Holmes, doesn’t it seem to you that the author who knows nothing of my theory gives proves of it though from another point of view?
Excuse me, count, that I interrupt your line of reasoning, but why very Rembrandt attracts madmen with a peculiar force?
I have an idea about it, but to understand it you should understand what role had painting played before cinema and television appeared.
Do you want to say, that painting was like cinema and television in the modern times?
Quite right, but… for the highest society. The modern science proved that musical and visual images go to unconscious levels of psyche passing over the consciousness. It is also known that one gets 95% of information through his vision (and 5% are left to audio, gustatory and other images). Hence painting played a colossal role in forming the worldview at the epoch before cinema and television. Since the majority of paintings of west European painters, at least before the middle of the 19th century, were on the biblical subjects, the biblical worldview of the Western “elite” was formed through painting. Paintings of west European painters firstly became taken to Russia during the reforms of Peter the Great, but especially great number of them was brought under Catherine II. For instance just in 1772 150 canvases of famous Flanders and Hollanders were bought at once and there were many Rembrandt’s paintings as well. Thanks to the peculiar style of painting his picture even in that time caused an unusually great influence on spectator’s psyche. Most probably he indeed was the first “impressionist”[37], from the viewpoint that his paintings as well as paintings of Cézanne or Monet weren’t acceptable to one’s eye from too near. People even said, that when one of his customers had tried to watch the details of a painting, Rembrandt told: “Don’t touch the canvas with your nose. Paints smell bad”. But that time the entrance to museums like Louvre, your National Gallery or our Hermitage was closed for the common people. To my view, in those times one “worked” on unconscious levels of psyche of the “elite” to make it loyal to the biblical worldview. But the one deal is to visit the church, make bows, and quite another deal is to read and recomprehend the Bible. And it seems that such great role in that “work” was given to Rembrandt’s painting, that nowadays in the Netherlands one called the highest building in Amsterdam[38] “the Rembrandt’s Tower” and “The Night Watch”[39].
If my comparisons of painting and television hadn’t caused an aversion of you, Holmes, I would like to return to your question about the context of my version of “Danaë’s restoration. However I should read another extract from the above-mentioned “Chas Pick”:
“But nevertheless many people say that today “Danaë” is just a ruin, though beautiful; that there is only a shade of great Rembrandt. In one paper it was even called a cripple, though still sensual and nice. Eugene Gerasimov himself, who had managed the restoration for many years, agreed that it isn’t Rembrandt we used to know. Those who remember the before-the-tragedy painting need to overcome a psychological barrier. But future generations will take “Danaë” in some another way. People have become ever used to Venus Milossian without her hands or to Nica Samothracian without her head.”
Have I answered to your question, Mr. Holmes?
I need to turn over it in my mind, count. Thinking so, you can discharge Herostratus and even anybody. By your extraordinary version you’ve nonplussed me. Though I’m not able to object to you thoroughly, I have an intuitive disagreement. In other words, I’m a child of the classical West culture; and that, which you try to lead me to by your argumentation, looks like accusing a certainly innocent of a hardened evil.
I understand you, Holmes. The point is the words “certainly innocent”. An intuition is without controversy a powerful thing, but there is something subjective in it, so it often misleads when it’s ruled by a subjectivism. What can we say of Herostratus? – He had burned one of the seven Great Wonders – Artemis’s temple in Ephesus – and the Wonder was irretrievably lost. But since we investigating something and have touched Herostratus, we are to find out his motives. Those, for whom this name tells something, knows that he was extremely vain and decided to immortalize his name by destroying the temple. But we know it only from ancient historians’ statements. And, by the way, one of them, Plutarch, was the supreme zhrets, indeed znakhar he was, of the Oracle of Delphi. So we have started and returned to the Delphi’s Oracle ones again.
Moreover, looking on the European culture, one can find that it’s far not so harmless, as one accustomed to it can think. The ecological crisis is in full view. And there are a lot of other things. Have you noticed the associative relation between “sensual appeal – cripples – armless Venus – Nica without head” in this fragment?
???
And many others haven’t noticed. But in the meanwhile, since the end of the 19th century, when the surgery had become a craft, guarantying patient’s survival well (in Napoleon’s times nearly 1/3 of all surgical patients died of sepsis), the special subculture became to form on the West. Women with stumps have for some reason become erotic and sensual in it. And this subculture enlarges its influence: legless models with artificial limbs come on podium; one of the “Beatles” participants – Paul McCartney – is contracted with one-legged woman; in “Titanic” film, watched all over the world, in one dialog the main character all of a sudden and inappropriately mentions a one-legged prostitute, who had been his model in Paris; and so on. All is going of itself: some need to raise their busyness ratings and editions, and others are just bored and don’t know what to do. Finally the first group states the amputated-women to be a beauty ideal[40] and second without thinking it over “eat” this “exotics”. Whether we like it or not, but the cult of bodily injuries aesthetical appeal is formed.
Of course, he who was injured but not broken, who tries to live a normal life, to be useful for humanity and who have a success in it is worthy of respect. And the society should support him in it. It means that ramps and wheelchair elevators in the streets, at houses and in transport, the development of prosthesis, sport for invalids and all of a kind is necessary in the society with cripples. Let the relations of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, who some time still having two legs posed for “erotic” magazines, be really pure. Let Amy Mullens, who has lost legs in an early childhood, live as others, go into track and field athletics for his pleasure and health and feel himself normal, not defective one…
But the question appears: how will an empty-headed crowd-man, looking only for pleasure, unconsciously react to the cult of injuries, if those who have them have reached something desirable for him, without what he really or imaginary suffers? Including special feelings in sex, which healthy one cannot get? Many people think, “All can be given for sex”, – and if an amputation helps to become more sexual attractive and opens a way to exotic experience in sex, then wait: the unconscious, and particularly conscious, behaviour algorithm of jaded and perverted crowd will react to the cripple-cult with growth of amputation statistics. It will correspond to the medical testimony, but naturally will be based on morally psychological hidden motive – one wants an “exotics”. If it seems for woman that to become sensual and get sexual power she needs to lose her leg – she will “lose” it, but essentially the leg will be torn away by unconscious psychological levels, which would provoke the corresponding injury or psychosomatic disease.
Whatever we think of scientology, but using its terms, this associative relation in the article I‘ve read is very bad “Ingram”, activated today by mass media and cultural workers. And so-called “body-art”, also actively cultivated, has begun from face and ear pricking, but now it becomes a “decorative-aesthetical” maiming and amputations oriented on satisfaction of low egoistic wills.