...'
`I tell you what,' said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; `I tell you what,' she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishchev, who was still talking away, `let's go and see him!'
Golenishchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed.
But, as the artist lived in a remote ward of the town, it was decided to take a carriage.
An hour later Anna, with Golenishchev by her side and Vronsky on the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to an ugly new house in a remote ward. On learning from the porter's wife, who came out to them, that Mikhailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards, asking permission to see his pictures.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 5, Chapter 10[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 10 The artist Mikhailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishchev were brought to him. In the morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.
`I've said it to you twenty times, don't enter into details. You're fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you're a triple fool,' he said after a long dispute.
`Don't let it run so long; it's not my fault. If I had the money...'
`Leave me in peace, for God's sake!' Mikhailov shrieked, with tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room, on the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him. `There's no sense in her!' he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. `Oh!
damn them all!' he thought as he went on working. He was ****** a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it. `No, that one was better.... Where is it?' He went back to his wife, and, scowling and not looking at her, asked his eldest little girl: Where was that piece of paper he had given them?
The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle grease. Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated gleefully.
`That's it! That's it!' he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he began drawing rapidly. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin, on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never be changed.
That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure; the legs, indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair, too, might be thrown back. But in ****** these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the veils which hindered it from being distinctly seen; each new feature only brought out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the figure when the cards were brought him.
`Coming, coming!'
He went in to his wife.