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Seeking the Soul

The story of the Circassian chief is recounted in two major works on Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, pp.747-8, and Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk, p. xiii, from which the account posted earlier is taken nearly verbatim.

It is that it is the Circassian chief’s story--and not Leo Tolstoy’s--that gives the story its power, that knowledge of Lincoln had reached such a remote corner of the world.  But this was Tolstoy’s take on Lincoln:

“This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become.  Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes?  He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character…Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world.” (Goodwin, 748)

How did America produce an Abraham Lincoln?  Why has China never? 

Seeking the Soul

                                                            

"His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America."

Seeking the Soul

A year before he died, Leo Tolstoy told the following story:

“Once while travelling in the Caucasus, I happened to be the guest of a Caucasian chief of the Circassians, who, living far away from civilized life in the mountains, had but a fragmentary and childish comprehension of the world and its history.  The fingers of civilization had never reached him nor his tribe, and all life beyond his native valleys were a dark mystery.”

Tolstoy told them of the industries and inventions of the outside world.  When he turned to the subject of warriors and generals and statesmen, the chief said, “Wait a moment, I want my neighbors and my sons to listen to you.”

“He soon returned, Tolstoy said, “with a score of wild looking riders and those sons of the wilderness sat around me on the floor and gazed at me as if hungering for knowledge.  I spoke at first of our Czars and of their victories; then I spoke of the greatest military leaders.  My talk seemed to impress them deeply.  The story of Napoleon was so interesting to them that I had to tell them every detail, as, for instance, how his hands looked, how tall he was, who made his guns and pistols and the color of his horse.  It was very difficult to satisfy them and to meet their point of view, but I did my best.” 

When Tolstoy finished, the chief lifted his hand.  “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world,” he said gravely.  “We want to know something about him.  He was a hero.  He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were as strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses.  The angels appeared to his mother and predicted that the son whom she would conceive would become the greatest the stars had ever seen.  He was so great that he even forgave the crimes of his greatest enemies and shook brotherly hands with those who had plotted against his life." 

Above is Megan a painting by Weimin Mo.  Below is the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

                                                        

Compare the eyes, the "windows to the soul," in the two paintings.  I would recognize Megan if I saw her on the street.  I would not recognize Lisa del Giocondo.

It is often said that artists have a "sixth sense," that they can see what we cannot.  The Impressionists abstracted slightly away from the realism of the Renaissance.  That is apparent to us now but at the time it was not a slight change. It was a radical departure.  We can see now that we did begin, in the 19th century, to experience--see-- the world the way that Monet, et al showed us: The world had sped up as the Industrial Age began, it became a blur of light and shadow and outlines and shapes, and that's the way that the Impressionists painted it:

                                             Monet, St. Lazare

                                         Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand-Jatte.

                                          Pissaro

                                                     Degas, The Absinthe Drinker.

Shunned in their own time, the Impressionists have now become the most popular artists in the world.

Weimin Mo paints in the style of the Impressionists but with spectacular verisimilitude. He has a sixth sense for his portrait models' souls.  It's all about the eyes: the models', and Mr. Mo's.

                                                    Weimin Mo, Elyssa.