Laktionov. Letter from the front. Composition based on Laktionov's painting "letter from the front" Speech plan based on the painting letter from the front
Seeing reproductions of some familiar paintings, our memory suddenly takes us back to the past. canvas Alexandra Laktionova "Letter from the front", which has become the hallmark of the artist - a vivid confirmation of this. Many of us wrote essays about this painting in our school years, but not many people know its amazing true story.
A little about the artist
The artist comes from Rostov-on-Don. Of his childhood years and family, he would later write: “My father was a blacksmith, my mother was a laundress. My love for drawing came early. This love was encouraged and developed by my father in every possible way. As a boy, he loved to look at reproductions of paintings in old pre-revolutionary magazines, dreaming about how he would definitely become an artist someday.
The father of the family worked at the Rostov plant, and by the end of his life - on the railway. It was with his light hand that little Sasha began to draw very early. Already at the age of four, he depicted objects so accurately and voluminously that people from all over the neighborhood came to see his drawings and himself. Of course, Laktionov owes his love for painting to his father, who himself painted well. “I am a blacksmith,” he said, “but you, Sashok, will be an artist!”
The Laktionovs, senior and junior, years later, were immensely happy when 16-year-old Alexander entered art school. The wish of the father and the dream of the son came true: “For me, the time has begun for bright holidays in life and in art ... The Rostov school gave me a lot ... I realized that I can only be an artist and I have no other way in life.”
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There were even rumors that ophthalmologists found out that Laktionov had a special visual perception of the environment. In this regard, one very prominent specialist in ophthalmology said that Laktionov has a very special eye structure. He perceives the world stereoscopically. And from the fact that he sees differently, he writes the same way.
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The problem was solved by itself when, on a sunny summer day in 1943, the artist met a wounded soldier carrying a letter from a colleague to his family. The soldier, leaning on a stick, with a raincoat over his shoulder, saw Laktionov, approached him and asked for help in finding the address he needed. The artist immediately offered to hold it. On the way, a conversation began - about life at the front, about the approaching Victory and that the soldier was bringing news to his friend's family. Laktionov led the fighter to the right house and saw how his friend's relatives immediately surrounded him, how they took out a letter, read it, they were afraid to miss even a word. The idea of the picture was immediately formed into images and plot. The artist immediately set to work. It took about two years to paint the picture, as the painter worked on it only on sunny, fine days, in order to convey light and shadow as realistically as possible.
In the future, this work went the way, as they say - "from thorns to the stars." During the Soviet era, in order for the picture to reach the viewer, before the opening of the exhibition, a commission met to decide the fate of the paintings of artists. Strict selection, where artistry and depth of images, skill and many other subtleties were valued, was difficult to pass. The letter from the front, exhibited in 1947 in the center of the Tretyakov gallery's exposition, also came under such scrutiny by the strict zealots of morality and ideology in art.
And literally all the members of the commission attacked this canvas, hanging on the central wall. "Why? And how is the Soviet family shown on this canvas? What kind of house is this, a wall with peeling plaster, a broken porch, people somehow poorly dressed, a woman in trampled slippers? And this is how we represent the Soviet family, Soviet reality?! And how will foreigners walk, and what will they think of our wonderful homeland? The organizers of the exhibition were stunned, it could not have occurred to them that in this way one could judge the picture. But just in case, they began to persuade and beg the indignant members of the council. To allow it - they allowed it, they only ordered it to be moved to hell.
Voice of the people
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Laktionov, being a fundamental artist, not only deeply studied the paintings of the old masters, but also tried to adopt some of their painting methods. He often applied the complex technique of mixed tempera and oil painting. He made his own paints according to old recipes. The canvases were primed with a special primer, which makes the canvases more durable.
The Great Patriotic War is devoted to a huge number of literary and musical works, as well as paintings. As for the latter, one of the most famous works is "Letter from the Front", the author of which was the Soviet artist A. Laktionov. “Letter from the Front” - the picture was painted in 1947, just a few years after the end of the war.
History
The work "Letter from the Front" has its own history of creation. The idea for the plot appeared 2 years before the painting. In 1944, Laktionov and his family returned from Samarkand (where they were evacuated) to the Moscow region. A year after his return, the artist approved the theme of his first postgraduate painting, which was to be called "Meeting".
Painting "Letter from the front"
In the first years after the war, the choice of subjects for creating works of art did not cause any difficulties, since the topic of the Great Patriotic War was relevant at that time for all citizens of the USSR without exception. It was difficult to find a person who had neither relatives, nor friends, nor just good acquaintances who did not participate in hostilities. Once in 1945, A. Laktionov, on one of the streets of Zagorsk near Moscow, met a young front-line soldier on the street, who, due to injuries received in the war, was walking, leaning on a cane, and had a bandaged hand. The soldier was looking for the address he needed in order to deliver the letter, and the artist helped him. The dialogue with the front-line soldier left an indelible impression on Laktionov, so the theme of his future painting was immediately determined - the artist wished to portray the long-awaited receipt of news from the front.
Description
The choice of people posing for the artist took a lot of time, since Laktionov himself wanted to depict on the canvas a real person who had been at the front. The image of a front-line soldier who brought a letter to a family waiting for news from his soldier was painted from V. Nifontov. This man was indeed a combatant (paratrooper). The family receiving the long-awaited letter was the wife and children of Laktionov himself.
Work on the painting took the artist 2 years, or rather, 2 summers. Laktionov strove to depict all the warmth and colors of the summer, so he was engaged in the direct depiction of the intended plot in the summer.
This picture resonated in the souls of millions of citizens of the USSR. The thing is that the artist managed to convey as realistically as possible all the joy associated with receiving the long-awaited news from the front from a loved one. Also, the emphasis was placed on the warmth of the relationship between the Soviet people, who were united by the horror of the war, which took tens of millions of lives. The painting also impresses with its realism and sharp depiction of details.
In 1948, A. Laktionov received for his work "Letter from the Front" the State Prize of the first degree. J. Stalin. However, the most valuable reward for the work for the artist was the delight of the citizens of the USSR who saw this picture. "Letter from the Front" was reproduced in print - the work was depicted on the pages of Soviet textbooks, in calendars and magazines. In 1973, a reproduction of the work was depicted on postage stamps of the "History of Soviet Painting" series.
Alexander Ivanovich Laktionov (1910-1972) already before his hour of glory (6 o’clock in the morning on April 21, 1948, when the radio announced that he had been awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree for the painting “Letter from the Front”) had his own special, noticeable against the general grayish background painting of the era of socialist realism, a style built on a rather unpretentious, innocent realism-naturalism coming from his teacher Isaac Brodsky, on a rare play of light and shadows for those dim times. It is important that, like the teacher, Laktionov wrote not just landscapes, but ideologically sustained paintings (“Cadets publishing a wall newspaper” (1938), “Speech of Comrade Stalin on November 7, 1941”). Particularly striking is the inhumanity of the painting “Letter from the Front” on canvases, which also received the “Stalin” of the first degree in the same year. We are talking about the paintings by V. A. Serov “Lenin proclaims Soviet power” and I. M. Toidze “Speech by I. V. Stalin at a solemn meeting dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution”. The point, of course, is the sunniest plot of the picture. A letter from the front - a tightly written triangle (and not a shivering gray piece of paper from the military registration and enlistment office - a notice of the death or missing of a soldier missing) - for millions of Soviet families who survived the war, was the most desired, longed-for message, an object of delight, love, an object of unspeakable joy : "Hello, dear Mother! I send you my heartfelt greetings and wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart, good health, I also send greetings to my wife Natalia and lovely children - Kolya and Lidochka, and I wish you all the best. Mother! I have received your letter, which was written on the 9th of August, and I am writing an answer right away. You write that all of our people were wounded, except for Zhenya Mankov, and I was left as one of my closest acquaintances. Sanya Kosolapov - wounded, Rebrov Pishchivitsky - wounded. And mine, dear Mom and wife, God really saves. I sat in the same trench with a comrade behind a machine gun, the whole machine gun was smashed, a comrade was killed, and the mine was only covered with sand, but it didn’t scratch anywhere, so I, Mom, are still in order and I pray every day to God that he save me. I, Mom, really want to see you, with my wife and children, but I don’t know, dear Mom, how it will be, because the enemy, before the death of an evil one, often goes into counterattacks, and I have participated in attacks only once. And attacks, dear Mama, are one thing from two: they either kill or injure, but, dear Mama, so far God has saved me and now I’m not in battle yet. Our division withdrew, it was replaced by another division. At the moment I am about four kilometers from the front line, but I, dear Mother, believe that you cannot escape your fate. Mother! what i want to write. On the night of August 15, already at 2 o'clock, it was raining heavily, we were walking under the roar of German artillery and I lightly jumped, I tell my Sani that Mother's heart probably woke up, looked at the weather and remembered about me and ektat did not become anymore.
Dear Mom and Wife! I’m finishing writing now, because you can’t describe everything, and I ask you to write letters as often as possible, you know how much more fun it is when you get a letter. Goodbye, I remain alive, healthy, waiting for your letter. Your Sanya.
This plot seemed to lie on the surface, B. Dryzhan approached him, and other artists turned to this topic. Laktionov recalled that the idea for the painting came to him in 1943, when, while living in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where the artist’s family was settled in one of the cells, he once saw a military man discharged from the hospital with a stick, who took out a letter from his pocket and checked with an address. Laktionov was able to express this sunny joy of a miracle, so understandable to post-war viewers - receiving a letter from the front. After all, the war had just ended, the people of 1947 were still living it, how many millions of people hoped to receive the same letter from a loved one who had not returned from the war. And Laktionov correctly caught these waves of human emotions and expressed them better than others in his picture.
As the employees of the Tretyakov Gallery recall, the exhibition commission did not like Laktionov’s painting, the artist was called in with paints and brushes and demanded that he “repair” the rotten floor in the painting. In the end, the painting was hung in a semi-dark corridor, under the stairs, and immediately the guides began to complain that it had become impossible to lead groups - there was always a dense crowd in the corridor near Laktionov's painting. The picture had to be hung, and a pilgrimage to it began. The most characteristic entry in the guest book was the words: "The most truthful picture in the exhibition." You can understand people if you only list what was then exhibited in the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery: V. P. Efanov “V. M. Molotov against the backdrop of the Kremlin wall”; A. N. Yar-Kravchenko “M. Gorky reads vols. I. V. Stalin, V. M. Molotov and K. E. Voroshilov his fairy tale “The Girl and Death”; M. I. Khmelko “For the great Russian people!”; V. M. Oreshnikov “V. I. Lenin at the exam at the university”; E. A. Kibrik “There is such a party!”, “Lenin in Razliv”, etc. And here Laktionov found his way to glory. He came to the gallery every day, as if to work, and copied reviews about his painting in a notebook, then he sent the sheets already typed on a typewriter (and there were dozens, hundreds) to various high authorities: to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, to the Academy arts, to the Committee on the Stalin Prizes, and - lo and behold! - it worked: the voice of the people and Laktionov was heard. The deputy director of the Tretyakov Gallery told the government commission, which came to select paintings for the award, that the Laktionov Gallery had not known such a hype around the painting since 1912, when Repin's Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son, which had just been restored after the attack of a madman, was exhibited. As a result, Laktionov received an award, became famous, reproductions of his paintings appeared everywhere: from the centerfold of "Spark", "Worker", "Peasant Woman" they migrated to the walls of rooms, got into textbooks, were seen on the backs of calendars, numerals, on postcards. Countless copies of the oil painting were also made - Laktionov himself personally wrote five autocopies! However, he continued to write other canvases and ... oh horror! One picture turned out worse than the other: “Again I visited ... (Pushkin in Mikhailovsky)” (1949), “To a new apartment” (1952), “Secured old age (veterans of the Russian stage)” (1954-1960). The artist did not seem to feel his increasingly false exercises with light, with naturalistic, detailed, but completely identical and devoid of inner world figures, with beautiful, but inanimate (as in horror films about high-tech robots) faces in numerous glamorous portraits. But he was inspired by the constant praise of ordinary viewers, who filled from top to bottom, as in 1947, the guest books with enthusiastic words: “How well the leaves are written, what bark - I want to touch ... what a wonderful light! A wonderful artist." Not without reason, towards the end of his life, Laktionov praised Shilov's writing style - he was a clear forerunner of this modern trend in art ...
Tretyakov Gallery. At the stairs that led to the second floor. Soon the All-Union Art Exhibition of 1946 opened, and it became impossible to squeeze through the narrow corridor. To the amazement of the gallery staff, the audience lingered for a long time at the painting by Alexander Laktionov.
The creation of Laktionov's work and the attitude of critics
The idea for the picture came to Alexander Ivanovich when, on the street of the rear Zagorsk, he met a wounded soldier, who had a triangle of a front-line letter clutched in his hand. The creation of the work fell on one thousand nine hundred and forty-seventh year.
There were many disputes, but the painting "Letter from the Front" passed the selection. But just a few hours before the start of the exhibition, another group of committee members arrived. It was they who looked at the works from both an ideological and a political point of view.
Representatives of the committee immediately saw how striking the work is. It was located on the central wall. And, of course, they began to argue whether it posed a danger. And it turned out that, in their opinion, the Soviet family represented on this canvas looked somehow poor.
The woman's slippers are too disheveled. And the house itself! The wall on which the plaster peeled off, the floor on the porch with broken boards. Is it possible to represent the Soviet family in this way. After all, the exhibition will be attended by foreigners.
A member of the arts committee demanded that Alexander Ivanovich close up the holes and lay the floor out of new boards. In Soviet reality, there should not be such a gender.
However, the floor did not have to be redone. We found another solution for the masterpiece that Laktionov wrote. The artist learned that his painting, created with such love and awe, is located in the dark corridor of the Tretyakov Gallery near the stairs leading to the second floor.
A small dark wall where the picture was hidden
The work was placed in a small entrance hall. It turned out that when people entered the Tretyakov Gallery, they simply did not notice him. But, returning from an excursion, it was impossible not to stumble upon a picture. And then something unimaginable began to happen.
Crowds of people gathered around the masterpiece. Someone just looked, others did not hide their tears. Because the topic touched upon by this work touched absolutely all viewers. A terrible war has recently ended, and no one has been harmed over the years. And most importantly, the picture was drawn in a very unusual way.
The view of an ordinary Soviet person on the work of Alexander Ivanovich
What did ordinary people see when they looked at Laktionov's work? The whole picture "Letter from the front" was permeated with very bright colors. Sun, greenery, insanely blue sky. Everything was so voluminous and illusory that every viewer felt like a participant in the events presented on the canvas.
The plot is very simple. But how emotionally Alexander Laktionov was able to convey it! "Letter from the Front" is a picture that reflects the unpretentious atmosphere of the life of ordinary Soviet people in the difficult years of the war. A small Russian town, a clear sunny day and a Soviet family gathered at the wide open door of an old wooden house.
Happiness that filled the hearts of spectators who saw Laktionov's masterpiece
It was in this poor family that many viewers recognized themselves. Almost everyone was waiting for news from the front, like the one depicted on the one with the children. And finally, the wounded fighter brings a letter from his father, which the boy reads aloud. He firmly and carefully holds pieces of paper dear to his heart in his children's hands. And the faces of mother and sister are lit up with happy smiles.
And all the jubilant and bright colors of the composition are filled with a feeling of boundless happiness. The golden rays of the sun play in the light strands of the girl, and even the air itself seems to glow. The whole picture "Letter from the front", each of its strokes are filled with a feeling of the breath of a close victory.
Several years passed, and one April morning of 149, the radio announced the award of the Stalin Prize of the first degree to the creator of the picture that the audience loved. And the artist, having heard this news, remembered the words of his father: "I am a blacksmith, and you, Sasha, you will see, you will be an artist." This was the highest award received by Alexander Ivanovich Laktionov. "Letter from the Front" is a picture not only loved by the audience, but also appreciated by the government. And at that time, such recognition was for a Soviet person much higher than any material wealth.
This painting holds a special place in my heart. Yes, except in mine. Otherwise it can not be. The picture appeared just in the year of my birth. It feels like it breathes time, which I can rightfully consider my time. Well, if we all come from childhood, then for me this picture also marks the beginning of myself. Yes, it is, in fact. For me, everything on it to the last detail is real.
Everything is real. That is, I see people on it as they were then, as I saw and remembered them. The way my tenacious childhood memory kept them in my mind.
Sometimes I occasionally see in television series filmed today about the war and post-war years, it seems to be the same people, though with much more photogenic faces, and even dressed as they were dressed in those distant times. And I don't believe. And the faces are not at all the same, and the ironed tunics, it seems, were sewn only to emphasize the sex appeal of the main characters, and the whole manner of behavior and the whole dialect - everything is not right, everything is wrong, everything is not real. I do not believe. And move on to another channel.
But in the picture of Laktionov everything is real. This is a frozen pictorial truth. She is breathing all the time. With all its warmth, spring aromas and sounds, it wonderfully conveys the mood that reigned in the minds and moods of people for whom the terrible war was counting down its last days, conveys the spirit of that time. That is why this picture does not let go.
*****
Alexander Laktionov created his work, one might say, in a living way. The idea matured with him for a long time. No, he was not at the front. Therefore, he could not describe some kind of battle scene with the risk of lying somewhere. He was already growing up. He was evacuated with his family to Central Asia. And then he returned. They gave him a home. More than amazing. Do not believe it, in the cell of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. That is, at first it was not even a cell, but a niche for tools. It was from this niche that they made a communal apartment. And not one. And you don't have to be angry. People in a ruined country needed somewhere to live. So Laktionov lived in a former gun niche with his wife and two children.
And the idea is mature. And not even a plan, but the idea itself. The idea of conveying the mood of his time. The time of the terrible invasion of our country. And then one day in the city he met a front-line soldier on the street. Wounded. He was looking for the address of his friend. Carried the news from him to the family, fully aware of all its value.
The artist helped him find a home. And then what we see in the picture happened. It was after that that it dawned on him. This is exactly what he was looking for. It couldn't have been better.
And in order for this wonderful vision to breathe truth and touch with all the pain and joy the soul of everyone who would not look at the picture, he depicted on it the people he knew in the best possible way. Here is the granny on the right - this is his aunt, depicting the mother of a front-line son.
Children? And these are the artist's own children. He only aged the boy so slightly, if I may say so. His son was only seven years old, and in the picture we already see a pioneer who was entrusted with reading the precious message. And the sister girl, leaning on the door frame, listens attentively to what her father writes. And her posture tells me that she is terribly jealous of her brother. Why not her? Why wasn't she entrusted with reading her parent's lines? She's older!
And the red-haired girl is the artist's neighbor in a communal apartment. She has a red armband with the letters PVO on her sleeve. That is, the military. Maybe an anti-aircraft gunner.
A soldier is a friend of an artist and an artist himself. He reminds me a lot of my father. He, too, was wounded in the arm. And he, too, was commissioned outright. And he, too, pitched the same cigarettes, which added to him in my eyes an attractive masculinity and masculinity, to which I belonged, still a very small kid. He is so condescending in the picture - he looks paternally at the son of his friend, who has not yet returned from the war.
And the yard is real too. It strongly reminds me of the Moscow courtyard on the Arbat. And I, too, grew up in exactly the same courtyard. There is no paved stone or asphalt pavement. And there is the spring May grass, which has made its way to the light after a long winter. This May green grass also marks the joy of a new life after the long suffering of the war years and the monstrous strain of the whole country.
*****
It's a shame that this picture is somehow forgotten. And the name of Laktionov already says something to a few. It's a shame and a pity. But in the post-war years, the picture was known to everyone. Everyone knew her.
Yes, there is, in my opinion, a certain deliberateness, staging and even posterity in it. There is! Well, let! So what! But the artist got into the most precious thing for all those who lived in those days. The picture became a "soul-changing sign", transferred so successfully and in a timely manner by the artist to the canvas. She moved me to tears. She touched the most sensitive nerve of the people of that time.
And it's easy to understand why. Millions of men went to war. And how many of them didn't come back. Suffered for an immensely long four years, of course, and those who were in the rear. But those who were forced to leave their families, their wives, children, elderly parents, were in direct contact with a cruel and ruthless enemy, with those who intended to wipe out our family from the earth. First of all, they put their lives in mortal danger. And gave up their lives. For the sake of saving not only the whole country, but also their closest and dearest people.
And when news came from the front, it meant, first of all, that the person you loved was alive. And the message came from the dividing line between life and death. And still, no matter what the lines of the letter tell. The main thing was that the hand of the father and husband drew the lines. The main thing is that the person who wrote these lines was alive. And the relationship has not been broken forever. And there is hope that it will not be interrupted.
The painting has an interesting history. Yes, she became famous, famous and popularly loved. By right. And this might not have happened. If not for the intervention, do not be surprised, Stalin himself. And it was like that.
After the war, the All-Russian Exhibition of Artists was organized in the Tretyakov Gallery. The selection was the most severe. "Letter from the front" was presented too. And there was a representative commission. And opinions about this picture, as they say, were divided. Yes, the theme is good, patriotic. Nobody objected. If only... Well, judge for yourself. The plot is somehow very melodramatic, if not tearful. Well, there is no heroic pathos. And look at these rotten, failed floorboards. And also crumbling plaster, exposing the brickwork. And foreigners will also come to the exhibition. And what will they think of our victorious country, seeing such poverty? No, it won't.
And to this we add jealousy, and spider swarm, which was also present in this artistic environment. Why not, if she was present in the literary environment. Why shouldn't she be among the artists? Do you remember Stalin's famous response to the complaint of one official that the Writers' Union is such a jar of spiders. Well, the leader answered him. “And other writers, comrade, I don’t have for you.” Well, why was the Union of Artists worse? Everything was the same there. By the way, I have a feeling that everything is the same on Prose. The same spiders. And who has not felt their vicious bites.
*****
The picture was admitted nevertheless to this all-Russian event. But they placed him in some passage place under the stairs. As if embarrassed. Out of sight, otherwise, as if something did not work out. Let us remember the unforgettable Belikov. And then a government delegation headed by Zhdanov also came. And he was at that time the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. Bypassing the exhibition, he could hardly squeeze in this place under the stairs. Because an enchanted crowd stood in front of the picture. Zhdanov also stopped. And then the picture disappeared. And Laktionov himself did not know where she had gone. And she alone was on viewing at Stalin himself in the Kremlin.
Stalin looked and felt and saw something that the officials who organized the exhibition did not see and did not feel. And he, unlike officials from painting, was also fascinated. The truth, which in all its radiance came from the picture. He felt how this image would touch the soul of the whole people. Yes, as, perhaps, no other painting in the exhibition.
And after that, "Letter from the front" was in the most prominent place. And she became famous all over the country. Her image entered our consciousness, it appeared in all calendars and primers, and became the very picture with which the Motherland begins. Got an artist. I touched the most sensitive strings of our long-suffering people.
Well, after Laktionov received the Stalin Prize. Yes, not some, but the first degree. Well, then everything went on and on. The name of the artist turned out to be promoted as well as possible. Orders poured in. Goodbye communal apartment in Zagorsk. Because they gave me an apartment on Tverskaya. And then the awards. The title of professor and people's artist. Well, as the last point - the eternal rest in the elite Novodevichy cemetery. Like this.
There is no irony in my words. All of the above was well deserved. Laktionov was a good artist. To see this, look at his other paintings. And for me, too, this picture is dear. And not only because it shows us the real look of that time. In the picture, as I already wrote, everything is real. And clothes, and faces, and the soul, too. All this is wonderful.
So my closest relatives were also at the front. Grandfather and father. But there is no news from the front from them in our family archive. Because my father was called quite young, before he met my mother. Yes, and he fought quite a bit. They wounded him and almost had his arm amputated. And then commissioned.
And grandfather Sergei Ivanovich went into the militia without telling his family anything about it. They were in the village. I thought that this war would not last long. Left as a volunteer. And no more news. Except one. Many months later, a notice arrived. Missing. And that's it.
*****
For a long time I thought that in the picture we see another Moscow courtyard. That is the courtyard of my own childhood. And there were many such courtyards in those days on the outskirts of Moscow. But it turned out not to be a Moscow courtyard at all. This is the courtyard of the city of Zagorsk, or as I call it Sergiev Posad again today. There, to this day, on its outskirts and around the monastery, we will see similar courtyards. I know because I went to this city 70 km away. from Moscow countless times.
And it seems to me quite symbolic that this courtyard with all its inhabitants is in the center of attraction of all our spirituality. A holy place encroached upon by a terrible enemy. Yes, he just broke his teeth, as evidenced by the letter that the boy carefully holds in his hand.
This most important monastery of ours has been repeatedly attacked by enemy forces. And they robbed, and destroyed, and burned it more than once. An invisible force emanated from this point, strengthening the Orthodox and military spirit of all our people. A spiritual force that eventually united the lands of our vast fatherland.
Here, the walls of the monastery with its defenders withstood a continuous siege of 16 months in troubled times and did not give up. Withstood. And then came the end of the Time of Troubles.
And the French also wanted to strike at the sacred heart of Russia in certain years. Yes, only God was with us: the foreigners, who had already plundered the Kremlin well, did not reach him. Lost - lost. and returned to where they came from.
And here is another disturbing fact. Natasha Rostov. We remember this kind, sincere, compassionate girl. Her pitiful heart could not bear and all their family belongings of the nobility - porcelain, carpets, bronzes - were removed from the cart in order to save the wounded soldiers - the heroes of Borodino and lead them out of the empty Moscow.
She did not even know that among the wounded was Prince Andrei. The convoy set off in a long file to their country estate and made a stop along the way. Where? But this is the most amazing thing. In Sergiev Posad! That's where the secret was revealed. Fate itself judged them to meet again in this city, in a house near the walls of the monastery. Amazing scene. Tears come to eyes. Both joy and sorrow. And then ... And then in the whole huge novel, one of the most piercing and sad notes will sound exactly here. There is no need to retell.
But in the painting “Letter from the Front”, painted in the same place, joy sounds. This is the month of May. And that means the last days of the war are coming. And a little more and we ended the score with her. And apparently, this is the last letter. And soon the children will see their parent, who will bring them Victory. Another formidable invasion was repulsed. And life goes on.
Reviews
Thank you so much, thank you very much for your words! You can’t imagine what this picture is for me. It hung for a long time in our house in a place of honor. I never get tired of being surprised by my mother, she didn’t know anything about this picture, but hung it at home in the 50s. everyone is familiar to me, these are my neighbors, and the soldier from the front is also a neighbor. I saw now I can’t stop and cry, what a wonderful country we live in! Gennady what words did you find! Low bow and health to you.
As for the picture itself, it is really attractive by the very simplicity of the plot and its truthfulness. And this is really MAY! Transparent warm air, clear sky, freed from vultures. And in the center of the picture, in the dazzling sunlight, there is a boy. the end of the war and the return of soldiers home. And the boy is a symbol of the future, their future support. a beautiful country, a country that overcame trouble. But I noticed the sagging floorboard and walls evidence of the absence of a male hand in the house later. I liked the landscape of a peaceful courtyard, a transparent sky lined with new types of aircraft. the heart of my peer Gennady Martynov and this is my hope for people like him. from a just cause, like our fathers. And not for a moment did they doubt their honesty.
I read your response with such attention, Alexander. And if we grow together, then we should also have understanding. It is. And it makes my heart warm. We breathed the same air. We felt this time. We are his witnesses. And that is why this picture is so close to us. She is about us. I was born in Moscow. And my childhood passed almost on the edge of Moscow. And I distinctly remember the people of that time. Starting with how they dressed, what kind of faces they had. And even what kind of cigarettes the men were smoking at that time. That's what I see in this picture. I see the truth. And this courtyard, well, just like that, in which my childhood passed. Without asphalt, with yellowing paths. I visibly plunge into that era. A picture for all time. And for a long time I was sure that this was the Moscow courtyard. No, Zagorsky, or Sergiev Posad courtyard. What's the difference. We had millions of such courtyards throughout the vast country. That is why this picture is so valuable. This simple landscape is the personification of the whole country. Thank you very much for your warm response, Alexander.
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