Isaac
Levitan

The idea that his private letters could become public, was unbearable to Levitan. Anticipating death, the 39-year-old artist bequeathed to burn his correspondence and, in addition, asked Adolf's older brother to send an urgent request to all his correspondents - to destroy everything that was ever written by Levitan. What depended on him, Adolf fulfilled: in the fire of the fireplace, letters that colleagues, friends and beloved women wrote to Levitan turned to ashes. However, not everyone who received Adolf Levitan’s notification with the last will of the late artist raised a hand to destroy his letters. A certain number of them have survived. Most of the quotes are from the letters of Isaac Levitan.

Everyone in life had their own pool.

It’s not necessary to decorate nature. But you need to feel its essence and free from chance.

The ideal landscape painter is to refine his psyche before hearing “vegetation grass” (quote from Yevgeny Baratynsky’s poem "Goethe's Death" - ed.). What a great happiness!

Heavy; not sleeping. I am terribly sad ... and I really envy peaceful snoring behind the wall of two old women, my mistresses. Nerves diverged, just death! But damn me at all! When will I stop rushing with me? ..

I have never loved nature so much, I have never been so sensitive to it, I had never felt this divine something so much, spilled in everything, but that not everyone sees that it can’t even be called, because it does not give in to reason, analysis, but is comprehended by love. Without this feeling, there cannot be a true artist. Many will not understand, they will call, perhaps, romantic nonsense - let it be! They are prudent ... But this is my insight for me a source of deep suffering. Could there be anything more tragic than how to feel the endless beauty of the environment, notice the secret secret, see God in everything and not be able, conscious of our powerlessness, to express these great feelings ...

Lord, when will I not have discord? When will I live in harmony with myself? This seems to never happen. That is my curse ...

In general, it is not necessary to very pinkish imagine the prospect of learning painting. A living example is me. How many efforts, labors, grief, so far have got out on the road.

Once again I chandled and chanted without measure and verge, choked to stupor, to horror. If I knew how bad it is in my soul now. Longing and gloom pervaded me. What to do? Every day I have less and less will to resist a gloomy mood. It is necessary to go somewhere, but I can’t, because the decision in any direction is impossible for me, I hesitate without end. I have to get it, but who will take it upon themselves? Despite my condition, I observe myself all the time, and clearly see that I am falling apart completely. And I got tired of myself, and how tired!

Melancholy reached me to the point where I shot survived, but for a month now, as a doctor comes to me, washes a wound and puts tampons. That's what your humble servant has come to. I walk with a bandaged head, sometimes a painful headache leads to despair.

I can’t work; I can’t read; music is annoying; people are boring, and they don’t need me either. One thing that remains is to take myself out of life, but I can’t repeat it after my summer assassination, God knows why, and thus, there is no strength to live, also to die; where to put yourself? !!

I spend whole days in the forest and read Schopenhauer. Are you surprised. Do you think that my landscapes from now on, so to speak, will be riddled with pessimism? Do not be afraid, I love nature too much.

Do not believe the enthusiasm Nesterova, he is fond of like no one else. If you see him, bow.

I, almost never knowing whether I will be able to do anything tomorrow, can I promise ahead in a few months? .. Of course, we are all more or less sick people, but we work nonetheless, but you forget that art is such an insatiable hydra and so jealous that it takes the whole person, leaving him nothing his physical and moral savings.

After all, my study is this tone, this blue road, this longing in the gleam behind the forest ... this is my spirit.

Do not wait for me - I will not come. I will not come because I am in a state in which I can not see people. I won’t come because I am alone. I don’t need anyone and nothing. I’m glad of hardly enduring mental severity, because the worse, the better and the sooner I will come to the same denominator.

Last night I climbed a rock and from the top I looked at the sea, and you know what ... cried ... that’s where the eternal beauty is and that’s where the man feels his utter insignificance.

Nature is here (in Crimea - ed.) only at first it’s amazing, and then it gets boring and I really want to go to the north ... I love the north more than ever ..., I only now understood it.

Longing, gnawing longing took hold of me. I hardly work anything, dissatisfaction with the old form - so to speak - of the old artistic understanding of things (I'm talking about the meaning of painting), the lack of new points of departure makes me extremely suffering.

In Venice, where we mainly wanted to go, a terrible cold, and we went to Paris. A bunch of impressions! The miraculous mass in art is here, but also the mass of the extremely psychopathic, which undoubtedly should have arisen from this extreme satiety, which is felt in everything. From this it follows that the French admire the fact that for a healthy person with a healthy head and clear thinking it seems crazy. For example, there is an artist Puvis de Chauvinworshiped and worshiped, and it’s such an abomination that it’s hard to even imagine. Old masters are touching to tears. That's where the greatness of the spirit!

Paris itself is extremely beautiful, but the devil knows it - you need to get used to it, otherwise everything is somehow wild. The women here are perplexed - unfinished or too remade, but something not categorical.

Beyond the forest, gray water and gray people, gray life ... nothing is needed! .. All quixoticism, although, like any quixoticism, it is noble, well, then what? “An eternity, a terrible eternity in which generations have drowned and will drown yet ... What a horror, what a fear!”

Write me a letter, even to a very dear person, well? just a feat but I’m little capable of feats, except for love ...

Why am I alone? Why haven't the women in my life brought me peace and happiness? Perhaps because even the best of them are the owners. They need all or nothing. I can’t do that. All I can belong only to my quiet homeless muse, everything else is vanity ... But, realizing this, I still strive for the impossible, dream of a pipe dream ...

I got carried away by work. The muse began to surrender to me again, and I feel great for this occasion.

I imagine what a charm we now have in Russia - the rivers have spilled, everything comes to life ... No country is better than Russia! Only in Russia can there be a real landscape painter.

I suffered typhoid in spring; I was almost overwhelmed. Now I am being treated here, that is, I take baths and do gymnastics. I feel much better. Longing here is terrible, there is no one to say a word with. It is surrounded by the British, whom, incidentally, wherever you come to Europe, the abyss is everywhere, like flies in the summer. I'm starting to think that there are no British in England, or there are too many everywhere! After two weeks, I’m probably going to Russia, where I really want to. Although a wild country, I love her!

You want to know what is being done in artistic Russia, - Yes, very little, except for intrigue, anger and misunderstanding of each other! It’s not easy to live here.

Probably in an hour there will be a gospel - oh, how I love these minutes, minutes speaking of the life of truth, speaking not of actual resurrection, but of the triumph of truth. However, this may be all wrong.

While I work a little, as usual at this time of summer I have some kind of apathy, most of the day in the forest, on the lake, with a book. Tired of reading, looking at the water, which is almost always interesting; tired of water - a book, and so whole days.

I sit by the window and look at Mont Blanc. Majestic to awe. From the top of it - one small effort and stretch out your hand to God (if worthy!). He wanted to enter into a legal marriage with the "muse", but she, mean-spirited, does not want to! I would very much like to give birth to at least on a small piece of Mont Blanc canvas, but without a muse, nothing comes of it. Seriously, I tried to write several times - to hell!

Most of the day I read French novels for practice. What vulgarity most of the French writers! Only some of Victor Hugo’s poems are interesting. It is terribly beautiful, although not without its stilts either.

I’m even at medium quality exhibitions and if I have my work, I feel terrible, but what I saw at the international exhibition exceeded my expectations. Imagine the best artists in Europe and in the best examples!
I was shocked. My things - I always do not like them at exhibitions - this time seemed to me babble, and I suffered terribly.

But the Germans are really cunning people and, perhaps, a monkey invented! You know, their baths work; the devil knows what is there in them, for water is like water, and the heart is made better, more calm. It's a shame, that is, it’s a shame not that it’s better done, but a shame that Russia probably has the same waters, but we didn’t do anything, but we must go to the Germans and really begin to consider them to be gifted people, but us to sign their insolvency. Maybe, however, this is not so, but I seem to be getting better. I’m doing gymnastics, and according to the meaning, muscle tension should make the heart work harder and expand, but it turns out the other way around. This is something I do not understand. I copulate occasionally (with muse, of course), and well, it seems, I got pregnant. What will give birth?

What do I need here, in a foreign country, at the same time as I am drawn to Russia and so painfully I want to see melting snow, a birch? .. The devil knows what kind of person I am - all the unknown entails, having experienced, there remains an unspeakable sadness and a desire to return the past ...

I think in ten, 14 days to go to the road, after all, Russia. An uncultured country, but I love her, vile!

Wandered the other day in the mountains; the rocks are perfectly flattened, not a single angular shape. As you know, they are smoothed by the ice age, which means that for many centuries, millennia, and inevitably I thought about it. Century, the meaning of this word is simply tragic; centuries - this is something in which billions of people drowned, and drown again, and again, and without end; what a horror, what a sorrow! This thought is old, and this fear is old, but nevertheless my skull is cracking from it! The futility, the uselessness of everything is obvious!

And in fact, there is no nature, but some impotence! I am longing unspeakably, yearning to hell! A sort of misfortune - you take yourself everywhere! If only one day to be alone!

What muck, you say, messing around with you forever. Yes, maybe disgusting, but as if we could lose our temper, as if we were influencing the course of events; we are in an enchanted circle, we are Don Quixote, but a million times more unhappy, for we know that we are fighting the mills, but he did not know ...

Today I’m going to St. Petersburg, I’m worried like a son of a bitch — my students will make their debut on Peredvizhnaya. I tremble more than myself! Although you despise the opinions of the majority, it’s terrible, damn it!

The worst thing for me is horseback riding - the heart throws out such things that involuntarily it is terribly done.

I take baths, go to the German doctor Dr. Schott, who promises to completely restore my heart, I only think that the damned German is lying!

I work a little - I get tired incredibly soon. Yes, I have completely spent, and there is nothing to live on! He must have finished his song.

However, only in farewell I will say: more love, more worship of nature and attention, attention without end.