Matisse (Матисс)
by Alexander Ilichevsky
Synopsis
Not a direct reference to the well known French painter, Ilichevsky's novel follows the life of 35 year old Leonid Korolev who dreams of Henri Matisse's pictures when roaming the gloomy ins and outs of the Moscow underground. One day he suddenly realises that he can't live in this mathematically organised space anymore and affects his own heroic downshifting – he decides to go underground. He sleeps in cellars, descends into secret metro tunnels and makes friends with the homeless. He sees reality as it is on reeking underside and in doing so gets to grips with metaphysical mysteries, without which life for anyone of the Russian intelligentsia would be so boring.
Korolev's fate cannot be happy by definition, just as a psychological novel cannot be dynamic and easy reading. Ilichevsky's “Matisse” is, at the same time, an aesthetically florid and socially cutting novel, torturously searching for the meaning of life and resulting in a bright outcome. The book shows that flight from the hum-drum routine of everyday life can be akin to a work of art – in the genre of an urban tragedy.