Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Ge: dialogue of a writer and an artist

Relationship of Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Ge, their correspondence are regarded as a unique example in the history of Russian culture of a close, organic convergence of a writer and an artist. The creative dialogue of Tolstoy and Ge is important for understanding their aesthetic views, views on painting and art in general: its nature, purpose, languages. Tolstoy was deeply in tune with the most important Gospel plots of Ge's later paintings. Such plots are Christ before Pilate's court and Crucifixion of Christ through the eyes of the robber who believed in Him. Tolstoy perceived Ge's painting "'What Is Truth?' Pilate and Christ" as an embodiment of his old thoughts about the belittling of the moral teachings of Christ in the world today. Tolstoy himself expressed this idea in the novel Anna Karenina, written 20 years before Ge's painting picture. Ge's work and Mikhailov's painting "Pilate's Exhortation" have a common source: both works illustrate the 27th chapter of John's Gospel, the last conversation of Pilate with Christ before his crucifixion. Referring to the Gospel story, the writer and the artist expressed the idea of the spiritual blindness of the punishing power and of the humanity of the condemned Christ in the languages of different arts. Tolstoy particularly noted Ge's sketch "Christ and the Robber", created during the work on "The Crucifixion". The writer praised the idea of the artist: not to describe the pains of Christ, but to depict Him as a living icon in the "mirror" of the eyes of the repentant robber. The plot of Ge's sketch was close to late Tolstoy's stories "Father Sergius" and "Divine and Human". The heroes of these stories are going through a spiritual crisis in the contemplation of the Crucifixion. Tolstoy never questioned the artistic "technique" of Ge, not satisfactory for contemporaries and far from the manner of the Wanderers. For the writer, technique in art was a negative trait rather than positive, because as a craft it became available to many people and overshadowed the main idea of the sincerity of the author and the content novelty of a work. Much in the religious paintings of Ge was close to Tolstoy: non-canonical interpretation of Christ as a "living person" who attained holiness by the fact of his crucifixion, development of the most important Gospel plots. Tolstoy is in tune with the key motives of major religious paintings by Ge: oblivion of the Teachings in the modern world and the resurrection of the soul under the influence of the tragedy of the Crucifixion. The writer and the artist were close in the understanding of creativity as an antinomy of a craft, of art as a transformation force capable of causing emotional distress, tragic catharsis.

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