Their devotion to art and artists produces in these people an
inexpressible mawkishness; it is distressing to have to do with them and
to talk to them; they are perfect logs smeared with honey. They never,
for instance, call Raphael, Raphael, or Correggio, Correggio; 'the
divine Sanzio, the incomparable di Allegri,' they murmur, and always
with the broadest vowels. Every pretentious, conceited, home-bred
mediocrity they hail as a genius: 'the blue sky of Italy,' 'the lemons
of the South,' 'the balmy breezes of the banks of the Brenta,' are for
ever on their lips. 'Ah, Vasya, Vasya,' or 'Oh, Sasha, Sasha,' they say
to one another with deep feeling, 'we must away to the South... we are
Greeks in soul--ancient Greeks.' One may observe them at exhibitions
before the works of some Russian painters (these gentlemen, it should be
noted, are, for the most part, passionate patriots). First they step
back a couple of paces, and throw back their heads; then they go up to
the picture again; their eyes are suffused with an oily moisture....
'There you have it, my God!' they say at last, in voices broken with
emotion; 'there's soul, soul! Ah! what feeling, what feeling! Ah, what
soul he has put into it! what a mass of soul!... And how he has thought
it out! thought it out like a master!' And, oh! the pictures in their
own drawing-rooms! Oh, the artists that come to them in the evenings,
drink tea, and listen to their conversation! And the views in
perspective they make them of their own rooms, with a broom in the
foreground, a little heap of dust on the polished floor, a yellow
samovar on a table near the window, and the master of the house himself
in skull-cap and dressing-gown, with a brilliant streak of sunlight
falling on his cheek! Oh, the long-haired nurslings of the Muse, wearing
spasmodic and contemptuous smiles, that cluster about them! Oh, the
young ladies, with faces of greenish pallor, who squeal; over their
pianos! For that is the established rule with us in Russia; a man cannot
be devoted to one art alone--he must have them all. And so it is not to