Titans of History (53 page)

1864–1901

He did not overturn reality to discover truth, where there was nothing. He contented himself with looking. He did not see, as many do, what we seem to be, but what we are. Then, with a sureness of hand and a boldness at once sensitive and firm, he revealed us to ourselves
.

From Toulouse-Lautrec's obituary in the
Journal de Paris

Vicomte Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the iconic chronicler of Parisian nightlife, confronted society with a vibrant celebration of humanity in all its distortions. He is world-famous today principally for his posters, but while these are undeniably superb, they have obscured his brilliance as a painter and portraitist who brought poignant sensitivity to his studies of the women of the
demi-monde
. In truth he was the Rembrandt of the night.

Toulouse-Lautrec's art illuminates Paris's artistic quarter in all its glory, immortalizing the chorus girls and entertainers who
crowded its streets, cabarets and cafés. It was a ground-breaking departure in art. His work caused outrage, but he did not do it to shock. Rather, he wanted to “depict the true and not the ideal.” In so doing, he humanized his subjects because they were people he knew so well, giving them a nobility that society had always denied them.

Toulouse-Lautrec's style—clear, economical lines, bright colors and vigorous, often ironic representations—was as revelatory as his subjects. After he decided to become an artist, his wealthy aristocratic family arranged for him to be tutored by a family friend and society painter. Toulouse-Lautrec developed his distinctive style almost in spite of his training. Notwithstanding his eagerness to please, he found himself unable to copy a model exactly. “In spite of himself,” a friend recalled, “he exaggerated certain details, sometimes the general character, so that he distorted without trying or even wanting to.” A subsequent tutor found this freedom of expression “atrocious.” At age nineteen, he was given an allowance to set up his own studio, whereupon he moved to Montmartre and began to paint his friends.

Toulouse-Lautrec soon became famous for his lithographs. Bold and clear, their elegant style anticipates art nouveau. They showed that art did not have to consist solely of oil on canvas, and as posters they turned advertising into an art form. The vast audience this gave him transformed his career. “My poster is pasted today on the walls of Paris,” he declared proudly of his first lithograph in 1891. His lithographs showed the great singing, dancing and circus stars of the Parisian night, especially the Moulin Rouge:
Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret
or
Moulin Rouge—La Goulue
and
Jane Avril sortant du Moulin Rouge
are now pasted on walls across the world. His paintings are remarkable for their humanity: his debonair boulevardier Louis Pascal shows that he could render men masterfully too, while his study for
The Medical Inspection
catches the pathos of whores
queuing up in the surgery. Some of his most beautiful paintings show these women relaxing together or alone, such as
Abandon
, the
Two Friends
or the touching
Red Haired Woman Washing
. Both the stars and the ordinary girls were his friends and lovers.

Like the rest of his family, Toulouse-Lautrec was enthusiastically sporty, but at the age of thirteen he broke his left thigh bone and a year later his right. Despite a long convalescence and numerous painful treatments, his legs never grew again. With a man's torso on dwarfish legs, he never exceeded 5ft (1.52m) in height. The cause was a bone disease, probably of genetic origin.

There is a clear irony in the contrast between the energy and physicality of Lautrec's paintings and his own atrophied state. He was never reconciled to his condition. His compositions often hide the legs of his figures. Surrounded by unusually tall friends, “he often refers to short men,” commented one acquaintance, “as if to say ‘I'm not as short as all that!'” But the “tiny blacksmith with a pince-nez” was under no illusions about himself: “I will always be a thoroughbred hitched to a rubbish cart” was just one of a litany of self-deprecating remarks.

Even in the raffish, boozy world of Montmartre, Lautrec's alcohol consumption was legendary. He helped to popularize the cocktail. The earthquake—four parts absinthe, two parts red wine and a splash of cognac—was a particular favorite. Syphilis accelerated his physical and mental decline, and when his beloved mother left Paris suddenly in 1899, it precipitated a total mental collapse. He was sent to a sanatorium, where he produced one of his greatest series of drawings,
At the Circus
. But after a brief spell he returned to Paris.

Toulouse-Lautrec degenerated into a haze of alcohol, the earthquake giving way to an esoteric diet of “eggs, which Monsieur eats raw mixed with rum.” Removed to one of his family's châteaux, he was reduced to dragging himself along by his arms as his useless
legs failed to work. Almost paralyzed and nearly totally deaf, Toulouse-Lautrec was just thirty-six when he died.

“He would have liked the elegant, active life of all healthy sports-loving persons,” wrote his father after his death. His son achieved in art all the vitality missing from his life. The man who did more than any other to create the image of
fin de siècle
Paris imbued his works with an astounding energy.

1869–1916

When the bell tolls three times, it will announce that I have been killed. If I am killed by common men, you and your children will rule Russia for centuries to come; if I am killed by one of your stock, you and your family will be killed by the Russian people! Pray Tsar of Russia. Pray
.

Rasputin

Grigory Yefimovich Novykh was known as Rasputin, the debauched one and the Mad Monk.

An illiterate itinerant peasant, Rasputin was able to wield considerable influence over Russia's autocratic rulers. He rose to prominence as an enigmatic mystic, finding a ready audience for his peculiar brand of religious devotion at a time when many Russian aristocrats were fixated by mysticism and the occult. He appears to have embraced a distorted version of the Khlysty creed, reworking its emphasis on flagellation to advocate sexual exhaustion as the surest path to God.

Introduced to the royal family in 1905, Rasputin eased the suffering of Tsarevich Alexei—the heir to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia who had been diagnosed with a hereditary bleeding disease, hemophilia. He swiftly became the confidant and personal adviser of Tsarina Alexandra (a German by birth), and when, in September 1915, Tsar Nicholas made himself commander-in-chief of the Russian armies following the outbreak of the First World War—spending much of his time at the front—fears grew that Rasputin was effectively running the country. Alexandra heeded Rasputin's advice in sacking several ministers and appointing new ones—but ultimately authority lay with her and the tsar, who ratified all decisions and, indeed, had rebuffed Rasputin's advice to stay out of the war.

Nicholas and Alexandra were actually inept, cruel, rigid and obtuse reactionaries. Nicholas, in a speech made in 1895, had deplored the “senseless dreams” of those seeking democracy, and had helped fund the murderous anti-Semitic Black Hundreds movement after crushing the 1905 Revolution. The country's problems, then, were firmly down to the incompetence of the tsar and tsarina, but Rasputin provided a scapegoat.

Rasputin's close relationship with the tsarina provoked rumors of sexual deviance at the Russian court led by the Mad Monk, and before long his position had become a national scandal. He came to symbolize the perceived corruption of the tsar's rule—with stories widespread about Alexandra's supposed lesbianism and Nicholas' impotence. Finally, in December 1916, a high-level plot involving senior politicians, noblemen and members of the imperial family—desperate to safeguard the regime—succeeded in eliminating the cleric. Rasputin was poisoned, shot (twice), beaten and eventually dumped into the River Neva, where he finally drowned. His astonishing resistance to poison and bullets suggested to some the mysterious potency of his powers.

1869–1948

I know of no other man in our time, or indeed in recent history, who so convincingly demonstrated the power of the spirit over things material
.

Sir Stafford Cripps, British Labour politician, speech at
the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference,
London (October 1, 1948)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the father of the Indian Nation, whose use of peaceful protest to achieve political independence has served as an inspiration for generations of political leaders seeking an end to oppression. The embodiment of man's capacity for true humanity, Gandhi came to be known by the name of Mahatma, meaning Great Soul.

Gandhi never had a clearly defined role in Indian politics. But Indian independence was as much his achievement as it was of the politicians in the Indian National Congress. Gandhi's leadership forged a national identity among the Indian people. The tools of his protests—boycotts and noncooperation—could be taken up by all. From spinning and weaving one's own cloth in preference to buying British textiles, to 250-mile (400-km) mass marches protesting against monopolies, Gandhi's methods of political involvement transcended the boundaries of age, gender, caste and religion.

No longer was political activism confined to the literate elite. Inspired by this small, frail figure dressed in homespun cloth, millions participated in the peaceful protests which reached their zenith in
the Quit India campaign of 1942. As the British authorities arrested hundreds of thousands of protesters, it became apparent that their rule was increasingly untenable. Some contemporaries criticized Gandhi's methods of protest as “passive”—incapable of achieving anything of real import. The achievement of Indian independence in 1947, and the triumph of countless civil rights movements since, proved them wrong.

Gandhi's fragile appearance belied his iron will. Although he came from a distinguished family—his father served as prime minister in several princely states—as a youth Gandhi displayed little promise in any sphere. His politicization began in earnest when he was a young lawyer working in South Africa. Here Gandhi experienced discrimination at first hand when he was thrown off a train after a white traveler complained about the presence of an Indian in her carriage. Gandhi set about campaigning for Indian rights and in so doing developed the philosophy of protest that came to define him.
Satyagraha
, the “truth force,” was an all-consuming discipline that involved nonviolent resistance to an oppressive authority. It required vast inner strength that could only be achieved by extreme self-control. Gandhi pursued it in every aspect of his life. Despite being happily married he adopted celibacy—and then tested his control by sleeping naked with attractive disciples. As a law student in London he had become an ardent practitioner of vegetarianism, and fasting became a frequent practice of his, which he used for both spiritual advancement and to attain political goals. Setting up ashrams, where he lived with his wife and followers, he abandoned his worldly goods and reduced his dress to the homespun
dhoti
—a type of loincloth. One of the few possessions that Gandhi left at his death was a spinning wheel.

Gandhi's campaigns against discrimination and injustice were many and varied. He fearlessly challenged social, religious and
political practices in the pursuit of justice for the oppressed, be they women, peasants or nations. Visiting London in 1931 for a conference on constitutional reform, Gandhi chose to stay with the poor of the East End. A devout Hindu, he was nonetheless steadfast in his calls for a reform of the caste system and an end to the practice by which certain groups of people, by virtue of their birth, were stigmatized as untouchable. For Gandhi there was “no such thing as religion overriding morality,” and his deep religious belief never closed his mind to the merits of the beliefs of others: he considered himself not just a Hindu but “also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew.” The bungled partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan on religious lines and the descent into sectarian massacres deeply distressed him, and one of his last actions was a personal fast during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1947.

Gandhi always displayed remarkable personal courage. He endured imprisonment by the British government several times, and he demonstrated more than once his willingness to risk death to secure the future of the Indian nation. As Hindu–Muslim violence threatened to consume India, Gandhi made an unarmed and unprotected pilgrimage through the heart of the unrest in Bengal in an effort to quell it. His assassination in 1948 by a Hindu extremist who resented his conciliatory stance toward Pakistan so shocked his people that it helped stop the slide into mayhem and restore order: he therefore died both a martyr and a peacemaker. “My service to my people,” he once said, “is part of the discipline to which I subject myself in order to free my soul from the bonds of the flesh … For me the path of salvation leads through the unceasing tribulation in the service of my fellow countrymen and humanity.”

1869–1961

I voluntarily, and against the wishes of my people, refuse reelection to the high office
.

Rafael Trujillo

Rafael Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic for thirty-one years with savage brutality and a flamboyant personality cult, epitomizing the murderous military strongman (
caudillo
) and military clique (
junta
) that have dominated South American politics until the very recent rise of democracy in countries such as Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

Trujillo rose to commander of the Dominican army, overthrew the president and held power from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, when he handed over the presidency to his brother Hector.