GV Soroka. Chinese duel in the Tver province

[Vlasta]

Painting artist Grigory Vasilevich Magpies (Vasiliev) (1823-1864) is quiet and calm. Serenity and quiet interiors, domestic idyll paintings, portraits of benevolence, the calm landscapes create the impression of the same, "malogollandskom" slowly being the master himself. The most famous artist's painting "Fishers" seems the personification of internal pacification and contemplative spiritual equilibrium. Not the slightest agitation of the river, nor quietest breath of wind, as if time itself had stopped for pictures of characters and its author.

    But the impression is deceptive: G. Soroka was a serf artist.

   

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At the beginning of April 1864 signed a complaint Soroka peasants of the village on his Pokrovsky landlord and sent it to Alexander II. Investigation of this complaint, the artist was arrested and sentenced to corporal punishment.

    In the Tver regional archive of the court documents remain on this: "The case shows that the bailiff 1 Mill Vyshnevolotsk county, due to reports elders Zaymischevskogo regional office from April 11 to number 16 on the farmer hanged himself Vasilyev nicknamed Magpie in potted obzhigalnoy hut, arriving on the scene found: ... the upper corners, called "princeling" - from the floor 4 ½ feet, which, as indicated by the brother hanged himself has been distorted 3raza rope length 11 ½ yards twice, and made a loop in the middle of the floor 2 arsh. 8 Versh., Which means small stones lying here Grigory Soroka stuck his neck and hung without reaching the floor 1 ½ inches. On the body of any signs of violent death is not found, except that the neck is visible scar sinebagrovy thick rope ... Why Magpie had taken his own life, nobody knows anything, and believe in the happened insane thought from alcoholism. Conduct was the late quiet and unassuming.

    Document Tver regional archive, although it captures the alcohol component in the psychopathology Magpies, still marks his sobriety at the time of committing suicide. Apparently, it would be better to say in this case is not about "insane thought from alcoholism, but a severe depressive reaction to the painter of corporal punishment and, perhaps, to understand the perspectives of future reprisals by the landlord, which is absolutely dependent on Magpie. Despite the fact that serfdom had been abolished several years as an imperial decree, the artist in the fifth decade of nothing but of painting, who could not and besides drinking, in fact anywhere could not get away from their village, and from his master ...

    Suicide Magpies in the details very similar suicides committed offended Chinese peasants, hung before the entrance of her abuser - to the eternal reproach and a reminder of his unrighteous act. And a suicide is, in fact, is the eastern duel, in which there is no fight as such, in his usual our understanding.

    Russian duel was bloody and uncompromising. While in the West, such fights have become a formality - and their rivals from going out, usually without a single scratch, devaluing, thus, and ritual, and the institution of a duel of honor, in Russia have been widely disseminated and so-called duel, "a handkerchief, and quarter duel (with subsequent bout seconds) in which a favorable outcome implied rare. Further to the East duel in general loses its dualism: a Japanese samurai, having received an insult, did not cause anyone to the barrier, but committed hara-kiri (correctly - seppuku). Thus, the suicide of the artist's Magpies, in terms of eastern traditions, it was a duel with his master, and from these positions act of the painter did not show psychopathological.

    But in the traditions of the East there is a very different, more restrained and calm, rather than in the West, man's relation to death. Under the Code of Bushido, the Samurai was born, already dead "or" Way of the Samurai is acquired in death. When to exit there are two ways, there is only a single - death. This is not particularly difficult, and these sentiments are present in various social strata of society in the East. Therefore, if the countries lying along the western coast of the Pacific Ocean, suicide is part of the cultural system, then in the West it is - part of the anti-system, and all Christian denominations condemn suicide. The anti-same - a deviation from cultural norms, that is pathological.

    Reactive states tend to leave no direct traces in the work of artists because of their relative transience (if the motives of the events giving rise to the actual reactive state, continuously heard in the works of masters, it is likely worth talking about another diagnosis, too, however, psychiatric). However, in cases where the psycho-emotional reaction does not entail a completed suicide or suicide attempt, she still somehow imprinted in the psyche of the artist, is already exerting an indirect and subtle influence on its further work.

I. Yakushev.
MY number 23 dated 01/04/2009