Japanese butterflies, those splendid tailed creatures with splashes and ripples of color on their delicately veined wings, always seem to have fluttered off Japanese fans or screens, just as the dove-gray volcano of that country looks as if it was acutely aware of its penciled image. And there is something in the fat little bronze idols, in their placid curves and eastern chubbiness, that makes one think of those round staring fishes that dream in a rainbow-haze—gleaming ghosts of a tropical sea. Thus, art and nature mingle together in such a wonderful way that it is difficult to say for instance whether sunsets made Claude Lorrain, or Claude Lorrain made sunsets. What strikes me too, is the connection between wooden Russian toys and the bright damp mushrooms and berries found in such profusion in the dark rich depths of northern forests. I seem to see the Russian peasant unconsciously drinking in their purple, blue, scarlet hues and remembering them afterward when carving and painting a plaything for his child.
I have read somewhere that several centuries ago there was a glorious variety of the pheasant haunting Russian woods: it remained as the “fire bird” in national fairy tales and lent something of its brightness to the intricate roof decorations of village cottages. This wonderbird made such an impression on the people’s imagination that its golden flutter became the very soul of Russian art; mysticism transformed seraphim into long-tailed, ruby-eyed birds, with golden claws and unimaginable wings; and no other nation on earth is so much in love with peacock feathers and weathercocks.
Cranberries, red mushrooms and an extinct pheasant combined to produce a most cheerful kind of art. In its beginning it had possibly a trace of genius in it, just as there is genius in the exquisite animal-pictures left by a prehistoric artist on the walls of his cavern—a cavern discovered in the southern part of France. And compare those leaping stags and red-haired buffaloes delicately painted in ochre, black and vermilion—compare them with the banal animals in modern picture-books! That subspecies of Homo sapiens knew how to make his family happy.
The same thing occurred in the case of national Russian art. Year after year, through long generations the moujik carved and painted dolls, boxes, cups and a hundred other things till at last the primordial image that laughed and sparkled in his brain grew dim and distant, because he found needless to keep his inspiration glowing, when he had only to copy the work of his predecessors. So life went out of this art, leaving behind only curves and angles of brightly painted wood. It became somewhat “bad taste” to decorate houses in the national style, in the “cock-style” as people would call it—with a contemptuous sniff. Russian attire—embroidered kerchiefs, sashes, high boots, bead necklaces and so on—were just laughed at. Russian children preferred teddy bears and golliwogs and clockwork trains to the painted stare of silly little wooden toys; and no one would dream of keeping his cigarettes or her needlework in one of those lacquered boxes (with the picture of a troika on it) for which an Englishman would gladly pay several pounds: yes, that was the curious thing about it.
And then, all of a sudden, there blew a marvelous wind, a merry, invigorating wind, that made the sunshine leap, and that tossed up dry leaves, making them look like little bright birds….Wooden toys and the dead heroes of Russian songs woke up, stretched themselves and lo! here they are again, laughing and dancing, glossy-new. A man walking along the street in some great stone-gray town, would suddenly come across the name of their new home—“Russian Theatre-Cabaret.” And if he entered, there he would be, gaping at the whirling wonders of a foreign art. Wonders to him, not to us. We have grown a little tired of our playthings, they do not personify our true idea of Russia. We wink at each other behind the curtains, while the foreigner is taking in the delightful lie. Art is always a little slyish and Russian art particularly so.
Taking everything in consideration it is not very strange that people of other countries are so attracted by our wooden dolls coming to life on the stage. Parisian “Cabarets” could produce long-haired poets in velvet jackets droning beautiful verses about cats, parrots and tropical lands, Italy would be more given to serenades and concetti, Germany has its bursts of gruff, simple humor—but the Russian “Cabaret” alone is endowed with the power of making the wildest dreams come true, of disclosing bewildering vistas full of dancing grotesque figures.
* V. Cantaboff, “Painted Wood,” Karussel 2 (1923), 9–10; also in Carrousel: Three Texts by Vladimir Nabokov (Aartswould: Spectatorpers, 1987), 19–24. See n. on “Laughter and Dreams.”