Almighty painter

Chapter 866 Artistic Life

“Only with complete understanding can one learn to love.” - Mrs. Sakai.
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In Gu Weijing's initial vague imagination, the change would be completely the opposite... Even if this was not an Indiana Jones-style mysterious adventure, it would be a journey full of hardships.

It will be a pilgrimage-style story.

Asceticism.

Grind.

First it's real gold in raging fire, then it's indestructible steel, and finally there is enlightenment.

Kara will become harder and stronger during the journey, and become a female bodybuilding athlete with a blade-like jawline and tanned skin. She can lift the heavy destiny high with a loud shout, just like she is lifting a 120-pound barbell.

This imagination is not entirely wrong.

People can't imagine the appearance of another person in their minds through letters, text, or even paintings, right?

Uncle Sakai's works are as delicate and beautiful as a woman's, and his brushstrokes give people a smooth and flawless feeling. It is said that at an anonymous exchange exhibition, a Kanto calligrapher accidentally saw a work of Sakai Kazunari and was amazed by it. He praised it with his friends, saying that the painting was extremely elegant and lingering.

Even better, it has an extremely "slim" beauty.

The calligrapher asked someone to bring paper and pen, and quoted the nine-character line "The water surface is clear and round, each lotus leaf is lifted by the wind" from a Chinese poem on the spot. He said the creator was so light that he seemed to be dancing on the lotus leaf. He dared to guess that the person who painted this picture was probably a beautiful female artist.

Later at the exhibition.

He saw Uncle Sakai, who weighed nearly 250 pounds, rolling up to the podium happily, and remained silent for a long time.

There is probably no lotus leaf in the world that can hold up Kazunari Sakai, allowing the uncle to jump and dance happily on it like the wind.

However, Kara is not necessarily unable to lift a 120-pound barbell. Her smooth and powerful muscular beauty is of course very beautiful and noble, just like a goddess from Olympia.

But, in these letters, there is Kara in the abstract sense and Kara in the spiritual sense.

She is becoming more delicate and sensitive.

She would tell her brother at length how people used flour, vegetable leaves and a moderate amount of animal fat to bake a kind of pancake in the shape of a pot cake, how hunters hung animal furs outside the thatched house to dry, and how she saw local women weaving cotton.

She told the story of a group of people following a guide on a journey from one city to another, of a carriage team traveling on a road covered with yellow sand, of black flocks of birds flying back to their nests through the distant valleys, of a strong wind, and of how the cloth on them and the carriages around them, as well as the hoods and veils of the pedestrians, were blown by the wind, like a boat sailing through a sea of ​​sand amidst the endless yellow dust.

"Nayuki" - the name of a local guide hired during Kara's journey, said to be an elderly hunter in the mountains and one of the people who impressed Gu Weijing the most in the letter.

He appears several times in Kara's letters.

The two people did not speak the same language at all, and could only communicate simply through an interpreter. Nayuki was very accustomed to silence, and most of the time, people almost forgot his existence. But he was also very interesting.

Gu Weijing was deeply impressed by the fact that Kara repeatedly used the word "noble" in the article.

Even though Anna translated the German directly into English when reading the letter.

Gu Weijing believed that there should be no misunderstanding of the second-hand processing of information here.

What he heard, what Anna read, and what Kara wrote should all be the word "noble". How strange, that was Kara Elena, whose biological father was a high-ranking earl of the oldest empire in Europe, and who spent most of her first half of her life in various banquets and salons.

She made fun of her father, but called an old, silent, local hunter one of the noblest people she had ever met in her life ("even though every time I tried to talk to him, we just stared at each other in silence and came back empty-handed," Kara wrote).

Was this statement intended to irritate her father?

Probably not.

Kara wrote a long letter, and the first third of it was devoted to Nayuki's black eyes, saying that those eyes sometimes showed kindness, rarely showed anger, and more often were silent.

A quiet and wise silence.

Never once did any levity or humor escape from those eyes.

Kara said that although there were times when she felt that Nayuki had never been truly happy from the bottom of his heart, just as she had never felt that Nayuki had ever been truly fearful and uneasy from the bottom of his heart.

But this was the most "noble and solemn" look she had ever seen in her life.

Yes.

Again.

Kara used the word noble, as well as dignified.

"I can't imagine what it would be like for a man with such eyes to laugh humorously, get drunk, or tremble in fear one day, just as I can't imagine what it would be like for him to be like many men in my life -" Anna read, "wearing tight shorts, rowing or holding a cricket bat..."

The last two thirds of the letter.

Kara recounted how Nayuki caught a lynx in a trap while taking a rest one day, and its blood flowed onto Kara's hands.

There are many, many more examples like this...

To borrow Kara's own words to describe it, these letters are enough to outline an image, that is - this is neither a story in Richard Burton's novel nor a story in the mythology of "The Thousand and One Pages".

When Kara left Paris.

She set out with the mentality of seeing "something".

later.

She discovered that this was neither the world of adventure novels nor the world of fairy tales.

This is just the world.

There are no wise and noble gentleman adventurers who represent rationality and civilization, nor are there Alibaba's forty thieves, nor are there warehouses full of gold treasures in the mountains.

The fairy tale world is colorful, shrouded in clouds and mist, and extremely mysterious.

The real world.

As long as you are sensitive and delicate enough, the wind and sand will blow on your face, and the temperature of blood will flow through your fingertips.
-
"…Returning to Paris once again—"

Anna read the last letter she held in her hands, the end of a long letter that Carla had sent home from Paris after her journey.

"I have decided to become a full-time painter. That's it. This is my final decision."

"Also: I hid a painting far away, you will never find it."

"——Carol."

The entire letter is written in a very concise and plain style, and the signature at the end is the same.

An inevitable part of Carla's early letters was the scathing dig at the end of the letter to her father.

slowly.

The words disappeared, and Kara's endings became simpler and simpler, a polite phrase, a name, or just a name and the letter K.

Got this letter.

It becomes "Carol".

Anna bent down and placed the letter very carefully on the coffee table. Her movements were as gentle and delicate as bending down to embrace Kara's soul in her arms.

Until you reach the end of your destiny, when eternal extinction or heaven and afterlife arrive.

power.

The amazing strength Kara gained during her journey always stayed with her.

People often have to experience and witness something before they can achieve real change.

But maybe Kara was not the only one on the journey. Those adventurers, like Kara, had witnessed similar scenes. Why did Kara have a completely different perspective from them?
This is not the magic of the name Elena. This is the magic of empathy.

Leo Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Courbet, Daumier... The power of this spell has always been manifested again and again in the history of art and has never faded.

Anna knew that Kara couldn't necessarily truly call that empathy.

It was an extremely long journey, but when viewed against the backdrop of the entire era, it was just a brief glimpse.

As a woman in that era, it was almost impossible for her to fully integrate into the surrounding customs and practices during her journey in such a short period of time.

No matter what her purpose was, this is an objective fact.

Mr. Fogg, who set out on a journey around the world with a check for £20000 and his servant Mr. Know-All, couldn't do it.

Miss Carla von Irene couldn't do it either.

She had plenty of cash, francs, pounds, and Ottoman liras, and she had maids and servants, checks and pistols, and would hire a lot of guards if necessary.

Together, these things formed a bubble around Kara, isolating her from real suffering.

Cara is not a critical realist painter.

She is an impressionist painter.

Compared to those painters of the Itinerant Exhibition School who truly integrated into the real lives of the lower classes, Cara was actually different.

She is still on a journey like a miniature crystal ball, no matter whether she is the one inside the crystal ball or the one outside the crystal ball.

it's the same.

Just like from the beginning to the end, Kara tried very hard, but still couldn't communicate a word in person with the old hunter Nayuf, who left a deep impression on her.

This is probably also Kara's regret.

But she still gained something from the trip.

If what is gained is not empathy, then it is power. If this is not a critical realist-style deep understanding of the world, then it is an impressionist-style deep understanding of oneself.

If this wasn't Repin.

Then it is similar to Van Gogh.

Anna always wondered how the change happened. Nightingale, who grew up in an aristocratic family, could have lived a life of comfort and wealth. She had taken care of her sick grandmother since she was a child.

The Crimean War broke out in 1854.

The hell-like scene completely shocked Nightingale as she watched people die wailing on the battlefield.

People weren't supposed to die like this, she told herself.

And maybe.

For Kara Elena, the one-year journey was a crucial moment of reflection in her life.

How people should live.

She began to want to see magnificent visual spectacles.

later.

She gradually felt that the truly magnificent things were never the flaming warships spewing Greek fire on the sea outside the walls of Constantinople, nor the young Sultan hiding behind curtains and eavesdropping on the conversations of his ministers.

The truly magnificent wonders may have always been hidden in the bazaar that was so noisy that she couldn't fall asleep, so bustling that it made her desperate, and made her want to "jump like a cat".

Hidden in the hustle and bustle of the world.

Perhaps, throughout the journey, she had not thought about the complex political games, the profound social system, the empire's overseas interests, or other things that were stirring up the world.

She just stared into the hunter's eyes.

Feel his tenacious vitality.

People can calmly fight against fate, people can move forward while carrying fate on their shoulders, and people can also catch fate like catching a lynx.

No matter what fate means, poverty or anything else, it is still... the great Elena family.

This has nothing to do with ability.

It's all about courage and fighting spirit.

Kara made her choice.

She didn't make the choice when she jumped on a boat, jumped on a train, left Paris, or arrived in Istanbul.

It was only after she understood it all that she made her real decision.

When Anna was very young, she heard some stories passed down from generation to generation by her elders. It was said that the old count was also very upset after capturing his daughter and locking her in the cellar.

Many servants heard it.

The Earl, who always paid attention to decency and dignity, grabbed his disheveled hair and roared hysterically, and also begged hysterically.

"I don't know what evil has befallen you in France!"

He said that Paris is indeed a city where people are morally corrupt.

He also said... said, please, please, I beg you, I'm begging you seriously, okay, I beg you to stop making trouble.

Some people even saw the old Earl, a man who usually wore the uniform of a cavalry colonel, crying silently in his study.

When Anna heard this story as a child.

She just felt that the old count was hypocritical, and felt that hypocrisy was simply a bad trait in Elena's family genes. He locked his daughter in the cellar and tortured her to death, and then begged pitifully, saying please. It was just as hypocritical as him claiming that he loved art while locking his daughter in the cellar.

As she grew older, Anna's thoughts changed.

The old earl, her ancestor, might not have pleaded from the bottom of his heart, and the tears he shed might not have been just crocodile tears.

Maybe the emotions are all real.

But the old count had always misunderstood one thing. He had always regarded Kara as a person who was throwing a tantrum and was disobedient.

No.

Kara wasn't having a temper tantrum.

Maybe it was when I first started my journey and wrote those complaints in the letter.

But then maybe not.

When she returned to Paris, when she sent a letter home under the name of Carol, when she said, "I have made up my mind to be a painter."

Definitely Not.

Really sorry.

Kara wrote letter after letter to her family, but the old count never understood them.

Anna read letter after letter. She put the last letter on the coffee table and raised her head to see if Gu Weijing understood it.

(End of this chapter)