009, 10:02:53 »

N. Roerich is discussed regularly at Rosamir forums, but the conversation never focuses on his pictorial and literary works. Most participants in discussions shift the focus to Agni Yoga, while emphasizing the inconsistency and obscurity of this teaching.

One of these discussions unfolded.

I then decided to introduce him consistently and in detail to the artist’s paintings, but I did not sense any interest in this topic among the forum members.

After that, I no longer appeared in this topic, and the thread, as far as I remember, finally acquired a destructive character.

Let me now try to return to the conversation I started. But I would like, if readers again have a desire to discuss the teachings of Agni Yoga, so that this does not disrupt the conversation about Roerich’s artistic creativity.

The skills of orientation in the laws of art and its language help, therefore, to perceive it effectively, to fully experience the meanings inherent in each work. The main principle here is not to expect the artist to speak in a language familiar to us and to focus on problems that are relevant to us now. On the contrary, you need to be able to meet the artist halfway in order to see a person close to you in a person of another era and a different mindset.

With these goals in mind, I decided to systematically introduce the forum to phenomena of art in which a heralding tendency is clearly visible, that is, a clear departure from the boundaries of earthly logic, the presence of alien inspirations. First of all, this is poetry - I have already selected the most striking works in this regard by about twenty Russian poets, they will gradually appear in the library. Their creative appearance is completely different; some of them are directly mentioned in the “Rose of the World” as messenger poets, others there are no such indications, but their works speak for themselves. All this can be discussed at the forum, and I would like this to become an experience of an unbiased assessment - not with the expectation of ideas that are already familiar to us, but with attention to the poets themselves; they deserve it.

Gradually I am preparing material on other arts, including painting. The painting of N. Roerich also appears in this context. I decided to dwell on it in detail for the following reasons. Roerich, with all his originality, actually reflected many trends of his time and, considering his work, one can draw many parallels, make excursions into various areas of artistic and spiritual life, which prepared and preceded, in turn, the emergence of the concept of “Rose of the World” " Roerich's work is very diverse in terms of the tasks posed in each specific painting, and therefore an overview of it can give the experience of multiple approaches to a work of art (especially non-verbal art, which loses most of its meaning when transmitted verbally). Not the least important role was played by the fact that his paintings are quite fully presented on the Internet, and I can illustrate each of my points with examples.

I will try to identify some qualities of Roerich’s painting, in which he is revealed precisely as a messenger, where there are parallels with the shift in worldview that D. Andreev was able to express verbally and formulate into a complete system.

This is, firstly, a new look at nature. Andreev spoke about guessing elemental worlds; but for us, repeating this thought, apart from the feelings that Andreev really put into these words, will not explain anything significant. Many people go through their own individual path of understanding nature, and only Andreev reached the realization of many separate, diverse transphysical layers. This does not mean that we should now put the search for other sensitive and inquisitive artists only in terms of “Roses of the World”. On the contrary, we must pay tribute to the independence and individuality of each artistic vision; they together constitute a culture of comprehension in which every person can find something truly in tune with themselves.

For the 19th century, the dominant tendency was to see in nature a reflection of the inner world of man. In general, this is what determined the face of the Russian school of lyrical landscape. But sometimes, through the “landscape of mood,” another approach was visible, the artist’s desire to penetrate into the essence of nature itself, to convey its inner voice, not associated with the refraction of human feelings, was manifested. This can sometimes be seen in the late Savrasov, Polenov, and late Levitan. Kuindzhi took a bolder step in this direction - he completely broke with the “mood landscape” and began to look for unprecedented pictorial forms in which nature could speak its own language. Roerich continued his search for his teacher; he expanded the range of expressive means that already existed in painting, but were now aimed at revealing the “voice of nature.”

A new point discovered along this path by Roerich - his landscapes evoke a difficult-to-explain feeling of being in one or another geographical zone of the Earth. The landscapes of Karelia and Arizona differ in their internal energy; behind them one can feel the presence of some transphysical currents that characterize this particular area. This feeling is so vivid that many people perceive his Himalayan sketches as something beyond the boundaries of Russian culture, irrationally alien to it (despite the fact that it is in them that Roerich comes closest to the Kuindzhi tradition). As a result, the entire volume of his landscape painting creates some new, unexpectedly multifaceted image of the nature of the Earth.

Diversity is also expressed in the implementation of views (including on nature) as if from different historical eras, on behalf of different artistic traditions. A picture from the life of the ancient Slavs, a setting for “Tristan and Isolde” and the implementation of the Mongol epic differ in the currents that fill them, coming not only from an intuitive comprehension of these plots, but also from artistic sources. Roerich, with his always tangible individuality, gradually absorbed the techniques of different types of fine arts from different centuries and countries. But, unlike, for example, many artists of the “World of Art” group (of which he himself was a member for some time), this was not limited to depicting the life of other eras while maintaining the same author’s (and, in essence, aesthetic) point of view. Roerich was able to transform himself much more deeply, to comprehend the atmosphere of distant centuries, their elusive inner pathos.

His interest in deeply understanding the uniqueness of each culture led him to an interest in their ancient mythologies and to the comprehension of their religious myths. At the same time, the attitude towards cultures as equal, obvious to him as an artist and art researcher, his experience in the synthesis of artistic styles - led him to the conclusion about the equality and real possibility of synthesis on a higher, spiritual level. Here he relied on his own cultural erudition and spiritual intuition; later, solid philosophical and religious knowledge was added to this.

These are some of the directions of his work, which I will try to reveal through painting (namely through painting; if I give fragments of Roerich’s literary texts, it will only be to confirm and concretize the meanings already indicated in his paintings). I repeat once again that it is impossible to find a picture in which this entire ideological program would be expressed in its final form. Each of the works solves its own particular problem, determined by both the plot and the genre (for example, a sketch of a theatrical costume, a sketch of scenery, a full-scale expedition sketch). But this is precisely what creates the diversity and unpredictability of the tasks of each painting, and when looking at the entire volume of his work - the unique completeness of its results, a touch on the concept of metaculture, clearly foreseen by the artist.

O. Mandelstam

It seems to me that many are inclined, when considering the artist’s work, to make a substitution, the scheme of which is very simple: first present Agni Yoga as the central fruit of all his activity, and then, having determined their attitude to Agni Yoga, transfer it to all of Roerich’s works. Subjectively, of course, everyone has the right to this, but as a result, human perception turns out to be deaf to many beautiful works and many ideas developed by the artist.

Meanwhile, in my opinion, Roerich’s providence was expressed primarily in the holistic structure of his personality, which allowed him to gradually embrace all new forms of activity: painter, writer, archaeologist, public figure, explorer, mystical thinker. Perhaps he did not cope with all tasks at the same high level. And yet, I don’t want to leave the field because of disagreement with some of its provisions (or perhaps because of the inability to enter the creative world of the artist, to understand the system of its conventions and internal laws; out of a desire to see everything expressed in an already mastered language). the entire range of spiritual values ​​brought by Roerich into our world fell into view.

I do not undertake to characterize all the diversity of his creativity. I set a modest task: to introduce some aspects of his painting, while drawing attention to the features of its pictorial structure, since the meaning of the work cannot be expressed by limiting itself only to a description of the plot and the verbally expressed ideas present there. Even in literature, in addition to all this, there is an internal rhythm, an order of words that gives words in a given context an unexpected and untranslatable meaning. Without such internal artistic mastery, no hints of trends from other worlds are possible. Such moments are all the more important in herald painting; its essence is not always amenable to verbal transmission; here it is important to feel the artist’s style, to go inside him, and then the paintings become living interlocutors, endowed with their own unique soul.

However, it will not be possible to do without subjects entirely: in order to understand all the diversity of Roerich’s paintings, one will have to group his works into separate themes (sometimes quite arbitrarily). None of them will give an idea of ​​the artist as a whole, but gradually a kind of mosaic picture will emerge, multicolored and fascinating.

So, topic one:

ROERICH AND “THE SNOW Maiden”

In the early 20s, while in the United States, Roerich wrote a series of articles aimed at bringing America closer to understanding Russian culture. In one of them (“The Robe of the Spirit”) he wrote in connection with the production of the opera “The Snow Maiden” in Chicago (we have published a translation from English, more like an interlinear translation):

...The legend-fairy tale “The Snow Maiden” shows a part of true Russia in its beauty. Ostrovsky, a realist playwright, gave inspiration to a fairy tale only once in his life. Rimsky-Korsakov gave “The Snow Maiden” a young reserve of strength. And the legend is convincing with its authentic epic.

All elements of influences on Russia are visible in “The Snow Maiden”. And the time of fairy tales - the poetic time of the Slavs, who revered the forces of nature - gives a bright atmosphere of exultation in nature. We have elements of Byzantium: the king and his court life. But here, too, the king is a father and teacher, and not a despot.

We have elements of the East: the trade guest Mizgir and Spring, arriving from warm countries. We have a folk way of life. The type of the legendary shepherd Lel, so close to the appearance of the Hindu Krishna. The types of Kupava, girls and boys lead the thought to the origins of poetry - to the earth and to the spring Sun.

And finally we have the elements of the North. Elements of forest enchantment. Kingdom of the shaman: frost, goblin, Snow Maiden.

Without being excessively historic, without being far-fetched, “The Snow Maiden” reveals so much of the real meaning of Russia that all its elements become part of a universal legend and understandable to every heart.

This is how every universal human idea is understandable. It is also clear that the heart of peoples still has a universal language. And this common language still leads to creative love.

In a rather dry enumeration of the components, Roerich appears here as a collector and analyst. At the same time, in the sketches themselves made for this performance, Roerich is revealed as a lyricist, captured by the pantheism and artless poetry of Ostrovsky’s fairy tale. At one time, this fairy tale and the opera by Rimsky-Korsakov that appeared after it caused a whole wave of incarnations of this plot: after V. Vasnetsov, sketches for productions of “The Snow Maiden” were created by Vrubel, Korovin, Kustodiev, Bilibin and other artists. This was the discovery of a completely new, clearly expressed Proto-Russian element in painting (first in the tradition of Abramtsev, then in a wider variety of trends of the Silver Age).

Roerich turned to the design of “The Snow Maiden” four times. In 1908 he made scenery sketches for the Paris Opera Comique; in 1912 - for a dramatic production of Ostrovsky’s fairy tale in St. Petersburg; in 1919 he designed an opera performance in London and in 1921 in Chicago. The surviving sketches give an idea of ​​the evolution of the artist’s style and the shift in emphasis in his views on theatrical painting.

In the works of the first cycle (1908), the art critic S. Ernst noted the “bluish-crystal light of the winter midnight of the Prologue,” the spring joy sounding in the curly white clouds, in the apple blossoms, in the intricacy of the huts of the Sloboda, and the yellow with the turquoise-green cover of “Yarilina Valley” - three of the most tender and beautiful places in the legend of “The Snow Maiden”.

Sketches for the prologue and finale of the opera (“Yarilina Valley”) have been preserved.

The “Prologue” as a whole resembles the corresponding plot of Vasnetsov, but is more subtle in color, more conventional and incorporeal in design. “Yarilina Valley” is a typical Roerich Russian landscape with an inexplicable ancient Slavic atmosphere appearing in the outlines of the trees, in the fabulous melodiousness of lines on the ground and in the sky, in a slightly magically shifted color system (new in each painting). These landscapes leave the impression of some kind of magical desolation, which is, as it were, compensated by nature coming to life under our gaze. Probably, it was these landscapes that D. Andreev had in mind when he wrote that the artist “manages to infect the viewer with his sense of the elemental worlds running through the nature of Enrof, or to hint with peculiar combinations of lines and colors at the landscapes of some other layer.” Here, the wavy surface of the Earth seems somehow softly fluid and translucent, emitting a muted and coldish light from within.

From the works of 1912, “Forest”, “Urochishche” and two sketches of costumes are known, as well as “Sloboda”, reproduced in old black and white editions, and the richly ornamented “Berendey’s Chamber”.

“Urochishche” (from the Russian Museum) is one of Roerich’s most joyful paintings. Here everything is subordinated to a single melodious movement - the play of the hills, the bends of the birches, the sky, which has taken on golden and greenish tones from the earth's blossoms. Stone is the cross-cutting “hero” of Roerich’s paintings; throughout his work there are many hundreds, if not thousands, of stones with their own individual “faces”, from those outlined in three or four multi-colored strokes (but always with a finely thought out color relationship) to those like here - complex in volume sculpting, mysterious in the expressed meaning.

“The Forest” apparently illustrates that episode of the opera where Mizgir makes his way through a dense thicket enchanted by Leshi. This is one of the very few cases when in Roerich epic detachment is replaced by subjectivity of perspective (in cinema this technique is called “subjective camera”, when, for example, the camera operator reproduces the point of view of a running man with the movement of the camera). Dull grayish-green color, trees blocking the road like living creatures (in full accordance with the plot), boulders and mysterious lights scattered on the ground - this is how the witchcraft spell is expressed, which transformed the forest for the sake of protecting the Snow Maiden.

The sketches of 1919 and 1921 differ in their style from the previous ones. Some of them are more conventionally graphic, others, on the contrary, are based on an indefinite, seemingly blurry drawing.

The hot, intense color in “The Sacred Grove” and the decorative, color convention of “Lel’s Song” anticipate the style of the artist’s Indian works. In the picture of the winter forest (to the prologue of the opera), the northern, “shamanic” side of the fairy tale was expressed more clearly than before, which, according to the artist, was one of the integral aspects of Russian culture.

For the 1921 production, Roerich made a particularly large number of costume sketches. Without overusing abundant ornamentation, the artist took the semantics of each element of the ornament with particular seriousness, seeing in them the deposited signs of the cultures that made up Russia. In the mentioned article “The Robe of the Spirit” he wrote:

A simple Russian peasant woman has no idea what multi-colored layers she wears on herself in her costume. And what a symbol of human evolution is written in its homespun ornaments.

Even now in the Tver and Moscow provinces we see an ornament of ancient deer. The images of these animals date our eyes directly to the Stone Age. At the same time, in the same places you will find clearly defined Mongolian embroidery. Or you will find clear forms of Gothic decoration.

In the remains of the Scythians, in the steppes of the south, you will be amazed by the implementation of things of the classical, Hellenic world.

In the Upper Volga region and along the banks of the Dnieper you will be amazed at the combination of the beautiful Romanesque style with the remains of Byzantium. And in the Byzantine remains you will feel the cradle of the East, Persia and Hindustan. You feel how cunning Arab merchants sailed along Russian rivers, widely spreading the tale of the entire East to the shores of China. You know how, along the same waterways, the Vikings brought the beauty of the Romanesque, which nourished one of the best times in Europe, to meet them. And do you believe that the palaces of the first princes of Kyiv could be equal in splendor and beauty to the famous Chamber of the Rogers in Palermo.

The idea expressed by Roerich about the kinship of the image of Lelya and Krishna will appear more than once in his articles; it will also be reflected in his paintings. As a variant of the scenery “Lel’s Song”, the painting “Krishna-Lel (Holy Shepherd)” was painted in 1932.

Subsequently, several versions of “Krishna” were created, where the once found graphic image was placed in various landscape environments.

All these paintings have some kind of internal kinship with the atmosphere of “The Snow Maiden”, a special feeling of vitality spilled in the air, filling nature with spontaneous growth and flowering.

Krishna-Lel. Sketch. 1935-36

Spring in Kullu (Krishna) 1931

Krishna 1936

Krishna. Magical flute. 1938

Krishna 1946

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I sing when my throat is cheese and my soul is dry,
And the gaze is moderately moist, and the consciousness does not cheat.
O. Mandelstam

ARCHITECTURAL SKETCHES

In the 1890s - early 1900s, N. Roerich was intensively engaged in archaeological excavations and the study of Russian history. At this time, his unique poetics was formed, in which objective realities associated with the national past became certain points of connection with the spiritual experience of past centuries. First of all, such realities are ancient architectural structures, the remains of ancient settlements, settlements and “zhalniki” (i.e. burial places), places associated with pre-Christian cults. Such pictorial motifs give many of the artist’s paintings a special legendary flavor (or, as they said then, a “historical feeling”).

At the same time, works of a more objective nature appeared, caused by the artist’s need for a close, systematic study of material monuments.

In the summer of 1903, Roerich undertook a trip to ancient Russian cities. He visited Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Rostov the Great, Vladimir, Bogolyubovo, Yuryev-Polskoy, Suzdal, Smolensk, Izborsk, Pechory, Pskov; further the route passed through the Baltic provinces: Troki, Mitava, Grodno, Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Revel, Wenden. In the summer of the following year, the artist visited Zvenigorod, Tver, Valdai, Kalyazin and Uglich.

The main goal was a comparative study of architectural styles of various local schools and different historical periods. During the trip, Roerich also wrote down folk songs and legends, and was interested in national costumes and applied arts. Among the results of these trips are about 90 paintings and many photographs (soon published in I. Grabar’s book on Russian architecture). The artist’s observations about the condition of the monuments marked the beginning of his active work to attract public attention to the issues of protecting cultural property. This activity will subsequently take on a worldwide scale.

Most of the works created during this period are small sketches on sheets of plywood, painted with large strokes, without detailed elaboration. Almost all of them are now in the Moscow Museum of the East.

Rostov the Great. View of the Kremlin from Lake Nero

Uglich. Resurrection Monastery

Izborsk Cross on the Truvorov settlement

Sometimes the artist successfully uses the texture of the material: in one of the sketches, the wood structure is visible through a layer of translucent dark paint, which enhances the image of a fabulously intricate wooden tower.

Rostov the Great. Church on Ishna

In those cases where the graphic expressiveness of a detail was important to the artist, he resorted to drawing.

Pskov. Windows of a 17th century house

Kovno. Gothic facade

The first thing that attracted Roerich’s attention in almost every new place was the fortress walls and those structures in which a powerful, sternly heroic spirit was expressed. In some cases, the artist makes every effort to construct the volume, emphasizing its monumentality and simplicity; in others, it plays on the contrast between the monotony of stone towers and the decorative diversity of internal buildings; Often the focus of his attention is the breadth of space and the walls of fortresses organically, freely scattering across it.

Izborsk Towers

Kostroma. Tower of the Ipatiev Monastery

Nizhny Novgorod. Kremlin walls

Nizhny Novgorod. Kremlin tower

Pechory. Monastery walls and towers

Suzdal. Walls of the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery

Rostov the Great. Towers of the princely chambers

Smolensk General view of the Kremlin walls

Smolensk Tower

Smolensk Tower-2

Smolensk Tower-3

The Moscow Kremlin also appears in the guise of a stern fortress.

Moscow. View of the Kremlin from Zamoskvorechye

In the western regions, the artist’s eye is especially attracted by the ruins of medieval castles - a favorite subject of European romantic painting, here painted rather in objective, epic tones:

Wenden. Chapel ruins

Vilna. Remains of the castle

Troki. Sketch of a castle

Troki. Sketch of a castle-2

____________________________________
I sing when my throat is cheese and my soul is dry,
And the gaze is moderately moist, and the consciousness does not cheat.
O. Mandelstam

At the center of almost every sketch is a clearly sculpted volume of the structure, sometimes seen almost close-up, leaving no room for the surrounding space. Often only the most characteristic part of the building is included in the picture, creating cut-off, unbalanced compositions:

Yaroslavl. Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary

Yaroslavl. Church of St. Vlasiya

Rostov the Great. Entrance to the Kremlin

Rostov the Great. Courtyard in the Kremlin

Suzdal. Alexander Monastery

Yuryev-Polskoy. St. George's Cathedral

Yuryev-Polskoy. St. George's Cathedral-2

Another cross-cutting motif of this series is the courtyards of monasteries, usually composed of buildings of various times and styles, filled with the charm of leisurely monastic life (in their atmosphere, these sketches are somewhat reminiscent of Kustodiev’s sketches of Russian provincial cities).

Pskov Pogost

Pechory. Great belfry

Pechory. General view of the courtyard

The most characteristic part of a building, its “face”, is often the porch or church porch. Roerich had a special lyrical feeling for the decorative ornamentation of Yaroslavl and Kostroma churches of the 17th century.

Smolensk Porch of the convent

Smolensk Porch of the convent-2

Kostroma. Tower of the Romanov boyars

Yaroslavl. Entrance to the Church of St. Nicholas the Mokroy

Yaroslavl. The porch of the Church of John the Baptist

____________________________________
I sing when my throat is cheese and my soul is dry,
And the gaze is moderately moist, and the consciousness does not cheat.
O. Mandelstam

The most colorful of the architectural sketches are sketches of the interior of temples. Seriously studying ancient Russian fresco painting, Roerich, however, here refrains from reproducing it; with the help of large spots of color, he sets only the general atmosphere of muted light, an atmosphere of mysterious concentration and inner glow.

Kovno. Old church

Riga. Interior view of the ancient cathedral

Yaroslavl. Interior view of the Church of the Epiphany

Rostov the Great. Inner door of the church on Ishna

Rostov the Great. Church of the Savior on Senya

Rostov the Great. Church of the Savior on Senya-2

Rostov the Great. Church of the Savior on Senya-3

Rostov the Great. Interior view of the church

A number of sketches (especially those created in the second year of the trip) are somewhat different in style: they are made in a softer, slightly stylized manner, thereby coming closer to some subject paintings of this period:

Uglich. Porch

Uglich from the Volga

Uglich. Church of Tsarevich Dimitri

Zvenigorod. Holy Gate in Savvin-Storozhevsky Monastery

Several views of Baltic cities are painted in the same manner. Here there is already a parallel with Roerich’s future theatrical sketches (for “Peer Gynt” and Maeterlinck’s plays); there is something related to the city landscapes of M. Dobuzhinsky.

Mitava. Square

Old Riga

These works, in their genre, are already on the verge between a sketch from nature and an independent, compositionally verified painting. This quality manifested itself even more clearly in the sketch “Medieval Revel” with its unique romantic atmosphere. Associations with Dobuzhinsky also arise here - with his images, which are gloomy and grotesque, but essentially not scary, filled with a kind fairy-tale quality.

Medieval Revel

In Roerich himself, from here there is a line to the images of medieval Europe, symbolically rich and colored with a very peculiar condensed psychologism.

The most interesting thing is that we did not plan our visit in advance. Of course, everyone knows that Roerich lived in India, somewhere in the mountains, so we knew absolutely that. When we went to Manali for 3 days, our goal was to see the mountains and drive up the road to Ladakh (we didn’t have time to get to Ladakh itself; in a week the train will go to Bangalore). Along this road we climbed to an altitude of about 4500 meters, played snowballs and in the evening returned to Delhi. But two days ago, when we just arrived and checked into the hotel, which happened not without adventures and prefaces, we found a magazine in the room, a kind of illustrated advertising brochure telling about the area and its attractions. Out of curiosity, we began to leaf through and suddenly discovered that the Roerichs’ house was only 20 km from us. Not without difficulty, we explained to our Indian friends that we couldn’t help but go there, found out what kind of bus we needed, and in the morning we visited a place we had never thought of visiting.

Now, when I was looking through the illustrations in this thread and came across the name “Kullu”, this valley immediately appeared before my eyes. Not because the picture turned out similar, not at all. Quite the contrary. The mountains in India do not at all resemble Roerich’s paintings. And at the same time, Roerich’s paintings can be more real than the mountains themselves. There is a special, inexplicable category - the category of artistic precision. It doesn’t matter what the artist writes, it should not look similar, but exactly. Often the details that seem most accurate to us either do not exist at all in three-dimensional reality, or slightly distort it, out of our habit.

Accuracy is not a copy of reality, but something that does not coincide with this reality, but seems to resemble it. “And, having stuck himself while sewing with a needle not removed, he suddenly sees all of it and cries in secret.” A painting should be formally similar to an artistic object as much as “sewing with a needle not removed” is formally similar to a beloved. That is, the picture owes absolutely nothing to anyone.

We value things not in themselves, but when they remind us of something, when behind them we feel not just one material meaning, but a multifaceted semantic meaning. And it doesn’t matter where this semantic versatility leads, where it originates. Multifacetedness is the truth, because it is the denial of evil, which is trying to subjugate all other facets. The very phenomenon of multifaceted perception establishes the victory of good over evil, because only in the world of good is such a vision of the world possible.

Multifacetedness must be distinguished from permissiveness, from limitlessness, when everything and everyone is mixed up, when everything and everyone is denied in its own name. Multifacetedness is a universal statement, but when each of the facets lives for the other. How do we perceive a symbol? The signifier strives to disappear so that the signified appears before our eyes as brightly and fully as possible. However, the signified, in turn, tends to dissolve in the signifier, thus making the plane of expression extremely precise and unique. No matter how well we understand a work, it always remains that the facets we understand want to show us. And the more facets we recognize, the more unknown they hide behind themselves, because each facet lives not for the sake of its own meaning, but for the sake of some other meaning, for the sake of some new facet. This is the structure of the universe if it were built according to the “laws” of good. But in life there is so much silent and deaf ore, moments that pass for themselves and speak of nothing but themselves. Multifacetedness is possible only in flashes; its principle cannot yet embrace all that exists, because many essences end in themselves, rest on themselves. From this perspective, the sacrifice taken as the basis for the structure of the universe by almost all ancient peoples becomes clear.

What is the “inner self,” our personality, not truncated by circumstances and dimensions, to the discovery of which we beautifully and vainly strive? But how can you strive for yourself? It is enough to imagine this lonely process to understand: firstly, it is boring, and, secondly, where to strive? Or do you need to first run away from yourself in order to strive later? But what if we assume that the “inner self” is only a symbol pointing to something else, a facet trying to tell us the secret of our heart? Who can you strive for? To my beloved, to you. The living person does not have his own inner Self, but there is an inner You, to which we strive all our lives, whose features we try to catch, express, and cultivate in our soul. We strive to become not ourselves, but to embody the essence of the You dear to us, that is, we ourselves become a symbol, where our I is the signifier, and You are the signified. And everyone’s You is unique, everyone participates in the creation of their beloved You. Not only God created us, but we also create God, because God resides in every feeling of love towards You. There is no love as such, given once and forever, the same for everyone, just as there is no God as such, because God loves too much to generalize. Love is too chaste to be shared.

Meanwhile, the meaning that a facet presents in the context of versatility reveals with its inner light the features of that facet, making it precise and unique. Without seeing the fullness of meaning that such a seemingly simple facet could convey, it is impossible to recognize the perfection of this facet. I am as complete as his inner You is fully revealed in him. But at the same time, I and You do not coincide, as if the difference in meaning disappears, the rhyme disappears. I basically don't exist. I have an inner You, and You have your other inner You, and this continues as long as life continues.

For a long time in communicating with art, I have recognized it as a rule: it is impossible to understand a work, it is impossible to exhaust it, but you can see how it comes to life and lives, to enter into communication with the versatility of the world of this work. And you can start from anywhere. For example, I do this. In order for the picture to come to life, you need to find at least one facet, a detail that suddenly speaks of something that it is not. Then the picture wakes up and begins to sound in different voices that cannot be listed or described, otherwise there would be no picture that alone is able to contain this polyphony.

At the beginning of this post I deceive the reader. It was not the Kullu Valley that attracted my attention and awakened my memory. Kullu too, but after. The first impulse was the painting “The Sacred Grove”, where pine trees float and float away against the background of the sunset (dawn?) sky. Here I cling to their crowns, because these are no longer crowns, but clouds, and the whole landscape suddenly becomes an ideal symbol of a fragile, unprotected, fleeting time of day. If the crowns of the pine trees are clouds, then not even a few minutes will pass, and the whole picture will float away, dissipate, transform into something new, unknown and therefore terrible. The earth is tied to the cloud-crowns with trunks: if they disappear, they will be transformed - the earth with the stars, thorns, and ants of our diligent lives, subject to eternal mortal danger and so often forgetting about it, will disappear and be transformed.

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Beauty is the memory of the face of God.
Alexandra Taran