PLATE XVII
LATE XVIII
The influence of Michael Vrubel (1856-1910) in late imperial Russia was almost as great on poets and composers as on experimental painters, for whom he had an impact that Naum Gabo likens to that of Cezanne on modern Western artists. Apprenticed in the restoration of church frescoes and mosaics, he soon turned from traditional religious subjects to the mystery of earthly beauty. From his early painting of 'Hamlet and Ophelia' to his powerful illustration of Pushkin's 'Prophet,' Vrubel displayed his greatest power in portraying those figures from the pantheon of romanticism who in some way incarnated the proud beauty of his ultimate hero: the devil.
Beginning with a first sketch in 1885 and stimulated by a commission to illustrate a commemorative edition of Lermontov's 'The Demon' in 1890-1, Vrubel painted the devil in a variety of forms, and increasingly referred to 'seances' with Satan himself. The two illustrations on the left show his first and last major efforts to depict Satan through a monumental oil canvas. 'The Demon Seated' (1890; Plate XVlll) broke sharply with the prevailing artistic realism and provided the Silver Age with a brooding hero: the newly seated prince of this world replacing, as it were, the traditional 'Christ enthroned' of the next. 'The Demon Prostrate' (1902; Plate XIX, central part only) was completed in the year of Vrubel's mental breakdown. The artist succeeds in suggesting the devil's own mental anguish by distending the figure in a manner somewhat reminiscent of some Russian variants of icons of 'Our Lady of Tenderness.' The swirling background reveals the influence of art nouveau and expressionism, and contrasts with the more controlled, semi-cubist backgrounds of the earlier 'Demon.'
Vrubel and the Devil
PLATES XVIII-XK
LATE XIX
Scriabin appears as the consummate romantic, a kind of cosmic Novalis, conceiving of his art as 'the last great act of fulfillment, the act of union between the male creator-spirit and the woman-world.'27 His mysticism of endless desire flows, thus, with a certain logic out of the lush Chopin- and Liszt-like melodies of his early piano works. Yet the complex orchestral works to which he soon turned show both technical inventiveness and a unique ability to express the inner aspirations of the age. There were essentially four musical stages in his late artistic- spiritual development: 'The Divine Poem' of 1903, his third and last symphony; 'The Poem of Ecstasy' of 1908; 'Prometheus: The Poem of Fire' of 1909-10; and his 'Mystery,' which he had only begun at the time of his sudden death in 1915.
The 'Divine Poem' depicted the ascent of humanity to divinity: the first movement represented the struggles, the second the sensual delights, and the last the 'divine play' of the spirit liberating itself from matter. While composing the 'Poem of Ecstasy' abroad, he met many socialists and proposed at one point to use the famous line from The International ('Arise ye wretched of the earth') as the epigraph to his work.28 Deliverance was to come, however, not from a revolutionary leader, but from a messiah who would unify the arts and provide mankind with a 'new gospel' to replace the outmoded New Testament. Scriabin apparently viewed himself as a new Christ preaching from a boat in Lake Geneva and establishing close links with a radical Swiss fisherman named Otto: his St. Peter.29
The language of his new gospel was to be even more unconventional than the iridescent 'Poem of Ecstasy,' which still bore some musical resemblance to the tonal sheen of Tristan and Isolde. Wagner's 'music of the future' was enjoying great popularity in Russia at the turn of the century; and the new musical world of Scriabin's 'Prometheus: The Poem of Fire' has been described by one leading Russian critic as
a continuation and development of the grandiose, inspiring finale of Wagner's Gotterdammerung. . . . But . . . Wagner's fire brings destruction. Scriabin's, rebirth . . . the creation of that new world which opens up in the presence of man's spiritual ecstasy. . . . His fundamental condition is ecstasy, flight. His element is fire. . . . Fire, fire, fire; everywhere fire. And accompanying it, the sounding of alarm bells and the ringing of invisible chimes. Awesome expectation grows. Before the eyes rises up a mountain breathing fire. 'The Magic Fire' of the Wagnerian Valkyries is childish amusement, a cluster of glow-worms in comparison with the 'consecrating flame' of Scriabin. . . .30
The 'consecrating flame' of Prometheus is provided by a totally new harmonic system. Among other features, Scriabin introduced the mystic
chords of the flagellants into his music, just as Blok had ended his 'Twelve' with the flagellant image of a returning 'Christ' at the head of a 'boat' of twelve apostolic followers. He also devised a correlation between the musical scale and the color spectrum, writing into the score chords of color to be projected through the symphony hall by a 'keyboard of light,' a giant reflecting machine to be played like a toneless piano. Fascination with color was a particular feature of an age anxious to compensate for the grayness of early industrialization. Rimsky-Korsakov had independently conceived of correlating sound and color; and the rediscovery of the pure colors of the newly restored icons encouraged a new generation of painters to see in color itself many of the miraculous powers originally attributed to the icons. Vasily Kandinsky, who exhibited the first of his pioneering, non-representational paintings in 1910, the year of Scriabin's 'Prometheus,' insisted that 'color is in a painting what enthusiasm is in life,'81 and that each color should start a 'corresponding vibration of the human soul,'32 ranging from the total restfulness of heavenly blue to the 'harsh trumpet blast' of earthly yellow.33
In the last year of his life, Scriabin turned to the great work he hoped would unify the arts and lift man to the level of the gods. In the score for 'Prometheus,' he had already insisted that the chorus wear white robes to emphasize the sacramental nature of the occasion. Now he began sketching out plans for a 'Mystery' that was to involve two thousand performers in a fantastic fusion of mystery play, music, dance, and oratory. It was to be a 'ritual' rather than music, with no spectators, only performers; the emission of perfumes was written into the score, along with sounds and colors, to provide a kind of multi-sensory polyphony; and the action was to begin in Tibet and end in England.34 The fact that this 'Mystery' could not be staged-or even clearly written out by Scriabin-was not held against him by artists of the silver age, most of whom agreed with Kandinsky that art is 'the expression of mystery in terms of mystery.'35 Humanity was not yet spiritually prepared for anything but mystery. A great cataclysm was needed to prepare humanity for the sublime ritual that would unify the good, true, and beautiful. The cataclysm came with the beginning of World War I, shortly after Scriabin had set forth the first plan ('initial act' he called it) for his 'Mystery.' Scriabin died just a few months later.
The purpose of art was not to depict but to transform the real world for most artists of the age. In their desire to bring the most advanced art directly into life, they staged innumerable exhibits, concerts, and cultural tours throughout provincial Russia. A highlight perhaps occurred in the summer of 1910, when Scriabin's complex tonal patterns were played on a boat floating down the Volga under the direction of young Serge Kousse-
vitzky, wafting music out across the unresponsive and uncomprehending countryside.
This Promethean aristocratic art helped spur on a simultaneous revival of popular art, which in turn provided fresh stimulus for the restless avant-garde. The aristocracy developed fresh interest in ceramics, woodcarving, weaving, and embroidery as industrialization began to threaten them. Cottage industries and peasant crafts were given new encouragement by the provincial zemstvos; and a totally new form of musical folk poem, the harmonically complex chastushka, arose as a kind of grass roots equivalent to the new and more musical poetry of
