(The Iconographer is an extended monologue in
three sets. The images of the icons on the wall later in the sets must pour
through the “window on the world.” The last Icon to be seen is a Mother of
Sorrows. The actor who plays Jason must not permit himself to be misled: Jason
is a man who is happy. A twilight lit studio in a retro-fitted mill in Hartford overlooking a
park. Light pours through a window throwing colors on a wall opposite. The
reflection, though diffuse, has the appearance of a stained glass window. This mirage
later will become various icons. Jason, a painter, sits at a table upon which are
a bottle of wine and two wine glasses. Throughout, Sorlée is represented by a
disembodied voice.)
Jason:
Socrates said “know thyself,” and ever since people have been dreadfully
confused, artists more than others.
The
modern age, God bless it, is in despair over its essence. But this has always
been the case. This expression – ‘the modern age’ – is fluid, right? One might
almost say it’s not very expressive. After all, in the 19th century,
the impressionists, who now seem to us old-hat, were modern, very cutting edge.
They were displaced by the abstractionists, as I call them. And pretty soon
artists were throwing slops against the wall, hoping some of it would stick.
These in turn were displaced by a whole series of absurdists – conceptualists,
for example. Conceptualists have murdered art; they have done away with the art
object -- the painting, the sculpture, the piece of music, the conveyer of
beauty. Art is to them subjective, an interior slice of life, a passing fancy.
The idea’s the thing; art for the idea’s sake.
(Waving his hand dismissively) Never
mind; this chase after the modern is very wearing. Let’s face it; to be modern
is to be “like us.” We are the moderns, those of us who are accidentally alive.
The
modern artist is the man in revolt, the anarch-artist. He does not want to
satisfy your aesthetic sense, your yearning for beauty. All that is
incomprehensible to him. He wants mostly to arouse an emotion in you, to scrape
his fingernails on surface of your soul until you screech, “LEAVE… ME… ALONE!” There are
ways of doing this; truly, most ways of making money lead downward.
You’ve
got to give it to Sorlée though. She was a great screech inducer, a true
modern. A few years ago, an idea popped into Sorlée’s fertile brain. Well, you
know, that head was a plowed field, waiting for seed. Artists were hungering
for their next victim. Who would it be? The God-bitten already had been trussed
and dressed; after Mesmere, they had become inured to insult.
Mesmere
was the genius who smeared mud –though later it turned out to be brown paint-- on
a replica of a Mother of Sorrows icon. Insult art, you know. After all, considered
as an emotion, what is the delight of beauty when compared with resentment?
The
highbrows were amused; the lowbrows, some few badgered old ladies and priests
still clinging to their outworn faith at a cathedral where the holy icon had
reposed unmolested for years, were moved to sorrow, very different from resentment. Mesmere was nonplussed.
What’s all the fuss about anyway? The icon’s a replica, not the real thing. Even
the mud was fake.
A
museum refused to include Mesmere’s insult art in a show. This assured his
notoriety. Queries began to pour in, followed by money. And before you could
say death to beauty, he was rolling
in commissions.
Other
artists took notice. Who can we insult now, they wanted to know? And the hunt
was on for the next hapless victims.
Sorlée
decided it must be the artists themselves. No one had yet so much as touched
them with a feather. They were spotless, virginal, placid, unmoved. This was
intolerable. And so she began to produce icon-like paintings.
Well!
They shrieked at this retreat into the Dark Ages, this inexcusable
retrogression. Icons? Icons? Are you mad?
Excuse
me, my throat is dry for some reason. (He
pours out and takes a sip of wine. Looking out the window) I wish you could
see this view. Viewed from the heights, it is beautiful… (Laughing)… that word again. This studio in a retro-fitted mill in Hartford is my window on
the world.
My
first window on the world overlooked Petrin
Garden in Prague . That is where I
met Sorlée. Now, you must know this about Sorlée: She is beautiful, beautiful in
the classical sense: hair black as a raven’s wing, high rolling cheekbones,
expressive sable eyes, a nose not perfect, blessed, I would say, with
imperfection, full lips and a smile that lights up the world.
Personally,
I can tell you, that smile did it for me, the way it transformed her mobile face;
that and the diffident, catlike way she moved, And she is intelligent too,
which makes her all the more alluring. (Takes
a sip of wine)
My
doctor says red wine is good for the arteries. Scripture says “take some wine
for thy stomach’s sake”…
Yes,
why not icons? Have you noticed the word has been overused in the modern
period? Madonna is said to be “iconic.” (Laughing)
Oh, dear, I suppose we shall have to distinguish between icons here. Madonna the singer is said to be iconic. Of
course, the Blessed Virgin Mary, that
Madonna, always was iconic. In the
modern period, chronically unable to make proper distinctions, everything – and
nothing – is iconic.
Did
you know that buildings are now iconic? Yes, buildings… and soccer players. Anything
that represents anything else is iconic. The word has been horribly debased. In
the so called dark ages, the icon was a sign of holiness. In our age it has
become a meaningless appendage.
Chagall
incorporated iconographic elements into his paintings. In fact, it was Chagall
who led Sorlée to icon making. Like many pre-moderns – and remember, anyone
preceding us is a pre-modern – Chagall liked to eat; which is to say, he liked
to make money, for him always a means to some nobler end. In those days, it was
still possible to think of an artist as a sort of priest called to a vocation,
dedicated to his muse.
You
know the Rockefellers of course -- the redundantly rich Rockefellers? It
appears that some of them were humane. They wanted to celebrate the good things
their family had done over the years. So, when their father and mother died,
David Rockefeller and his wife Peggy decided to memorialize them by
commissioning an artist to make a stain glass window in the Union Church in New York where their
family had worshipped. David’s wife persuaded Matisse to do a single window,
his last art project before he died. While in Paris , she had seen an exhibit in stained
glass done by Chagall, and – BANG -- something erupted in her soul. Chagall did
a window in Union Church on the theme suggested by the family, the Good
Samaritan, and it was only much later, after Chagall had completed other
windows for the small church, that David realized there had been a previous Rockefeller-Chagall
connection.
Chagall
was a Russian Jew who had settled in France . In 1940, he fled Nazi
occupied Paris
to Marseilles ,
where he was plucked from what the Rockefeller’s understatedly called “an
increasingly desperate situation” by Varian Fry of the Emergency Rescue
Committee, a group charged with snatching artists and intellectuals from the
iron jaws of totalitarian regimes. (Takes
a sip of wine) It always seemed reasonable to me that Chagall would not
relish getting stuffed into a crematorium.
David
was surprised to discover that the Rockefeller Foundation, headed by his
father, funded the effort that brought Chagall through Spain to America .
Chagall had illustrated a Bible, and his life experience had opened his heart
to the beauty of the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Another sip of wine, and the glass is finished) Just a bit more (He pours a half glass. Transfixed, as
before, by the scene out the window)… That winding stream, that blue sky, would
delight any artist in the service of beauty; the leafy green of the trees, a
splash of yellow, a splash of blue, there a woman in a red dress and a child
together curled like a serpent by a bed of flowers, dark roofs, life moving and
shimmering outside the window… Try to imagine all this color and beauty caught in
window itself, and the images too… (A sip
of wine). There you have the windows of the Union Church, and a story, as
well, of pursuit, sanctuary and redemption.
An
odd thing is art -- that could catch all this joy and fear and rescue in a
window that, at certain times of the day, pulses like a heart with light… (Takes a sip of wine. Light floods through
the window and throws on the wall an image of an icon – the Mother of Sorrows)
I
fell in love with Sorlée. Have you noticed – one always gives oneself
permission to fall in love, yes?
It
happened one morning at the Kavarna Slavia in downtown Prague . I hadn’t seen Sorlée in a long while
– two years – and then, suddenly, she was there before me, quite alone in the
hubbub of the cafe, nursing a coffee… There is weightiness about some people, a
too solid, almost unbearable mass. That was Sorlée, nothing ephemeral about
her… Or maybe it was me; it may have been my fitful fall into love.
She
was wearing around her neck a small cross on a slight chain, spider web thin,
that would have been inconspicuous on anyone other than her. As an artist, you
know, she was used to sending messages. We all are. And I thought, (scornfully) “A cross?” Among artists,
gestures like this shout.
Here
she was in a tourist café – she who despised tourists -- far from her usual
haunts, small cramped places full of intellectuals and aspiring artists, I
almost said “aspiring atheists,” wearing a cross. Well, you know, among our
kind at that time, this was a provocation. If you are going to step into a nest
of vampires, it’s best to leave the crosses at home.
I
thought to myself, “Why get excited; it’s only jewelry.” So, I brought myself
and my coffee to her, and noticed almost immediately that something had changed,
though I didn’t know what it was until much later, when it was too late.
In
those two years, Sorlée had been a witness to suffering on a grand scale. I
tell you, the stench of death changes one in subtle ways; one becomes more
reflective (searching for exactly the right word) … perfected.
(Sorlée’s voice is rendered here in italics.
Though not personally present in the play, she is a presence, through her voice)
She
said, “Hello, Jason.”
(He sits at the small table. On the chair
opposite, is one of his icons propped against the back of the extra chair.
There is a full, second wine glass on the table. He will not drain this until
the end of the play. For him, the icon stands in the place of Sorlée, and he
talks to it)
Those
sable eyes, that canopy of hair -- still, I thought, the glory of a woman, that
hair. Later, she wore her hair short.
“I
haven’t seen you. You’ve been hiding, eh?”
“In a way. I’ve been behind enemy lines..”
“That
couldn’t have been too pleasant.”
“No.”
(He takes a sip of wine) “Your cross is
pretty.”
“More useful than pretty.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
I
wanted to get a rise out of her. “I think you know that here crosses cannot be
too useful.”
“Yes, here. It’s good to get away for awhile;
you know, see something of the world, break out of this dead end. It broadens
your perspective. The cross” she fingered it lovingly – “is a sign of hope in suffering.”
And
now, decades later, how I wished I were that cross.
“Well,
one generally wants to avoid suffering, even at the risk of abandoning hope.”
“Yes Not everyone is so fortunate. Where
there is much suffering, one finds hope. There are many crosses in the
suffering East. The underground churches are full.”
And
with that the laugh – or rather the generous smile, because there was no
mendacity in Sorlée, ever – was on me. She was referring to an earlier conversation
we had had, about Job and suffering and empty churches. Prosperity in the West,
she had said, had emptied the churches.
Even
people who know nothing about scripture know Job, artistic agnostics too. They
are always shoving Job in your face. “What about suffering? Why does God
tolerate it? What about Job? If I were God, I’d be a little more compassionate,
I can tell you” (He laughs). Poor
Job; he has become a sharp stick to poke Christians with. He used to be a man.
Now, he is little more than a reproach.
I
remember Sorlée’s take on all this. Suffering is one of the paths to God. Those
who do not suffer do not need God. The rich, the self satisfied, those who have
never tasted suffering, those who are full, are destined to go away empty.
How
easy it was to murder all this… (The
light from the window is fading)… The light is going. (To the audience) You’ve been so still, so patient. Really, you’re a
saint, to sit there all this time, a silent witness to all this. (Fade slowly to black).
The Iconographer Set 2
Do
I sound like a professor? Sorlée said that to me once: “You sound like a
professor.” And now look, I’ve become a professor, happily retired. But who would
have guessed I would have turned to iconography.
(Looking at one of his icons) These
things, you know, are difficult to make. Luckily, there is a place in Connecticut off the
coast of Mystic – evocative name there – where
one can learn to write icons. At Ender’s Island ,
a master icon maker pointed me in the right direction. And an orthodox priest
in New Hampshire ,
Father Andrew Tregubov, introduced me to the work of Gregory Kroug. Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, then in exile from Russia after he had exposed the Soviet Union ’s vast Gulag Archipelago, found sanctuary in
his church.
Kroug’s
trajectory was that of a falling star. He was born in Russia in 1909
and immigrated to Estonia
after the 1917 revolution. Later, he found his way to the Academy of Art
in Paris . There
he was joined by a brilliant group of Orthodox theologians, lay people and
monastics, who bore within themselves what has since come to be called the
Russian religious renaissance. Together they restored the art of icon making of
Holy Mother Russia as it had been before Russia ’s “western captivity.” Their
work of love was interrupted by the violent religious persecutions of the
communists.
Violence
is nothing new to revolutionaries. Revolutions destroy utterly what they
replace. During the French revolution, several nuns were led to the scaffold.
One of them asked to pray before she died. “Shut up,” she was told. “Die.”
Artists,
who murder and create, are also revolutionaries; or they consider themselves
such. But the revolution this time was burning in Russia , where icons were being
ground underfoot, and Paris ,
the city of light, ironically became a refuge for the rebirth of Russian
iconography. Imagine! A couple of centuries earlier, Parisian revolutionists
had made a cow barn out of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Kroug
became a monk, imposed upon himself the yoke of poverty and asceticism, and
died in 1969 in the Skete of the Holy Spirit, a small hermitage near Paris . In the course of
his life, Kroug wrote 550 icons and wall paintings. He was very active.
And
it was in Paris
I met Sorlée for a second time.
Can
you guess why she was there? (Big smile)
As fortune would have it, she was there to visit Noisy-le-Grand, Montgeron and
Mesnil-St-Denis to see the icons of Father Kroug.
Life
has some surprising twists in it.
It
was raining. A friend had been kind enough to let me use her apartment while
she was on business in England .
The rain drew me to the window, which I noticed had not been cleaned. The
pelting rain was beading up on the soiled window, making little meandering
tracks of dirt. An image flying past the window stabbed me in the eye. Across
the street, I could see a woman in red move by. Immediately, I knew it was
Sorlée. I ran down the stairs, breathless, flew out the door and shouted, (He
shouts out the window) “Sorlée, for God’s sake, Sorlée!”
But
she had disappeared. Then there was a profound silence, an abyss of emptiness.
She stepped around the corner.
“Jason?”
“Yes,
it’s me.”
I
could feel the warm rain on my face. My heart was dancing.
“How
did you know it was me”?” I asked after I had led her back to the apartment. (He sits at the table)
“The voice is a signature.”
Imagine!
People are present even in a voice, little more than a puff of wind. She was
uncomfortable in the apartment, I could see, so we went to a small café.
“You
still cradle the coffee with your hands.”
“Some things don’t change.”
“I’m
glad to see you.”
She
smiled her world conquering smile.
“I’m glad to see you too.”
“Is
there someone for you here? Is that why you were uncomfortable at my invitation?”
“No. There is no one.”
“I’ve
been reading about Jonah and the whale.”
She
laughed.
“You have this way of continuing
conversations as if no time at all has passed since we last saw each other.”
“We
are alive and young. We leap over time.”
“Yes. What about Jonah?”
“Where
is your cross?”
“It’s raining. I have it under my blouse.
What about Jonah?”
“I
said that to catch your attention.”
“Why are you in Paris?”
“Do
you know the icons of Father Kroug?”
She
laughed heartily and rolled her eyes.
“Why
do you laugh?”
“Know them? I’ve lived in them for the past
year. And how do you know Father Kroug?”
“Through
an orthodox priest in New Hampshire ,
Father Tregubov. Don’t tell me you know him.”
“No.”
“The
coincidence is astonishing. So then, you’ve seen the icons?”
“Yes.”
“And
what do you think?”
“They are beautiful. Works of love. Little
pieces of heaven fallen to earth. But they are disappearing. Father Kroug was a
poor priest; he used inferior paints.”
“Why
don’t we get married?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“It’s impossible.”
“Will
you show me the icons?”
“Yes.”
(The Icon of Christ Pantocrater appears on
the wall)
Amazingly,
we were alone in the chapel of Noisy-le-Grand, both of us looking at Christ
Pantocrator, a familiar image in iconography.
But
Sorlée was looking through the icon, as earlier I had looked through the soiled
window and saw her, a splotch of red moving swiftly down the street.
“There is much ennobling suffering here. This
little chapel was once a barn owned by a poor Orthodox nun in Paris,
Mother Maria Skobtsova. Do you know her?”
“No.”
“She tended to the poor and the homeless. She
had very little money, yet somehow she was able to acquire this farm, her
retreat from a bruising world. One of the sheds she turned into this chapel.
She died the death of a martyr later in a German concentration camp; she went
to the crematorium in place of a woman with a child. The script in the open
book of this icon is a verse from Mathew: “Come to me all who labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
“Why
won’t you marry me, if there is no one?”
“Please,” she said, and with such
passion…
I
make my pilgrimage, whenever I can, to Noisy-le-Grand. Not too often, because
retired professors are not rich, you know. I go first to Paris , and hope for a cleansing rain, then to
the chapel. Father Kroug lavished much attention on these icons. They are
brilliant, just brilliant. Here is the light of Christ – here, and no where
else, for me – caught in the writing of these icons. You see it, peeking
through the transparent wash of paint, a celestial light, otherworldly, arrows
of light dancing on Christ’s brow, there in the white of his eyes, in the slivers
of golden light piercing his shoulder – the first light, the light of
creation. I was in love here. And
everything was strangely mixed up, this ferment in my heart and soul… this (he raises his glass of wine) … wine,
this fruit of the vine (as he sinks in to
a reverie. He walks to the window, looks out) I wait, in joyful hope, of
your coming. (Fade to darkness)
The Iconographer Set 3
(The twilight stage. Intense light pours
through the windows, and we see on the wall opposite a clear reflection of a
Mother of Sorrows icon. Jason is still looking out the window) But she
never came. I met her brother here in Hartford …
I
have my view. I’ve always insisted on a view. This one overlooks a slice of
park, a large weeping willow, a duck pond befouled by Canada geese. No
one seems to know how to rid the park of these unwelcome geese. They are not
native to the area and drive out the more desirable native species. Everything
has been tried. Someone stuck a stuffed hawk in the willow tree. This worked
for awhile. But soon the geese were back, bad habits with feathers. Dogs were
let loose in the area, but then the park administrators began to fear they
might be sued if one of the dogs bit a child. Believe me, nothing is so rabid
as the bite of a lawyer. And so finally, having exhausted every stratagem to
rid the park of these menaces, the park administrators began to see some
virtues in those geese. But the pond is now polluted, and it is hoped that the
geese may move on…
I
have the patience of Job (laughing to
himself)… Job again. We never get far from Job… I was waiting – for hope to
come and swarm in the empty places in my heart. Then, one day, a letter
arrived. It was from Sorlée. She mentioned Jonah. It was a friendly letter…
I’ve
since burned it. She was right – it was impossible. I nursed the memory of her
in my heart. But she was fading, like the icons bleaching into the walls at Noisy-le-Grand.
Finally,
a messenger arrived in Hartford :
her brother. I could see a resemblance.
But this was decades later. When I had last seen Sorlée, both of us were young.
Her brother, younger than her by a dozen years, had spikes of gray in his hair.
“And
your sister Sorlée, how is she?”
“Gone.”
“What
do you mean, gone?”
“She just disappeared. We thought—an
accident... Such things happen. I
came here because we found your letters. I’ve brought them to you.
I
burned them. When you get to be of a certain age, nostalgia is a deadly companion;
hug her and, like a vampire, she’ll suck the breath from your mouth in a fatal
kiss.
In
our time, there are many Leviathans, many Jobs.
So then, something had opened wide its jaws and swallowed my beautiful Sorlée.
The
Sorlée I knew, at least in the early days, was an ardent rebel. She once told
me she admired the early Russian anarchists, Dora Brilliant, a member of the
terrorist Combat Brigade, in particular.
“Dora
Brilliant, a pseudonym?”
She
shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t know. Dostoyevsky, at some point,
became involved in the socialism of the day. Some extremists, though not those
in Dostoyevsky’s group, were serious atheistic regicides. They wanted to strike through the mask of Czarism
to kill the God that supported the king. Dostoyevsky’s imprisonment was a bureaucratic
error. His involvement in the Petrashevsky circle was hardly revolutionary. After
suffering much in prison, the artist discovered the God hidden in the pleas of
the poor and wretched, and he turned in another direction. Others, less worthy,
came later to complete the work begun by the terrorist brigades – Stalin, for
instance, whose mistakes were intentional and deadly. By that time, the purity
of Dora Brilliant had been corrupted: A murdered
Christian God was replaced by the deadening hand of the god of history, at
whose alter we still worship.”
I can tell you, Sorlée had many friends. She
was in rebellion against everything, everything. And then an inordinate love of beauty led her by the hand to icons, and soon she was lost to us. Pretty much
everyone turned against her. Not me. Because I loved what she loved, for the
love of her.
And
so here I am – an old man, at the butt end of September. Soon, winter will
come. I have my icons. I have my window on the world. I have my wine. There are
not many pleasures in this dessert of modernity worth the bother; most of them
leave the taste of cardboard in your mouth. With this (he holds up the wine) I
toast the revolution to come. Wine has become my only sacrament. That and the
beauty of icons is enough. Sometimes, I wander towards the window and imagine
other vistas. Sometime a shot of red goes by and I think -- my deliverer lives.
I am happy to think I may someday expect a visit. In this demonic human comedy,
stranger things have happened. It pleases me to think Sorlée is alive and
moving about in the world. I have never since met anyone so joyful. And I am
joyful too. It is my vengeance on a world that has taken her from me. (He drinks the second glass of wine. Fade to
black)