For a moment he stood motionless and insensible in the middle of his magnificent studio. His whole being, his whole life was awakened in one instant, as if youth returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent blazed up again. The blindfold suddenly fell from his eyes. God! to ruin the best years of his youth so mercilessly; to destroy, to extinguish the spark of fire that had perhaps flickered in his breast, that perhaps would have developed by now into greatness and beauty, that perhaps would also have elicited tears of amazement and gratitude! And to ruin all that, to ruin it without any mercy! It seemed to him as if those urges and impulses that used to be familiar to him suddenly revived all at once in his soul. He seized a brush and approached the canvas. The sweat of effort stood out on his face; he was all one desire, burning with one thought: he wanted to portray a fallen angel. This idea corresponded most of all to his state of mind. But, alas! his figures, poses, groupings, thoughts came out forced and incoherent. His brush and imagination were confined too much to one measure, and the powerless impulse to overstep the limits and fetters he had imposed on himself now tasted of wrongness and error. He had neglected the long, wearisome ladder of gradual learning and the first basic laws of future greatness. Vexation pervaded him. He ordered all his latest works, all the lifeless, fashionable pictures, all the portraits of hussars, ladies, and state councillors, taken out of the studio. Locked up in the room by himself, he ordered that no one be admitted and immersed himself entirely in his work. Like a patient youth, like an apprentice, he sat over his task. But how mercilessly ungrateful was everything that came from under his brush! At every step he was pulled up short by want of knowledge of the most basic elements; a simple, insignificant mechanism chilled his whole impulse and stood as an insuperable threshold for his imagination. The brush turned involuntarily to forms learned by rote, the arms got folded in one studied manner, the head dared not make any unusual turn, even the very folds of the clothing smacked of rote learning and refused to obey and be draped over an unfamiliar pose of the body. And he felt it, he felt it and saw it himself!
"But did I ever really have talent?" he said finally "Am I not mistaken?" And as he said these words, he went up to his old works, which had once been painted so purely, so disinterestedly, there in the poor hovel on solitary Vasilievsky Island, far from people, abundance, and all sorts of fancies. He went up to them now and began to study them all attentively, and along with them all his former poor life began to emerge in his memory. "Yes," he said desperately, "I did have talent. Everywhere, on everything, I can see signs and traces of it…"
He stopped and suddenly shook all over: his eyes met with eyes fixed motionlessly on him. It was that extraordinary portrait he had bought in the Shchukin market. All this time it had been covered up, blocked by other paintings, and had left his mind completely. But now, as if by design, when all the fashionable portraits and pictures that had filled the studio were gone, it surfaced together with the old works of his youth. When he remembered all its strange story, remembered that in some sense it, this strange portrait, had been the cause of his transformation, that the hidden treasure he had obtained in such a miraculous way had given birth to all the vain impulses in him which had ruined his talent-rage nearly burst into his soul. That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing. A terrible envy possessed him, an envy bordering on rage. The bile rose in him when he saw some work that bore the stamp of talent. He ground his teeth and devoured it with the eyes of a basilisk. 14 A plan was born in his soul, the most infernal a man ever nursed, and with furious force he rushed to carry it out. He began to buy up all the best that art produced. Having bought a painting for a high price, he would take it carefully to his room, fall upon it with the fury of a tiger, tear it, shred it, cut it to pieces, and trample it with his feet, all the while laughing with delight. The inestimable wealth he had acquired provided him with the means of satisfying this infernal desire. He untied all his bags of gold and opened his coffers. No monster of ignorance ever destroyed so many beautiful works as did this fierce avenger. Whenever he appeared at an auction, everyone despaired beforehand of acquiring a work of art. It seemed as if a wrathful heaven had sent this terrible scourge into the world on purpose, wishing to deprive it of all harmony. This terrible passion lent him some frightful coloration: his face was eternally bilious. Denial and blasphemy against the world were expressed in his features. He seemed the incarnation of that terrible demon whom Pushkin had portrayed ideally. 15 His lips uttered nothing but venomous words and eternal despite. Like some sort of harpy, he would appear in the street and even his acquaintances, spotting him from far off, would try to dodge and avoid the encounter, saying it was enough to poison all the rest of the day.