Čiurlionis: pilkoji valanda

ENHow can be a world of a “grey hour” entered, when the same grey hour is playing an introductory role? The entrances into the entrances do not deepen mostly an understanding, but just withdraw from the essence of the thing, which, in this case, can be the explanation of the creation of M. K. Čiurlionis. How can such notions, like the grey hour, a shadow, twilight, dusk in Polish language “szara godzina” solve for the explanation? However, the short hours, following the days, have repeatedly opened the wonderful artistical worlds. Here is this real, though practically forgotten way into the world of the fantasy, an entryway to the art. By paying attention to this period, which belongs already to the past, together with his people, who took part in the ceremonies of the grey hour, we will be able to raise ourselves from the twilight up to the spaces of the miscellaneous creations. Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, which as a painter debuted with his Nocturne in fis-moll and started his carrier as the painter with the pictures in the sulky spirit, has been also feeling this strange attraction of the “grey hour”. This attrac ¬tion has always been together - in Druskininkai, Palanga, Warsaw, Leipzig, St. Petersburg... Later, in one of his letters from St. Petersburg to Sofija Kymantaitė, who already become Čiurlionienė, he promised her to play every grey hour, “to read together the nicest poems, and in winter, sitting near a huge fireplace, to speak about the past and the future things, discuss togethe the new performances of the scene, prepare their common life for a sacrifi¬ce, which will burn into the “Eternal, Infinite, Omnipotent Altar of Art”. The grey hour was for Čiurlionis like a peculiar bridge between a reality and an image, the reality and a spirit and especially between the nearest people and the art.Thus, leaving the home of Čiurlionis, we are finding ourselves in the temple, which should have been called not only the temple, as not only a winter, but also broadly speaking, as the temple of art. This is a very natural conclusion - a dreaming is a very important property of the grey hour. Mikalojus Konstantinas has sometimes improvised, playing piano and after, when it has been darkening, was going for a walk and for thinking. This “role of shadow” is characteristical not only for the house of Čiurlionis, but also for all other houses of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Still primarily, in the hours of dusk, a strong religious, firstly Christian background is subsistent, like hiding in the bottom layers of the oddments of the archaic faiths. By giving the evening worships in the churches of East and West, the earthly happenings are being assigned to the history of the saviour and the eternity. Thus, the community aspects of these worships become important. In the remarks of a famous painter and a critic Stanislaw Witkiewicz of the year 1901 the grey hour is no longer a sacral source, but an atavistic forth of an unknown nature, inciting the people to be together in the presence of the night dangers. This is a result of nature spiritualization and a secularization of the spirituality of the 19th century. There is no doubt, that the grey hour has been dependent on these processes. Čiurlionis has been dependent on these processes as well. Most believable, that Čiurlionis has taken part in his childhood at the evening worships and the evenings of the accumulation in the church as well as at home. Later being in Warsaw he was often together with Maria Morawskaite in the time of the dusk running to the Cathedral of St. Jan and still not for praying, but for listening to the music of organs and yearning for something greater. Finally, Čiurlionis intended, with the help of his wife, to build a shrine of the national culture and art.Thus, he was following the steps of the romantics to the art temple of the neo-romanlics and the modernists, where, as an artist, he found a spiritual solitude of the Universe, especially felt in the grey hours.