The Satanic Cosmic Force 125
has been no time crueler than ours, yet we did not allow what is human
in man to perish.’ 76
In The Sistine Madonna Grossman does not mention Hiroshima (nor Nagasaki)
but focuses on the ever-escalating arms race instead, thereby precluding any
attempt to shift the blame for the global nuclear threat on one particular
nation or system. 77 This time, it is not a dictator, but an entire generation that
is about to avert its eyes from the gaze of the Sistine Madonna and embark
on a path of self-destruction, while the wounds of the recent war have not
yet healed. Significantly, 1954, the year when The Sistine Madonna was written, coincides with the appeal to Georgii Malenkov by a group of prominent Soviet nuclear physicists under the leadership of Igor’ Kurchatov to ban
testing of thermonuclear weapons, which spawned a short-lived revision of
Soviet nuclear policy. 78
In The Sistine Madonna, Grossman celebrates in an almost ostensibly optimistic vein the capacity of art to overcome the forces that aim at annihilating
the kindness embodied in Raphael’s Madonna. The painting prevails in view
of what is now termed the Holodomor, the Stalinist purges, and the Shoah. It
may, Grossman hopes, even safeguard the human spirit in the global nuclear
wars to come. What is more, the Madonna has the potential to reverse the
thermonuclear reaction process, thus undoing the very foundation of the
global atomic threat. While thermonuclear reaction transforms matter into
energy, the maternal soul as the highest manifestation of the human spirit,
embodied in Raphael’s immortal painting, is energy materialized. 79
On closer inspection, however, there is a darker undertone to the upbeat
tenor of Grossman’s eulogy on the power of art. In a curious passage, long
before he addresses the issue of nuclear war, Grossman envisions a world
where the human spirit embodied by the Madonna still exists, but humans no
longer do: “But maybe, when people have died, those creatures that will take
their place on earth – wolves, rats, bears, and swallows – will come, walking or flying, to look at the Madonna…” 80 When humans have turned into
beasts, thus becoming extinct as species, there remains only the hope that the
surviving beasts become susceptible to the orphaned human spirit captured
in the immortal gaze of Raphael’s Madonna.
By having both Hitler and Stalin fail to recognize the Sistine Madonna,
Grossman shows that it is secularized chiliastic ideology, be it National
Socialism or communism that brings about rupture in what he perceives to
be essentially human. 81 That Grossman’s critique aims not only at Stalinist
totalitarianism but also at any ideology that claims to be moving toward an
empire of Good, including communism, becomes evident in his magnum
opus, the novel Life and Fate. In this novel, there is a character who witnesses
the mass killing of Jewish women, children, and old people by German
Einsatzgruppen in Berdichev (Grossman’s mother was killed that day) and
loses all faith in any salvation ideology, and in fact in any concept of an absolute good, since this absolute good always has the potential to change into
has been no time crueler than ours, yet we did not allow what is human
in man to perish.’ 76
In The Sistine Madonna Grossman does not mention Hiroshima (nor Nagasaki)
but focuses on the ever-escalating arms race instead, thereby precluding any
attempt to shift the blame for the global nuclear threat on one particular
nation or system. 77 This time, it is not a dictator, but an entire generation that
is about to avert its eyes from the gaze of the Sistine Madonna and embark
on a path of self-destruction, while the wounds of the recent war have not
yet healed. Significantly, 1954, the year when The Sistine Madonna was written, coincides with the appeal to Georgii Malenkov by a group of prominent Soviet nuclear physicists under the leadership of Igor’ Kurchatov to ban
testing of thermonuclear weapons, which spawned a short-lived revision of
Soviet nuclear policy. 78
In The Sistine Madonna, Grossman celebrates in an almost ostensibly optimistic vein the capacity of art to overcome the forces that aim at annihilating
the kindness embodied in Raphael’s Madonna. The painting prevails in view
of what is now termed the Holodomor, the Stalinist purges, and the Shoah. It
may, Grossman hopes, even safeguard the human spirit in the global nuclear
wars to come. What is more, the Madonna has the potential to reverse the
thermonuclear reaction process, thus undoing the very foundation of the
global atomic threat. While thermonuclear reaction transforms matter into
energy, the maternal soul as the highest manifestation of the human spirit,
embodied in Raphael’s immortal painting, is energy materialized. 79
On closer inspection, however, there is a darker undertone to the upbeat
tenor of Grossman’s eulogy on the power of art. In a curious passage, long
before he addresses the issue of nuclear war, Grossman envisions a world
where the human spirit embodied by the Madonna still exists, but humans no
longer do: “But maybe, when people have died, those creatures that will take
their place on earth – wolves, rats, bears, and swallows – will come, walking or flying, to look at the Madonna…” 80 When humans have turned into
beasts, thus becoming extinct as species, there remains only the hope that the
surviving beasts become susceptible to the orphaned human spirit captured
in the immortal gaze of Raphael’s Madonna.
By having both Hitler and Stalin fail to recognize the Sistine Madonna,
Grossman shows that it is secularized chiliastic ideology, be it National
Socialism or communism that brings about rupture in what he perceives to
be essentially human. 81 That Grossman’s critique aims not only at Stalinist
totalitarianism but also at any ideology that claims to be moving toward an
empire of Good, including communism, becomes evident in his magnum
opus, the novel Life and Fate. In this novel, there is a character who witnesses
the mass killing of Jewish women, children, and old people by German
Einsatzgruppen in Berdichev (Grossman’s mother was killed that day) and
loses all faith in any salvation ideology, and in fact in any concept of an absolute good, since this absolute good always has the potential to change into