"German borrowings" - Military. Items of clothing. Furniture items. Contents: Classification of borrowed words. Food. Alpenstock (alpenstock) graphite (graphit). Choreographer (ballettmeister) janitor (w?chter) foreman (briegadier). Chemical. Poodle (pudel) pinscher (pinscher) rottweiler (rotweiler) dachshund (dachschund).
"Berlin in German" - Die sch?nsten sind Bodemuseum und Pergamonmuseum. Fundamental question: German, grade 8. Project participants: Hauptstadt gr?n sch?n Viele Touristen gross Kulturzentrum. Questions of the educational topic: Hier befindet sich die Regierung der BRD. Internet resources, printed publications, multimedia applications.
"Borrowings from German" - 15% learners knowledge of borrowed words helps to learn a foreign language. Learn word formation using borrowed words. Kalki. Household speech. Tracing is the creation of words from the original material, but according to foreign language samples. The use of foreign words. History of borrowings: Words related to are borrowed from the German language:
"German national clothes" - "Brief description of national dresses: German and Chuvash." German clothes. A special role was played by the white color of clothing. Do you know about the features of German national clothes? It was believed that God loves white. Conclusion. Object of study: Observation Description Analysis of theoretical literature Practical work.
"German tanks" - In Germany, helmets are painted a dark grayish green. The order for design and pilot production was given to Henschel. Gun ammunition consisted of 82 shots, machine guns - 4800 rounds. Explanations The foo-fighter phenomenon has been studied since 1943. B, Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf.
"German School" - Also, classes are initially divided into labor training for boys and girls. In such universities, much attention is paid to practical training. Free time of German schoolchildren. in Germany. Labor lesson in a German school. School education. The focus here is preparation for industrial and social work professions.
There are strange coincidences of events in life, incomprehensible coincidences of circumstances, significant dates that seem to be unrelated to each other and may seem miraculous, as a manifestation of a higher will or mysterious predestination. But decades, centuries pass, and what seemed strange, wonderful, becomes an understandable phenomenon of the necessary continuity in the history of culture.
Mikhail Lermontov (1814 - 1841)
In 1856, in the German city of Karlsruhe, the first edition of the poem "Demon" by the former lieutenant of the Tenginsky regiment Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was published. In the same year in Omsk, in the family of the captain of the same Tenginsky infantry regiment, Alexander Mikhailovich Vrubel, a son was born - the future artist Mikhail Vrubel, whose life developed in such a way that Lermontov's Demon flew to his cradle, choosing the newborn as his new prophet.
Sad Demon, spirit of exile,
He flew over the sinful earth,
And better days of remembrance
A crowd crowded before him;
Those days when in the dwelling of light
He shone, a pure cherub,
When a running comet
A smile of affectionate greetings
Loved to swap with him
Any person who is seriously interested in Russian culture and art cannot fail to notice the amazing spiritual and creative relationship between the two great Russian geniuses of the 19th century - the poet Mikhail Lermontov and the artist Mikhail Vrubel.
Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910)
The tragic life paths of both constantly echoed in the images of their art, creative torments and insights. One of the central themes in the work of both artists was the theme of the Demon - a fallen angel, wandering in proud solitude across the expanses of the universe.
Lermontov's brilliant poem "The Demon" and the amazing Vrubel drawings for it became the pinnacles in the work of both masters. Everyone who knew Vrubel during his lifetime, and everyone who later wrote about his character and work, could not help but think about the essence of the obvious deep connection and spiritual kinship between the extraordinary, unlike other Russian artist of the late 19th century and the great Russian poet of the thirties. the last century.
In their childhood there were similar features: both of them lost their mothers early, from whom they inherited spiritual fragility and at the same time hidden ardor. Both were fascinated by the music that they could listen to for hours, both preferred theatrical games with dressing up as heroes of fairy tales and novels to all others.
An insatiable imagination woke up in them early and grew - they became real heroes of fictional stories and, surrendering with all their ardent passion to the game, which for them was not a game at all, but rather children's poetry, creativity, carried away their peers, conquered them with the power of their imagination.
But often they fell into daydreaming and then left everyone for solitude: Lermontov ran away to an arbor with acacias in the garden, Vrubel quietly went to his room or to his grandfather's library. Sudden detachment and thoughtfulness, silence and the desire for loneliness, which arose regardless of conditions and circumstances - all this was with the poet and the artist even in their childhood years as a result of their romantic natures.
Both Lermontov and Vrubel received a thorough education, but the artist had the opportunity to study more and diversify at the gymnasium, university, and the Academy of Arts. And yet, with all the differences in eras and class privileges, property status, their education, their interests had many similarities: home teachers, passion for history and literature - antiquity, the Middle Ages, epic, the same favorite works and authors: Dante, Shakespeare , Goethe, Byron and Walter Scott. Pushkin was the idol of both, but Vrubel also had Lermontov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Since childhood, both have been drawing and painting with passion, but this hobby did not exclude others; their enormous talents did not at all manifest themselves in love for one thing - literature or painting, they vividly delved into the sciences.
Lermontov at one time was fascinated by mathematics, Vrubel was fascinated by geology, both conscientiously studied Latin in order to read ancient writers in the originals, French, German, and Vrubel also studied English and Italian on his own.
At the university, the future poet and artist penetrated into the depths of classical philosophy, mainly German - Schelling, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer.
Vrubel's meeting with Lermontov did not happen at the very beginning of his creative path, but only by the age of thirty, when the young artist painted frescoes and the iconostasis of St. Cyril's Church in Kyiv. During his years at the university and at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, he painted images from the works of other writers: Turgenev's (Asya, Lisa and Lavretsky), Goethe's (Margarita and Faust), Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri were then closer to him than the Angel and the Demon.
For the first time, Vrubel embarked on an image promising "forebodings of bliss" and the glory of a great artist in 1885 in Odessa. But in those years, the Demon was not given to the artist, slipped away, dissipated in a haze, like a ghost. Probably, the idea of the image has not yet become a clear, visually tangible form.
Vrubel saw at times almost naturally only separate parts: either huge eyes appeared before him, burning like black diamonds, full of inhuman anguish, then he saw lips parched like lava, then a mane of serpentine hair, then a wonderful plumage of wings, then an elongated oval pale gray painfully distant face.
But all this did not gather into a whole, blurred, became “not the same” as soon as the artist transferred his vision to canvas, paper or clay; and it all ended with a migraine that depressed Vrubel once or twice a month, unbearable, "so that the body cramps from pain."
Only after the artist "met" with his Demon, Lermontov's "king of knowledge and freedom", the very idea of the image and the thirst for its embodiment in painting illuminated his mind with a "beam of miraculous fire".
In 1891, on the anniversary of the tragic death of Mikhail Lermontov, a unique complete collection of the poet's works was published, for the design and work on which many famous artists of that time were involved. Among the other masters was Mikhail Vrubel, whom no one really knew then, and therefore no one took seriously.
However, it was Vrubel's drawings for Lermontov's poem "The Demon" that best approached the very essence, the very spirit of Lermontov's poetry. Without these illustrations by Vrubel, the goal of publishing Lermontov's works would not have been achieved.
The drawings of other artists next to Vrubel's look poor, uninteresting, stereotypical. They do not rise above the norm adopted in those years. Even successful drawings by such masters as Repin, Surikov, Vasnetsov are easel works on Lermontov's themes, but not illustrations for his poetry and prose.
But, meanwhile, critics and artists most of all slandered Vrubel for “misunderstanding Lermontov”, for illiteracy and even for inability to draw. Even connoisseurs did not understand Vrubel's drawings. Stasov, this conceited critic, called them "terrible", Vrubel became "unpleasant in these illustrations" to Repin.
At that time, only in a narrow circle of young artists (Serov, Korovin) and connoisseurs understood the significance of Vrubel's unique drawings, their genius and adequacy to the works of the poet. None of Lermontov's other illustrators approached his creative and philosophical heritage of the poet as closely as the artist, bewitched by Lermontov's "Demon" and his own, did.
After completing his work on drawings for Lermontov, Vrubel did not return to the demonic theme for a very long time. Didn't come back to come back one day - and stay with her forever.
In the last years of his life, the theme of the Demon became central to Vrubel's life. He created many drawings, sketches and painted three huge paintings on this subject - the Demon sitting, the Demon flying and the Demon defeated. He continued to “improve” the last of them even when it was already exhibited in the gallery, thereby astonishing and frightening the public.
By this time, the deterioration of the physical and mental state of the artist dates back, which only added fuel to the fire and strengthened the legend that had already arisen about the master who sold his soul to the devil. But, as Vrubel himself said,
“They don’t understand the demon - they confuse it with the devil and the devil, while the “devil” in Greek simply means “horned”, the devil is “slanderer”, and “Demon” means “soul” and personifies the eternal struggle of the restless human spirit seeking reconciliation passions that overwhelm him, knowledge of life and not finding an answer to his doubts either on earth or in heaven.
The artist who painted demons had to drink his bitter cup to the bottom. He began to gradually go blind. Half-blind, he tried to draw, then sculpt.
And then there was impenetrable darkness. Mikhail Vrubel spent the last years of his life in absolute darkness. In the clinic, he raved about the "sapphire" eyes that someone should bestow on him.
Vrubel died on April 1, 1910. He stepped over the thin line separating existence from non-existence, and who met him beyond that last line - angels or demons - we will not know ...
Alexander Blok said about Vrubel on his grave:
“It was in him that our time was expressed in the most beautiful and saddest thing that it was only capable of ... Returning constantly to the “Demon” in his creations, he only betrayed the secret of his mission. He himself was a demon, a fallen beautiful angel, for whom the world was endless joy and endless torment ... "
When through eternal fogs,
Greedy for knowledge, he followed
Nomadic caravans
In the space of abandoned luminaries;
When he believed and loved
Happy firstborn of creation!
He knew neither malice nor doubt.
And did not threaten his mind
Centuries of barren series of dull ...
And many, many ... and everything
He did not have the strength to remember!
M.Yu. Lermontov "Demon"
Music: Georg Ots - fragment of the "Demon"
Meanwhile, Vrubel did not resemble Lermontov either in his mental disposition or in his worldview.
But there are strange coincidences of events in life, incomprehensible coincidences of circumstances, significant dates. In 1856, in the German city of Karlsruhe, the first edition of the poem "Demon" by the former lieutenant of the Tenginsky regiment Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was published, and in the same year in Omsk, in the family of the staff captain of the same Tenginsky infantry regiment, Alexander Mikhailovich Vrubel, a son was born - the future artist Mikhail Vrubel, whose life turned out in such a way that it was as if Lermontov's Demon flew to his cradle, choosing the newborn as his new prophet.
Like Lermontov, Vrubel was born with a romantic soul, but 15 years after the early death of the poet.
In their childhood there were similar features: both of them lost their mothers early, from whom they inherited spiritual fragility and hidden ardor; both were fascinated by music that they could listen to for hours, both preferred theatrical games to all others; an insatiable imagination awoke early in them and grew. Sudden detachment and thoughtfulness, silence and the desire for loneliness - all this was with the poet and the artist.
Even in childhood, both Lermontov and Vrubel could feel the breadth of the world thanks to trips and travels: from the Urals to Moscow and the Caucasus - Lermontov; from Siberia to the Volga cities, to St. Petersburg and Odessa - Vrubel. The artist traveled a lot both in his own country and abroad, he lived in Germany, Italy, France, saw Greece, traveled around the Mediterranean, and although he painted few purely landscape paintings, he loved and understood nature no less deeply than the poet.
Both received a thorough education.
They were also brought together by the following: both, who were formed in the dead time of reaction (the poet - in the 30s, after the defeat of the Decembrists, the artist - in the 80s, after the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya), despite it, cherished in their souls the ideal of a proud, recalcitrant human spirit. Their Demon is not a devil, a bearer of evil, depicted with horns, a tail and goat hooves, colloquially called "evil spirits." The demon is a symbol of the rebellious beginning, an angel who rebelled against God, who rejected the indisputability of God's will. Later, the image of the "demonic personality" takes root in the art of romanticism, in Byron's poetry.
From the rebellious titans of Byron - Lucifer, Manfred, Cain - Lermontov's Demon partly traces his lineage.
The essence of this image is twofold. On the one hand, there is the impressive greatness of the human spirit, which does not tolerate any prohibitions or fetters in its impulses towards freedom and fullness of knowledge. On the other hand, there is boundless pride, an immense overestimation of the forces of the individual, which turns into loneliness, cold, emptiness. Lermontov's Demon achieved absolute freedom, but it turned out to be a hateful freedom for him, a heavy burden.
Only God's curse
Turned -
From the same day
Nature's hot embrace
Forever cold for me. Lermontov M.Yu. Poetry, publishing house "Children's Literature", Leningrad, 1981, p.158
In the years of "sleep and darkness", suppression and miserable vegetative existence of the personality, Vrubel wanted to once again glorify the proud inflexibility of the spirit. But history has already made its own adjustments to the understanding of "demonism", and the motives of longing, loneliness and death involuntarily came to the fore. Moreover, the artist himself, who bravely took the burden of the “demonic” theme on his fragile shoulders, was far from being a titan, not a hero - he was a weak son of his non-heroic time.
The artist painted the picture in 1890, in the finally formed unique and individual Vrubel style. This style is based on the dominance of plastic-sculptural, three-dimensional drawing, the originality of which lies in the crushing of the surface of the form into sharp, sharp edges, likening objects to some kind of crystalline formations. Color is understood by Vrubel as a kind of illumination, colored light penetrating the face with a crystalline form. This is how the painting "Demon (sitting)" is written - the result of everything that was found by the artist in the Kyiv period of creativity. It is Vrubel's program work, in which his method of artistic transformation of reality receives the plot design. This is not a method of direct observation and transmission of visible nature, but method of ideal representation, imagination, which is only used by visible forms to create a fantastically transformed world of "demonic expressiveness," in the words of one of the later critics. touched Vrubel Art by M. M. Alpatov Vrubel, p. 221
The image of the demon breaks away from its poetic prototype - Satan and represents the "demonic in general" in the interpretation of the artist of the 19th century. There is no plot here, but there is an "eternal theme". The form of this work is as loaded with artistic memories as its theme. The sculpted body of the Demon resembles the titanic images of Michelangelo. The Seated Demon is like a giant. He is huge, his figure seems to be carved out of stone. Against the backdrop of fantastic colors, lined with color planes, like a mosaic, the Demon seems unearthly, far from the usual ideas that people are used to. Vrubel's image expressed a symbol in which the yearning for beauty and the dream of human happiness, which is difficult to find on earth, merged. This image could be realized only by the means used by the artist. His painting is always unusual. The colors burn like precious stones, as if glowing from within. The figures seem huge, likened to the heroes of ancient myths.
Lermontov's Demon, although suffering, is still "the king of knowledge and freedom." In Vrubel, he is not regal - there is more melancholy and anxiety in him than pride and grandeur. This was reflected in the illustrations for Lermontov's poem.
Here Vrubel most of all succeeded in a fierce, mournful, lonely face against the backdrop of mountain peaks. He was less successful in the scenes of Tamara's temptation, where he triumphs over his victory over her - here a sign of theatricality appears in his appearance.
You can get an amazing impression from the sheets "The Demon in Tamara's Cell", they are so full of expression and beautiful as works of graphic art. You do not know which of the three options to give preference. The first - “Do not cry, child, do not cry in vain” - the Demon whispers seductive speeches to Tamara, she covers her face in confusion. Both figures are against the backdrop of a magnificent pattern of oriental carpets. The second sheet - Tamara, with confidence and prayer, turns to the one who touched her heart: "Swear to me ... now give me dinner to renounce evil possessions." Outside the window is a magical starry night, one big star shines brighter, closer than others. The demon looks at the girl with tenderness, touched.
And now let's turn directly to M. Lermontov's poem "The Demon". Beautiful poems in which the Demon tells Tamara about his love and his loneliness:
As soon as I saw you -
And secretly suddenly hated
Immortality and my power.
I envied involuntarily
Incomplete earthly joy;
Not to live like you, it hurt me
And it's scary - it's different to live with you.
In a bloodless heart, an unexpected ray
Warmed up again,
And sadness at the bottom of an old wound
She moved like a snake.
What is this eternity without you?
My dominion is infinity?
Empty sounding words
A vast temple - without a deity!
The third option depicts the moment when
A mighty gaze gazed into her eyes!
He burned her. In the darkness of the night
Above her, he sparkled,
Irresistible as a dagger. Dmitrieva N.A. "Mikhail Vrubel", Children's Literature, M., 1984; With. 117
This sheet is decoratively somewhat poorer than the previous ones, but the most remarkable in terms of expression. Both faces are in profile, the Demon leans over Tamara, she rises to him like a magnet attracted by his burning gaze, her will is enslaved.
Let us turn again to the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Demon".
A lava of feelings pours out of the Demon's soul. Against the background of Tamara's frightened remarks ("Tell me, why do you love me? Why should I know your sorrows? They can hear us"), the monologues of a merciless denier evoke a strong response in the reader's soul. A furious passion froze in them, boiling up and escaping, while something like a cautious foreboding is just beginning to be felt in Tamara. In rapture, the Demon is even ready to change his nature:
I want to reconcile with the sky
I want to love, I want to pray
I want to believe good.
Wipe away with a tear of repentance
I am on a forehead worthy of you,
Traces of heavenly fire -
And the world in ignorance is calm
Let it bloom without me!
Love me!
Further, the artist draws Tamara in a coffin. There are two options, but the best, perhaps, is the one that depicts only the head at rest. The shape of the face, its plasticity is tangible, as in a sculpture, and this is done with the lightest touches of the brush, gentle chiaroscuro, only in some places and slightly supplemented with light strokes.
The poem "Demon" is Lermontov's best romantic work. Work on it lasted almost the entire creative life of the poet. According to religious myth, the demon is a former angel whom God banished from heaven to earth and punished with eternal loneliness. In order to correctly perceive the poem, it is very important to catch the author's intonation of the first characteristic of the hero:
Sad Demon, spirit of exile,
He flew over the sinful earth ...
Not "embittered" or "terrible", but "sad". The first epithet incites the reader to sympathize with the lonely wanderer rather than to condemn him. This is all the more surprising because, according to religious beliefs, the demon is the personification of evil. Lermontov's hero is not like that. Good, love is not ordered to him either. The demon is contradictory, like all living things. The reader finds the hero at a moment when he, fed up with atrocities, is increasingly busy with memories of “better days”:
Those days when in the dwelling of light
He shone, pure cherub
When the running tunic
A smile of affectionate arrival
Loved to trade with him.
When through eternal fogs,
Greedy for knowledge, he followed
Nomadic caravans
In the space of abandoned luminaries;
When he believed and loved.
Happy firstborn of creation!
I knew neither malice nor doubt,
And did not threaten his mind
A barren series of centuries...
And many, many... and everything
He did not have the strength to remember!
"Knowledge greedy." Elsewhere in the poem, the demon is said to be "King of knowledge and freedom." In this logic, God is a symbol of faith, arbitrarily imposing its unshakable truths, the Demon is a sign of that doubt in their immutability, without which no creativity is possible. The demon doesn't deny for the sake of denying. But for later approval. He contrasts the anxiety of search with divine calmness. The basis of his "freedom" chooses not faith, but self-knowledge. The demon protests against the divine regulations that fetter the personality, and turns out to be a more “human” hero than God himself. Demon's proud struggle brings him closer to Byron's romantic rebels. As a romantic hero, the Demon is also an individualist.
In general, the Lermontov cycle, in particular the illustrations for The Demon, can be considered the pinnacle of Vrubel's skill as a graphic artist. Here Vrubel consciously set himself the problem of expressing color without color, with only gradations of dark and light. The artist called such searches the search for "technology", and Vrubel's technique is akin to magic - it made it possible to embody his romantic vision of nature.
Among the artistic intelligentsia, especially the younger generation, there were more and more passionate, to the point of fanaticism, fans of Vrubel, for whom each of his works was a shrine and each word was a revelation.
Vrubel became the spokesman for the frontier time. And the painting of his “Demon” sparkled with colors, fantastically refracting both the “past” and “future” in the “present”. These were the colors of "epic" and "futuristic" art, the art of "archaists", "innovators", "classics" and "avant-gardists". The phenomenon of Vrubel consisted in the fact that he was least concerned about belonging to any artistic orientation, and his “abnormality” turned into a cruel tragedy - misunderstanding, condemnation and rejection of him as an artist. The historical irony is that Vrubel never became an artist of any of the artistic "flocks". And in this sense, the sign of his fate is "Demon Downtrodden". Picture-spell. And the picture is a prophecy.
In 1856, the first edition of Mikhail Lermontov's poem "The Demon" was published in the German city of Karlsruhe, and in the same year the future artist Mikhail Vrubel was born in Omsk. "Demon" was a program image-symbol, an artistic form of philosophical worldview and a lyrical hero of many works of both artists.
And the proud demon will not fall behind
As long as I live from me,
And it will illuminate my mind
Ray of wonderful fire;
Show the image of perfection
And suddenly take away forever
And, giving premonitions of bliss,
Never give me happiness.
Lermontov's Demon falls in love with the Georgian princess Tamara; she is an image of the perfection of earthly beauty and angelic purity; but even in it there is an attraction to the unknown and majestic, a doubt is born in the established rules and the catechism of faith. On her deathbed on her lips "strange smile":
What's in it? A mockery of fate
Is it invincible doubt?
Or cold contempt for life?
Or proud enmity with the sky?
Among the heroes of Vrubel are the characters of Shakespeare and Goethe. Both in Faust and in the choir of witches in "Macbeth" ("Evil - in good, good - in evil") the artist encounters demonic dialectics.
Pushkin could not and did not have such a Muse with the Olympian harmony of his worldview and the healthy joy of being. In Onegin and other works, Pushkin ironically looked at Byronian demonism, fashionable in his time, as a secular mask, as a "parody".
After the Demon, perhaps, only Hamlet was a strong attachment, Vrubel's interlocutor. In his opinion, none of the contemporary actors penetrated the essence of the Danish prince. “If there’s money, I’ll rent a theater, find actors and play Hamlet for real,” Vrubel once said to his circle of friends. “Look in the mirror, what kind of Hamlet are you?” Vrubel answered. “You are a midget, you have a whistling tooth and a ventriloquist voice Not a single person will go to watch how you will distort Shakespeare! .. - Well? - Vrubel objected coolly. - This does not bother me; I will play alone in front of an empty hall, that's enough for me " 1 .
After completing the illustrations for Lermontov's works, Vrubel, tormented by the Demon, is freed from his spell and from his oppression and for almost 10 years does not return to the image of this "evil master". Ten years, free from the Demon, became, perhaps, the happiest time of his whole life. These are the years of happy marital love, the rise of creative forces, more durable than before, success with customers.
At the end of December 1898, Vrubel wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov: “I am preparing The Demon.” The painful search continued for three years. In December 1901, the painting Demon Downcast was completed. at exhibitions in Moscow and especially in St. Petersburg, where the picture was in February - March 1902, Alexander Benois says: "Every morning, until 12, the public could see how Vrubel" completed "his picture. In this last struggle (2 months later the artist was already in the hospital) there was something terrible and monstrous. Every day we found new and new changes. The Demon's face became more and more terrible, more and more painful; his posture, his constitution had something tortured and twisted, something strange and painful to the last degree, the general coloring, on the contrary, becomes more and more enchanting, brilliant. A whole firework of ringing peacock colors scattered over the wings of the Demon, the mountains behind lit up with a strange solemn glow, the head and chest of the Demon were decorated with semi-precious stones and royal gold. In this form, the picture was both ugly and insanely seductive. But either the artist himself was frightened of her, or the model cunningly changed her face, confusing the image of the master and pushing him to a completely different one. A revolution took place and since then the picture has become dimmed, blackened, the posture has become more natural, the head is more beautiful, somehow more prudent, and the demonic charm has almost completely disappeared. Vrubel would have completely changed the picture if his comrades had not begged him, even at the exhibition, not to touch his work. 2 .
Even artists who accepted Vrubel's art could not renounce the requirements of correct anatomy in depicting a figure, the expression of which was perceived as a flaw or ugliness of the drawing. The nit-picking of artists, even of his close comrades, infuriated Vrubel. In a letter to E. I. Ge, he says that the layman, infected with Tolstoy-Christian ideas, "with triple anger protects his half-hearted vision from bright light. Before pathetic, he sighs about his sweet eructation and chewing gum of petty, everyday alleged naturalism."
N.A. Prakhov, who knew Vrubel well, wrote that "Vrubel's Demon could not be broken in a fit of despair... In Vrubel's last picture, he did not break, but only languishes...".
When Vrubel was placed in a hospital, ill-wishers and persecutors, without hiding their joy, were in a hurry to notify readers in print that the head of the Russian decadents was "crazy" like Baudelaire, and that, consequently, "The Demon" and all Vrubel's paintings were the fruit of madness 3 .
2. Benois A. Vrubel // World of Art. 1903. No. 10-11, p. 182.
3. Text and citations: Suzdalev P.K. Vrubel and Lermontov. M., 1991.
