第一百三十四章 第十章
第十章
画家米哈伊洛夫照常在工作时，收到了弗龙斯基伯爵和戈列尼谢夫的拜帖。早上他正在画室里画他的大幅画。回家后因为妻子没能设法推迟催要房钱的女房东而大发雷霆。
“我跟你说过二十遍了，别管那些细枝末节。你平时就够蠢的了，一用意大利语解释事情更是蠢三倍。”经过一番长久的争吵后他说道。
“别让事情拖这么久；这不是我的错。要是我有钱......”
“看在上帝份上，让我安静会儿！”米哈伊洛夫带着哭腔喊道，捂住耳朵，走进隔板另一边的画室，随手关上了门。“蠢女人！”他自言自语道，在桌前坐下，打开文件夹，带着异常的狂热立刻开始画一幅已经动笔的草图。
他从未像在事情不顺心时，尤其是和妻子吵架后，工作得如此狂热而成功。“哼！都见鬼去吧！”他一边继续作画一边想着。他正在画一个愤怒至极的人物形象。之前已经画过一张草图，但他不满意。“不，那张更好......在哪儿呢？”他回到妻子那里，皱着眉头，也不看她，问大女儿他给她们的那张纸在哪儿。那张画着废弃草图的纸找到了，但已经弄脏了，还沾着蜡烛油。不过他还是拿起草图，放在桌上，退后几步，眯起眼睛，开始端详。突然他笑了，愉快地打起手势。
“就是它！就是它！”他说道，立刻拿起铅笔，飞快地画了起来。那块蜡油给人物赋予了新的姿势。
他正在画这个新姿势，突然想起一个卖给他雪茄的店主的模样——一张下巴突出的有力面孔，于是他把这张脸、这个下巴画到了人物身上。他高兴得放声大笑。这个形象从死气沉沉的想象之物变成了活生生的存在，而且再也无法改变。这个人活了起来，轮廓清晰分明。可以根据形象的要求修改草图，腿确实而且必须换个姿势，左手的位置也要完全改变；头发也可以往后梳理。但进行这些修改时，他并没有改变形象，只是去掉了遮蔽形象的东西。他仿佛在剥去妨碍形象清晰显现的包装。每一个新特征都只是更充分地展现出整个形象的力量和活力，就像从蜡烛油中突然涌现出来一样。他正在仔细完善这个形象时，拜帖送到了。
“就来，就来！”
他走进妻子那里。
“好了，萨莎，别生气了！”他怯生生地、温柔地笑着对她说。“你有错。我也有错。我会处理好的。”与妻子和解后，他穿上带天鹅绒领的橄榄绿大衣，戴上帽子，向画室走去。那个成功的形象他已经忘了。现在他为这些乘马车来的有身份的俄国人的来访感到欣喜和兴奋。
对于他画架上那幅画，他内心深处有一个信念——没有人画过这样的画。他不相信自己的画比拉斐尔的所有画都好，但他知道他想在这幅画中表达的东西，从未有人表达过。这一点他确信无疑，而且从开始画这幅画起就早已知道。但别人的批评，无论怎样，在他眼中仍然意义重大，深深搅动着他的灵魂。任何评论，哪怕最微不足道的，只要显示出评论者看到了他在画中看到的哪怕最微小的一点，都会深深触动他的灵魂。他总是认为评论者比他理解得更深刻，总是期待从他们那里看到他自己在画中看不到的东西。而且他常觉得自己在他们的批评中找到了这些。
他快步走向画室门口，尽管心情激动，仍被安娜站在门廊阴影里听戈列尼谢夫急切地说着什么的柔和光线所打动，而她显然想回头看看画家。他自己都没有意识到，在走近他们时，他抓住了这个印象并吸收了它，就像他吸收了卖给他雪茄的店主的下巴一样，把它存放在某个地方，等需要时再拿出来。两位访客事先就因戈列尼谢夫对画家的介绍而没有留下好印象，现在见到本人就更不愉快了。米哈伊洛夫身材敦实，中等个头，动作敏捷，戴着棕色帽子，穿着橄榄绿大衣和窄腿裤——尽管宽腿裤早已流行——还有他那张大脸的平凡，以及胆怯又想保持尊严的复杂表情，都给人留下不愉快的印象。
“请进，”他说着，努力做出若无其事的样子，走进过道，从口袋里掏出钥匙打开了门。
The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count
Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had
been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew
into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the
landlady, who had been asking for money.
“I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into details. You’re
fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in
Italian you’re a fool three times as foolish,” he said after a long
dispute.
“Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the money....”
“Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!” Mihailov shrieked, with tears in
his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room,
the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him.
“Idiotic woman!” he said to himself, sat down to the table, and,
opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a
sketch he had begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill
with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. “Oh! damn
them all!” he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for
the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before,
but he was dissatisfied with it. “No, that one was better ... where is
it?” He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her,
asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had
given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it
was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch,
laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes,
he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated
gleefully.
“That’s it! that’s it!” he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he
began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of
a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a
prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the
figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a
lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never
be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably
defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the
requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put
differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered;
the hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he
was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed
the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which
hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought
out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly
come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the
figure when the cards were brought him.
“Coming, coming!”
He went in to his wife.
“Come, Sasha, don’t be cross!” he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. “You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it
all right.” And having made peace with his wife he put on an
olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards
his studio. The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was
delighted and excited at the visit of these people of consequence,
Russians, who had come in their carriage.
Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the
bottom of his heart one conviction—that no one had ever painted a
picture like it. He did not believe that his picture was better than
all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey
in that picture, no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and
had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other
people’s criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense
consequence in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his
soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic
saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him
to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a more
profound comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from
them something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in
their criticisms he fancied that he had found this.
He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his
excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna’s figure as she
stood in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was
eagerly telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round
at the artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he approached them,
he seized on this impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the
shopkeeper who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be
brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed
beforehand by Golenishtchev’s account of the artist, were still less so
by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of middle height, with nimble
movements, with his brown hat, olive-green coat and narrow
trousers—though wide trousers had been a long while in fashion,—most of
all, with the ordinariness of his broad face, and the combined
expression of timidity and anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov
made an unpleasant impression.
“Please step in,” he said, trying to look indifferent, and going into
the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.
