Isaac Levitan Above Eternal Peace. 1894.
The iconic philosophical painting by Isaac Levitan “Above Eternal Peace” has long attracted attention.
In a letter to P. M. Tretyakov on May 18, 1894, the artist wrote about his painting: “I am so incredibly happy that my work will again reach you that since yesterday I have been in some kind of ecstasy. And this, in fact, is surprising, since you have enough of my things, but the fact that this last one came to you touches me so much because it contains all of me, with all my psyche, with all my content...”
It is known that the artist wrote this work while listening to music. The solemn and sad sounds of Beethoven's funeral march inspired the author and forced him to create a gloomy and almost tragic atmosphere of this work. One of the artist's friends called it "a requiem for himself."
Levitan began work on the painting in the summer of 1893 on Lake Udomlya, near Vyshny Volochok. The church in the picture was painted from the sketch “Wooden church in Plyos at the last rays of the sun.” A sketch of the canvas “Above Eternal Peace” called “Before the Storm” is also kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery.
Isaac Levitan Above Eternal Peace. 1894.
Helplessness, fragility and defenselessness - these are the main feelings that every viewer experiences before this work of the great artist.
In the painting “Above Eternal Peace,” lead clouds hang heavily over the earth. The wide lake opening behind the cliff looks gloomy and harsh. Levitan wrote that he felt “alone, face to face with a huge expanse of water that could simply kill...”.
There is a church on a small cliff, next to it there is a forgotten cemetery, a graveyard, the last refuge... Fragile trees bend under the strong wind, a thin, intermittent path leading to the church is a symbol of oblivion, abandonment, wear and tear.
The elements surrounding the cliff breathe with power. It seems that in one more moment the graveyard will disappear, the church will scatter across the world... Destruction seems inevitable.
The viewer hears the howling of the wind, feels the piercing cold, dampness, and hears the rumble of distant thunder.
In the distance you can see a deserted island, which is rapidly “swimming away” from the cliff. It seems that the island takes with it the souls of the dead, so that eternity absorbs the remnant of the human spirit, the very memories of the departed people.
Human life is insignificant, fleeting and meaningless... The huge space covered by the artist’s gaze presses on the viewer. Sharp feeling The viewer experiences loneliness and defenselessness before this eternal peace, which people are afraid to even think about.
The eternal question is what is there, beyond the threshold of eternity, tormenting the author, but he does not find an answer, leaving this search to the viewer.
In an amazing way, the small dome of the church resists the full power of the elements. It is directed strictly upward, and its color, merging with the metallic tones of the sky, creates a feeling of unshakability and strength.
The painting was released at the moment of greatest flowering of the artist’s talent. That is why his idea, philosophical depth, and the refined skill with which this canvas was painted so amazed his contemporaries and amazes his descendants. The content of this picture will be relevant for all generations.
And in its essence it is his spiritual testament, his creative program and the most complete philosophical attitude of the artist to the world and people. Russian poets and musicians admired the work. It served as an impetus for the creation of many musical, poetic and literary works.
OVER ETERNAL REST
Spreading your hand
dark bushes,
I didn’t even find the smell of raspberries,
But I found grave crosses
When I went to the raspberry farm for the barns...
It's fantastically quiet there in the dark,
It's lonely, scary and damp there,
The daisies there don’t seem to be the same -
Like creatures of another world.
And so in the fog of muddy water
The cemetery stood silent and deaf,
Everything was so mortal and holy,
That there will be no peace for me until the end.
And this sadness, and the holiness of former years
I loved so much in the darkness of my native land,
That I wanted to fall and die
And hug daisies while dying...
Let me go beyond a thousand lands
Takes away life! Let it carry me
Throughout the land there is hope and blizzard,
Which someone can't stand anymore!
When will I sense the proximity of a funeral?
I'll come here, where the white daisies are,
Where is every mortal
buried holy
In the same white sorrowful shirt...
Rubtsov Nikolay
Text with
Other articles about Levitan.
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Reviews
Thank you for such interesting material. This is the first time I have read so many new and interesting things, although the material is about Russians and foreign artists I've been collecting for a long time. I will come back and read more often.
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1894 150 x 206 cm. Oil on canvas.
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Description of the painting by Levitan I.I. "Above Eternal Peace"
Isaac Levitan’s painting “Above Eternal Peace” is not only one of the master’s most famous works, but also the most philosophically filled and deep.
The work was carried out in the Tver province, near the city of Vyshny Volochek, and the picturesque church itself was transferred to the canvas from a previously created sketch on Ples.
Levitan himself had a special attitude towards this picture; there is even evidence that the entire period that he spent at work, the master asked his dear friend Sofya Kuvshinnikova to play Beethoven’s Heroic Symphony.
So, let's move on to the description. At first, you can’t take your eyes off the wide expanses of water, which cover almost half of the picture; only later does the eye notice a small wooden church and crosses lopsided from time to time - and this is where the whole deep meaning, laid down by the author.
Heavy clouds hang over expanses of water, a gusty wind shakes the trees - all this evokes thoughts about the frailty and fleetingness of life, loneliness and transience, the meaning of existence and human purpose.
“Above Eternal Peace” touches on eternal thoughts about God, nature, the world, and oneself. One of the artists' closest friends called the painting a requiem for himself. Levitan will never create such a piercing creation again.
Despite the philosophical grandiose program of the picture, it is imbued with love for the great beauty of nature, native spaces, and the Motherland. The Motherland, which drove the master from his beloved Moscow because of his Jewish origin, the Motherland, which considered Levitan’s favorite genre of landscape to be secondary, the Motherland, which did not fully appreciate his outstanding unique talent - all the same, Levitan continued to love it, praise it in his work, and not It’s no wonder that the picture presented is considered the “most Russian” of all those painted.
The best paintings by Levitan I.I.
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Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy was born on May 27, 1837 in the city of Ostrogozhsk, Voronezh region. He graduated from the Ostrogozh School in 1839. At the same time, the father of the future artist, who served as a clerk in the Duma, died. Kramskoy also worked as a clerk, an intermediary in amicable land surveying. Kramskoy’s talent appeared already in early years. Photographer Aleksandrovsky drew attention to the boy. Soon Kramskoy entered his service as a retoucher. |
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Isaac Levitan.
Over eternal peace.
1894.
Canvas, oil. 150 x 206.
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
“Above Eternal Peace” is the third among the paintings of a unique dramatic trilogy created by Levitan in the first half of the 1890s. - (along with the paintings “At the Pool” and “Vladimirka”).
For the first time in the master’s painting, in addition to the poetic beauty of eternal nature, one can feel a philosophical attitude towards the frailty of human existence. Under swirling leaden-purple clouds, on the steep and deserted shore of a huge lake stretching to the very horizon, stands a dilapidated wooden church.
Behind it, a few trees bending under sharp gusts of wind cover a dull graveyard. And there is not a soul around, and only the dim light in the church window gives a ghostly hope of salvation.
It is no coincidence that the artist chose such a perspective to display the image. The picture is full of feelings of deep melancholy, powerlessness and loneliness, but the author’s point of view is very expressive, which directs the viewer upward, towards the cold air currents.
“Above Eternal Peace” is one of Levitan’s most significant works, about which he himself wrote in a letter to Pavel Tretyakov:
“I’m all in it.
With all my psyche,
with all its content..."
Levitan painted this picture to the sounds of the Funeral March from Beethoven's "Eroic Symphony". It was to such solemn and sad music that the work was born, which one of the artist’s friends called “a requiem to himself.”
Download Symphony No. 3 "Heroic". free on player.com
Sergey Yesenin.
Tears
“The more I saw and spoke with the amazingly sincere, simple, thoughtfully kind Levitan, the more I looked at his deeply poetic landscapes, the more I began to understand and appreciate... great feeling and poetry in art...
I realized that you don't need to copy objects and painstakingly paint them to make them seem as impressive as possible - this is not art.
I realized that in any art the most important thing is feeling and spirit - that verb with which the prophet was commanded to burn the hearts of people. That this verb can sound in paint, in line, and in gesture - as in speech.
From these new impressions I drew the appropriate conclusions for my own work in the theater."
(F.I. Chaliapin).
...Levitan's paintings caused the same pain as memories of a terribly distant, but always tempting childhood.
Levitan was an artist of sad landscapes. The landscape is always sad when a person is sad. For centuries, Russian literature and painting spoke of a boring sky, skinny fields, and lopsided huts. "Russia. poor Russia, your black huts are to me, your songs are windy to me, like the first tears of love."
From generation to generation, man looked at nature with eyes clouded from hunger. She seemed to him as bitter as his fate, like a crust of black wet bread. To a hungry person, even the brilliant sky of the tropics will seem inhospitable.
This is how a stable poison of despondency was developed. He muffled everything, deprived the colors of their light, play, and elegance. The gentle, varied nature of Russia has been slandered for hundreds of years, considered tearful and gloomy.
Artists and writers have lied to her without realizing it.
Levitan was a native of a ghetto, deprived of rights and a future, a native of the Western region - a country of small towns, consumptive artisans, black synagogues, cramped conditions and poverty...
Levitan's paintings require slow viewing. They are not overwhelming to the eye. They are modest and precise, like Chekhov's stories; but the longer you look at them, the sweeter the silence of provincial towns, familiar rivers and country roads becomes...
Levitan saw the beauty of the rains and created his famous “rainy works”: “After the Rain” and “Above Eternal Peace”...
In the painting “Above Eternal Peace” the poetry of a stormy day is expressed with even greater force. The painting was painted on the shore of Lake Udomli in the Tver province.
From the slope, where dark birch trees bend under the gusty wind and a rotten log church stands among these birches, the distance of a remote river, meadows darkened by bad weather, and a huge cloudy sky opens up. Heavy clouds, filled with cold moisture, hang above the ground. Slanting sheets of rain cover the open spaces.
None of the artists before Levitan conveyed with such sad force the immeasurable distances of Russian bad weather. It is so calm and solemn that it feels like greatness.
Konstantin Paustovsky. "Isaac Levitan."
One of the most interesting questions in cognitive science is what human genius is.
There are, for example, more or less generally accepted views on genius in the fields of mathematics, physics and other natural sciences.
But who is a painting genius? In our opinion, this is an artist who, with the help of images, symbols and signs, sometimes hidden, but easily captured by the collective unconscious, is able to have a profound impact on others.
This is what this small study is devoted to.
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
Publius Virgilius Maro
Hidden images and meanings of one of Levitan's most famous paintings
(Experiments in artistic investigation)
IN major museums world, and the Tretyakov Gallery is rightfully one of them, sometimes it is interesting to watch not so much the paintings as the visitors. More precisely, behind some patterns of their behavior when viewing exhibits. You can often notice how they, often in a hurry to see as many rooms as possible in one go, linger a little longer near this or that painting. This means that the picture “hooked” - sometimes at the level of the unconscious, which is often difficult to verbalize.
For example, in one of my favorite halls of the Tretyakov Gallery - the “Levitan Hall” - there are several such paintings. Paintings in which the amazing landscape artist managed to encrypt his message at the level of direct appeal to the collective archetypal unconscious - at the level of signs, images and symbols.
Let's look at one of his most famous paintings, “Above Eternal Peace.”
Over eternal peace. 1894 Oil on canvas. 150 x 206. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Here is how it is described on the Tretyakov Gallery website:
“The image of Russian nature, devoid of bright colors and contrasts, is endowed with heroic features in this landscape. The artist contemplates the world as if from a bird's eye view. A panorama of the natural elements unfolds majestically before his gaze...”
"The Search for Large Images. 1892-1894." The work of I. Levitan in the first half of the 1890s is distinguished by a variety of themes, motifs, synthetic images, and a rich arsenal artistic means. One of the central sections of the exhibition includes the generally recognized masterpieces of the master, the monumental paintings “At the Pool” (1892), “Vladimirka” (1892), “Above Eternal Peace” (1894, all - Tretyakov Gallery). They reveal a philosophical disposition and a dramatic inner world the artist, his reflections on the frailty of human existence in the face of eternity. (from materials for the exhibition “ISAAC LEVITAN. To the 150th anniversary of his birth”, 2010-2011, (http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/ru/calendar/exhibitions/exhibitions2160/)
And perhaps the last quote:
“1892 - creates the famous gloomy trilogy - “Vladimirka”, “At the Pool”, “Above Eternal Peace.” (http://isaak-levitan.ru/hrono.php)
We are absolutely not ready to agree with the last statement. Maybe it will seem clean subjective opinion, but at least two paintings from this “trilogy” never made a “dark impression,” which we will try to show with the example of the painting “Eternal Peace.”
Let's start our little research together.
First, a few preliminary remarks that we will need later to confirm our conclusions (even the smallest details will be important here).
First: Water
It is worth recalling that, according to the prevailing opinion of art historians, the painting depicts an imaginary place, compiled from impressions of the Volga in the area of the city of Plyos and Lake Udomlya. The Volga near Plyos is quite wide, and flows mainly from west to east (until Yuryevets, where it turns south). The width of the Volga in the Plyos area is more than half a kilometer. There are islands upstream on the river, and its width there is already more than one and a half kilometers.
It is believed that Levitan began working on Lake Udomlya, which is located not far from Vyshny Volochek. You can imagine what the lake was like at that time from the landscapes of the artist Vitold Kaetanovich Byalynitsky-Biruli:
An hour of silence. Lake Udomlya. 1911
Church on Lake Udomelsky. 1910
Modern view of the lake
Plyos
Second: Temple
It is also believed that Levitan depicted in the picture a different church from the one that actually stood on the shore of the lake (see above). He took as a model a church from the city of Plyos (the wooden Church of Peter and Paul of the 16th century, burned down in 1903):
Sketch “Wooden church in Plyos in the last rays of the sun”, 1988, private collection, Moscow (http://isaak-levitan.ru/good/18.php)
Currently, in the city of Plyos, on the so-called “Mount Levitan”, instead of a burnt church, there is a very similar wooden Church of the Resurrection. It is also ancient, and was moved from the village of Bilyukova in the same Ivanovo region. The church, in addition to its official name, received a second, also almost “official” name among the people - “Above Eternal Peace” - for reasons that are quite understandable and worthy of respect (http://stage1.10russia.ru/sights/1/2297, http://www.volga-ples.ru/attractions/9.php). True, the church once had its own bell tower.
Resurrection Church in the village of Bilyukovo (pre-revolutionary photo)
Modern photographs of the Church “Above Eternal Peace”
Let's travel for a while to one of the most beautiful places in the world, located on the Mediterranean Sea. This is the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. There are two small islands in the bay - the island of St. George and the island of Gospa od Skrpela.
Island of St. George. Benedictine Abbey.
Island of Gospa od Skrpela. Orthodox Church of Our Lady of the Rock.
More detailed information can be found, for example, here:
Let's compare these two islands:
Here, as nowhere else in the world, we clearly see that the altars (and bell towers) of Catholic and Orthodox churches located exactly the opposite way in their East-West orientation).
Why did we need this? Here's why:
Buildings that are quite strictly oriented along the horizon include churches, mosques, and synagogues.
Altars and chapels of Christian and Lutheran churches face east, bell towers face west.
The altars of Catholic churches are located on the western side.
The lowered edge of the lower crossbar of the cross on the dome Orthodox Church facing south, raised - to the north.
Why? Here is one explanation:
“Why do churches always face the east with their altars? The Old Testament tabernacle faced its holy of holies to the west and the door leading to the sanctuary to the east, as a sign that believers Old Testament They were still awaiting the coming of the promised Messiah, like the East from above. We, Christians, confess that our Savior Jesus Christ has already come into the world, and therefore we turn our churches with our altar, and ourselves in our prayers, facing the east as the land of light, where the Sun of Truth, our Savior, resides. In the east, in the land of Judea, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we should remember during worship, was born, and lived, and suffered for our salvation. There, in the east, was the blessed home of the first people.” (Priest I. Svyatoslavsky. “Notes for reading about the temple,” M., 1889. Quote from MDS 31-9.2003, volume 1, p. 55)
And here is a brief visual rule for installing crosses (including on graves):
Third: Thunderstorm
Levitan. Before the storm. 1890 Study. Canvas, oil. 26.2x35.8 cm. Smolensk Regional Museum of Fine and Fine Arts applied arts, Smolensk
Undoubtedly, Levitan was not just an outstanding, but a brilliant landscape painter. Therefore, as we see in this sketch, creating a feeling of anxiety when a formidable element approaches would not have been difficult for him.
However, if we go into the next room, we will see the following picture:
Dubovskoy N.N., It’s quiet. 1890
When we look at Levitan’s sketch and the adjacent painting by Dubovsky, we are born with a very definite internal state anxiety and understanding that soon there will be a thunderstorm - real, strong and sweeping away everything in its path. Since we have all been caught in a thunderstorm, and more than once, it is impossible to make a mistake in this.
And lastly: Sketch
Levitan. Sketch for the painting “Above Eternal Peace”
As we can see, the original concept of the painting was somewhat different.
Now we have everything we need to begin our little investigation.
Hypothesis
First of all, we would immediately like to put forward a hypothesis, which we are going to further prove.
Hypothesis: Levitan’s painting “Above Eternal Peace” is unfair to call the “dark” period of the creative work of the brilliant Russian artist. In fact, the picture is more than optimistic.
This is confirmed, among other things, by the fact that, as we will show below, while working on the painting, he radically revised its concept and symbolism, changing them to the opposite.
However, this also applies to the painting “At the Pool”, in which there is even more symbolism and hidden images.
Study of the picture and proof of the hypothesis
A short introduction. The author of this work was once a national champion in sports trips, in which he served as a navigator who constantly worked with maps. In addition, he was also a professional military man, and therefore, purely automatically, out of habit, he immediately tied himself to the terrain to determine his location.
This is precisely what explains the fact that, not being an art critic and not belonging to the world of artists, he, nevertheless, took it upon himself to interpret from a not entirely unusual point of view to everyone famous painting(sometimes from the outside you can see small details missed by specialists who (quite naturally) pay more attention to the artistic aspects of the paintings and the features of the creativity/biographies of their authors).
In addition, it also helped that at Levitan’s anniversary exhibition in 2011 in the new building of the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, both the painting itself and a sketch from the private collection “Wooden Church in Plyos in the Last Rays of the Sun” were nearby. A lucky coincidence.
It could be determined, for example, by the flow of the river and by the Coriolis forces in the northern hemisphere (by the difference in the steepness of the left and right banks). However, in this case we see that the artist depicted both banks as gentle. Let’s compare, for example, with the banks in another painting by Levitan:
Evening. Golden Ples, 1889
But this is unlikely to succeed also because even if this is the Volga in the Plyos area, then, as we mentioned earlier, it flows there from west to east.
Note: However, the picture gives a purely subjective feeling water movement , which does not happen on the lake. At the same time, the movement is directed towards the viewer, which is again characteristic of the flow of the Volga just in the Plyos area.
However, we see that the banks will not help us here. We need to look for another clue.
And she is. Church.
The location of the church will help us - or rather, the location of its altar and cross on the dome.
Let's look a little closer.
First stroke of the brush: Temple
And here we are faced with the first riddle, even a secret.
The lower crossbar of the cross on the dome faces the right end upward, that is, to the North. Therefore, we stand from the East and look to the West.
But if you look closely, you can see how the artist rewrote the cross, which is visible even to the naked eye.
Having become interested in this, I had to take a closer look at the sketch. Let's do this too:
As we can see, in the sketch Levitan did not pay much attention to the accurate depiction of the cross. Moreover, he is not spelled out carefully, and one can even assume that he is looking in the other direction (if the sun is on the right, and not its reflections).
But if we look carefully, we will see the entrance door to the temple facing us. That is, with reverse side there is an altar facing East.
And the church in the main picture is turned in the other direction. Moreover, it was deployed later, and we will see this right now.
How? We see a path that can only lead to the entrance to the church:
Second stroke of the brush: Road
And since we already know what we should look for, it won’t be too difficult. If the artist changed the concept of the painting, then he had to change the direction of the path, which in the first version should have turned to the left earlier. Let's take a closer look:
Exactly. We guessed right. It can be seen that there used to be a path ( yellow) went to the left much earlier, and traces of this remained in the picture - the remains of yellow paint are visible on the left:
But then the artist painted over the first path (but not completely, as if leaving us a hint) - directing it with a few light strokes of this same yellow paint further, to the opposite side of the temple..
And finally,
Third stroke of the brush: Light
And now Levitan, without specially drawing the altar window (as can be seen in the photographs above), “cuts through” it with red-yellow light coming from inside the altar:
That is, there is a living person in the altar, and this person (priest? monk?) serves the evening service. And, most likely, one, because the path is clearly little traveled.
What remains for the artist to “finish”? Block the altar area with thickets (in the sketch, as we saw, the trees were located on both sides of the church).
And draw an abandoned cemetery:
Where, as we see, three six-pointed crosses are located similar to the cross on the dome, and the other three are located in the opposite direction, as if another hint from the artist. Moreover, one of these last crosses is written as if “casually”, and the remaining two (the ones on the far right near the trees) are written quite thoroughly and clearly.
Brief conclusions
Levitan seems to constantly give us clues about exactly how he changed the concept of his painting. What he wanted to do and what happened in the end.
It should be remembered that the artist had a deep knowledge of Orthodoxy, its ritual part and dogma. Therefore, he could not be mistaken about the location (orientation) of the church, even if it was in a place he himself invented.
It turns out that when the original plan was made, the temple looked in a completely different direction, and then it was morning before the storm . Then the clouds really should have been thunderous (compare with the sketch by Levitan himself described above and the neighboring painting by Dubovsky).
But in the process of work, Levitan decided to change everything exactly the opposite. That is, he depicted it in the final version of the painting evening . And now this is a common situation for the second half of the day, when against the background of the setting sun in the west, the clouds become darker, and the wind rises near the water, characteristic of the time of sunrise and sunset.
Note: the exact time can be determined from the picture, but we don’t really need this in this particular case.
We deliberately did not analyze other strong archetypal images here. For example, very briefly we can only mention the triad “Earth-Man-Sky”, which Levitan introduces into his picture by indicating the presence of a person in it (light in the altar). As a true landscape painter, he cannot depict people, but with a brilliant, simple stroke of red paint, he makes us literally physically see the Man present right in the middle between Earth and Heaven. The symbol of triadity is a symbol of unification, while dualism is always opposition. And thanks to this seemingly insignificant detail, the picture is transformed. Let's try to mentally block out this light, and everything will instantly go out. We return the light - and nature becomes spiritualized, because at this late hour a person is present in this world and prays for it.
That is why this picture unconsciously does not at all produce the gloomy impression that we are told about. It is quite bright, optimistic, full of symbols, signs and hidden clues.
We will never know whether Levitan did this on purpose or not. Given his talent, he could well have unconsciously broken through to such a high level of creativity. This makes the impact of the painting on the viewer even stronger.
Easily, as if playfully, the genius of the Russian landscape changed Space and, thereby, Time in his painting. A few strokes of the brush.
P.S. Many thanks to the caretakers of the Tretyakov Gallery, who allowed us to photograph Levitan’s paintings at the exhibition in exchange for a promise to write and publish an article. I am keeping my promise.
Moscow
2011-2015
©Mitrofanov A.N.
Contacts for suggestions and comments:
[email protected]
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Work on the painting took place in the summer of 1893 on Lake Udomlya, near Vyshny Volochok. Regarding the acquisition of the painting, I.I. Levitan wrote to P.M. Tretyakov on May 18, 1894: “I am so incredibly happy that my work will come to you again, that since yesterday I have been in some kind of ecstasy. And this, in fact, is surprising , since you have enough of my things, but this last one came to you, it touches me so much because I am all in it, with all my psyche, with all my content..."
In a private collection in Moscow there is a sketch “Wooden church in Plyos at the last rays of the sun”, from which the church in the picture was painted. According to A.P. Langovoy, it previously belonged to P.M. Tretyakov. While Levitan was working on the painting, the artist took a sketch from the gallery, after which “...Pavel Mikhailovich told Levitan that he no longer needed the sketch, and offered to take it back, replacing it with another of his choice.”
A sketch of a painting called “Before the Storm” (paper, graphite pencil) is in the State Tretyakov Gallery.
Isaac Levitan's painting "Above Eternal Peace" is imbued with deep philosophy and reflections on human destiny.
This painting occupies a special place in the artist’s work. This is not only a philosophical landscape painting. Here Levitan sought to express his inner state. “...I am all in it with all my psyche, with all my content...” he wrote.
Levitan was always excited by the vast expanse of water. He wrote that he felt “alone, face to face with a huge expanse of water that could simply kill...” On the Volga, the artist overcame this feeling. In the painting “Above Eternal Peace,” a huge expanse of water and a heavy sky put pressure on a person, awakening the thought of the insignificance and transience of life. This is one of the most tragic landscapes in world art. Somewhere below, at the edge of a flooded lake on the Jurassic River, a wooden church is nestled, next to it is a cemetery with rickety crosses. Desertion, the wind whistles over the heaving lake. Certain associations arise: the lake, the sky with the complex play of light and clouds are perceived as a huge, harsh, eternally existing world. Human life like a small island visible in the distance, which could be flooded at any moment. Man is powerless before the all-powerful and powerful nature; he is alone in this world, like a weak light in the window of a church.
I am so incredibly happy with the knowledge that my latest work will again reach you, that since yesterday I have been in some kind of ecstasy. And this, in fact, is surprising, since you have enough of my things, but the fact that this last one came to you touches me so much because I am completely in it, with all my psyche, with all my content, and it brings me to tears it would hurt if she passed your colossal...
From Levitan’s letter to P.M. Tretyakov dated May 18, 1894
http://www.art-catalog.ru/picture.php?id_picture=3
Above Eternal Peace is one of Levitan’s darkest, and at the same time, significant works, about which he himself wrote in a letter to Pavel Tretyakov: “I am all in it. With all my psyche, with all my content...” Levitan painted this picture to the sounds of the Funeral March from Beethoven's "Eroic Symphony". It was to such solemn and sad music that the work was born, which one of the artist’s friends called “a requiem to himself.”
“None of the artists before Levitan conveyed with such sad force the immeasurable expanses of Russian bad weather. It is so calm and solemn that it feels like greatness. Autumn removed the rich colors from the forests, from the fields, from all of nature, washed away the greenery with rains. The groves became through-and-through. Dark colors summers gave way to timid gold, purple and silver. Levitan, like Pushkin and Tyutchev and many others, waited for autumn as the most precious and fleeting time of the year."(K. Paustovsky)