Our dear readers, we present you the shortest retelling of the story of N.V. Gogol “Portrait”. We strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the source. You can find a detailed analysis of the story in chapters here, and an essay on the theme “The image of St. Petersburg in the story of N.V. Gogol's "Portrait" here.
Part I
The main character of the story is a young and very poor artist Chartkov. With the last money, he buys a rather strange picture in a St. Petersburg art shop - a portrait depicting an old Asian man with surprisingly magnetic eyes and taking him home.
At night, Chartkov had a dream that the old man came to life from the picture and seemed to come out of the picture with bags of money, and the artist imperceptibly grabbed one of these bags with a thousand red hearts, and then woke up. He looks around and realizes that it was a dream.
After that, the owner of the house with a quarterly overseer comes to the artist and demand payment for the rented apartment in which Chartkov lives. But the young man has no money. Then the Quarterly Overseer begins to inspect the artist’s paintings and accidentally breaks the frame with a portrait of an old man. A bag with a thousand red hearts falls out of it, exactly the same as in a young man’s dream. There is no limit to the joy of Chartkov. He moves to another apartment, whirls, goes to theaters, shops, brothels and begins a new life. Chartkov becomes a young and popular secular artist. He paints to order, he has rich and well-known clients, and he is incredibly rich, but at the same time he is degrading internally - becoming a snob, a formalist and proud.
He is trying to find his former inspiration and cannot. He realizes that he craves only money and falls into a real “dream of reason”, only for a moment before realizing all his lost gift, and mourns his lost abilities for true beauty.
After the mind completely leaves him: driven by anger and envy of other artists, he buys the most beautiful paintings, and then vomits and burns them. Further, the artist falls ill with consumption and dies in terrible agony.
Part II
The property, which the late Chartkov managed to accumulate, goes under the hammer at auction. A difficult lawsuit unfolds for the same portrait of an old man - this work is so attractive and mysterious.
Among all those who want to buy a picture, one young man stands out who claims to have some exclusive rights to it and tells such a story to all bidders.
It turns out that the author of this portrait is the father of the narrator. He painted this picture many years ago, and depicts an old moneylender who lived in St. Petersburg Kolomna. This money-lender was shrouded in very bad fame - his money, according to rumors, brought misfortune. After the death of the moneylender, the picture passes into the possession of the artist. He notes that the most unkind and undesirable events begin to occur in his life and suspects the influence of an ominous portrait in this. He gives it to his friend, but he also soon notices something was wrong and gives it to his nephew, and he sells himself to the market almost for nothing. After that, the traces of the portrait are lost, and the young man is sure that this is only because all its owners felt the negative energy emanating from this canvas - as if the very soul of the old money-lender possessed it. Everyone who owned the picture began to feel anger, fear, envy, pride, began to suffer from insomnia, and even went crazy.
The artist who painted the portrait, after he realized his sin, went to the monks. He spent many years in prayers, asking for forgiveness from higher powers for his deed. He asks his son to find and destroy the portrait that came out from under his brush.
The story ends unexpectedly: the auction listeners are so amazed at the young man’s story that they don’t notice how someone steals a portrait right from the audience. Thus, evil remains in our world.
Viscount de Brazhelon
