Ball in the cave: Experiments (not) visions

Olga Sedakova. Traveling with eyes closed: letters about Rembrandt. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House of Ivan Limbakha, 2016. - 120 p., Ill. - (Orbis Pictus)

Letters of the Russian poet about the Dutch artist "from the Prussian wilderness, from the Brandenburg plain, which goes and goes into the distance, to the east" turned to the many years of understanding the author’s interlocutor, philosopher Vladimir Bibikhin. The fact that the addressee died 13 years ago does not cancel his interlocutors. As befits real interlocutors, he continues to set the direction of thought and speech - and create a space of understanding.

Olga Sedakova says with her interlocutor not only - and not so much - about Rembrandt. We are talking about a special way of working with being and non -being, which in the hands of Rembrandt turns into painting, about the interaction of visual images with realities - visible and invisible.

Olga Sedakova’s book cover “Traveling with my eyes closed: Letters about Rembrandt”

One could say - about painting as a variety of philosophizing - but with an important reservation: this "philosophizing" is not the mind - not one, not first of all, but all included in the act of vision by the human being - the whole, in the limit, its fullness. That is, not so much - and not at all - about "speculation in colors", how much ... just about vision. About vision as such. True, by understanding as expanded and in -depth as it is rarely understood. Almost never.

Rembrandt gives for an understanding of the vision of this kind as many grounds as, perhaps, none of his colleagues-living rooms. At least for the author of letters, he is eloquent and more intelligible than more than others.

According to the author, this is in no way about the personal perception of Rembrandt's paintings. No lyrics. "My Rembrandt"? God forbid from all these “mine”! ”The poet is important here to find outputs to the supra -heating, supra -objective. True, the vision of this common is still deeply individual - neither ordinary viewers, nor art historians do not customize painting and painters of such questions. Sedakova, with the help of his hero, enters into the field of meanings, which is open for the most part with poets and mystics. It is happening in this area. It is best to guess, and the most faithful assistants here are intuitions and images.

Rembrandt is only a conductor there. He himself, in fact, is not necessary - therefore, on a trip after his guide, the poet goes "with his eyes closed." You must look through it, further, to what he points to. "The painting of the mature Rembrandt <...> very quickly becomes invisible - and invisible entirely, leaving on the visual surface neither the features of the face, nor a scoop from its lace, nor the folds from its velvet, nor warm pearls, similar to this, collected together and reduced to their praform. To a small sphere, to a non -core light ball."

In the radicality of this conduction (a kind of self -denial), the Dutch artist surpasses, according to Sedakova, only the icon - the next step after Rembrandt to silence, to the internal, eternal and invisible. The icons "become invisible" "even faster" than Rembrandov’s painting. "In different descriptions of the plastic system of the icon that I met <...>, I miss the following: you should not see all this, these eyes need to be closed. We, in fact, see all this - lighting, perspective, linearity, when we stop seeing the icon as an icon, that is, as that disappears from the view of the view. surroundings. " That is, icons and Rembrandt do the same work.

And therefore, before us, letters are not so much “about Rembrandt” as “Rembrandt” - just like photography, depicting his objects, writes with light. Sedakova herself admits this: “... Rembrandt,” she says, “not the subject of my knowledge, but in some respects its author.” The Dutch artist is perceived by the Russian poet as an internal form of his own vision, but his own vision, as we have already noticed, is the last thing the author occupies. It is much more worried about its structure of human vision in general, especially in its outskirts.

Self -portrait Rembrandt at the age of 63

That is why the topic, intuition of vision persistently accompanies in the book its shadow-two: intuition of blindness, non-guidance. These two topics here are fundamentally inseparable: blindness is a reminder of the limit of vision and that it extends behind this limit.

And at the same time, that vision in itself is dramatic, problematic, vulnerable-if you like, not obvious : “The visible lives inside the huge improper invisibility, the darkness of the tangible, and as it would be remembered that it can again dissolve in it again-because of the universal mortality of the“ world of this world ”or because of our closely-response, so that something is already seen-this is what is already seen-this Event. Rembrandt shows Sedakov, not just - and not even in the first place - depicts people, objects and situations: he is engaged in an event of vision, puts the viewer before this event, before his drama, makes it possible to feel the close connection of vision and being. “He does not cease to remember that the visible, revealed - is not at all, of course. The light and shadow are not found in him in the“ finished ”world of visible, like his brothers” - in Latur or Caravaggio. Rembrandt has "everything is much more painful: shadow, darkness puts the visible into question."

“The idea of blindness,” Sedakova says about his hero-savor, “is most intimately connected with what he does <...> But the matter is not in the plots. The matter is in some common question about blindness and sight, about the visible and invisible, which is saturated with the whole fabric of Rembrandov’s painting: in his faces that do not see the external look, in his incredible hands, knowing the world to the world. The touch, as the eyes will never know <...> the question of the visible and blindness in the surrounding color of Rembrandt blackness, in this red, rather tactile than the visual (he is the sign of the heat that differs to the touch), in the pastry of the colorful layer, which we involuntarily feel (the groom's sleeve in the "Jewish bride"). Sedakov returns to the vision and labor (and therefore suffering) , which is embodied in the Rembrandt pictures (and, therefore, with suffering) again and again: by the 1640s, she will say later, when “all blue gamut” and “we remain in“ very Rembrandtic color ”will say from the works of Rembrandt: in a dark red-golden environment, trembling and surrounded impassable darkness”. He recognizes things, by the touch, but he finds out not only their appearance, but their heaviness, warmth ... their time! And then again: the Light Rembrandt “Light does not fall on things: it enters the substance and acts and suffers there. Thus, we will find out that our vision is active and difficult. And our vision wanders in the semi -gem, like a blind man with his staff. Finding the last colors that still speaks life: black, dark, brown ... and gold, is also not quite color.”

Reproduction of Rembrandt's painting "Jewish Bride", 1665

The force is a breakthrough of the border. We are talking about expanding the range of vision - as a semantic action, as a semantic ability. About how the eye goes beyond the limits of its own typical, well -mastered culture of opportunities - and it begins to really see what is usually not given to the eye.

Blindness is needed here then to conquer new spaces of vision from her. Maybe - as a necessary condition for such an effort. In the effort of vision of blindness, it involves the whole body, turns the whole person into an organ of perception: “So-with the whole body-they peer into something and the people of Rembrandt. As long as a person has eyes and they see, everything else in him can seem to be free from visual effort, it seems to be not required. But Rembrandt is not only people, but the trees seem to be occupied by the same, and things ...” and things ... "

The gaze of Rembrandt characters, according to Sedakova, is constantly busy with the fact that he is mining the invisible, he is always on the way from the visible to the invisible and vice versa, he is this path. "The eyes may still see something, but it doesn’t matter: they see without distinguishing, his gaze left them-his gaze left where, as Dante says, our memory cannot follow him." And this is somehow deeply connected with the fact that on the way to an invisible look explores obscene spaces, that which is not given to the word,-perhaps it is not given to him fundamentally: "... upon returning it turns out that there is almost nothing to tell this view: he returned to others, and this is indisputable."

Rembrandt - moreover, as Sedakova notes, it is in painting, in the graph of this - evolves from the image of the visible to the presence of the invisible. “Over the years, the space of Rembrandov’s work is increasingly taking the shape of a cave <...> or wombs, an earthly or air womb. But the image of this spherical deepening, a dark, blind, warm deafness, in which another ball appears - a loose ball of complex, mobile light - it arises in Rembrandt's compositions. Apparently, this is the main intuition of remrandt about Rembrandt about what is the earthly world. " "Rembrandt intuition of the human vision itself" represents it in the form of "a ball that is in a dark cave of blindness."

In his hero Sedakov sees metaphysics - but not a philosopher. This, so to speak, is a direct action metaphysics - before concepts and besides them. For Sedakova, this is fundamentally: she immediately suppresses such a natural, it would seem - to self -evidence, to inertia, to automatism - with the word “cave” a memory of a platonic cave: “Intuition is not philosophical,” she insists, “(you should not immediately remember Plato with its cave), not speculative, but visual.”

Rembrandt painting with means of surface, she shows, works with the depths, external means-with the extremely internal, with the fact that everyone usually knows only alone with them (offers each "in some inexplicably divided seclusion"). With the internal so much that it is not pronounced in words - there are no words for this. But it is clear that this concerns the very structure of the universe: "What he portrays is the spherical geometry of our world itself."

Reproduction of Rembrandt's painting "Apostle Matvey and Angel", 1661

In the paintings of his hero, Sedakov sees the effort to return to the verbatim perception of the world-to what preceded "the vision of a person who knows the word-and, in general, sees in words, names." This is especially important in a situation where "the visible world has developed for us in visual words - and vision is no longer working on Nanovo every time, does not want, but recognizes the signs that have long been known to him." Words set the vision of inertia, and thereby - the boundaries. Painting from inertia removes, becomes an experience of liberation from verbal and the boundaries that it sets-a form of spiritual work, closely and closely related religious effort.

This is where it becomes clear what it is, this is invisible to the eyes.

Rembrand-metaphysicist looks on the other side of physics-to where the mysterious (rational understanding are not given) foundations of life are located.

Moreover, for an adequate perception of these foundations, the author believes, it is important that they remain mysterious. “One of the Lessons of Rembrandt” and the vision he cultivated, according to Sedakova, consists in this: “Stop running of associations and generalizations, quick identification and unraveling. We will prompate some time before a mystery as a mystery. Let the mind and memory are silent. We will see simply, only with our eyes - we still have the opportunity to watch the presence of significance, and not its content.”

Ultimately, Sedakova reads Rembrandt as a religious artist: “<...> What is common in the shaggy Rembrandt’s writing and hieratic, through the symbolic, slender world of the classical icon? One: this is the point of some essential, I dare to say, mysterious communication. This is a revelation of communication”. “We saw, thanks to Rembrandt,” she says directly, “that life has a prayer nature.” However, she makes an important reservation: Rembrandt appears to her in such a way because she sees it with Christian - already in advance - eyes. "The two greatest icons of Rembrandt’s letters - non -omnofessional, extrarama, in the weak and unclear light of everyday life, written by a weakening hand, perhaps, a blind -handed Rembrandt, ours modernity:" Semon's song "and" Return of the prodigal son. "We recognize their message as undoubtedly Christian. People of other traditions recognize them as a native."

With the help of his hero, Sedakov, a performance develops here-in our culture there is little mastered-about other, non-philosophical, inappropriate paths of metaphysical reflection. One of these paths appears Rembrandtovo expanded vision - a ball of being and light in a cave of non -being and darkness.