A cover and some art history

[MeltyBread]

This cover was inspired by one of my favorite paintings, Mikhail Vrubel's "The Demon Seated."

It's a Russian symbolist piece done in the 1890s in response to Mikhail Lermontov's poem "The Demon."

While I always found the painting to be mysterious and awe-inspiring, I read the poem and found a much deeper meaning behind the character. The demon is a creature hiding in the sky who falls in love with a princess. The underlying dilemma of the story is that the princess is already in love with a prince. The demon reveals his true nature, using his powers to kill the prince. Meanwhile, he soothes the princess by singing while she grieves over her dead fiancé. The demon eventually kisses the princess, accidentally killing her and cursing the world for his loneliness.

The story depicts the demon as a villain, attempting to trick the princess into sinning. Vrubel's fascination with the Demon shows another side of the story. Vrubel describes the Demon as "a spirit which unites in itself the male and female appearances, a spirit which is not so much evil as suffering and wounded, but withal a powerful and noble being." Vrubel’s painting shows the demon with an ethereal gaze cast over a sunset (believed to symbolize the world's end).

The character shown in my cover is inspired by the duality of Lermontov’s and Vrubel's “demons”. They both struggle within a world that rejects them but are humanized through their goals and needs: to be accepted.

If you wanna see more of stuff like this check out my comic: https://tapas.io/episode/1667098

[domisotto]

Heh, my favourite part was that Lermontov modelled the story on the Caucasian tales of nuns falling prey to demons, but had to add the strongest part of the poem, Demon’s vow and the ending where Tamara’s soul is whisked away to heavens despite her succumbing to the seductive plea due to censorship

Bad boys, always the bad boys...

Also, there is a joke that sort of ruins the soulful romanticism of the painting, but that’s going too far in the woods.

[MeltyBread]

Yeah, that part is pretty funny. Especially how the angel tried to save her by saying "you're out of her league man" to the demon and then just running away.

What's the joke?

[domisotto]

Yup, that ending with the angel basically going, “Dude, good try, but we got dibs on her soul, ‘cause reasons. Ta-ta.” always felt out of place. The vow though was good, solid bad boy with tragic backstory stuff.

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Brezhnev is cruising the Trey’yakov’s Gallery. (Okay, think Russian Trump if you don’t know who Brezhnev was). His aids are whispering the names of the paintings and painters in his ear, so he could appear as an art connoisseur.

So, they whisper: Demon, Vrubel’...

And he stays silent.

They whisper louder. De-Mon, V-Rubel’...

and he is still silent...

So, they say it again... DEMON, V-RU-BEL’...

Then he goes, “Hmm, Demon, vrubel’... good painting, and pretty darn cheap...”

(Vrubel’ sounds like ‘costs a rubl’, ruble being Russian currency)

[MeltyBread]

That's an amazing joke.