One day he found a note on his desk in which the Academy of
Art asked him as a worthy member to come and give his opinion of a new work sent from Italy by a Russian artist who was studying there. This artist was one of his former comrades, who from a young age had borne within himself a passion for art, and with the ardent spirit of a laborer had immersed himself in it with his whole soul, had torn himself away from friends, from family, from cherished habits, and rushed to where under beautiful skies a majestic hothouse of the arts was ripening-to that wonderful Rome, at the name of which the ardent heart of an artist beats so deeply and strongly. There, like a hermit, he immersed himself in work and totally undistracted studies. He was not concerned if people commented on his character, his inability to deal with people, his nonobservance of worldly proprieties, the humiliation he inflicted upon the estate of artists by his poor, unfashionable dress. He could not have cared less whether his brethren were angry with him or not. He disregarded everything, he gave everything to art. He tirelessly visited galleries, spent whole hours standing before the works of great masters, grasped and pursued a wondrous brush. He never finished anything without testing himself several times by these great teachers and reading wordless but eloquent advice for himself in their paintings. He did not enter into noisy discussions and disputes; he stood neither for nor against the purists. He granted its due share to everything equally, drawing from everything only what was beautiful in it, and in the end left himself only the divine Raphael as a teacher. So a great poetic artist, having read many different writings filled with much delight and majestic beauty, in the end might leave himself, as his daily reading, only Homer's Iliad, having discovered that in it there is everything one wants, and there is nothing that has not already been reflected in its profound and great perfection. And he came away from this schooling with a majestic idea of creation, a powerful beauty of thought, the lofty delight of a heavenly brush.
On entering the hall, Chartkov found a huge crowd of visitors already gathered before the painting. A profound silence, such as rarely occurs amidst a gathering of connoisseurs, now reigned everywhere. He hastened to assume the significant physiognomy of an expert and approached the painting-but, God, what did he see!
Pure, immaculate, beautiful as a bride, the artist's creation stood before him. Modest, divine, innocent, and simple as genius, it soared above everything. It seemed that the heavenly figures, astonished to have so many eyes directed at them, shyly lowered their beautiful eyelashes. With a sense of involuntary amazement, the experts contemplated this new, unprecedented brush. Here everything seemed to have come together: the study of Raphael, reflected in the lofty nobility of the poses; the study of Correggio, breathing from the ultimate perfection of the brushwork. But most imperiously of all there was manifest the power of creation already contained in the soul of the artist himself. Every least object in the picture was pervaded with it; law and inner force were grasped in everything. Everywhere that flowing roundedness of line had been grasped which belongs to nature and is seen only by the eyes of the creative artist, and which comes out angular in an imitator. One could see how the artist had first taken into his soul everything he had drawn from the external world, and from there, from the spring of his soul, had sent it forth in one harmonious, triumphant song. And it became clear even to the uninitiate what a measureless abyss separates a creation from a mere copy of nature. It is almost impossible to express the extraordinary silence that came over everyone whose eyes were fixed on the painting- not a rustle, not a sound; and the painting meanwhile appeared loftier and loftier with every minute; brightly and wonderfully it detached itself from everything, and all transformed finally into one instant-the fruit of a thought that had flown down to the artist from heaven-an instant for which the whole of human life is only a preparation. Involuntary tears were ready to flow down the faces of the visitors who surrounded the picture. It seemed that all tastes and all brazen or wrongheaded deviations of taste merged into some silent hymn to the divine work. Chartkov stood motionless, openmouthed before the picture, and at last, when the visitors and experts gradually began to stir and to discuss the merits of the work, and when at last they turned to him with the request that he tell them what he thought, he came to himself; he was about to assume an indifferent, habitual air, was about to produce the banal, habitual judgment of a jaded artist, something like: "Yes, of course, it's true, one can't deny the artist a certain talent; there's something there; one can see he wanted to express something; but as for the essence…" And to follow it, naturally, with such praise as no artist would be the better for. He was about to do that, but the words died on his lips, tears and sobs burst out in a discordant response, and like a madman he rushed from the hall.
For a moment he stood motionless and insensible in the middle of his magnificent studio. His whole being, his whole life was awakened in one instant, as if youth returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent blazed up again. The blindfold suddenly fell from his eyes. God! to ruin the best years of his youth so mercilessly; to destroy, to extinguish the spark of fire that had perhaps flickered in his breast, that perhaps would have developed by now into greatness and beauty, that perhaps would also have elicited tears of amazement and gratitude! And to ruin all that, to ruin it without any mercy! It seemed to him as if those urges and impulses that used to be familiar to him suddenly revived all at once in his soul. He seized a brush and approached the canvas. The sweat of effort stood out on his face; he was all one desire, burning with one thought: he wanted to portray a fallen angel. This idea corresponded most of all to his state of mind. But, alas! his figures, poses, groupings, thoughts came out forced and incoherent. His brush and imagination were confined too much to one measure, and the powerless impulse to overstep the limits and fetters he had imposed on himself now tasted of wrongness and error. He had neglected the long, wearisome ladder of gradual learning and the first basic laws of future greatness. Vexation pervaded him. He ordered all his latest works, all the lifeless, fashionable pictures, all the portraits of hussars, ladies, and state councillors, taken out of the studio. Locked up in the room by himself, he ordered that no one be admitted and immersed himself entirely in his work. Like a patient youth, like an apprentice, he sat over his task. But how mercilessly ungrateful was everything that came from under his brush! At every step he was pulled up short by want of knowledge of the most basic elements; a simple, insignificant mechanism chilled his whole impulse and stood as an insuperable threshold for his imagination. The brush turned involuntarily to forms learned by rote, the arms got folded in one studied manner, the head dared not make any unusual turn, even the very folds of the clothing smacked of rote learning and refused to obey and be draped over an unfamiliar pose of the body. And he felt it, he felt it and saw it himself!