第一百三十六章 第十二节
第十二节
安娜和弗龙斯基早已面面相觑，对朋友的机智善谈感到惋惜。最后弗龙斯基不等画家说完，就走到另一幅小画前面。
“哦，这多美呀！多好的东西！多迷人呀！多么美啊！”他们齐声叫了起来。
“他们究竟欣赏什么呢？”米哈伊洛夫想。他已经忘记三年前画的那幅画了。他忘记了那幅画曾使他朝思暮想地忙了几个月，忘记了他在创作中的一切痛苦和欢乐。他通常总是这样把他画好的画忘掉。他甚至不喜欢看它，这次拿出来只是因为等一位想买它的英国人。
“这不过是一张旧作品而已。”他说。
“真棒！”戈列尼谢夫说，他也显然被这幅画吸引住了。
两个孩子正在柳树荫下钓鱼。大的全神贯注地钓着鱼，正小心地从灌木丛后拉鱼漂；小的则侧身躺在草地上，支着胳膊肘，蓬乱的亚麻色头发抱在手里，用一双若有所思的蓝眼睛望着水面。他在想什么呢？
对这幅画的赞赏在米哈伊洛夫心里激起旧日的激动，但他害怕、也不喜欢，白白地为往事耗费感情，因此尽管他对这些赞扬感到欣慰，他还是设法把来客引到第三幅画前。
但是弗龙斯基问这画是否出售。此刻，米哈伊洛夫正因来了几位客人而非常激动，他很不愿意谈到金钱问题。
“摆出来就是为了卖的。”他阴沉着脸回答。
客人走后，米哈伊洛夫在彼拉多和基督的那幅画前面坐了下来，在脑海里重温着客人刚才说的话，以及即使没有说出但已经暗示的话。说也奇怪，当他在场，当他以他们的观点来思考时，他觉得非常重要的事，现在一下子失去意义。他开始用艺术家全部深邃的目光审视自己的画，并很快进入一种境界——坚信自己的作品完美无缺、从而意义重大。这种信念——排除其他一切兴趣而专注于创作——是他工作所必需的。
可是，基督的那条腿画得不对，不像。他拿起调色板，动手修改。他一边改那条腿，一边不断地望望背景里约翰的像。客人没有注意到那幅画，但他深知那是完美的顶峰。他画好了腿，还想修改约翰的像，但他觉得太激动，不能动笔。在他冷静时和太激动时，看一切色彩都太刺眼时，都是不能作画的。只有在从冷静到灵感升华的过程中，才能进行创作。此刻他太激动了，简直想遮住画幅。他停住了，手里拿着抹布，露出幸福的微笑，久久地凝视着约翰的像。最后，他好像依依不舍地放下抹布，他怀着精疲力尽但很愉快的心情回家去了。
弗龙斯基、安娜和戈列尼谢夫回家途中格外活跃、愉快。他们谈论着米哈伊洛夫和他的画。“才能”这个词，意思是天生的、不依靠智慧和心灵的、几乎是生理上的本领，他们在谈话中反复使用，因为他们想用这个词来概括他们对这位画家从生活中体会到的一切感受，其实他们对此毫无概念，却非谈不可。他们都说，他的才能是不可否认的，但缺乏教养——这是我们俄国画家的通病——因此难以得到发展。但是，那幅画着孩子的画已深深印在他们的记忆里，他们反复回味着。“多么好的东西！他是怎么画出来的，又这么质朴！他甚至不懂这是多么好。是的，我不能错过机会，一定要买下它。”弗龙斯基说。
Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their
friend’s flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the
artist, walked away to another small picture.
“Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!” they
cried with one voice.
“What is it they’re so pleased with?” thought Mihailov. He had
positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He
had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through
with that picture when for several months it had been the one thought
haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the
pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had
only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted
to buy it.
“Oh, that’s only an old study,” he said.
“How fine!” said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity,
falling under the spell of the picture.
Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just
dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a
bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little
younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his
tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy
blue eyes. What was he thinking of?
The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it
in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for
things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he
tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.
But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov at that
moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of
money matters.
“It is put up there to be sold,” he answered, scowling gloomily.
When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of
Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and
what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange
to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and
while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all
importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own
full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the
perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture—a conviction
essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other interests—in
which alone he could work.
Christ’s foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette
and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the
figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even
noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished
the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited
for it. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was
too much affected and saw everything too much. There was only one stage
in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was
possible. Today he was too much agitated. He would have covered the
picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling
blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, as it
were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and,
exhausted but happy, went home.
Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly
lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word
_talent_, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude
apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an
expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred
particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them
to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of
it. They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent
could not develop for want of education—the common defect of our
Russian artists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on
their memories, and they were continually coming back to it. “What an
exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn’t
even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn’t let it slip; I must buy
it,” said Vronsky.
