Dead island. Böcklin and his “island of the dead” A cultural phenomenon of its time

"DEAD ISLAND"

The painting “Island of the Dead” by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin has, oddly enough, a magical appeal. Soon after its creation, it gained fantastic popularity, and, surprisingly, St. Petersburg and Muscovites willingly decorated their apartments with reproductions of “The Island” in massive carved frames, although the meaning of the painting has not been fully deciphered to this day.

Arnold Böcklin was born in Basel in 1827. He studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts. Already in adulthood, he connected his life with Italy: Soon Beklin began to surprise the Italians and his compatriots with mythological compositions. Images of sea monsters and mermaids, goat-footed satyrs and graceful forest nymphs, landscapes inhabited by fantastic creatures, the terrible painting “The Plague” depicting a skeleton flying on a huge elephant’s head - all this looked fantastically exotic in the second half of the last century.

The painting “Island of the Dead,” painted in 1880, exists in five versions. The painting depicts an eerie island that resembles a neglected cemetery. Gloomy cypress trees rise into the gray sky. A boat floats through the open gate, in which the viewer sees a standing figure draped in white.

Interpreters of Beklin's work gave the painting different interpretations. In their opinion, this is a generalized picture of the afterlife, and an allegory of the cemetery’s “eternal peace,” and a collective image of ancient civilization. The draped figure is either the soul of the deceased, or the ruler of the kingdom of the dead himself.

For a long time it was believed that cypress trees played a special role in the artist’s work. Gradually they became a symbol of mourning and grief. Landscape painters literally “dragged” these fantastic trees from Beklin’s sketches into their paintings. The cypress trees also matched the characters in the paintings - fauns, centaurs and mermaids: they bore little resemblance to real life, although they had human faces. It was often said about Beklin that he only writes an unreal world. They called him that: “Drawing what is not there.” One famous doctor said to the artist: “Can your strange characters really live in the world?” “They not only can live, but they live. Moreover, they will live much longer than your patients,” the artist answered proudly.

He was right. The heroes of Beklin's paintings were indeed destined to live a long life. Their images were replicated in the form of tens of thousands of postcards and reproductions. These postcards were preserved, framed and used to decorate residential interiors. The characters of the famous Swiss became inhabitants of St. Petersburg houses, an integral part of the life of the city on the Neva. The Moscow merchants did not lag behind (for some reason the merchants really loved Beklin). And although the artist never visited Russia, he was destined for a second life away from his homeland.

But Symbolist artists were especially enthusiastic about Beklin’s work. Representatives of early Russian graphic fiction and, first of all, the greatest Russian science fiction writer Viktor Zamirailo owe a lot to the famous Baselian.

It was believed that Beklin in Russia not only had followers, but also some kind of “doubles”. The landscape by I. I. Levitan “Above Eternal Peace” is considered to be the Russian analogue of “Island of the Dead”. And about the last days of Levitan’s life they said that before his death he began to outwardly resemble the main character of Beklin’s painting “The Artist and Death.” This strange resemblance amazed everyone. It turned out that Levitan is a kind of Russian Beklin.

Nicholas Roerich's painting "The Sinister" is another parallel to the "Island of the Dead". The breath of death literally blows from the terrible stones and fragments of rocks. The color scheme is also gloomy. At the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg, for a long time there stood a tombstone with a finely executed mosaic insert, reproducing a painting by Böcklin. Under it lies a member of the German community of St. Petersburg, Gustav Baumeister.

In 1909, Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov created the symphonic poem “Island of the Dead,” and Beklin’s images were thus given a musical embodiment. Beklin's picture also attracted the attention of filmmakers. The image of an ominous island with an abandoned castle and frightening silhouettes of trees has appeared in many feature films. In the English film One Million Years BC, a bloodthirsty Archeopteryx takes the main character to an island where a nest with huge chicks is eeriely blackened. Beklin’s motifs were also used in A. Konchalovsky’s film “The Adventures of Odysseus.” In 1993, St. Petersburg director Oleg Kovalov made the film “Island of the Dead.” Kovalev brought to the screen that unique sense of history that the fashion for Beklin inspired on our predecessors.

Arnold Böcklin. "Dead island"

1880 Oil on canvas. 111 x 115 cm. Kunstmuseum, Basel
1880 Wood, oil. 111 x 115 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1883 Wood, oil. 80 x 150 cm. State Museums, Berlin
1886 Wood, tempera. 80 x 150 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig.

Everything in the world should be understood as a mystery.
Giorgio de Chirico

European citizen

Arnold Böcklin can rightfully be called a European citizen. He was born in 1827 in Switzerland, in Basel, studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf, and traveled a lot in his youth. He disliked Paris and spent only a year in it, and settled in Rome for seven years. Here, in 1853, he happily married a seventeen-year-old Italian beauty.

Arnold Böcklin. Self-portrait. 1873

Together with his large family (the Böcklin couple had 14 children, 8 of whom died at an early age), the artist moved many times: from Rome to his native Basel, then to Hanover, to Munich, to Weimar, from there again to Rome, again to Basel , again to Munich, from there to Florence, then to Zurich... He spent the last nine years of his life in Italy and died in 1901 at his villa near Fiesole.

These endless moves had good reasons: in his youth - the desire to see with his own eyes the monuments of classical art of Italy, later - invitations to teaching work, large orders (Böcklin not only painted pictures, but also decorated interiors with frescoes), the need to give children a good education, and finally , last but not least, lack of money.

(Fame did not come to Böcklin immediately; the opinion of the public, as he frankly admitted, did not bother him much; he did not know how to work to please customers and sometimes quarreled with those people on whom his well-being depended.)

Such mobility allowed Böcklin not only to see a lot and make acquaintance with outstanding contemporaries in different countries, but also to synthesize in his work the artistic ideas that were exciting Europe at that time. He was called a symbolist and neoclassicist, the last romantic and herald of surrealism.

In the world of fauns and nymphs

Böcklin began with romantic landscapes. Characteristic signs of romanticism are often found in his mature works: swirling clouds, mysterious shadows and flashes of light, piles of rocks, raging waves, picturesque ruins, lonely villas on deserted shores...

The friendly Mediterranean nature, the southern sun, and most importantly, contact with the classical art of Italy, primarily with the ancient Roman frescoes in Pompeii, suggested new themes to the artist: mythological characters appeared on Böcklin’s canvases. The artist seemed to have opened a window into a blissful country, where the forest god Pan plays his pipe in the reeds, the fairy night showers the peacefully sleeping earth with poppy seeds, Triton blows a sea shell, Nereids splash among the waves, and nymphs frolic in flowering meadows.

In his paintings, Böcklin constantly conducts a dialogue with the heritage of European art, responding to the great predecessors - the masters of the Middle Ages, artists of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classicism - with his own “replicas” to their works. For example, the plot of “Self-Portrait with Death Squealing on a Violin” (1872) goes back to the famous medieval fresco “Dance of Death” in Basel and to the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger.

The artist's later works stylistically belong to the 20th century. In the series “War” (1896-97) and in the painting “Plague” (1898), classicism and balance give way to open expression: mad horses carry an otherworldly army of non-humans over the earth, and a plague descends on a dying city on a winged dragon.

Böcklin clears reality of everything momentary, everyday, concrete. His image is endowed with some kind of magical authenticity and at the same time understatement.

Böcklin's symbolism was not bookish, not theoretical, but felt, natural - he depicted objects and elements in such a way that a certain mysterious elusive essence was felt behind the outer shell.

This mesmerizing skill of Böcklin was fully demonstrated in his main film, “Island of the Dead.”

"Picture for dreams"

Böcklin usually did not give titles to his works, but the name “Island of the Dead” most likely belongs to the artist himself: in April 1880, he wrote from Florence to the customer of the painting, philanthropist Alexander Günther, that “Island of the Dead” (“Die Toteninsel”) would soon will be finished..

The first version of the painting “Island of the Dead”. 1880

The painting had not yet been completed when Böcklin received an order from the young widow Maria Berna for a “picture for dreams” (“Bild zum Träumen”). The customer, who may have seen the unfinished first version of “The Island,” became the owner of the second. It is interesting that the figure in a white shroud standing in a boat and the sarcophagus in front of her were absent in the first and second versions of the painting and were added by the artist a little later.

Second version of the painting "Island of the Dead", 1880

Böcklin completed the third version of “The Island” in 1883 at the request of the Berlin collector and publisher Fritz Gurlitt, and in 1884 financial difficulties prompted the artist to create a fourth version of the painting (lost during the Second World War).

The third version of the painting “Island of the Dead. 1883

The artist painted “The Island” for the fifth time in 1886 for the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig.

Fifth version of the painting "Island of the Dead", 1886

To Böcklin’s credit, he did not copy the painting, but each time developed the plot in a new way, maintaining the basis of the composition, but changing the size, technique, color scheme, lighting and finding new shades of mood - from gloomy hopelessness to enlightened tragedy. Taken together, the four versions of “The Island” that have come down to us seem to be parts of a solemn requiem, in which sublime sorrow gives way to deep peace, and time recedes before eternity.

The plot of the film is based on the ancient myth that the souls of heroes and favorites of the gods find their final refuge on a secluded island. The island of the dead is washed by the deserted mirror waters of the underground river Acheron, through which the boatman Charon transports the souls of the dead.

Art historians have, of course, wondered which island inspired Böcklin. The sheer light cliffs of the “Island of the Dead” are very reminiscent of the landscapes of the volcanic Pontine Islands and the Faraglioni reefs off the coast of Capri, which Böcklin could see during his trip to Naples.

Faraglioni rocks off the coast of Capri

One cannot help but recall the island-cemetery of San Michele near Venice, where the bodies of the deceased are transported in gondolas and where the same dark “mourning cypresses” rise into the sky as in Böcklin’s painting.

Mourning cypress trees on the cemetery island of San Michele near Venice

These trees, symbolizing eternal life, are traditionally planted in Italy in cemeteries, monasteries and near churches.

But no matter what island Böcklin was inspired by, he managed to detach himself from nature and convey the main thing - this island with crypts carved into the rocks and a small pier does not belong to earthly life, it is located in another space, inaccessible to living things.

A boat with a carrier, a shrouded figure and a sarcophagus does not disturb the silence of this ghostly world, melancholic and devoid of living breath, but beautiful in its own way.

"Island of the Dead" in the interior of the era

After the famous graphic artist Max Klinger created an etching reproducing the third version of “The Island” in 1855, and the owner of the painting, Fritz Gurlitt, released this etching in a huge edition, “The Island of the Dead” conquered all of Europe.

Max Klinger. Etching based on Böcklin’s painting “Isle of the Dead”

Böcklin font

According to a contemporary, at the turn of the century “there was almost no German family where reproductions of Böcklin’s paintings did not hang.” And not only German. The famous reproduction adorned Sigmund Freud's office in Vienna, and the father of psychoanalysis mentioned Böcklin in his lectures. It hung above the bed in V.I. Lenin’s room in Zurich, as evidenced by an archival photograph (it is unclear whether the etching belonged to the owners of the house or the lodger). In the photograph of the dining room of the outstanding French politician Georges Clemenceau we see the same etching.

The melancholy of “The Island” exactly reflected the mood in society that was denoted by the word “decadence” - vague melancholy, gloomy forebodings, greedy interest in the other world, a feeling of weariness from life, rejection of rough earthly reality.

In living rooms where seances were held, “Island of the Dead” was quite appropriate. The picture was perceived by contemporaries as a requiem for an entire era, as a farewell to a culture based on humanistic values and retreating under the onslaught of industrialization. The magical atmosphere of the “Island” attracted avant-garde artists. The pioneer of surrealism in poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire, put “The Island” on a par with the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel; the creator of metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico, counted Böcklin among his teachers, Max Ernst recognized Böcklin’s influence, and Salvador Dali expressed his respect to him in the painting “The True Image of the Island of the Dead by Arnold Bölin at the Hour of Evening Prayer” (1932).

Salvador Dali. A true depiction of the Isle of the Dead by Arnold Bölin at the hour of evening prayer. 1932

Böcklin was also an idol for the Russian intelligentsia. According to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, reproductions from Böcklin’s painting “were scattered throughout our province and hung in the rooms of progressive youth.”

Böcklin was quoted by Wassily Kandinsky in his treatise “On the Spiritual in Art” (1910). “In painting I love Böcklin most of all,” admitted Leonid Andreev. Valentin Serov wrote from Florence in 1887: “The cypress trees are swaying like Böcklin.”

Böcklin was praised in their reviews by Igor Grabar and Maximilian Voloshin, Alexander Benois and Anatoly Lunacharsky. Sergei Rachmaninov, deeply impressed by the painting, the fifth version of which he saw in Leipzig, wrote the symphonic poem “Island of the Dead” in 1909 (in total, five musical works inspired by this painting were created in Europe in the 1890-1910s ).

Böcklin was, of course, a stranger to Vladimir Mayakovsky: having met the sisters Lilya and Elsa Kagan, he, as Lilya later recalled, “survived from the ‘Island of the Dead’ house.”

But Mayakovsky could not ignore this symbol of the era: “From the wall to the city, the expanding Böcklin // placed the “Island of the Dead” in Moscow,” he wrote in the poem “About This” (1923). In the 1920s Böcklin's popularity was already on the wane. The scoffers Ilf and Petrov did not miss the opportunity to laugh in “The Twelve Chairs” at their recent idol, hanging “The Island” in the room of the fortune teller to whom Gritsatsuev’s widow came: “Above the piano hung a reproduction of Böcklin’s painting “Island of the Dead” in a fantasy dark green polished frame oak, under glass.

One corner of the glass had long since fallen off, and the naked part of the picture was so covered with flies that it completely merged with the frame. It was no longer possible to find out what was going on in this part of the island of the dead.” However, later the picture had unexpected admirers, one of whom was... Adolf Hitler.

Trying to build the cultural foundation of Nazi ideology, he “appointed” Böcklin as the artist who most deeply expressed “Germanness” and the “Aryan spirit,” just as he chose the philosopher Nietzsche and the composer Wagner for the same purpose. In “The Island,” the Fuhrer was obviously impressed by the idea of the chosenness of heroes, “representatives of a superior race,” awarded eternal peace where the souls of the mob have no access.

In 1933, Hitler bought the third version of the painting (in total he owned 16 works by Böcklin), which was first located in his Berghof residence, and from 1940 adorned the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. A photograph taken on November 12, 1940 has survived, in which Hitler and Molotov are negotiating in front of a painting by Böcklin.

In this chronicle footage, Hitler and Molotov are negotiating against the backdrop of the Berlin version of “Isle of the Dead”

Of course, there is no reason to really consider Böcklin a herald of the ideology of Nazism, but, nevertheless, the Fuhrer’s high assessment of the painter thoroughly undermined the authority of “Hitler’s favorite artist” in the post-war years.

Böcklin finally went out of fashion, but was not considered a classic. In art history books published in the second half of the 20th century, he was usually given only a few lines, and even then lukewarm ones.

Even in the former popularity of the artist, art critics often saw evidence of the low level of his work. The case in the history of European art is not new and quite understandable: after all, the starting point for the development of painting of the 20th century was the work of the Impressionists - opponents and antagonists of Böcklin.

The coming century rehabilitated the artist: an exhibition dedicated to the centenary of his death was held with triumphant success in 2001-2002. in Basel, Paris and Munich. Respectable catalogs and monograph albums were published, serious articles were written about Böcklin and television films were made. And although the name of Arnold Böcklin remains insufficiently known to today's public, this artist is already returning to us from a long and, it seems, undeserved oblivion.

Marina Agranovskaya

I thought for a long time whether to write an article about the artist Arnold Böcklin.? The doubts are not because of Böcklin’s paintings, but because he was Hitler’s favorite artist. But nevertheless, his name was well known in Russia.

Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin was one of the notable masters of the 19th century. A romantic and a symbolist at the same time, he perceived modernity through the prism of the classical heritage.

There was no other artist in European cultural life who at first caused so much misunderstanding and irritation, then was literally deified by everyone, and soon after his death almost instantly consigned to oblivion.

Self-portrait. 1877—1876

A LITTLE ABOUT THE ARTIST

Arnold Böcklin can rightfully be called a European citizen. He was born in 1827 in Switzerland, in Basel , studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf, traveled a lot in his youth. He disliked Paris and spent only a year in it, and settled in Rome for seven years. Here, in 1853, he happily married a seventeen-year-old Italian beauty.

Fame did not come to Böcklin immediately; the opinion of the public, as he frankly admitted, did not bother him much, he did not know how to work to please customers and sometimes quarreled with those people on whom his well-being depended.

Böcklin's paintings, bright and sharp in color, are painted mainly tempera . In his paintings, the artist paints a fictional world, often deliberately mysterious. At first, Böcklin wrote romantic landscapes with mythological figures , then - fantastic scenes with nymphs , sea monsters.

Today we’ll talk about the main film - “ISLE OF THE DEAD”

What’s interesting is that the artist created 5 versions of this painting.

PFIRST OPTION.

The customer of the painting wasphilanthropist Alexander Gunther

The first painting had not yet been completed when Böcklin received an order from the young widow Maria Berna for a “picture for dreams” (“Bild zum Träumen”).

The customer, who may have seen the unfinished first version of “The Island,” became the owner of the second.

It is interesting that the figure in a white shroud standing in a boat and the sarcophagus in front of her were absent in the first and second versions of the painting and were added by the artist a little later.

1883 Old National Gallery, Berlin

Böcklin completed the third version of “The Island” in 1883 at the request of the Berlin collector and publisher Fritz Gurlitt, and in 1884

PHOTO. 1884 Destroyed in Rotterdam during World War II Financial difficulties prompted the artist to create a fourth version of the painting (lost during the Second World War).

1886 Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig

The artist painted “The Island” for the fifth time in 1886 for the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig.

Taken together, the four versions of “The Island” that have come down to us seem to be parts of a solemn requiem, in which sublime sorrow gives way to deep peace, and time recedes before eternity.

BASIS OF THE PLOT.

Ostro San Michele.Venice.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURE.

The boat approaches a tiny island, the rocks of which seem to form a natural wall for the interior space, overgrown with dark cypress trees. Between the water and this space, stone blocks form an entrance. Rectangular openings are visible on the inside of the rocks.

There are two people in the boat: the rower who controls it and a figure wrapped in white cloth. In front of the figure stands a long rectangular box, which is usually interpreted as a coffin. The rower was often associated with Charon, and the body of water that the boat crossed with the rivers Styx or Acheron. Interestingly, in Southern Europe, cypress trees are associated with death and are often planted in cemeteries

The magical atmosphere of the “Island” attracted avant-garde artists. The pioneer of surrealism in poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire, put “The Island” on a par with the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel;

The creator of metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico, counted Böcklin among his teachers, Böcklin’s influence was recognized by Max Ernst, and Salvador Dali expressed his respect to him in the painting “The True Image of the Island of the Dead by Arnold Böhlin at the Hour of Evening Prayer” (1932). Böcklin was also an idol for the Russian intelligentsia

Böcklin and Hitler.

The picture had unexpected fans, one of whom was... Adolf Hitler.

Trying to build the cultural foundation of Nazi ideology, he noted Böcklin as the artist who most deeply expressed “Germanness” and the “Aryan spirit,” as well as the philosopher Nietzsche and the composer Wagner.

In “The Island,” the Fuhrer was obviously impressed by the idea of the chosenness of heroes, “representatives of a superior race,” awarded eternal peace where the souls of the mob have no access.

GALLERY OF WORKS.

Idyll.

Naiad games.

Pirate attack.

Battle of the Centaurs.

Portrait of Angela Böcklin.

Mary Magdalene mourning Christ 1867

Angelique Guarded by a Dragon 1873

QUESTIONS.

How do you evaluate the artist's work?

What attracted contemporaries to the painting ISLAND OF THE DEAD?

Why was this topic so interesting to people?

"....The berths of invisible piers are hidden,

vague shadows of restless ghosts...

Imagine, this island is truly some kind of mystical. I wrote a post twice, and, approaching the end, both times the posts disappeared without a trace.
I'm starting attempt number three!

We continue our journey through the Balkan countries. We are in Montenegro, driving along the coast of the Bay of Kotor, heading towards a city with a strange name - Perast.
I have already talked about the indescribable beauty of the Bay of Kotor. What to write! You need to see all this with your own eyes. And I am incredibly lucky that I ended up in these parts.

We look not at me, but at the beauty around me. In the distance, under the mountain itself, is the city of Perast, where we are heading. And right above my head there was a small island, which is what my story will be about.

Looking at this island, I had a feeling of something very familiar. Exactly what is now so fashionable to call “déjà vu”. But enchanted by the surrounding beauty, I somehow forgot about it. But still, this island did not let me go, and as I approached it, it attracted my gaze more and more.

And finally I realized that it reminds me very much of the famous painting by the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901). "Dead island." But was the painter here, in the Bay of Kotor?

Having studied the artist’s biography on the Internet, it became clear that he, it seems, had never been to these parts.
A most interesting self-portrait. Agree! And very consistent with his famous painting.

The painting is indeed famous to this day. Many writers wrote about it, Sergei Rachmaninov dedicated a very dark symphonic poem to “The Island of the Dead”. Many famous artists painted imitation of this painting, such as the Swiss artist Hans Rudi Giger, who is also called the artist of hell. Here is his painting "Tribute to Böcklin"

I think you are well familiar with the quote from the immortal book: “ Above the piano hung a reproduction of Böcklin’s painting “Isle of the Dead” in a fancy frame of dark green polished oak, under glass.
One corner of the glass had long since fallen off, and the naked part of the picture was so covered with flies that it completely merged with the frame. It was already impossible to find out what was going on in this part of the island of the dead.”
It is also interesting that the artist repeatedly addressed this topic. There are five known versions of the painting. One of them, however, was destroyed. All that was left was a black and white photograph. (Photo from Wikipedia).

Arnold Böcklin was Adolf Hitler's favorite artist. He purchased one of the versions of the painting “Island of the Dead”. At this link you can view the painting acquired by Hitler in large size and even find the initials “AG” on one of the rocks.

As you can imagine, the island I saw interested me very much. Moreover, tourists were categorically not allowed there. Arriving home, I began to collect information about the island, which, alas, turned out to be very scanty.
We managed to find out that since the 12th century there was an ancient Benedictine monastery here. I don’t know whether it is currently functioning.
Photo of the model taken in a museum on a neighboring island.

In the 16th century, the Church of St. Juraj was built on the island, which was the parish church of Perast. The abbot of the monastery, also the rector of the church, was killed under mysterious circumstances shortly after its construction. A little later, the island was raided by pirates - the monastery was plundered and the church set on fire. It was restored thanks to Andriy Zmaevich (1628-1694), who served as abbot of the monastery, and in 1671 was appointed Barsky (city of Bar) archbishop and primate of the Kingdom of Serbia. Let's remember this name. Doctor of Theology and Philosophy, writer, poet, historian, educator, collector of antiquities and patron of art. It is thanks to him that we will be able to admire the art gallery on the neighboring island and admire the most interesting exhibits of the museum.

Until 1886, there was a cemetery here, where mainly sailors - residents of Perast - were buried. That is why, obviously, the second name appeared - the Island of the Dead.

I’m telling an interesting story, and maybe even a legend.
At the entrance to the church there are two graves, one of them dates back to 1813, in it lies a young girl named Katica, in the other - a soldier of the Napoleonic army.
In 1813, a detachment of the French expeditionary force occupied the fortress of the Holy Cross. Residents of Perst drove the French out of there. The detachment settled on the island of St. Juraj and periodically fired cannons at the city of Perast. And it had to happen that the ball of one of the cannons hit the house where the beloved soldier lived, who fired from this cannon. The girl died. The unfortunate soldier remained on the island of St. Juraj and every day the funeral bell rang over the area. So the soldier mourned the death of his bride, who united them forever under the mournful cypress trees of the Island of the Dead.

Dear Dmitriy Shalaev added to this legend: "In the bike with the Napoleonic artilleryman missed an important detail. The pushkar was local - from Perastyan. This makes a big difference! H The man was hitting his hometown, his relatives, acquaintances, and friends with a cannon... It’s not surprising that he killed his lady love.”

I would like to end this post about the island that I remember so much with a poem by Eremey Parnov, which he dedicated to Böcklin’s “Island of the Dead.”
"There in the ocean, shrouded in secrets,
melting into the abyss of foggy space,
An island, deceptively uninhabited,
scary and strange, like a mummy in a shroud.
Time on the Island froze in a stupor,
rolled up in a vague, mysterious cocoon,
the starless sky with a ghostly dome,
as if woven from unknown threads...(I hide the rest under a spoiler)
The waves are stringy, boring, dark
they roll towards the shore in rostras of foam,
roll slowly, obedient to the wind,
the beach is littered with mortal remains -
slippery logs, slimy boards,
the ashes of ships and broken oars...
Marine debris and whale carcasses
The fairways of the Island were firmly locked.

Hidden berths of invisible piers,
hidden paths deep into the cypress groves,
only in caves, like sparkling signs -
vague shadows of restless ghosts.
Ghosts of those who in bygone centuries
did not fulfill the destiny of a mortal,
those who are in pursuit of pseudo-immortality
locked my soul with eternal death...

Those who with a dagger, a noose and a hemlock
fell into temptation in a battle against time,
tightly bound by invisible bonds
with the Isle of the Dead, the vale of oblivion.
Life is short and there is not much to be done.
There is little time - to Heaven, or to Hell?
Let it be better for God to remain Godly -
It’s inappropriate for us. No need. It wouldn't be necessary...

P.S. This time I was more prudent and copied what I wrote all the time. Therefore, the attempt seemed to be a success. But the most amazing thing is that I did it like a famous hero - he did not sleep all night and composed a letter to his beloved. And in the morning I discovered that these lines had been written a long time ago by A.S. Pushkin. So it is with me. Looking for details about the painting “Island of the Dead” and its creator and about to upload the finished post to the magazine, I discovered a very interesting and wonderful article

Arnold Böcklin - famous Swiss artist, graphic sculptor. He is one of the most famous representatives of symbolism of the 19th century. Born 1827 in Basel, Switzerland - died 1901 in San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy. His art contains many amazing works, but one of the most remarkable and even iconic is the painting “Island of the Dead,” which was painted in 1880-1886, and one of the versions of which is currently in St. Petersburg.

It was written by Arnold Böcklin in five versions. All five paintings were painted between 1880 and 1886. This painting represents mythological ideas about death and the place where the souls of dead people go. The painting shows a body of water, which is the symbolic River Styx. In the middle of the river there is an island, which is a concave wall and somewhat resembles an amphitheater. This, in fact, is the island of the dead. There are buildings on the island that look like crypts with windows. Cypress trees also grow here, which are considered symbols of death and are often planted in cemeteries.

A boat is approaching the island. Boat with an oarsman - there is a mythological Charon who transports the dead across the River Styx. Charon is dressed in white matter. Besides him, there is another figure in the boat. The passenger of the boat is the soul of a person who is traveling in the other world. The very plot of the picture, its gloomy atmosphere so impressed many viewers and eminent people (Max Ernst, Sergei Rachmaninov and many others) that an interpretation of the picture was created in a variety of forms. The famous painting by Salvador Dali is “The True Image of Arnold Böcklin’s “Isle of the Dead” at the Hour of Evening Prayer.” Sergei Rachmaninov wrote a symphonic poem “Island of the Dead”. The painting is mentioned in the novel “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov, and the novel “Mashenka” by Vladimir Nabokov. Science fiction writer Roger Zelazny, inspired by the work, wrote the novel “Island of the Dead.” It is impossible not to mention the fact that the image of the island is often used in the architecture of cemeteries. Two films were made based on the film: the 1945 American film “Island of the Dead” and the Russian collage film “Island of the Dead.” In addition to all of the above, this island is present in the anime “Black Butler” and the manga “The Extraordinary History of Panorama Island”.

Arnold Böcklin - "Island of the Dead"

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