The Image of the Modernist Reader in Russian Painting and Early Lyrics
by M. Tsvetaeva

The article establishes the features of the image of the reader in
Russian painting at the turn of the 19–20th centuries and in the early poetry collections
of M. I. Tsvetaeva – «The Evening Album» (1910) and «The Magic
Lantern» (1912). The image of the girl with the book, imprinted in the landscape
(or at the window, opened in the park), occurs in the works of M. Nesterov,
N. Ge, K. Somov, V. Shukhaev (M. Nesterov, Natasha Nesterova on the Garden
Bench, N. Ge «Natalia Petrunkevich's Pottery», K. Somov, «The Lady in Blue»,
V. Shukhaev, «Portrait of L. Reisner»). The park, the garden, the evening, the
window, the silence and the book are all components of the image of the Lady
of the Silver Age. In her guise, the features of long-gone epochs – Renaissance,
rococo, romanticism – are clearly «read», she is theatrically trying on herself
known female destinies.
The romanticized look of the reader was often surrounded by the aura of
childhood memories: the image of a girl with a book that easily passes from the
world of reality to the world of artistic conventionality will be met by
M. Tsvetaeva (M. Tsvetaeva, «Books in a red cover»), a girl like her, carried
away by a book and not noticing anyone around, we see on the picture
of M. V. Nesterov (M. V. Nesterov, «Natasha Nesterova in the Garden Bench».
1914).
A book in which the font on the pages (or as in V. Shukhaev's completely
white pages) is blurred is another sign of the scenic plot of reading in the style
of epoch of modernism. Book is more often a generalized cultural phenomenon,
therefore the book is depicted in general, and not as a specific text. If we repeat
this semantics of generalization, M. Tsvetaeva will say: «...we are all books
in a row, all the melodies» (M. Tsvetaeva, «They and We»).
In the early collections of M. Tsvetaeva there appears the image of a reader
who, like a romantic woman, also lives in the art world: her feelings are «borrowed
» from literary sources; she seeks literary stories in her life, she strives to
live bright literary fates and find in book the food of your feelings. However,
if the romantic beauty in the literary «exemplary» of her heart movements saw
the pledge of a high feeling («It is not nature who teaches us love, / But Staël or Chateaubriand» (A. S. Pushkin, «Eugene Onegin»)), the beautiful woman of
the modernist era style sadly approves that her heart «is collecting books’ dust»
(M. Tsvetaeva, «Thirst»). The world of art in which the book was the guiding
thread turned out to be a beckoning ghost, and the game of cultural associations
prevented the reader from manifesting herself in an existential way, to find her
personality («We can not drive down slumber / And we can not tell who we
are...» M. Tsvetaeva. «They and we»).