The insane artist
The mad artist ( Russian Безумный художник , Besumny chudozhnik) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which was written in Paris in 1921 and published in 1923 in vol. 1 of the Almanac Okno there .
content
The no longer young painter arrives on the Petrograd train on December 24, 1916 , stays in the big old hotel, where the action takes place, and does not ask for a room with the windows facing north. No, it has to be the brightest. He introduces himself to the waiter as an artist and asks for painting utensils. What will the subject of the new work be? Answer: Of course, appropriate to the day mentioned above, the birth of the human being, namely the new human being in "the bloody old world". In addition, this artist wants to bring everything into the new work that has driven him crazy over the past two years. Canvas and oil paints cannot be found in the city in the middle of a war. The artist makes do with cardboard, colored pencils and watercolors and makes a brush.
The police asked the hotel management to monitor the artist. If, as in the case, a person has been abroad, then that is not surprising during the war. At least there is nothing objectionable in the passport. It says that the artist's wife has died.
The artist takes a photo from his suitcase. Two coffins with his wife and their child are photographed on it. The painter deviates from his concept - child in the manger with Madonna and lamb. Towards the end of the long Christmas Eve the new work is done. Then is Christ not born but before the background dominant embers crucified. Hanged on the gallows and the instruments of torture including the tools of execution of this world are not missing. There is something devilishly animal about the faces of the murderous perpetrators.
reception
In 1985 Kasper wrote that the text spoke of desperation. That new person whom the painter shows lives in "a world of hell in which there seems to be no more room for man or the human."
German-language editions
- Used edition
- The insane artist. German by Ilse Tschörtner . P. 14–26 in: Karlheinz Kasper (Ed.): Iwan Bunin: Dunkle Alleen. Stories 1920–1953 . 580 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1985
Web links
- The text
- online at Lib.ru (Russian)
- online at bunin.niv.ru (Russian)
- online in the Komarow library (Russian)
- Notice of first publication in the Labor der Fantastik (Russian)