Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/115

Rh Moscow") and Biblical figures, but although he changed his subjects, he remained faithful to his realistic method and to his Hannibal oath of everlasting hatred of war. His place in the Pantheon of Russia is fixed: in the words of Alexander Benoit, the historian of Russian art, Vereshchagin is Russia's foremost artist-preacher "and a great master of realistic art, a spiritual brother to the painters Ryepin and Makovsky, and to the sculptor Antakolsky." Vereshchagin is a remarkable plastic expression of Russian genius, and he has much in common with other spirits that are suggestive of the high potentialities hidden in the depths of the Russian soul. Like Ivan Karamazov, the hero of Dostoyevsky's novel, Vereshchagin was a gatherer of unavenged, unexpiated tears and voiceless agonies, and like the author of the novel he was a Man of Sorrows, with his mind eagerly scanning the mysteries of human suffering. But he resembles Tolstoy more closely. To both, art was essentially a preacher's tribune and a prophet's tripod; in both of them the splendors of pure art are dominated by a moral preoccupation; both preached and practiced austere fidelity to life and supreme sincerity; both the painter and the novelist reach out for truth with remarkable earnestness and directness of vision; both are distinguished by simplicity in portraying the tragedy of things, and by a truly Russian freedom from traditions and conventions.  

 

When ebbs the tide, think not the sea inconstant, It will return again back to the shore; Believe it not, my friend, when in excess of anguish, I say my love for thee exists no more!

Already back the dashing waves are rolling, Back from afar to the beloved strand; Again, again I long, full of that self-same passion, To place once more my freedom in thy hand!