Sometimes this thought completely took over Levitan. Then attacks of painful blues came. It intensified from dissatisfaction with his work, from the consciousness that his hand was unable to convey in paint what his free imagination had long ago created. When the blues came, Levitan ran away from people. They seemed like enemies to him. He became rude, impudent, intolerant. “Autumn in Levitan’s paintings is very diverse. It is impossible to list all the autumn days he painted on the canvas. Levitan left about a hundred “autumn” paintings, not counting sketches. They depicted things familiar from childhood: lonely golden birches, not yet covered with wind; a sky like thin ice, shaggy rains over forest clearings. But in all these landscapes, no matter what they depict, the sadness of farewell days, falling leaves, rotting grass, the quiet hum of bees before the cold and the pre-winter sun, barely noticeably warming up, is best conveyed. earth..." ( Paustovsky K. ) He angrily scraped the paints from his paintings, hid, went hunting with his dog Vesta, but did not hunt, but wandered through the forests without a goal. On such days, only nature replaced him with a loved one - she consoled him, passed the wind across his forehead, like a mother’s hand. At night the fields were silent - Levitan rested on such nights from human stupidity and curiosity.
Twice during a fit of blues, Levitan shot himself, but remained alive. Both times Chekhov saved him. The blues passed. “I valued my acquaintance with Levitan very much, because no other artist made such an impression on me as he did. In every painting of his, even an insignificant sketch, I saw what Kramskoy called the “soul” in the picture... I am this soul "I saw not only in Levitan's paintings, but also in his sketches. In my opinion, no one knew and loved our poor Russian nature like Levitan. Moreover, he had the gift of making others understand and love it." ( Langovoy A.P. ) Levitan returned to people, wrote again, loved, believed, became entangled in the complexity of human relationships, until a new blow of the blues overtook him.
Chekhov believed that Levitan's melancholy was the beginning of mental illness. But it was, perhaps, an incurable disease of every great person who was demanding of himself and of life. Everything written seemed helpless. Behind the colors applied to the canvas, Levitan saw others - cleaner and thicker. From these paints, and not from factory-made cinnabar, cobalt and cadmium, he wanted to create a landscape of Russia - transparent, like the September air, festive, like a grove during leaf fall.
But spiritual gloom held his hands while he worked. Levitan could not write for a long time; he did not know how to write lightly and transparently. Dim light lay on the canvases, the colors frowned. He couldn't make them smile.
In 1886, Levitan left Moscow for the first time to the south, to Crimea. In Moscow, he painted scenery for the opera house all winter, and this work did not pass without a trace for him. “Oh, if only I had the money, I would buy his “Village” from Levitan, drab, pitiful, lost, ugly, but it emanates such inexpressible charm that it is impossible to tear yourself away: I would just look at it and look at it. So amazing the simplicity and clarity of the motive that Levitan has recently reached, no one has reached him, and I don’t know if anyone will reach it after.” ( Chekhov A.P.) He began to use paints more boldly. The stroke became freer. The first signs of another trait inherent in a true master appeared - signs of audacity in handling materials. This property is necessary for everyone who works on the embodiment of their thoughts and images. A writer needs courage in handling words and the store of his observations, a sculptor - with clay and marble, an artist - with paints and lines.
The most valuable thing Levitan learned in the south was pure paint. The time spent in the Crimea seemed to him like continuous mornings, when the air, settled overnight like water in the giant reservoirs of mountain valleys, is so pure that from afar one can see the dew flowing from the leaves, and tens of miles away the foam of the waves reaching the rocky shores. Large expanses of air lay over the southern land, giving the colors sharpness and convexity.
In the south, Levitan felt with complete clarity that only the sun rules over colors. The greatest pictorial power lies in sunlight, and all the grayness of Russian nature is good only because it is the same sunlight, but muted, passing through layers of humid air and a thin veil of clouds.
The sun and black light are incompatible. Black is not paint, it is the corpse of paint. Levitan was aware of this and after a trip to Crimea he decided to banish dark tones from his canvases. "By incorporating into his art all the best of what was created by his predecessors, Levitan solves a problem of extraordinary complexity - the problem of a deep philosophical understanding of nature." ( Kochik O.N.) True, he did not always succeed. Thus began the struggle for light that lasted many years. At this time, in France, Vincent Van Gogh was working on conveying on canvas the solar fire that turned the vineyards of Arles into crimson gold. Around the same time, Claude Monet studied sunlight on the walls of Reims Cathedral. He was amazed that the haze of light gave the bulk of the cathedral weightlessness. It seemed that the cathedral was built not of stone, but of variously and palely colored air masses. You had to come close to it and run your hand over the stone to return to reality.
Levitan worked still timidly. The French worked bravely and persistently. They were helped by a sense of personal freedom, cultural traditions, and a smart, friendly environment. Levitan was deprived of this. He did not know the feeling of personal freedom. He could only dream about her, but dream powerlessly, with irritation at the dullness and melancholy of Russian life of that time. There was no smart, friendly environment either. Since the trip to the south, Levitan’s usual melancholy has been supplemented by a constant memory of dry and clear colors, of the sun, which turned every insignificant day of human life into a holiday.
There was no sun in Moscow. Levitan lived in furnished rooms "England" on Tverskaya. “Levitan’s whole life, all his work passed over his beloved country, over its nature like a beneficial rain, after which a wonderful rainbow shone over the Russian landscape, through the gates of which all artists who love their country, their people, their nature should pass.” ( Nissky G.G.) During the night the city was so thickly shrouded in cold fog that it did not have time to thin out during the short winter day. A kerosene lamp was burning in the room. The yellow light mixed with the darkness of the chilly day and covered people's faces and painted canvases with dirty spots.
Again, but not for long, the need returned. The landlady had to pay for the room not in money, but in sketches. Levitan felt a heavy shame when the hostess put on her pince-nez and looked at the “pictures” to choose the most popular one. “Yes, while studying nature, Mr. Levitan, in the end, still feels nature and surrenders not to skill, but to mood. This, it seems to us, is the whole secret of his accurate and at the same time soft, truthful and at the same time time of a beautiful manner of painting. This is the secret of his ever-increasing success. The objective beauty of his landscapes attracts the eyes, but the music of the mood hidden in them enchants the heart. Behind the promising depth of the landscapes of Mr. Levitan one can see the beautifully melancholy chords of the harp." ( Mikheev V.M.) The most striking thing was that the hostess’s grumbling coincided with the articles of newspaper critics. “Monsieur Levitan,” said the hostess, “why don’t you draw a thoroughbred cow in this meadow, and here under the linden tree plant a couple of lovers?” It would be pleasing to the eye.
St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications named after. prof. Bonch-Bruevich
Faculty of Evening and Correspondence Studies
Russian language and culture of speech
Topic: Basic concepts of syntax
2nd year AB-19s
№ 119155 Gorlyshev E.S.
Plan
Basic concepts of syntax.
Syntactic norms of the modern Russian literary language.
2.1. Collocations. Difficult cases of their construction.
2.2. Simple sentence. Difficulties in using them in speech.
2.3. Complex sentences. Difficulties in using them in speech.
Literature.
Basic syntax concepts
Syntax(from Old Greekσύνταξις - “construction, order, composition”) - section linguistics, studying the structure proposals And phrases.
Syntax includes:
connection of words in phrases and sentences;
consideration of types of syntactic connections;
identifying types of phrases and sentences;
determining the meaning of phrases and sentences;
combining simple sentences into complex ones.
A phrase is a combination of two or more significant words, related in meaning and grammatically, which serves to denote a single concept (object, quality, action, etc.). For example: "Evening came".
A phrase is considered as a unit of syntax that performs a communicative function (enters into speech) only as part of a sentence.
It is generally accepted that phrases include combinations of words based on a subordinating relationship (connection of the main and dependent members). Some researchers also recognize coordinating phrases - combinations of homogeneous members of a sentence.
The construction of phrases in speech often causes difficulties, because in the Russian language there are words that can only be agreed with a certain preposition and case, for example. run headlong, show interest in something, a girl with a cheeky tongue, did not receive an answer, does not make concessions, received a reward - demands a reward).
A sentence is a minimal unit of language, which is a grammatically organized combination of words (or a word) that has semantic and intonation completeness. From the point of view of punctuation, a sentence as a complete unit of speech is formalized at the end with a period, exclamation or question marks - or an ellipsis.
Sentence members are grammatically significant parts into which a sentence is divided during syntactic analysis. They can consist of either individual words or phrases. There are two main members of a sentence: the subject and the predicate, which are in a predicative relationship, forming a predicative unit, and play the most important role. Predicativeness is the correlation of the content of what is expressed to reality. Predicativeness manifests itself in the grammatical categories of modality, tense, and person. The secondary members of the sentence include the addition, circumstance, and definition.
The subject composition is the subject and all minor members of the sentence that relate to the subject (common and non-common definitions).
Similarly, the composition of the predicate is the predicate and all minor members of the sentence that relate to the predicate (adverbials and complements with dependent words).
For example: “A fair teacher gave the student a well-deserved pass in the exam.” Fair - definition, teacher - subject, on the exam - circumstance, put - predicate, test - addition, student - indirect object.
A simple sentence is a syntactic unit formed by one syntactic connection between the subject and the predicate or one main member.
A two-part sentence is a simple sentence with a subject and predicate as necessary components. : “She laughed. He was smart."
A one-part sentence is a simple sentence that has only one main clause (with or without dependent words).
There are one-part sentences:
Vaguely personal
Generalized-personal
Impersonal
Definitely personal
Nominal
Incomplete
The following situation may cause difficulties in determining the main member of a sentence: the predicate may include a phraseological phrase, or the phraseological phrase itself may act as a predicate. For example, Having said this, he touched her to the quick; He agreed to see me tomorrow.
Incomplete sentences occupy a special place in the use of simple sentences in speech. In incomplete sentences, some members are omitted, but they can be restored from the context or situation. Most often in our speech we use incomplete sentences, because... the situation presented in the speech is clear to us from the context.
Difficulties of use in speech are cases of use with a subject, in which there is a collective noun with a quantitative meaning (majority, minority, row, part, etc.) or a numeral; the predicate can have both a singular and a plural form (The majority was against, the minority - for; The vast majority of the intelligentsia lives a dream of a different level of life; Some of the builders are sent to the site; Five students are absent; A couple of runners have pulled ahead; A lot of problems have captured him).
Particularly difficult is the use of gerunds and participial phrases in speech. They give the statement a bookish character and are distinguished by conciseness. If necessary, they can be replaced with synonymous constructions - subordinate, case forms of nouns, verbs: Deep in thought, she wandered around the garden - Deep in thought, she wandered around the garden - She was deep in thought and wandered around the garden, etc. You cannot use gerunds (gerund turnover) in an impersonal sentence, the main member of which does not contain an infinitive form, for example: After reading this book, I felt sad.
A complex sentence is a sentence with two or more predicative stems, and simple sentences within a complex sentence form a semantic and intonational whole.
According to the method of connecting simple sentences, complex sentences are divided into conjunction and non-conjunction. Conjunctive sentences are divided into complex (sentences are connected by coordinating conjunctions and a coordinating connection) and complex (sentences are connected by subordinating conjunctions or relative words and a subordinating connection). The connection in non-conjunctive complex sentences is called non-conjunctive; it is not associated with either subordination or composition).
I came home, my mother was already asleep, (non-union complex sentence)
I came home, and my mother was already asleep, (complex sentence)
When I came home, my mother was already asleep, (complex sentence)
A complex sentence allows you to describe several events and express the relationships between them. The use of certain means of communication (conjunctions and allied words) between simple sentences as part of a complex sentence makes it possible to accurately determine the semantic relationships (causal, temporal, target, etc.) that are established between the individual parts of a detailed statement. Complex sentences are widely used in book writing.
However, often the construction of such sentences causes great difficulties, and incorrect construction of a complex sentence leads to a violation of the syntactic norms of the modern Russian language and causes gross speech errors. The most common mistakes made when constructing a complex sentence include the following.
1. Incorrect or inaccurate use of conjunctions and allied words.
For example: New methods of organizing production will become widespread only if the results of the economic activity of the enterprise are sufficiently high. - New methods of organizing production will become widespread only when the results of the economic activity of the enterprise are sufficiently high. Or: New methods of organizing production will become widespread only if the results of the economic activity of the enterprise are sufficiently high.
2. Using identical conjunctions and allied words between parts of one complex sentence, stringing together parts of a complex sentence.
For example: The discussion has taken such a turn that we can safely say that its participants will not be able to reach a compromise. - The ongoing discussion suggests that its participants will not be able to reach a compromise.
3. Setting a series of unambiguous conjunctions.
For example: The teacher made comments to the students several times, but his words had no effect. - The teacher made comments to the students several times, but his words had no effect. Or: The teacher made comments to the students several times, but his words had no effect.
4. Incorrect word order in a sentence with a subordinate clause.
Between the conjunction word which and the noun to which it refers, there should not be another noun of the same number.
For example: Yesterday, a journalist interviewed a representative of the delegation who specially came to the meeting. - Yesterday, the journalist interviewed a representative of the delegation who specially came to the meeting.
5. Mixing direct speech and indirect.
Eg: The student said that I have not yet prepared the answer. - The student said that he had not yet prepared for the answer.
6. Variation in the parts of a complex sentence.
For example: At the parent meeting the following issues were discussed: a) assistance to the school in repairing classroom furniture; b) how to organize an evening meeting of school graduates. - The following issues were discussed at the parent meeting: a) assistance to the school in repairing classroom furniture; b) organizing an evening meeting for school graduates. Or: At the parent meeting, the following issues were discussed: a) how to help the school repair classroom furniture; b) how to organize an evening meeting of school graduates.
Complex sentences are divided into:
Compound sentences consist of parts (simple sentences) that are independent grammatically, connected in meaning and through coordinating conjunctions and, a, but, yes, or, or, however, but, as well as coordinating conjunctions neither.. nor.., then..that.., that..either.., either.., not that.. not that... and etc. “The rain stopped and the sun rose. Either the phone will ring, or the doorbell will ring.”
Complex sentences consist of parts (simple sentences), one of which is not independent in grammatical and semantic terms; parts are connected using connecting conjunctions and allied words: what, where, to, where, when, why, if (if), how, while, although, therefore etc. As well as complex subordinating conjunctions: due to the fact that, due to the fact that, instead of, etc.
Non-union proposals. Parts of a non-union sentence (simple sentences) are almost always independent grammatically, but sometimes equal in meaning; there are no conjunctions and allied words: “ I hear someone knocking on the door."
Complex syntactic constructions are combinations of parts with different types of syntactic connections. Such constructions are very widespread in speech, and are used equally often in works of different functional styles. These are combined types of sentences; they are diverse in possible combinations of parts in them, but with all their diversity they lend themselves to a fairly clear and definite classification.
Depending on various combinations of connection types between parts, the following types of complex syntactic constructions are possible:
1) with composition and submission: Lopatin began to feel sleepy, and he was delighted when the driver appeared at the door and reported that the car was ready (Sim.);
2) with an essay and non-union connection: My direction is to another unit, but I fell behind the train: let me, I think, look at my platoon and at my lieutenant (Cossack.);
3) with subordination and non-union connection : While walking in the forest, sometimes, thinking about my work, I am overcome with philosophical delight: it seems as if you are deciding the conceivable fate of all humanity (Prishv.);
4) with composition, subordination and non-union connection: But the river majestically carries its water, and what does it care about these bindweeds: spinning, they float along with the water, just as the ice floes floated recently (Prishv.).
Sentences with different types of syntactic connections usually consist of two (at least) logically and structurally distinguishable components or several, among which there may, in turn, be complex sentences. However, as a rule, the main components have the same type of connection - coordinating or non-conjunctive. For example, in the sentence: “The sword did not look back and did not hear the chase, but he knew that they were chasing him, and when three shots were fired one after another and a volley rang out, it seemed to him that they were shooting at him, and he ran even faster (Fad.)"four components: 1) Mechik did not look back and did not hear the chase; 2) but he knew that they were chasing him; 3) and when three shots were fired one after another and a volley rang out, it seemed to him that they were shooting at him; 4) and he ran even faster. All these parts are connected by coordinating relationships, but within the parts there is subordination (see the second and third parts).
More often, in such combined sentences there is a division into two components, and one of them or both can be complex sentences. The connection between components can be of only two types - coordinative or non-union. A subordinate relationship is always internal.
1) The greatest pictorial power lies in sunlight, and all the grayness of Russian nature is good only because it is the same sunlight, but muffled, passing through layers of moist air and a thin veil of clouds (Paust.);
2) There was one strange circumstance in the Stavraki case: no one could understand why he lived under his real name until his arrest, why he did not change it immediately after the revolution (Paust.);
3) One circumstance always surprises me: we walk through life and do not know at all and cannot even imagine how many greatest tragedies, beautiful human deeds, how much grief, heroism, meanness and despair have happened and are happening on any piece of earth where we live (Paust .).
Direct speech is a statement introduced verbatim into the author’s speech (speaker or writer). Unlike indirect speech, it preserves the individual and stylistic features of the speech of the person whose statement is reproduced: dialectal features, repetitions, pauses, introductory words, etc. Direct speech is introduced without conjunctions, personal pronouns, verb forms indicate the attitude towards the speaker’s person, for example : "You said, 'I'll be back late.'" For comparison in indirect speech: “You said that you would be back late.” Typically, direct speech is highlighted in the text with quotation marks or given in a separate paragraph, at the beginning of which a dash is placed. Direct speech as its variety includes quotations.
Direct speech is not a part of the sentence.
Not every direct speech can be easily converted into indirect speech. Direct speech, rich in interjections, introductory words, appeals and words characteristic of oral speech, cannot be replaced by indirect speech. For example: 1) In despair, Marya Vasilievna just threw up her hands and said: “Oh, Semyon, Semyon! What kind of person are you, really!..” (A. Chekhov). 2) “Ugh, you’re an abyss! - he [Yermolai] muttered, spitting into the water. - What an opportunity! And that’s all you, old devil!” - he added with heart... (I. Turgenev).
Literature.
1) Grammar of the Russian language. M., 1954,1960. - T. 2, parts 1 and 2.
2) Russian grammar. M., 1980, vol. 2.
Choose the appropriate option for agreeing the predicate with the subject.
A. To my sick son came father and mother to the hospital.
B. Cat with kittens hid under the table.
B. Plants are the same necessary both moisture and heat from the sun's rays.
G. Since then passed no longer seven, but ten whole years.
D. Son or daughter will help bring things to you.
2. Add endings.
A. Two (unequal) parts.
B. Three (workshops) were repaired.
B. Four (new) computers were purchased.
D. Two (fifth) moons.
3. Determine whether the participial phrases are used correctly.
Write the correct option.
A. Only a year later, the parents learned about the incident from their son’s letter, which occurred in the fall. (Only a year later did the parents learn about the incident that had occurred in the fall from a letter from their son)
B. The initiative shown by the students helped the dean.
(The initiative shown by the students helped the dean)
Q. Another detective story has already gone on sale, written by
Marinina. (Another detective story written by Marinina is already on sale)
D. Later, only in the third chapter, we learn about an article in which
Raskolnikov touched upon the issue of the crime written for
six months before the events take place.
(Later, only in the third chapter, we learn about an article written six months before the events, in which Raskolnikov touched upon the issue of the crime.)
4. Correct errors in the use of participles.
A. The newspaper reported about the theater opening the new season of the fifth
B. To answer the question, let us turn to two historical
personalities depicted in the novel.
B. One of the main problems put forward in the novel is
personality formation.
D. This question will be answered by the conference, which will take place in January.
D. Give the trip to citizen Gromov, who lives in
the specified address.
E. The road was covered with falling snow.
5. Correct errors in the use of adverbial verbs.
A. Without feeling tired, we continued our way to the top
B. It never occurred to the boss that when addressing a subordinate, there was the same person in front of him.
V. Describing the beauty of Russian nature, the writer noted the features of central Russia.
G. I feel a sense of pride in Russian literature when reading works of Russian classics.
D. Silence suddenly reigned, understanding the meaning of which,
I was in a bad mood.
6. Correct errors and indicate their cause.
B. According to the order of the head of the department, a
duty list.
B. We agreed that this is the only correct
G. Reviews about this film appeared in the newspapers.
D. In his speech, the speaker pointed out his shortcomings.
E. The examples given indicate the possibility of using
new method.
G. With the help of local authorities, we
Let's green our area.
5.(choose one answer)
Indicate the sentence with a grammatical error.
The famous German calculator Rückle memorized a number consisting of five hundred and four digits within thirty-five minutes.
The main accounting department serves thirteen kindergartens and twenty-two nurseries. (!)
Over one hundred and seventy nationalities and two hundred and sixty million people speaking seventy languages inhabit this region.
On Venus, day and night last one hundred and seventeen Earth days, that is, more than eight hundred hours.
(choose one answer)
Indicate the sentence with an error in the use of the adverbial phrase.
This exercise is done while standing on your toes extended.
Students, while completing the task, turned to reference literature.
Going down from the window into the bright night, the sentries can see him. (!)
Read it. Which sentence more accurately expresses the causal relationship between the two situations?
1. Crossing the river is dangerous: the ice is still very thin.
2. Crossing the river is dangerous because the ice is still very thin.
What are the similarities between the first and second sentences? How are they different?
What is the name of the conjunction that joins simple sentences into complex ones?
What are these conjunctional complex sentences called?
From which part of a conjunctive complex sentence can a question be raised to the other?
Which part do you think is the main one and which is the dependent one?
The sentences that are part of a complex sentence are combined on the basis of a subordinating connection using subordinating conjunctions, allied words, and intonation.
Complex sentences consist of a main clause and a subordinate clause.
The main clause denotes a situation that is explained or clarified in the subordinate clause.
A subordinate clause can provide additional information about an object, person, event, and can also indicate the cause, conditions, purpose of those events and phenomena referred to in the main clause.
83. Read it. Find complex sentences. Select the conjunctions that are in the subordinate clause.
Sample reasoning: Offer To speak well, you need to know your language well is complex. It contains two simple sentences. They are connected to each other by a subordinate relationship. Main offer: you need to know your language well. From him we pose a question to the subordinate clause: for what, for what purpose Do you need to know your language well? Subordinate clause: to speak well. The main and subordinate clauses are connected by a conjunction to.
1. The famous Italian linguist V. Pisani wrote in his book “Etymology” that the main task of etymology is “to find the meaning of a word at the time of its initial creation.” 2. Modern meaning of the word a shame appears later, but it is already found in the Old Russian language. 3. Scientists have found that Indo-European languages have a similar grammatical structure. 4. If we compare, for example, the grammar of modern Russian and English, we will not be able to detect much similarity between them. 5. To establish the general grammatical features of the Indo-European languages, it is necessary, by turning to the history of each language separately, to restore the most ancient stages of their development.
(According to Yu. Otkupshchikov.)
84. Rewrite, adding missing commas. In a complex sentence, from the main clause, put a question to the subordinate clause. Enclose in an oval the means of connecting the subordinate clause with the main clause. What style of speech do the highlighted words belong to?
“Newborn” words live from a month to decades. But people need an environment for new words to be born. Do they enrich or enrich our literature? Does it make sense to give examples? If you please. Make a fuss bro soldering string bag party mayhem showdown super cool... I will not continue because the reader is capable of adding to this list himself.
(According to V. Agranovsky.)
A subordinate clause can refer to a specific (supporting) word or phrase, to the grammatical basis of the main sentence, and sometimes to the entire main sentence. For example:
85. Read it. Write out complex sentences, placing missing commas, in the following sequence:
- the subordinate clause explains the main word;
- the subordinate clause explains the phrase;
- the subordinate clause explains the grammatical basis of the main clause;
- the subordinate clause refers to the whole main thing.
For a sample implementation, see above.
1. Levitan strives to paint so that the air can be felt in his paintings. This was not the air we imagine. Levitan felt it as a boundless environment of transparent substance that imparted such a captivating softness to his canvases. 2. Levitan was an artist of a sad landscape. The landscape is always sad when a person is sad. 3. In the south, Levitan felt with complete clarity that only the sun rules over us. All the grayness of Russian nature is good because it is the same sunlight but muffled..(n, nn) passed through a layer of moist air and a thin film of clouds. 4. Around the same time, Manet studied sunlight on the walls of Reims Cathedral. He was pissed that the haze of light gave the bulk of the cathedral (weightlessness). It seemed that the cathedral was built not from stone, but from various and pale colored air masses. I had to come close to him and run my hand over the stone in order to return to Reality.
Current page: 6 (book has 29 pages in total)
Levitan suffered the most. He was constantly accused of all sorts of ridiculous crimes and, finally, a trial was held against him. Anton Chekhov, disguised as a prosecutor, delivered an indictment. The listeners fell from their chairs with laughter. Nikolai Chekhov played the fool-witness. He gave inconsistent testimony, was confused, frightened and looked like Chekhov’s peasant from the story “The Intruder” - the one who unscrewed the nut from the rails to make a sinker for the shelesper. Alexander Chekhov - the defender - sang a stilted actor's speech.
Levitan was especially targeted for his handsome Arab face. In his letters, Chekhov often mentioned Levitan's beauty. “I will come to you, handsome as Levitan,” he wrote. “He was languid, like Levitan.”
But the name Levitan became an exponent of not only male beauty, but also the special charm of the Russian landscape. Chekhov coined the word “Levitanist” and used it very aptly.
“Nature here is much more Levitanistic than here,” he wrote in one of his letters. Even Levitan's paintings varied - some were more Levitanistic than others.
At first it seemed like a joke, but over time it became clear that this cheerful word contained a precise meaning - it expressed that special charm of the landscape of central Russia, which of all the artists of that time, only Levitan was able to convey on canvas.
Sometimes strange things happened in the meadow near Grandma's house. At sunset, Levitan, dressed as a Bedouin, rode out into the meadow on an old donkey. He got off the donkey, squatted down and began to pray to the east. He raised his hands up, sang pitifully and bowed towards Mecca. It was a Muslim prayer.
Anton Chekhov was sitting in the bushes with an old Berdanka loaded with paper and rags. He predatorily aimed at Levitan and pulled the trigger. Clouds of smoke scattered over the meadow. Frogs croaked desperately in the river. Levitan fell to the ground with a piercing scream, pretending to be killed. They put him on a stretcher, put old felt boots on his hands and began to carry him around the park. The Chekhov choir sang every nonsense that came to mind to accompany the sad funeral chants. Levitan shook with laughter, then could not stand it, jumped up and ran into the house.
At dawn, Levitan left with Anton Pavlovich to fish on Istra. For fishing, they chose steep banks overgrown with bushes, quiet pools where water lilies bloomed and rudd walked in flocks in the warm water. Levitan read Tyutchev's poems in a whisper. Chekhov made scary eyes and swore in a whisper too - he was biting, and his poems frightened the cautious fish.
What Levitan dreamed of back in Saltykovka happened - games of burners, twilight, when a thin moon hangs over the thickets of the village garden, fierce arguments over evening tea, smiles and embarrassment of young women, their kind words, sweet quarrels, the trembling of the stars above groves, the cries of birds, the creaking of carts in the night fields, the proximity of talented friends, the proximity of well-deserved fame, a feeling of lightness in the body and heart.
Despite a life full of summer charm, Levitan worked a lot. The walls of his barn - a former chicken coop - were covered from top to bottom with sketches. At first glance, there was nothing new about them - the same familiar winding roads that are lost behind the slopes, copses, distances, a bright moon over the outskirts of the villages, paths trampled by bast shoes among the fields, clouds and lazy rivers.
A familiar world appeared on the canvases, but there was something of its own in it that could not be conveyed in meager, human words. Levitan's paintings caused the same pain as memories of a terribly distant, but always tempting childhood.
Levitan was an artist of sad landscapes. The landscape is always sad when a person is sad. For centuries, Russian literature and painting spoke of a boring sky, skinny fields, and lopsided huts. “Russia, poor Russia, your black huts are to me, your songs are windy to me, like the first tears of love.”
From generation to generation, man looked at nature with eyes clouded from hunger. She seemed to him as bitter as his fate, like a crust of black wet bread. To a hungry person, even the brilliant sky of the tropics will seem inhospitable.
This is how a stable poison of despondency was developed. He muffled everything, deprived the colors of their light, play, and elegance. The gentle, varied nature of Russia has been slandered for hundreds of years, considered tearful and gloomy. Artists and writers have lied to her without realizing it.
Levitan came from a ghetto, deprived of rights and a future, a native of the Western Region - a country of small towns, consumptive artisans, black synagogues, cramped conditions and poverty.
Lawlessness haunted Levitan all his life. In 1892, he was evicted from Moscow for the second time, despite the fact that he was already an artist with all-Russian fame. He had to hide in the Vladimir province until his friends managed to cancel the deportation.
Levitan was joyless, just as the history of his people, his ancestors, was joyless. He fooled around in Babkino, was carried away by girls and colors, but somewhere in the depths of his brain lived the thought that he was a pariah, an outcast, the son of a race that had experienced humiliating persecution.
Sometimes this thought completely took over Levitan. Then attacks of painful blues came. It intensified from dissatisfaction with his work, from the consciousness that his hand was unable to convey in paint what his free imagination had long ago created.
When the blues came, Levitan ran away from people. They seemed like enemies to him. He became rude, impudent, intolerant. He angrily scraped paint from his paintings, hid, went hunting with his dog Vesta, but did not hunt, but wandered through the forests without a goal. On such days, only nature replaced him with a loved one - she consoled him, passed the wind across his forehead, like a mother’s hand. At night the fields were silent - Levitan rested on such nights from human stupidity and curiosity.
Twice during a fit of blues, Levitan shot himself, but remained alive. Both times Chekhov saved him.
The blues passed. Levitan returned to people, wrote again, loved, believed, became entangled in the complexity of human relationships, until a new blow of the blues overtook him.
Chekhov believed that Levitan's melancholy was the beginning of mental illness. But it was, perhaps, an incurable disease of every great person who was demanding of himself and of life.
Everything written seemed helpless. Behind the colors applied to the canvas, Levitan saw others - cleaner and thicker. From these paints, and not from factory-made cinnabar, cobalt and cadmium, he wanted to create a landscape of Russia - transparent, like the September air, festive, like a grove during leaf fall.
But spiritual sullenness held his hands while he worked. Levitan could not write for a long time; he did not know how to write lightly and transparently. Dim light lay on the canvases, the colors frowned. He couldn't make them smile.
In 1886, Levitan left Moscow for the first time to the south, to Crimea.
In Moscow, he painted scenery for the opera house all winter, and this work did not pass without a trace for him. He began to use paints more boldly. The stroke became freer. The first signs of another trait inherent in a true master appeared - signs of audacity in handling materials. This property is necessary for everyone who works on the embodiment of their thoughts and images. A writer needs courage in handling words and his store of observations, a sculptor - with clay and marble, an artist - with colors and lines.
The most valuable thing Levitan learned in the south was pure paint. The time spent in the Crimea seemed to him like continuous mornings, when the air, settled overnight, like water in giant reservoirs of mountain valleys, is so pure that from afar one can see the dew flowing from the leaves, and tens of miles away the foam of the waves reaching the rocky shores is white. .
Large expanses of air lay over the southern land, giving the colors sharpness and convexity.
In the south, Levitan felt with complete clarity that only the sun rules over colors. The greatest pictorial power lies in sunlight, and all the grayness of Russian nature is good only because it is the same sunlight, but muted, passing through layers of humid air and a thin veil of clouds.
The sun and black light are incompatible. Black is not paint, it is the corpse of paint. Levitan was aware of this and after a trip to Crimea he decided to banish dark tones from his canvases. True, he did not always succeed.
Thus began the struggle for light that lasted many years.
At this time in France, Van Gogh was working on conveying on canvas the solar fire that turned the vineyards of Arles into crimson gold. Around the same time, Monet studied sunlight on the walls of Reims Cathedral. He was amazed that the haze of light gave the bulk of the cathedral weightlessness. It seemed that the cathedral was built not of stone, but of variously and palely colored air masses. You had to come close to it and run your hand over the stone to return to reality.
Levitan worked still timidly. The French worked bravely and persistently. They were helped by a sense of personal freedom, cultural traditions, and a smart, friendly environment. Levitan was deprived of this. He did not know the feeling of personal freedom. He could only dream about her, but dream powerlessly, with irritation at the dullness and melancholy of Russian life of that time. There was no smart, friendly environment either.
Since the trip to the south, Levitan’s usual melancholy has been supplemented by a constant memory of dry and clear colors, of the sun, which turned every insignificant day of human life into a holiday.
There was no sun in Moscow. Levitan lived in furnished rooms “England” on Tverskaya. During the night the city was so thickly shrouded in cold fog that it did not have time to thin out during the short winter day. A kerosene lamp was burning in the room. The yellow light mixed with the darkness of the chilly day and covered people's faces and painted canvases with dirty spots.
Again, but not for long, the need returned. The landlady had to pay for the room not in money, but in sketches.
Levitan felt a heavy sense of shame when the hostess put on her pince-nez and looked at the “pictures” to choose the most popular one. The most striking thing was that the landlady's grumbling coincided with the articles of newspaper critics.
“Monsieur Levitan,” said the hostess, “why don’t you draw a thoroughbred cow in this meadow, and here under the linden tree plant a couple of lovers?” It would be pleasing to the eye.
Critics wrote much the same thing. They demanded that Levitan enliven the landscape with herds of geese, horses, figures of shepherds and women.
Critics demanded geese, but Levitan thought about the magnificent sun, which sooner or later would flood Russia on his canvases and give each birch the weight and shine of a precious metal.
After Crimea, the Volga entered Levitan’s life for a long time and firmly.
The first trip to the Volga was unsuccessful. It was drizzling, the Volga water became cloudy. The wind blew short, boring waves along it. The annoying rain made the windows of the hut in the village on the banks of the Volga water, where Levitan settled, the distances became foggy, and everything around was eaten away by gray paint.
Levitan suffered from the cold, from the slippery clay of the Volga banks, from the inability to write in the air.
Insomnia began. The old housewife snored behind the partition, and Levitan envied her and wrote about this envy to Chekhov. The rain drummed on the roof, and every half hour Levitan lit a match and looked at his watch.
Dawn was lost in the impenetrable night wastelands, where an inhospitable wind ruled. Levitan was overcome with fear. It seemed to him that the night would last for weeks, that he was exiled to this dirty village and doomed to listen all his life to wet birch branches whipping against the log wall.
Sometimes he would go out on the threshold at night, and the branches would hit him painfully in the face and hands. Levitan got angry, lit a cigarette, but immediately threw it away - the sour tobacco smoke set his jaws.
On the Volga, the persistent slavish clatter of steamship wheels could be heard - the tug, blinking yellow lights, was dragging stinking barges up to Rybinsk.
The great river seemed to Levitan the threshold of a gloomy hell. Dawn did not bring relief. Clouds, stupidly crowding, rushed from the northwest, dragging watery hems of rain along the ground. The wind whistled through the crooked windows, and it made our hands turn red. Cockroaches scattered from the paint box.
Levitan did not have mental stamina. He despaired at the discrepancy between what he expected and what he actually saw. He wanted the sun, but the sun did not appear; Levitan was blind from rabies and at first did not even notice the beautiful shades of gray and bluish color characteristic of bad weather.
But in the end the artist defeated the neurasthenic. Levitan saw the beauty of the rains and created his famous “rainy works”: “After the Rain” and “Above Eternal Peace.”
Levitan painted the painting “After the Rain” in four hours. Clouds and the pewter color of the Volga water created soft lighting. It could disappear any minute. Levitan was in a hurry.
Levitan's paintings require slow viewing. They are not overwhelming to the eye. They are modest and precise, like Chekhov's stories, but the longer you look at them, the more lovely the silence of provincial towns, familiar rivers and country roads becomes.
The painting “After the Rain” contains all the charm of rainy twilight in a Volga town. The puddles sparkle. The clouds go beyond the Volga like low smoke. Steam from steamship pipes falls on the water. Barges near the shore turned black from dampness.
In such summer twilight, it is good to enter dry hallways, low rooms with freshly washed floors, where lamps are already burning and outside the open windows there is a noise from drops and the wild smell of an abandoned garden. It's good to listen to an old piano being played. Its weakened strings ring like a guitar. A dark ficus stands in a tub next to the piano. A high school student sits in a chair with her legs crossed and reads Turgenev. The old cat wanders around the rooms, and his ear twitches nervously - he listens for the knocking of knives in the kitchen.
The street smells like matting. Tomorrow is a fair, and carts are coming to Cathedral Square. The steamer goes down the river and catches up with a rain cloud that covered half the sky. The schoolgirl looks after the ship, and her eyes become misty and large. The steamer goes to the lower towns, where there are theaters, books, and tempting meetings.
Around the town, disheveled rye fields are wet day and night.
In the painting “Above Eternal Peace” the poetry of a stormy day is expressed with even greater force. The painting was painted on the shore of Lake Udomli in the Tver province.
From the slope, where dark birch trees bend under the gusty wind and a rotten log church stands among these birches, the distance of a remote river, meadows darkened by bad weather, and a huge cloudy sky opens up. Heavy clouds, filled with cold moisture, hang above the ground. Slanting sheets of rain cover the open spaces.
None of the artists before Levitan conveyed with such sad force the immeasurable distances of Russian bad weather. It is so calm and solemn that it feels like greatness.
The second trip to the Volga was more successful than the first. Levitan did not go alone, but with the artist Kuvshinnikova. This naive woman, who touchingly loved Levitan, was described by Chekhov in the story “The Jumper”. Levitan was severely offended by Chekhov for this story. Friendship was disrupted, and reconciliation was difficult and painful. Until the end of his life, Levitan could not forgive Chekhov for this story.
Levitan left with Kuvshinnikova for Ryazan, and from there he took a boat down the Oka River to the settlement of Chulkovo. In the settlement he decided to stop.
The sun was setting in the fields behind the clay slope. The boys chased pigeons red from the sunset. Bonfires burned on the left bank, and bitterns hummed gloomily in the swamps.
In Chulkovo everything that the Oka was famous for was united - all the charm of this river, “flowing, oak forest, flowing royally, brilliantly and smoothly in the expanse of the Murom sands, in sight of the venerable banks.”
Nothing better than these poems by Yazykov conveys the charm of the lazy Oka.
At the pier in Chulkovo, a short old man with a leaky eye approached Levitan. He impatiently pulled Levitan by the sleeve of his scalloped jacket and for a long time kneaded the material with his rough fingers.
-What do you want, grandfather? – Levitan asked.
“It’s over,” said the grandfather and hiccupped. - I want to admire the cloth. Look, it creaks like a woman’s voice. And who, God forgive me, is this wife, or what? – Grandfather pointed to Kuvshinnikova. His eyes became angry.
“Wife,” answered Levitan.
“So-so,” the grandfather said ominously and walked away. “The goblin will figure you out what’s what, why you’re wandering around the world.”
The meeting did not bode well. When the next morning Levitan and Kuvshinnikova sat down on a slope and opened the boxes of paints, confusion began in the village. The women shuffled from hut to hut. The men, gloomy, with straw in their hair and belts, slowly gathered on the slope, sat down at a distance, and silently looked at the artists. The boys snorted behind their backs, pushed each other and quarreled.
The toothless woman came up from the side, looked at Levitan for a long time and suddenly gasped:
“Lord Sous Christ, what are you doing, you cheeky guy?”
The men made a noise, Levitan sat pale, but restrained himself and decided to laugh it off.
“Don’t look, old man,” he said to the woman, “your eyes will burst.”
“Uh-oh, shameless,” the woman shouted, blew her nose into her hem and went to the men. There was already shaking, leaning on his staff, a tearful monk who, out of nowhere, had wandered into Chulkovo and taken root at the local church.
- Gathering! - shouted the old man with a bleeding eye. - We don’t have an establishment to draw pictures with women! Gathering!
I had to pack up my paints and leave.
On the same day, Levitan and Kuvshinnikova left the settlement. When they walked to the pier, a stupid gathering was buzzing near the church and the shrill cries of a nun were heard:
- Dashing people. Unbaptized. The woman walks with her head open.
Kuvshinnikova wore neither a hat nor a headscarf.
Levitan went down the Oka to Nizhny and there boarded a ship to Rybinsk. All the days he and Kuvshinnikova sat on the deck and looked at the banks - looking for places for sketches.
But there were no good places, Levitan frowned more and more often and complained of fatigue. The shores flowed slowly, monotonously, not pleasing the eye with either picturesque villages or thoughtful and smooth turns.
Finally, in Plyos, Levitan saw from the deck an old small church, cut from pine ridges. It turned black against the green sky, and the first star burned above it, shimmering and shining.
In this church, in the silence of the evening, in the melodious voices of the women selling milk on the pier, Levitan felt so much peace that he immediately decided to stay in Plyos.
From that time on, a bright period began in his life.
The small town was silent and deserted. The silence was broken only by the ringing of bells and the lowing of the herd, and at night by the beaters of the guards. Along the street slopes and ravines, burdocks bloomed and quinoa grew. In houses behind muslin curtains, linden blossoms were drying on the windowsills.
The days were sunny, steady, and dry. Russian summer, the closer to autumn, the more it is painted in ripe colors. Already in August, the foliage of the apple orchards turns pink, the fields glisten with gray hair, and in the evenings there are clouds covered with a hot blush over the Volga.
The blues have passed. It was embarrassing to even think about her.
Every day brought touching surprises - either a blind old woman, mistaking Levitan for a beggar, would put a worn-out nickel on his box of paints, then the children, pushing each other in the back, would ask to draw them, then they would burst out laughing and run away, then a young woman would come secretly the neighbor is an Old Believer and will complain melodiously about her hard lot. Levitan nicknamed her Katerina from Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm.” He decided, together with Kuvshinnikova, to help Katerina escape from Plyos, from her hateful family. Flight was discussed in a grove outside the city. Kuvshinnikova whispered to Katerina, and Levitan lay on the edge of the grove and warned the women of the danger with a quiet whistle. Katerina managed to escape.
Before his trip to Ples, Levitan loved only the Russian landscape, but the people who inhabited this large country were incomprehensible to him. Who did he know? The rude school watchman “Evil Spirit”, the tavern floor guards, the arrogant bellhops from the furnished rooms, the wild Chulkov peasants. He often saw anger, dirt, dull submission, contempt for himself, for the Jew.
Before living in Plyos, he did not believe in the kindness of the people, in their intelligence, in their ability to understand a lot. After Plyos, Levitan felt his closeness not only to the landscape of Russia, but also to its people - talented, disadvantaged and, as it were, silent either before a new misfortune, or before a great liberation.
On this second trip to the Volga, Levitan painted many canvases. About these things Chekhov told him: “There is already a smile in your paintings.”
Light and brilliance first appeared in Levitan’s “Volga” works – in “Golden Reach”, “Fresh Wind”, “Evening Bells”.
Almost every one of us has in our childhood memories forest glades covered with leaves, lush and sad corners of our homeland that shine under the cool sun in the blue, in the silence of windless waters, in the cries of nomadic birds.
In adulthood, these memories arise with amazing force for the most insignificant reason - even from a fleeting landscape flashed outside the windows of the carriage - and evoke a feeling of excitement and happiness that is incomprehensible to us, a desire to leave all the cities, worries, the usual circle of people - and leave to this wilderness, to the shores of unknown lakes, to forest roads, where every sound is heard as clearly and for a long time, as on mountain peaks - be it the whistle of a steam locomotive or the whistle of a bird fluttering in the rowan bushes.
Such a feeling of lovely places seen long ago remains from Levitan’s “Volga” and “autumn” paintings.
Levitan's life was uneventful. He traveled little. He loved only central Russia. He considered trips to other places a waste of time. This is how his trip abroad seemed to him.
He was in Finland, France, Switzerland and Italy.
The granites of Finland, its black river water, icy sky and gloomy sea made me sad. “Once again I was moping beyond measure and bounds,” Levitan wrote to Chekhov from Finland. “There is no nature here.”
In Switzerland, he was amazed by the Alps, but for Levitan the view of these mountains was no different from the views of cardboard models painted with loud colors.
In Italy, he liked only Venice, where the air is full of silvery shades born of dim lagoons.
In Paris, Levitan saw Monet's paintings, but did not remember them. Only before his death did he appreciate the painting of the Impressionists, realized that he was partly their Russian predecessor, and for the first time mentioned their names with recognition.
In the last years of his life, Levitan spent a lot of time near Vyshny Volochek on the shores of Lake Udomlya. There, in the family of landowners the Panafidins, he again fell into the confusion of human relationships, shot himself, but was saved...
The closer he got to old age, the more often Levitan’s thoughts stopped at autumn.
True, Levitan wrote several excellent spring works, but it was almost always spring, similar to autumn.
In “Big Water”, the grove flooded by the flood is naked, as in late autumn, and is not even covered with the greenish smoke of the first leaves. In “Early Spring,” a deep black river stands dead among the ravines, still covered with loose snow, and only in the painting “March” is the real spring brightness of the sky above the melting snowdrifts, yellow sunlight and the glassy shine of melt water dripping from the porch of a plank house conveyed.
The softest and most touching poems, books and paintings were written by Russian poets, writers and artists about autumn.
Levitan, like Pushkin and Tyutchev and many others, waited for autumn as the most precious and fleeting time of the year.
Autumn removed the rich colors from the forests, from the fields, from all over nature, and washed away the greenery with the rains. The groves were made through. The dark colors of summer gave way to timid gold, purple and silver. Not only the color of the earth changed, but also the air itself. It was cleaner, colder, and the distances were much deeper than in summer. Thus, among the great masters of literature and painting, the youthful splendor of colors and elegance of language is replaced in adulthood by severity and nobility.
Autumn in Levitan's paintings is very diverse. It is impossible to list all the autumn days he painted on the canvas. Levitan left about a hundred “autumn” paintings, not counting sketches.
They depicted things familiar from childhood: haystacks, blackened by dampness; small rivers swirling fallen leaves in slow whirlpools; lonely golden birches, not yet blown by the wind; a sky like thin ice; shaggy rains over forest clearings. But in all these landscapes, no matter what they depict, the sadness of farewell days, falling leaves, rotting grass, the quiet hum of bees before the cold and the pre-winter sun, barely noticeably warming the earth, is best conveyed.
Little by little, from year to year, Levitan developed severe heart disease, but neither he nor the people close to him knew about it until it gave its first violent outbreak.
Levitan was not treated. He was afraid to go to the doctors, afraid to hear the death sentence. Doctors, of course, would have forbidden Levitan to communicate with nature, and this for him was tantamount to death.
Levitan was even more sad than in his younger years. More and more often he went into the forests - he lived in the summer before his death near Zvenigorod - and there he was found crying and confused. He knew that nothing - neither doctors, nor a quiet life, nor the nature he loved so ecstatically - could delay the approaching end.
In the winter of 1899, doctors sent Levitan to Yalta.
At that time Chekhov lived in Yalta. Old friends met aged, alienated. Levitan walked, leaning heavily on a stick, gasping for breath, telling everyone about his imminent death. He was afraid of her and did not hide it. My heart ached almost continuously.
Chekhov yearned for Moscow, for the north. Despite the fact that the sea, in his own words, was “big,” it narrowed the world. Apart from the sea and quiet winter Yalta, it seemed that there was nothing left in life. Somewhere very far beyond Kharkov, beyond Kursk and Orel, there was snow, the lights of poor villages blinked blindly in the gray snowstorm; she seemed sweet and close to the heart, much closer to the Beklin cypress trees and the sweet seaside air. This air often gave me headaches. Everything seemed sweet: forests, rivulets - all sorts of Pekhorki and Vertushinki, and haystacks in deserted evening fields, lonely, illuminated by the dim moon, as if forever forgotten by man.
The sick Levitan asked Chekhov for a piece of cardboard and in half an hour he sketched an evening field with haystacks on it in oil paints. Chekhov inserted this sketch into the fireplace near his desk and often looked at it while working.
Winter in Yalta was dry, sunny, and warm winds blew from the sea. Levitan remembered his first trip to Crimea, and he wanted to go to the mountains. He was haunted by the memory of this trip, when from the top of Ai-Petri he saw a deserted cloudy sky at his feet. The sun hung overhead - here it seemed much closer to the ground, and its yellowish light cast precise shadows. The cloudy sky smoked in the abysses below and slowly crawled towards Levitan’s feet, covering the pine forests.
The sky was moving from below, and this frightened Levitan just as the never-heard-of mountain silence frightened him. Occasionally it was disturbed only by the rustle of scree. The slate slid down the slope and shook the dry, prickly grass.
Levitan wanted to go to the mountains, he asked to be taken to Ai-Petri, but he was refused - the rarefied mountain air could be fatal for him.
Yalta didn't help. Levitan returned to Moscow. He almost never left his house in Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane.
On July 22, 1900, he died. It was late twilight, when the first star appears above Moscow at a terrible height and the foliage of the trees is immersed in yellow dust and in the reflections of the dying sun.
Summer was very late. In July the lilacs were still blooming. Its heavy thickets filled the entire front garden near the house. The smell of leaves, lilacs and oil paints stood in the studio where Levitan was dying, a smell that haunted the entire life of the artist, who conveyed on canvas the sadness of Russian nature - that nature that, just like man, seemed to be waiting for other, joyful days.
These days came very soon after Levitan's death, and his students were able to see what the teacher did not see - a new country, whose landscape became different because man became different, our generous sun, the grandeur of our open spaces, the purity of the sky and the brilliance of those unfamiliar to Levitan festive colors.
Levitan did not see this because the landscape is joyful only when a person is free and cheerful.
Levitan wanted to laugh, but he could not transfer even a faint smile onto his canvases.
He was too honest not to see the people's suffering. He became the singer of a huge poor country, the singer of its nature. He looked at this nature through the eyes of a tormented people - this is his artistic strength, and this is partly the key to his charm.