Creativity, Self-Expression, and Truth Theme Analysis

I am an observant Jew. Yes, of course, observant Jews do not paint crucifixions. As a matter of fact, observant Jews do not paint at all—in the way that I am painting. So strong words are being written and spoken about me, myths are being generated: I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.

Well, I am none of those things. And yet, in all honesty, I confess that my accusers are not altogether wrong: I am indeed, in some way, all of those things.

“Asher, are you drawing pretty things? Are you drawing sweet, pretty things?”

I was not drawing pretty things. I was drawing twisted shapes, swirling forms, in blacks and reds and grays. I did not respond.

“Asher, are you drawing birds and flowers and pretty things?”

“I can draw you birds and flowers, Mama.”

“You should draw pretty things, Asher.”

“Shall I draw you a bird, Mama?”

“You should make the world pretty, Asher. Make it sweet and pretty. It’s nice to live in a pretty world.”

“What do they all want from me?” I said to my mother.

“They want you to study Torah. A boy your age should be studying Torah.”

I went into my room and stood by the window, staring out at the melting snow. I did not hate studying. I had no strength for it. My drawing needed all my strength. Couldn’t they see that? What did they all want from me?

I came into Yudel Krinsky’s store one day in February.

“You are a scandal,” he said to me in his hoarse voice. “The world knows you are not studying Torah.” He fixed his bulging eyes on me. “Your father journeys through Europe bringing Jews back to Torah, and here his own son refuses to study Torah. Asher, you are a scandal.”

I heard her sigh. “I wish I knew what to do,” she said. “I hope the Ribbono Shel Olom will help me not to hurt your father. Look where it’s taken us, Asher. Your painting. It’s taken us to Jesus. And to the way they paint women. Painting is for goyim, Asher. Jews don’t draw and paint.”

“Chagall is a Jew.”

“Religious Jews, Asher. Torah Jews. Such Jews don’t draw and paint. What would the Rebbe say if he knew we were in the museum? God forbid the Rebbe should find out.”

I didn’t know what the Rebbe would say. It frightened me to think that the Rebbe might be angry.

“I wish I knew what to do,” my mother murmured. “I wish your father was home.”

“Now, between today and the middle of March is a long time. You will do something for me in that time. You will take a journey to the Museum of Modern Art, you will go up to the second floor, and you will look at a painting called Guernica, by Picasso. You will study this painting. You will memorize this painting. You will do whatever you feel you have to do in order to master this painting. Then you will call me in March, and we will meet, and talk, and work. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“It is in my nature to be blunt and honest. I shall ask you a question. You are entering the world of the goyim, Asher Lev. Do you know that? […] It is not only goyim. It is Christian goyim.”

“Yes.”

“You should better become a wagon driver,” he said, using the Yiddish term. “You should better become a water carrier.”

“You are entering a religion called painting. It has its fanatics and its rebels. And I will force you to master it. Do you hear me? No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it. Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it […] it is a tradition of goyim and pagans. Its values are goyisch and pagan. Its concepts are goyisch and pagan. Its way of life is goyisch and pagan. In the entire history of European art, there has not been a single religious Jew who was a great painter. Think carefully of what you are doing before you make your decision. I say this not only for the Rebbe but for myself as well. I do not want to spend time with you, Asher Lev, and then have you tell me you made a mistake.

I did not understand what had happened to bring on the idea […] I drew with a pen, working slowly, calmly, and with ease, the segment from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment of the boat beached on the Styx and Charon striking at his doomed passengers with an oar, forcing them onto the shores of torment and hell. I drew much of it from memory, but I wanted to be as accurate as I could, so I checked it repeatedly against a reproduction in a book I had purchased on Michelangelo. I drew the writhing twisting tormented bodies spilling from the boat. I drew the terror on the faces of the dead and the damned. I made all the faces his face, pimply, scrawny—eyes bulging, mouths open, shrieking in horror. I exaggerated the talons and painted ears of Charon; I darkened his face, bringing out the whites of his raging eyes. I folded the drawing and went to bed. […] He said nothing to me about the drawings. But he began to avoid me. His thin face would fill with dread whenever he caught me looking at him. I had the feeling he regarded me now as evil and malevolent, as a demonic and contaminating spawn of the Other Side.

Often in the early mornings, I came out of the house and walked across the dunes to the beach. The dunes were cool then from the night. I wore sandals and shorts and a shirt and had on my tefillin. Those mornings, the beach was my synagogue and the waves and gulls were audience to my prayers. I stood on the beach and felt wind-blown sprays of ocean on my face, and I prayed. And sometimes the words seemed more appropriate to this beach than to the synagogue on my street.

“Asher Lev, an artist who deceives himself is a fraud and a whore. You did that because you were ashamed. You did that because wearing payos did not fit your idea of an artist. Asher Lev, an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist. It is of no importance to me whether you wear your payos behind your ears or whether you cut off your hair entirely and go around bald. I am not a defender of payos. Great artists will not give a damn about your payos; they will only give a damn about your art. The artists who will care about your payos are not worth caring about. You want to cut off your payos, go ahead. But do not do it because you think it will make you more acceptable as an artist. Good night, Asher Lev.”

The nobleman was a despotic goy, a degenerate whose debaucheries grew wilder as he grew wealthier. The Jew, my mythic ancestor, made him wealthier. Serfs were on occasion slain by that nobleman during his long hours of drunken insanity, and once houses were set on fire by a wildly thrown torch and a village was burned. You see how a goy behaves, went the whispered word to the child. A Jew does not behave this way. But the Jew had made him wealthy, wondered the child. Is not the Jew also somehow to blame? The child had never given voice to that question. Now the man who had once been the child asked it again and wondered if the giving and the goodness and the journeys of that mythic ancestor might have been acts born in the memories of screams and burning flesh. A balance had to be given the world; the demonic had to be reshaped into meaning. Had a dream-haunted Jew spent the rest of his life sculpting form out of the horror of his private night?

Trapped between two realms of meaning, she had straddled both realms, quietly feeding and nourishing them both, and herself as well. I could only dimly perceive such an awesome act of will. But I could begin to feel her torment now as she waited by our living-room window for both her husband and her son. What did she think of as she stood by the window? Of the phone call that had informed my father of her brother’s death? Would she wait now in dread all the rest of her life, now for me, now for my father, now for us both—as she had once waited for me to return from a museum, as she had once waited for my father to return in a snowstorm? And I could understand her torment now; I could see her waiting endlessly with the fear that someone she loved would be brought to her dead. I could feel her anguish.

Asher Lev, Hasid. Asher Lev, painter. I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. […] The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. Art was demonic and divine. […] I was demonic and divine. Asher Lev, son of Aryeh and Rivkeh Lev, was the child of the Master of the Universe and the Other Side. Asher Lev paints good pictures and hurts people he loves. Then be a great painter, Asher Lev; that will be the only justification for all the pain you will cause. But as a great painter I will cause pain again if I must. Then become a greater painter.