The exhibition “The Man Who Was Chesterton”, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the writer, passionate critic of society and master of paradoxes, offers a look at his work in all its diversity. It is no coincidence that the name is a reference to one of the author’s most famous novels of philosophical parables, “The Man Who Was Thursday”, in which detectives infiltrate an anarchist cell and each character is named after the day of the week. The exhibition takes as its basis the composition of the novel: each of the seven rooms represents a separate aspect of Chesterton’s work: Monday is a journalist, Tuesday is a novelist and Friday is a book illustrator and author of caricatures.
“Our exhibition is paradoxical, just like Chesterton’s work,” says exhibition curator Timur Khairulin. “We began our conversation about the writer with Alexander Tairov’s stage production of the novel “The Man Who Was Thursday.” Unexpectedly interpreting the writer’s work as eccentric and almost close to the ideas of the revolution, it was one of the first avant-garde productions in which the principles of constructivist theatre were applied. The paradox is that an author like Chesterton, who was an example of healthy English conservatism, is a Catholic, a defender of order, sanity, he was perceived by our artists of that time as one of their own, but when they heard about him, for example, that he actively supports the Orthodox Church, they were disappointed. In Soviet Russia they did not publish him for a long time.”
The organizers offer to completely lose oneself in the writer’s texts, implying that Chesterton’s biography is the sum of his works. By the way, Chesterton himself, being one of the most popular authors in Great Britain, did not consider himself a writer, but preferred to be called a journalist: “I have never taken my novels and stories seriously and I do not consider myself, in essence, a writer.” So we begin our acquaintance with him with political caricatures that literally scream on the pages of a wide variety of newspapers: Chesterton changed ideological sides more than once, publishing in one newspaper then in another. Here it would be useful to note that 7 thousand journalistic essays occupy 10 volumes of the 37-volume collection of his works.
The next room immerses the viewer in detective stories about Father Brown. We are talking here about the non-standard “device” of Chesterton’s detectives. The author used paradox as a tool to find out the truth. You can try to understand how it worked, how the method of a Catholic priest differs from the method of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, and also solve a couple of crimes together with Father Brown right at the exhibition. Contemporary artists Igor Oleynikov and Pyotr Lyubaev will help you delve deeper into the investigation. Oleinikov’s works seem to be presented here for the first time to a wide audience, as they were written privately for the Arbour publishing group and have not been shown to the public until now.
Pyotr Lyubaev’s graphics for Chesterton’s detective stories. Photo by: Goslitmuseum
Next we meet Chesterton, a passionate polemicist. Before us is his journalistic battle with his favourite opponent – Bernard Shaw, with whom he was friends, but constantly disagreed. The disputes with him were published in separate publications.
The story about Chesterton ends with an ascetic space – this part is dedicated to the religious and philosophical aspects of his work. “When Chesterton passed away, a letter of condolence arrived from the Vatican to London, which included information that Chesterton was being awarded the title of Defender of the Faith and in the Soviet years, for Russia, the writer became a window to the Christian world, through reading his religious works, many came to Orthodoxy,” said Khairulin.
Speaking of Russian readers, it is impossible not to mention the final part of the exhibition, where you will be able to meet the person who introduced Chesterton to us: we are talking about the translator Natalia Trauberg. It was she who translated his works and distributed them through samizdat, and also created the first Chesterton Society in Soviet Russia, whose president, paradoxically (Chestertonian?) as it may seem, was her cat, Innocent Cotton Grey (the grey cat Kesha).
In his essay “On Reading,” Chesterton wrote: “What we call ‘new ideas’ are often fragments of old ones. One must not think that this or that thought did not come into the minds of the great: it did come, and there were plenty of better thoughts there ready to give it a good beating.” And one cannot argue with that, even after 150 years.
Four quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton
1. “My country is either right or wrong” – that expression is not appropriate for a patriot. It is the same as saying: “My mother, whether drunk or sober.” Of course, a decent person will cover for his mother at all costs; but to behave as if she were completely indifferent is not in the spirit of one who understands something of the mystery of love. “In Defense of Patriotism”
2. Everything dead floats with the current; only the living can swim against the current. “Eternal Man”
3. Noble people are vertebrates: they are soft on top, hard on the inside. And today’s cowards are clams: they are hard on the outside, soft on the inside. “Prehistoric Station”
4. People lose their humanity if they are not sufficiently separated from each other, one might even say if they are not sufficiently alone. “Eternal Man”
