* * *
Таилось, снилось, вечерело,
неузнаваемо жилось,
стремилось быть и тихо пело,
и неожиданно сошлось
всё воедино: в каждом жесте,
в необратимости открытий,
в той жизни, где мы были вместе,
одним несбывшимся событьем.
/Alexander Korotko/
______
I did not just put the picture “After the concert” by Mikhail Vrubel under the poem. This is a portrait of his wife Nadezhda Ivanovna. The artist lost his mother early, an eternal wanderer, hard years of teaching, adversity, deprivation, long years of non-recognition, illness and, finally, a miracle! After 50 years there is a turning point: an unsettled, homeless artist fell in love!
Nadezhda Ivanovna Zabela – a famous singer, brought to the inner world of Vrubel the charm of feminine charm and peace of mind. It was actually a very harmonious and happy marriage. And in 1901 they have a son – Savva.
For five years, before the disaster erupted, both are happy, and for both these five years were the time of the highest creative upsurge. But later Vrubel began to take over the gloomy feverish excitement, the first symptoms of impending mental illness appeared, caused by the constant depression and the death of his son. And his wife was there. Often visited him, sang to him in the hospital.
In the last years of his life Vrubel creates the last image of his wife – the painting “After the concert”, written in 1905, which was never finished – the artist had hardly seen anything at that time, mixed up the colors, took the wrong brushes and, finally, had to stop work.
Having lost his vision and desire to live, Mikhail Vrubel died in 1910 from pneumonia, just a few minutes before his wife arrived. And in three years Nadezhda Ivanovna, having returned from a concert, suddenly died after a short attack.
Here is a story. Honestly, I’m not such a great painter, but after reading this short poem by Alexander Korotko, I was inspired by what I wrote above.
Who knows the higher mathematics, now recalls Harnack’s theorem – if an increasing or decreasing sequence of harmonic functions in a certain domain converges at least at one point of this domain, then it converges uniformly inside.
I agreed: the spiritual and moral aspirations of Mikhail Vrubel and Alexander Korotko, their transcendent identity. Thank you both!
P.S. Mikhail Vrubel can be seen in Moscow in the Tretyakov Gallery.
A poem by Alexander Korotko read on his website http://korotko-poetry.com