KAZAN — MOSCOW
Fatigue, an increasingly tormenting, stifling, sleep-inducing fatigue, a sort of stickiness and numbness. During the rare surges of energy, the desire to jump out of this rushing, trembling cage. My admiration for the endurance of Kopeć and of so many thousands like him, my homage to their suffering, their torment.
FIRST, green, snow-covered woods and more woods, then woods and houses, then more and more houses, then houses and apartment buildings, finally only apartment buildings, taller and taller.
The steward removes the sheet, pillow, two blankets, and tea glass from the compartment.
The corridor fills with people.
Moscow.
THE SOUTH, ’67
NINE YEARS after my journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, I traveled again to the Imperium. My expedition took me across seven southern republics of the former USSR: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and Uzbekistan. The tempo of this journey was murderous — there were only several days for getting to know each of the republics. I was aware of how superficial and aleatory such encounters were. But in the case of a country so difficult of access, so closed, so steeped in mystery, one has to take advantage of even the smallest chance, of the most unexpected opportunity, so as to raise, if only slightly, the impermeable and heavy curtain.
What was most surprising in this third encounter with the Imperium? In my imagination, the USSR constituted a uniform, monolithic creation in which everything was equally gray and gloomy, monotonous, and clichéd. Nothing here could transcend the obligatory norm, distinguish itself, take on an individual character.
And then I traveled to the non-Russian republics of what was then the Imperium. What caught my eye? That despite the stiff, rigorous corset of Soviet power, the local, small, yet very ancient, nations had succeeded in preserving something of their tradition, of their history, of their, albeit, concealed pride and dignity. I discovered there, spread out in the sun, an Oriental carpet, which in many places still retained its age-old colors and the eyecatching variety of its original designs.
GEORGIA
One should see the museum in Tbilisi. It is located in the former seat of a theological seminary, where Stalin once studied. A marble plaque at the entrance commemorates this. The building is dark but spacious and stands in the center of town, at the edge of the old downtown district. The rooms are virtually empty. A student is showing me around: Tamila Tevdoradze, a girl of a subtle, romantic beauty.
The splendor and excellence of Georgia’s ancient art are overwhelming. The most fantastic are the icons! They are from a much earlier time than Russian icons; the best Georgian ones came into being long before Andrey Rublyov. According to Tamila, their originality lies in their having been executed largely in metaclass="underline" only the face is painted. The most glorious period of this work spans the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. The faces of the saints, dark, but radiant in the light, dwell immobile in extremely rich gold frames studded with precious stones. There are icons that open, like the altar of Vit Stoss. Their dimensions are immense, almost monumental. There is an icon here on which several generations of masters worked for three centuries. There is a small cross, the museum’s most valuable exhibit, the only remaining possession of the empress Tamara.
Then there are the frescoes in the Georgian churches. Such marvels, and yet so little is known about them outside of Georgia. Virtually nothing. The best frescoes, unfortunately, were destroyed. They covered the interior of the largest church in Georgia — Sveti Tschoveli, built in 1010 in Georgia’s former capital, Meht, near Tbilisi. They were a masterpiece of the Middle Ages on a par with the stained glass of Chartres. They were painted over on the order of the czar’s governor, who wanted the church whitewashed “like our peasant women whitewash stoves.” No restoration efforts can return these frescoes to the world. Their brilliance is extinguished forever.
Sveti Tschoveli is the best preserved monument of eleventh-century architecture in Europe. The church looks as if it were no more than a hundred years old, even though it has never been restored. It was built by the Georgian architect Arsukizdze, whose hand the emperor later ordered cut off so that he would never erect anything that would compete. Tamerlane tried several times to blow up this church, but the walls did not so much as tremble. It is open to this day, and the head of the Georgian Church, the catholicos of Greater Georgia, Jerffrem II, celebrates services there.
I also saw, although only in photographs, Vardzya. It is one of those incomprehensible wonders that contemporary man cannot explain. Vardzya is a Georgian town of the twelfth century, carved completely out of rock. It is laid out not horizontally but vertically, as if in stories. It is important to understand that this is not some collection of caverns or ruins, but an entire town, with a plan, with streets, with original architecture, only all of this is cut into living rock, embedded in an enormous mountain. But how, with the aid of what tools? Carving out such a town must have been more difficult than building an Egyptian pyramid. Vardzya was once a practical creation. Today, like the pyramids, it is dead. What remains is the wall of rock, sculpted into a melancholy, surrealistic composition.
At the end Tamila led me to the Niko Pirosmanashvili room so I could see the paintings that soon would be going to Paris for an exhibition. Tamila claims that Niko Pirosmanashvili is all the rage in Paris these days. Niko died in 1916. He was a Georgian Nikifor or Rousseau.
A great naive.
Niko lived in Nachalovce, the Tbilisi neighborhood of the lumpen and the poor. He never had anything. He made his own brushes. The predominant color in Niko’s paintings is black — he always used mostly black because he got his paint from coffin makers. He collected old tin signboards so he would have something to paint on. That is why lettering sometimes shows through in the background of his paintings, an incompletely covered over “Magaz” or “Tabak.” The advertisement in gold and red and, on top of that, Niko’s black-and-white visions. Georgian naive art laid over Russian commercial art nouveau. Niko painted in taverns, in stuffy Nachalovce bars. Sometimes onlookers would buy him wine. Perhaps he had tuberculosis? Perhaps epilepsy? Little is known about him. Many of Niko’s works perished, a portion survived. The main subject of his paintings is the supper.
Niko painted suppers like Veronese.
Only Niko’s suppers are Georgian and secular. Against a background of the Georgian landscape, a richly laid table; at this table Georgians are drinking and eating. The table is in the foreground. It is the most important thing. The culinary fascinated Niko. What will there be to eat, what will man gorge himself on? All this Niko would paint. He depicted what he would like to eat and what he would not eat, not today, or maybe not ever. Tables piled high. Roasted lambs. Greasy piglets. Wines red and heavy like calves’ blood. Juicy watermelons. Fragrant pomegranates. There is a kind of masochism in this painting, a sticking the knife into one’s own stomach, although Niko’s art is cheerful, even humorous.
Niko’s Georgia is sated, always feasting, well nourished. The land flows with milk. Manna pours from the sky. All the days are fat. The residents of Nachalovce dreamed at night of such a Georgia.
Niko painted Nachalovce’s dreams.