"Just imagine: after my
series, Henrik Ibsen will
receive the Nobel Prize.
Everything is possible…"

Vladimir Fomin

Foreword: The paintings about the meaning of life.

The Norwegian writer, Henrik Ibsen, was rarely published in Russia after the 1950s. His plays appeared briefly in the repertoire of the Soviet theatres at the beginning of perestroika. Today, Ibsen's name is heard again in the titles of important cultural events.

In the 1990s, many influential cultural and artistic publications, including those in Russia, suddenly began to discuss Peer Gynt, one of Ibsen's famous dramas. The reason for this renewed interest in Peer Gynt was the German production of a ballet based on the play. Almost at the same time the best orchestras of the world began to perform Eduard Grieg's compositions inspired by Peer Gynt. Another unique event took place in the world of music: for the first time ever, fragments of two suites by Grieg for Peer Gynt and their jazz variations were performed together in one concert. This combined performance was the idea of the Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner, composer-musician Winton Marsalis -- a man who, according to Time magazine, is one of the 25 people defining the cultural life in America. Marsalis collaborated with the best orchestras of the world - the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Russian National Orchestra - performing with each of them selections from two suites to Peer Gynt. First, he played Grieg's original music and then the jazz arrangement by Duke Ellington. He performed Peer Gynt in Moscow twice - in 1998 and 1999. Finally, inspired by the great success of all the events related to Ibsen, in 2000 a popular Moscow theatre staged one of his plays. In Russia, interest in Henrik Ibsen always waxed or waned in accord with the political situation - the playwright was interpreted either as a critic of the decaying capitalist society or, since in the world dramaturgy there was perhaps no other author whose works asked so many questions and left so many of them unanswered, as a fashionable classic representing the modern anti-dogmatic art.

The events of 1848 (revolutions in France and Hungary, the war between Denmark and Prussia) intensified the "freethinking" mood of the Norwegian youth and had enormous impact for Ibsen's work. Only 20 years old, he was a leader of the radical youth, and he had just written his first drama, Catilina (1849), which, for the first time in Norwegian literature, dealt with the subject of man's calling, of that special inner destiny present in every man, which, according to Ibsen, had to be actively pursued in order to discover the true meaning of human existence.

Later, Ibsen wrote about his youth, "Accompanied by the noise of the great international storms, I engaged in the war with the "little" society to which I was bound by the will of circumstances and the conditions of my life." The material hardships and deprivations, an unsuccessful attempt at combining creative life with political journalism, the steadfast rejection by the society around him, and spiritual discord led to Ibsen's isolation and separation from the society. He wanted to see in the "state" not a "state" but the "people." In 1864 the writer left Norway and spent 26 years in voluntary exile, living in Italy and Germany, traveling to Egypt…and only twice visiting his native land. At that time he realized and expressed in one of his plays the idea that "God is deus caritatis" (God of mercy). The ideals of compassion and sympathy for the people that stayed with Ibsen until the end of his life (1906) were never contradicted by his thesis that "the majority is never right," which he articulated as early as the beginning of 1870s. Ibsen preferred that the "intellectual aristocracy," "a few select individuals" should lead the "masses." Not by accident, Friedrich Engels applied to Ibsen's heroes his interpretation of the concept of "real man."

In 1908, the Russian symbolist poet Alexandr Blok wrote, "If I was forced to point out the most hopeful fairwater in the sea of the newest European literature, I would place a warning flag over all names, except for the name of Henrik Ibsen."

From Ibsen's letters:

"I will never agree that the concepts of freedom and political freedom have the same meaning. What you call freedom, I call liberties…" "I am not expecting anything from social reforms." "We need a revolution of human spirit." "After all, I am a pagan in politics; I don't believe in its liberating power and don't trust too much the selflessness and good will of the rulers."

Henrik Ibsen and Russia

Ibsen wrote about Russian painting, which he saw at the Vienna exhibition, "The freshest and the most energetic national artistic inspiration is combined here with the technique unsurpassed by anyone…" According to the recollections of Ibsen's friend, Brandes, this exhibition of Russian painters determined the playwright's attitude towards Russia. Ibsen said that "Russia is one of a few countries in the world where people still love freedom and sacrifice for it. That is the reason that the country ranks so high in poetry and in art. Just think that Russia has such a poet as Turgenev and that there are Turgenevs among the painters. We don't know them, but I saw their pictures in Vienna."

Peer Gynt (1866)

The play, Peer Gynt, had interesting fate. It became famous, but its road to fame was rather thorny. At one time the Nobel Prize committee rejected the author's candidacy for the Nobel Prize with a strange excuse, claiming that "the prize, which rewards the works that are imbued with creative power, enlighten the human kind and give it hope for a worthy future cannot be awarded to Ibsen for a work with such a negative, destructive power."

Already famous, Ibsen, like the rest of the Norwegian public, rejected the music of Eduard Grieg to Peer Gynt. Many years had to pass for the work, which today is a world-famous masterpiece of classical music, to be accepted in the motherland of the two great Norwegians. Duke Ellington's arrangement of Grieg's two suites to Peer Gynt, a jazz classic performed today all over the world, was banned in Norway in the 1960s. Years had to go by before the public accepted Ellington's arrangement of the famous "Solveig's Song" with its growling trombone, and the deeply tragic death of Aase rendered as a funeral march in the spirit of Afro-American street music.

Peer Gynt series by Vladimir Fomin

Fomin's series of paintings devoted to Peer Gynt is unique on account of its original stylistic affinities with the avant-garde and lubok (popular print). Indeed, nobody has yet attempted to depict this truly folkloric hero (based by Ibsen on Norwegian folk tales) in this style.

The personality of the painter dictates the choice of the subject. It is a combination of aestheticism and individualism, which were close to Ibsen and his heroes. The key to Fomin's personality is Ibsen's dream of man's emancipation -- possible only through the creative act.

Fomin spent three years searching the bookshops for the work that later came to life on his canvasses. Finally, one of the Moscow bibliophiles agreed to sell the artist the collected works of Ibsen published in Russia in 1956.

Three years passed between the appearance of the first painting about the meaning of life (author's definition) - "The False Prophet" and the last, fortieth, called "The Golden Dialogue." The "dialogue" with eternity, exemplified by Peer Gynt's dialogue with the Sphinx, is the last chapter of the eternal story of the prodigal son rendered by the artist afresh. Ibsen's philosophical and symbolic drama, in which the elements of relativity, symbolism, and fantasy brightly shine through unfathomable dimensions of human life, allowed Fomin to create a series of paintings about human passions and vices, in which all images are developed hyperbolas.

Like the author of the play, the painter does not approve of his hero. Emphasizing the trivial essence of Peer Gynt through the artistic means, the artist unmasks that level of human existence which results from weakness of the human spirit. The image of Peer Gynt, who easily changes his "face" throughout his life, represents "the crowd," masses of "peer gynts" who are searching for easy ways to reach their false goals.

In the paintings "Riding the Reindeer," "The Dream," and "Looking up at the Sky," Peer Gynt is shown as an impulsive and ambitious man drawn to the heavens by unrelenting fantasies which terrify his mother. The artist uses romantic colors (mainly blue, green, and ochre) to paint the phantasmagoric flight on a reindeer along the Gjendin ridge, in the clouds among the sea gulls, and the subsequent fall into the lake. The painting, in which the moon plays with the sun and the branches of the trees are interwoven with the fiords, symbolizes the story of youthful maximalism. In all ages and centuries the youth thinks that all the heights are reachable, one only needs to want to reach them. The ending of the tale told by Peer to his mother is not accidental - he falls into a puddle, but in his words the puddle turns into a lake.

In "Looking up at the Sky," Peer is lying awake in the heather, but later, in "The Dream," where Gynt's personal philosophy becomes even clearer, he "flies amidst the clouds." Ibsen reveals the spiritual secret of the "lost" Peer in a monologue, discovering his perversion, the stamp of which will be imprinted later on all his actions:

What an odd-shaped cloud! Like a horse almost.
Someone's riding him - he's saddled and reined -
And there's an old witch on a broom behind.
(With a quiet little laugh.)
It's Mother. She's scolding and yelling: "You beast!
Hi, wait for me Peer!"
(Slowly closing his eyes.)
She's frightened now -
Peer Gynt rides ahead, with an army in tow -
His harness is silver, his mount is gold-shod.
He wears gauntlets, a scabbard, a fine saber blade,
And a cape flowing long and silken-lined.
They're the salt of the earth, the men of his band;
Yet no one sits so bold in his saddle as Peer,
Or glitters like him in the sunlit air.
Below by the road people gather in groups,
Tipping their hats, and everyone gapes.
The women are curtsying. Who hasn't heard
Of the Emperor Peer Gynt and his thousand-man horde?
Pieces of silver and new copper coins
He scatters like sand till his pathway shines,
And every citizen's rich as a lord.
Then Peer makes the ocean his boulevard.
On a far-off shore stands Engelland's prince,
And all Engelland's maidens wait in suspense.
And Engelland's nobles and Engelland's king,
As Peer canters up, rise from parleying.*

In Fomin's "The Dream," the action described above acquires epic dimensions, astonishing the viewers with its expressiveness of color and a touch of childish naivete. In the center of the picture the dreamer is lying in the heather; the riders, headed by the imagined Emperor Peer, hover directly above him, and around the horsemen the jesters throw their hats in the air. Perhaps an expression used by critics in regard to the drama Peer Gynt -- "the true farewell to romanticism" -- can be applied to this painting more than to the others. The pictures "Looking up at the Sky" and "The Dream" cover the entire monolog of Peer Gynt, but a fragment from the play, which draws attention to the nature of Peer's youthful ravings, remains beyond their frames:

ASLAK THE SMITH (to some others, passing on the road)
Well, look; it's Peer Gynt, the drunken swine--!

The trolls, who resemble Peer in Fomin's canvasses, are the extension of the "crowd" - greedy, jealous, and angry with all those who deviate ever so slightly from the norm. In "The Wedding Horse," "TheYellow Ribbon," "The Inhabitants of the Ronde Mountains," "The Two Troll-Witches," "The Old Man of Dovre," and "The Old Acquaintances" "the selected crowd" plays a practical role. The trolls are the embodiments of that irrational element which intuitively leads to cruelty in relationships. This evil affects Peer Gynt because from the very beginning it is included in the program that he creates for his entire life. He is interested only in his own "I," in his calling, his desire to express his individuality as clearly as possible, sacrificing in the process everything and everyone.

"The Three-Headed Troll" - Peer making love to three women - is indeed the artist's surreal rendition of trolls inhabiting man. Among the people who exist for Peer only insofar as they serve him as means for accomplish his goals, are his fiancees, his mother, and his slaves, the objects of his trade in America and the source of his fortune… He is kind of playing up to the circumstances, hoping to win against fate itself.

Blinded by pitiless egoism, Gynt does not notice the next warning from above. In the painting "The Feast," he is depicted surrounded by four traveling companions, similar money-grubbers as himself. His candid revelations resemble more a sermon than a confession. They hide the abyss of his triviality and his internal emptiness:

What should a man be?
I say himself and nothing more.
All for himself and his! I say
Why, like a camel, should he carry
Someone else's burden of worry?

Peer Gynt sees himself only in the mirror of adulation, the reverse of which is the whole world - the object of exploitation and violence done for profit's sake. Soon, he becomes exactly such an object for his companions. Not by chance one of the four - Von Eberkopf -- pumps up Peer's "I" even though later he proposes to rob the sleeping Peer Gynt, bribe the crew, and capture the yacht:

A taste
Of free self-consciousness, a grip
On world-historical-fellowship,
A vision piercing veils of mist,
The most unprejudiced of minds
Stamped by the higher criticism,
An Ur-natur, whose empiricism
Is raised to a total synthesis.

After the feast, Peer and his "legion of desires, interests, and passions" finds himself robbed clean to a point where he has to start everything from the beginning. But he interprets the fatal destiny, which sinks the ship with the traitors-travelers, the crew, and the load, as forgiveness of his personal sins. He returns to his previous road of lies, the only one that he knows. Master of compromise and adaptation, in the painting "Fending off the Monkeys," Peer Gynt is even ready to turn into a monkey to achieve his goal. In the pictures "Forward! Half Kingdom for a Horse," "The Horseman," and "Into the Desert," Peer appears as a thief who stole from other thieves. Nothingness dressed in a pompous form (a rider on a stolen white horse in someone else's golden clothes) appears in Fomin's canvasses three times, on an ochre, golden, and blue background.

The new tragic mask, which Peer has donned - the mask of a false prophet - is shown in the works characterized by special elements of jewel-like ornamentation and by oriental colors. The refined, colorful, mosaic-like works "The Arabian Dance," "The Dancer," "The Moonlit Night in Morocco," "Peer Gynt Playing a Lute," and "Anitra, the Eternal Feminine" record a story of one more lesson taught by fate to Peer Gynt, who is already growing old. Peer's love for everything superficial, exemplified by the image of the young and calculating Anitra, again turns into a disaster of illusions about accomplishing "a sea of ideas, strivings for the goal, and needs…" Searching for the ruins of Gyntland, a country where he can be "himself," Peer runs away to Egypt. In order to depict his wanderings, the artist visited Egypt and repeated the journey of his hero, recording it in paintings "The Memnon's Colossus (The Singing Statue)," "The Riddle," and "The Dialogue with the Sphinx." The confrontation of conscience with the otherworldly reality produced the image of the Sphinx -- a symbol of unquenched thirst to decipher Peer Gynt's destiny, transformed into the "great curve."

As an old man and an inmate of the Cairo madhouse, Peer Gynt accepts the absurdity of his philosophy and is crowned by the insane a ruler of his own "I." Squashed by the life's circumstances, Peer loses his battle with fate (pictures "The Curve," "The Voice from the Darkness," and "Dissolving into Nothing,") but he is saved by the intervention of his mother, Aase, and Solveig. In the images of women ("The Death of Aase," "Solveig's Song," and "The Return,") the artist creates special worlds: tragic, but at the same time lofty and poetic. The women's presence in Gynt's fate is both secret and apparent - they both symbolize a kind of sacred enchanted realm, in which his soul can be saved. The women are sent to Peer from above, like the Aesopian, surreal characters - the Strange Passenger and the Button-Molder. They appear in Peer's life journey as phantoms ("A Friend," "The Button-Molder," and "At the Crossroads,"), reminding him every time that he is "just average."

The unknown, represented in the play by the image of a Passenger, represents the opposite of the shipwrecked Peer. As soon as Peer receives from fate during the storm one more chance for which he can pay with another man's death ("The Boat Will not Hold Two"), such a phantom being immediately appears and forces Peer to make the terrible choice. Peer's tragic inability to find noble forms of his own existence in the world suggests an alternative - the death is better than an unwanted life. That's why the Passenger tells Peer that "time may force another conclusion" and that he is "waiting." Like Peer Gynt's own thoughts (his other "I"), the phantom Passenger and the Button-Molder help him realize that he has always followed the trolls' maxim: "Be happy with yourself."

The painting "Peer Gynt's Dreams" is the first honest, albeit belated, conversation of the hero with his own thoughts. In this work, the empty face, devoid of even a hint of human features, is framed by a multi-colored serpentine of fantasies and "live" thoughts, symbolizing Peer Gynt's soul which was given to him by God, but which never came to life.

God gives the Button-Molder (a mythical intermediary between the creator and his earthly works) an order - and this time it is not a warning for Peer Gynt, but a sentence: See, where it's written: "Peer Gynt; to be claimed
For setting his life's definition at odds;
Consigned to the ladle as damaged goods." "The living lies" which helped Peer feel protected and needed in society, do not save him from the Button-Molder. And yet, at the end of his life, Peer Gynt finds his harbor - a place next to Solveig ("The Return"). Their meeting at sunrise makes Peer's soul come to life. Solveig, who has gone mad from being alone, sings over her sleeping beloved. She is conducting her sad and bright "dialogue with eternity."

According to the artist, "we come into this world to lead a dialogue with eternity." This was the main thing missing in Peer Gynt's life. For Fomin, such a dialogue is his creative work, in which the series Peer Gynt occupies a special place.

Svetlana Gromova
Translated by Alexander Boguslawski