An entry written in the spring of 1782 from the lost travel diary of the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, wife of the Grand Duke Paul Petrovich and later Empress Consort of Russia.
“‘Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.”
– Horatio to Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 1
Yesterday, the Duke of Orléans invited us to a tour of his art gallery. It was a welcome diversion on an otherwise cold and gloomy day, so Paul and I decided to walk incognito the short distance from where we were staying to the Château de Saint-Cloud, the Duke’s Parisian residence. Rain fell steadily and fog enshrouded the city, bringing to mind a tearful widow whose face was half-hidden by a shawl.
We walked through the streets, cloaked against the rain and carefully stepping on the wooden slats laid over the mud. I was in a talkative mood, having had at breakfast a strong cup of Turkish coffee in the Viennese style. I thought aloud about whatever was on my mind – the anticipated beauty of the Duke’s gallery, the curious sights that greet the eye while in Paris, the latest news in the gazette. Paul kept up the conversation, making remarks pertinent to my topic and asking me little questions every now and then to show that he was listening, but I could tell that his mind was elsewhere today, as he hardly raised his eyes from the ground and didn’t indulge in his usual habit of occasionally interrupting me.
After a little while we reached Saint-Cloud, where we were received in the Duke’s usual gracious style. He expressed surprise to learn that we’d walked instead of taking a carriage, but I replied that it can be healthful to occasionally spend some time in the rain.
The Duke – a tall, imposing man of about my height, with a refined but somewhat austere manner – led us then to his art gallery. It was as long as the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, yet its size paradoxically created a sense of intimacy with the works of art on display there. The whole gallery and the palace beyond seemed to melt away in one’s peripheral vision, leaving nothing but oneself and the paintings.
The Duke showed us his favorite acquisitions himself, commenting on how he’d gotten them and who the artists were, and then invited us to explore the gallery at our pleasure. I was particularly drawn to the portraits; I asked the Duke to come with me as I examined them so that he could tell me something about each sitter. The measure of a good portrait lies in how well it captures not only the subject’s external likeness, but also his inner character – or at least the impression of it. Thus, knowing something of the sitter helps one judge a portrait’s success.
(I’m no painter myself, but I’ve found I have an eye for such things. Many years ago in Württemberg, an aunt of mine died and a posthumous portrait was commissioned for her funeral. The artist, an Italian who had painted her once during her life, depicted her features well – he got exactly right her long nose, haughty brow, and the hints of dimples that were always present on her cheeks. But he so failed to convey her actual character that, looking at the portrait, one felt as if it were of a totally different woman – perhaps a long-lost twin of hers of whose personality one knew nothing. There was nothing in the painting that revealed the slightest hint of her sharp wit, her ear for music, or her ability to turn any occurrence into a moral tale. I pointed this out and explained my reasoning, and so the portrait was reworked to much better results.)
As the Duke and I conversed, Paul went to the other side of the hall. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him passing by with a peculiar detachment, not looking at anything for very long. I wondered what he was thinking – usually he had much to say on the subjects of art and aesthetics, but today he seemed hardly to notice his surroundings or to care that his companions had left him behind.
Still watching him, I noticed as he stopped in front of a huge canvas that took up nearly an entire corner of the gallery; from a distance, I could see that it was a landscape of some sort, but painted vertically rather than horizontally.
“What is that painting called, Your Grace?” I asked the Duke, motioning to it discreetly.
He turned to see which one I meant. “Ah, that’s The Shipwreck by a certain Hubert Robert, Your Highness. I bought it quite recently.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The brushwork is no doubt impressive, but the painting itself is somewhat too fanciful, I think.”
“I should like to look more closely at it. Excuse me, Monsieur,” I said, and walked over to where Paul was standing.
The scene depicted on the canvas was a disturbingly accurate example of the philosophical notion of the sublime – a mingling of horror and harmony that by its grandeur seems to dwarf the onlooker and make one aware of one’s own wretched fragility. Travelers often ascribe such properties to grand mountain ranges: here was sublimity distilled into painted form. To one side of the painting, a savage, impassable cliff rose up into a dark and unforgiving sky, which was made all the more monstrous by a flare of red sunlight somewhere on the horizon. The sea hammered against the rocks, spraying foam everywhere like desperate tears; tossing on the waves was a forlorn ship, drifting ever farther away from land. In the foreground of this violent seascape, several ragged people – an old man, several women with children – scrambled on the wet rocks at the foot of the cliff, striving against the tempest even while all their hopes of rescue seemed utterly lost as the distant ship forsook them. The old man was trying in vain to save one of their party who’d fallen into the water; the women held onto their children, shielding them from the gale. Above, on another part of the cliff, it seemed that there were more people, no less ragged, also huddled together and calling pitifully for help. A horribly twisted, witch-like tree with sparse leaves, a broken mast on the rocks, and a ruined castle built of pale stone, all crowned the scene, adding a strange sense of loneliness and futility to an already desolate picture.
Looking at this creation, I felt a shiver run through me, but whether it was a reaction to beauty or an expression of terror I couldn’t say. Paul’s voice, itself imbued with a trance-like tone, broke my fearful reverie.
“What must it be like, I wonder, to be shipwrecked?” he mused. “Imagine it. You’re going on a long journey to seek your fortune, to escape from your past, to see distant lands – and all your fellow men on deck are also harboring their own secret ambitions and desires as they set sail with you. But then, in the midst of an endless sea, a storm strikes; all of a sudden your fate is inextricably yoked to that of everyone else on board the ship. The waves rise so high they seem to block out the sun. All your plans, all your imaginings for the future, are washed away by the water, and you can only pray to God for survival. You might be crushed on the rocks, or pulled down into the deep as irrevocably as a necklace dropped into a pond. The terrible maw of the sea swallows up the heavens. Everywhere you hear the roar of the waves, the cries of the desperate, the groan of breaking timbers.”
He paused; neither of us looked away from the painting. My eyes were wide, but Paul seemed to be in the grip of a deathly calm. He continued, “No one can help you in the middle of the vast waters – but perhaps you survive and wind up on some empty shore. Your world has been violently torn asunder and then pieced together again, however roughly, all in the space of a single evening storm. What will you do, now that you’ve been fashioned anew by the brutal hand of Fate?”
He gazed at the picture for another moment. “What must it be like?” he repeated. “What terrible wonders must it work on the soul?”
A thousand thoughts were whirling in my head, but I could say nothing. It was just then that the Duke of Orléans approached us genially, and our strange brush with the sublime had to come to an end. Paul, it seemed, miraculously regained his spirits: for the rest of our visit he conversed animatedly with the Duke. I took part in their conversation, but now it was I who had sunk into thoughtfulness, and my manner was less lively than before.
The three of us took tea, served with brioche and mille-feuille. Toward evening, Paul and I bid the Duke goodbye with sincere thanks, and set off back through the city. The rain had stopped and the air was clear of fog; lights twinkled in the windows of the stately houses, which looked like huge sugar confections in the twilight.
“The Duke has a fine taste for art,” Paul remarked to me as we walked. “It’s a shame that we have, as yet, no such collection in Pavlovsk.”
He began to talk more generally of the arts, and of their various effects on society. I listened as well as I could, but all the while I looked out at the Parisian streets as if through a pair of darkened spectacles. By the time we returned to our residence, the city was all in shadow; the lamplighters were just now beginning their work. I don’t remember my dreams that night, but I doubt they were tranquil.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}