514
ILYA EHRENBUR6
St. Paul, who cast down the graven images of the false gods. Before
he embraced the new faith, Paul was called Saul. In
1922,
when
I
was defending constructivism and editing the magazine
The Thing,
Victor Shklovsky called me Paul Saulovich
34
in his book
Zoo-this
was spiteful but just. Through the whole of my life I have kept
my
love for many works of art of the past-the novels of Stendhal, the
stories of Chekhov, the verse of Tyutchev, Baudelaire and Blok. It
has not stopped my hating imitations or liking Picasso or Meyerhold.
Paul must have a patronymic, and it's better to sculpt a new statue )
than to destroy, even for the highest reasons, a statue that has
al·
ready been made. To the sculptor who chiseled the effigies of the
Indian gods and goddesses in Ellora, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva
were gods; to us they were images created by the genius of
man
whose passions are close to ours and whose harmonies are clear to
us.
Idols have outlived their time not only in religion, but also in
art. Iconoclasm has died together with the adoration of icons. But
could the desire to say something new in a new way really disappear
on that account? I recently read the words "modest innovation"
in
a periodical; at first they amused me, then they saddened me. An
artist must be modest in behavior, but by no means moderate, tepid
or limited in his creative endeavors. Surely, it is more seemly to
write squiggles in one's own way than to copy something of the past
I
in neat handwriting. I feel that
kolkhozniks
depicted in the manner
of the academic school of Bologna will give pleasure to few, and
that it is not possible to convey the rhythm of the second half of the (
twentieth century with that plethora of relative clauses which Leo }
Tolstoy used so brilliantly.
(Translated
by
John Richardson)
34. A mock patronymic meaning "son of Saul."
