Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/260

230 IV." The first canvas conjures up one of the darkest visions that haunt Russia's barbaric past. On November 16, 1581, it is said, Tsar Ivan, in a fit of fury, killed his son. The picture presents the terrible Tsar clasping his dying son in a passion of unspeakable remorse. In "Ivan the Terrible" the painter has given the full measure of his art: he has shown all his power of plastic presentation and characterization, and displayed all the splendors of his rich palette; he has merged into this work all his knowledge of the dark recesses of the Russian soul, extreme both in its sins and in its repentence. Nothing can equal the tragic impression the painting makes: men are said to have turned away from it, and ladies have fainted while gazing upon it. The harrowing effect it produces may be the psychologic cause of the strange crime committed three years ago by a certain Balashov, supposedly a madman. He penetrated into the Tretiakovsky Gallery, Moscow, where "Ivan the Terrible" is kept, and slashed the canvas with a pruning-knife, fortunately leaving the eyes of the tsar and the tsarevich untouched.

In "The Cossacks' Reply" lives again that barbaric military order of half-monks, half-freebooters, which is the most romantic passage in the history of Southern Russia. In this canvas, glowing with rich color and exuberant animality, the purely pictorial side eclipses the "literary" theme. There is the imprint of observation on it: himself of Cossack descent, Repin was undoubtedly familiar with the picturesque figures which he has so masterfully and effectively grouped in his picture. Even in his historic and legendary works, the painter of the Burlaki is essentially a realist feeding on what comes directly to his senses. His latest historical painting represents a meeting famous in the annals of Russian literature, that between young Pushkin and the poet Derzhavin, "the Swan of Queen Catherine's time."

Russian art has almost no history; its face is turned not toward the past, but rather toward the glorious future, whose splendor is augured by talents such as Repin's.