» Ekphrasis In Dostoevsky

Here four examples of ekphrasis (ie, inclusion of pictures in another piece of art; see this for an extended definition) in three of Dostoevsky's novels and the significant passage they appear in.

Claude Lorraine, "Acis and Galatea", 1657
Hans Holbein, the Younger, "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb", 1521
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), "The Golden Age"
I.N. Kramskoy, "Meditator", 1876

It was that picture that I saw in my dream, not as a painting, but as a fact.

A corner of the Greek archipelago; blue, caressing waves, islands and rocks, a foreshore covered in lush vegetation , a magic vista in the distance, a spell-binding sunset--it is impossible to describe it in words. Here was the cradle of European civilization, here were the first scenes from mythology, man's paradise on earth. Here a beautiful race of men had lived. They rose and went to sleep happy and innocent; the woods were filled with their joyous songs, the great overflow of their untapped energies passed into love and unsophisticated gaiety. The sun shed its rays on these islands and that sea, rejoicing in its beautiful children. A wondeful dream, a sublime illusion! The most incredible dream that has ever been dreamed, but to which all mankind has devoted all its powers during the whole of its existence, for which it has sacrificed everything, for which it has died on the cross and for its prophets have been killed, without which nations will not live and cannot even die. I seem to to have lived through all these sensations in my dream; I do not know what exactly I dreamed about, but the rocks and the sea and the slanting rays of the setting sun--I still seemed to see them all when I woke and opened my eyes, which were literally wet with tears for the first time in my life.

-Stavrogin's 'confession' to Bishop Tikhon, p. 695 (tr. Magarshack)

Claude Lorraine, "Acis and Galatea", 1657

"The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb", 1521
Hans Holbein, the Younger

When I arose to lock the door after him [Rogojin], I suddenly called to mind a picture I had noticed at Rogojin's in one of his gloomiest rooms, over the door. He had pointed it out to me himself as we walked past it, and I believe I must have stood a good five minutes in front of it. There was nothing artistic about it, but the picture made me feel strangely uncomfortable. It represented Christ just taken down from the cross. It seems to me that painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the cross and taken down from it, with great beauty still upon His face. This marvellous beauty they strive to preserve even in His moments of deepest agony and passion. But there was no such beauty in Rogojin's picture. This was the presentment of a poor mangled body which had evidently suffered unbearable anguish even before its crucifixion, full of wounds and bruises, marks of the violence of soldiers and people, and of the bitterness of the moment when He had fallen with the cross--all this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.

The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body, only just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The picture was one of pure nature, for the face was not beautified by the artist, but was left as it would naturally be, whosoever the sufferer, after such anguish.

I know that the earliest Christian faith taught that the Saviour suffered actually and not figuratively, and that nature was allowed her own way even while His body was on the cross.

It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: 'Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him--supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and they MUST have so seen it)--how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?'

The thought steps in, whether one likes it or no, that death is so terrible and so powerful, that even He who conquered it in His miracles during life was unable to triumph over it at the last. He who called to Lazarus, 'Lazarus, come forth!' and the dead man lived--He was now Himself a prey to nature and death. Nature appears to one, looking at this picture, as some huge, implacable, dumb monster; or still better--a stranger simile--some enormous mechanical engine of modern days which has seized and crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being, a Being worth nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was perhaps created merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.

This blind, dumb, implacable, eternal, unreasoning force is well shown in the picture, and the absolute subordination of all men and things to it is so well expressed that the idea unconsciously arises in the mind of anyone who looks at it. All those faithful people who were gazing at the cross and its mutilated occupant must have suffered agony of mind that evening; for they must have felt that all their hopes and almost all their faith had been shattered at a blow. They must have separated in terror and dread that night, though each perhaps carried away with him one great thought which was never eradicated from his mind for ever afterwards. If this great Teacher of theirs could have seen Himself after the Crucifixion, how could He have consented to mount the Cross and to die as He did? This thought also comes into the mind of the man who gazes at this picture. I thought of all this by snatches probably between my attacks of delirium--for an hour and a half or so before Colia's departure.

Can there be an appearance of that which has no form? And yet it seemed to me, at certain moments, that I beheld in some strange and impossible form, that dark, dumb, irresistibly powerful, eternal force.

-from Ippolit's 'Explanation', pp. 442-444

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), "The Golden Age"

Apparently significant for "The Dream of the Ridiculous Man".

(Images courtesy Web Gallery of Art)

In Brothers Karamozov, Smerdyakov ("Balaam's Ass") is likened to the man in this painting.
I.N. Kramskoy, "Meditator" 1876
(via Olga's Gallery).