In Memory of Victor Ryabinin

The Spirit of Königsberg

Published: 18 July 2020 on the first anniversary of Victor Ryabinin’s death

Victor Ryabinin died on 18 July 2019

For those who knew him well, it has been a difficult 12 months. The first 12 months after someone dear passes away always is. There are so many occasions that memory will not let go of, everything becomes a commemorative anniversary of the last time, and it is virtually impossible not to fall victim to the ‘this time last year’ syndrome.

As the anniversary of Victor’s death closed in, it has also been impossible not to fall under the insidious spell of that morbid countdown: viz, this time last year Victor had only four weeks left to live … It is a macabre thought is it not, that last 60 seconds of life ticking inexorably away and then nothing? Not just the physical man himself gone but, as Leonard Cohen so eloquently puts it, “that tangle of matter and ghost”. A lifetime lost in a second. A unique loss of personality, thoughts, talent, experience, good nature, kindness, humanity. It is, indeed, a morbid thought, but as a friend of mine pragmatically said about death, “Well, you can’t stop it, can you?”

There is nothing much longer than eternity, but notwithstanding in the past 12 months those of us who were fortunate enough to be counted among Victor’s friends and those whom he taught and mentored have been just as busy preserving his memory as we have been cherishing it and missing him.

Book celebrating Victor Ryabinin’s work

As well as my blog, which is dedicated to Victor Ryabinin, to his artistic talent, to the magic that he found in and brought to Königsberg-Kaliningrad and to the man himself, one of Victor’s closest friends, Marina Simkina, herself an artist, has been working with writer and journalist Boris Nisnevich to bring to fruition a book about the life and work of this remarkable man: a thematically related text with essays, personal recollections, interviews, letters and poems which taken together speak of the rich legacy that Victor has bequeathed in his paintings, assemblages, collages and diaries and, for those of us who knew him personally, in the light that his sincerity, goodwill, open nature and profound interest in everything he heard or saw brought into our lives.

On the first anniversary of Victor’s death, I have added another article to the pages of my blog contributed by our friend Stanislov, whom Victor introduced us to shortly before he passed away

Catalogue of Victor Ryabinin’s work

Stas, as we know him, is actively involved in a project which will hopefully see the canon of Victor Ryabinin’s artistic work and his collection of Königsberg ‘relics’ housed and displayed in a permanent exhibition here in Kaliningrad. He also hopes to catalogue Victor’s work and produce a definitive version in print of the extraordinary talent of this man whose self-genre as Königsberg’s art-historian captured, celebrated and ultimately cast him as the spirit of the ruined city he had spent his life divining ~ the very Spirit of Königsberg.

Victor Ryabinin’s love affair with the interconnectivity of Königsberg’s past and Kaliningrad’s present, the surface paradox of two cultures hammered together in war but mysteriously wed by time and destiny, was as devotional as it was unconditional. For him, both transition and movement were seamless; it was the place itself that ‘drew people in’ as it had drawn him in.

Victor’s childhood impressions and art-historian perspective surpassed that of mere academia ~ he lived and breathed Königsberg. It was not a lifestyle choice; it was made for him; it was predestined. The symbiotic relationship that he formed with this special, this unique place, as he called the Königsberg.-Kaliningrad continuum, continually reminded him that his soul existed in two cultures, both Russian and German, and as much as he enjoyed anywhere else he intuitively knew he belonged nowhere else. He could not precisely say why, ‘I cannot explain this magic’, but as a child of Königsberg’s ruins he instinctively knew “this is my city”.

His city, represented symbolically through the artistic fusion of his childhood memories, the interaction between Gothic ruins and Hoffman’s Gothic fantasy, transcended time and place, engendering philosophical interpretations on a universal scale. His enduring belief in the insolubility of the past’s effect on the present and of existence viewed as a fantastic web of interconnectivity may suggest that whilst he had a definite sense of place and his place in it, he was also a child of the universe, but if so he was a prodigy.

The oft-cited opinion of those who were close to him, that he exhibited an almost childlike fascination in everything new that he saw or heard, was not a slight on his character but a character trait to be envious of. For the majority of people, interest, as with every other human faculty, slips further and further away from us the older we become, but not so with Victor, who remained alert, fascinated, enthralled to the last. Even in the latter days of his life, when in hindsight, by recourse to photographs of that time, he appeared discernibly older and more frail, he never lost his curiosity, he never grew old as others grow old, giving up his zest for life only when life itself decided that the time had come for him to paint his last picture, make his last entry in his pictorial diary and drink his last cognac with friends.

In the shadow of death and even more desperately in its gloomy, memory-filled aftermath, we rake among the embers not of the life that has passed, the life that has been extinguished, but in what remains of our left-behind lives, in hope of consolation.

But my consolation in Victor’s death lies in the certain knowledge that whilst we grieve for ourselves, we have no real need to grieve for him, for he has returned to the self-same spot where it all began. He is a child again in the ruins of Königsberg. His spirit has gone home. He is now a part of that history which so fascinated and clung to him from the moment of his birth. It is my belief that it never let go; he was just given to us on loan; and he drew us into Königsberg as he himself had been drawn in.

If you do not believe me just listen to and read the testimonials of those who knew him and what they have to say ~ his students, friends and colleagues. Through their words and their impressions, they seek to understand the mystical aura with which Victor was endowed. We may never comprehend it entirely, but we share one thing in common which is a sense of pride and privilege that in this ephemeral but interconnected world it was fortunately predetermined that our paths should cross with his.

We shall miss him always, forget him never.