Painter’s Visions of Siberia in Literary Microforms. Aleksander Sochaczewski is Writing In Siberia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how Aleksander Sochaczewski’s literary miniatures, written in prose and making up the Siberian cycle, can be read through the lens of icon writing in religious painting. I argue that, using the example of an exile’s artistic biography, it is possible to demonstrate what it means for an atheist painter to write about Siberia (both in his paintings and in literary miniatures) in the same way as icons are written. Therefore, in my method of diagnosis and analysis, I utilize this theological expression immersed in the metaphysics of intimate and religious experience and personal contact with the material of the emerging portrait work. I evaluate Sochaczewski’s literary microforms from the perspective of a literary scholar, not an art historian. This perspective, therefore, is characterized by defining the rules of language, types of narrative, the way of diagnosing Siberia in words as a creative tool, and, finally, Sochaczewski’s stylistic diction and his perception and observation of Siberian scenes. One could say metaphorically and figuratively that Aleksander Sochaczewski, when writing, paints in language in such a way as to complement his most important way of seeing the world and creating it with a brush.