An Unhappy Genius
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. (Constable. 63s.) Tats collection of letters by the great painter Vincent Van Gogh will be received with delight by his devotees in this country—specially by those already familiar with the " Life " by Here' Meier Graefe.
Born in the middle of the last century, Van Gogh only lived to be thirty-seven. " On his own pinnacle there is room only for Van Gogh," writes his very brilliant biographer, and we agree. As a thinker he was a disciple of Rembrandt and Delacroix, " as a painter he was, as a result of profound self-tuition and experience, a naturalist of the first water." Nothing came easy to him—at times " he drew like a boy of twelve, not a line straight, one can almost see his awkward fingers," but if his hand lacked precision " his eyes bit into every object, into trees and soil like an axe."
Vincent, as he always signed himself, came of the cultivated Dutch bourgeoisie. Among his forebears and relations he counted clergy, doctors, booksellers, art-dealers, gold-wire- drawers, and a sculptor. At nineteen his father apprenticed him to the Hague branch of the House of Goupil, in which he had already more than one uncle. From this period his first letters date. They are all written to his younger brother Theo, and are boyish in tone. He is pleased with his new surroundings, he has got what he " always longed for, a room without a slanting ceiling and without a green paper with a blue border." But he gets homesick in spite of a new bedroom. - He wants to see his father and mother, he longs for Christmas, he plans presents ; art at .his time is only a secondary consideration.
He and Theo have made a secret treaty " to stand for the good always, for art and for virtue." To Vincent Van Gogh art means religion ; lie desires ardently to " preach the Bible." The firm are at first well satisfied with their new apprentice. They send him to Paris and to London. He is glad of the chance to see sights, especially pictures, but "the gospel" is always uppermost in his mind. After a while, disagreements begin between him and his chiefs. He despises Lis own trade. They break with him, and after a period of school teaching in England he definitely decides to enter the Church. The necessary " grind," however, proves too much for hun, he learns with great difficulty, and according to his fellow- students does not know the meaning of submission. ".The
best way to approach God is to love God," he says. Book- study is impossible to him; all inhibitions are irksome. Christianity he sees, not as a law, but as a hero worship. He flings off alone to preach and work among Belgian miners. He lives as a working-man, denying himself food, clothes, even a bed, that he may give alms. His father, kindest of country parsons, remonstrates mildly. Vincent is intolerant of reproof. Herr Meier Graefe compares his religion to a blazing furnace, the father's to a hearth—and it is the furnace which dies down quickly. What he calls " free lectures in the school of misery " quench the fire. He gives up Christianity, though its Founder he still feels to be " sublime." He wants to see the moral law " altered." He will not, however, be called• an atheist. He believes in " a je ne sais quoi ' of great goodness and also an element of evil infinitely above, infinitely greater, infinitely mightier than we are." Henceforward, such joy in life as he had, and it was little enough, came to him through his eyes.
Whoever remembers what he has seen, he writes, should never be quite without happiness, nor entirely lonely. By this time Van Gogh had realized that his vocation was pictorial art, and he works without intermission to put his vision upon paper, to find " ce qui ne passe pas dans ce qui passe." He wanders, painting, from Amsterdam to Paris, from the town to the country, going home when his pockets are quite empty, always working, making friendships which he cannot keep, always with the sense that he is a stranger. This sensation is nothing new to him ; he has had it as a boy, but in his religious days he could say " but we have a God who preserves strangers." After he has ceased to be conscious of the presence of the Great Companion " the loneliness sometimes' drives him to despair. Whatever happens, however, there is always Theo. He has become a well-off young picture dealer, and Vincent never appeals to him in vain for money or for sympathy, though he can find it in his bitter heart to reproach Theo for being a tradesman. Occasionally we gather that Theo has read his brother a lecture, but he never fails him.
In his relations with women the painter was unfortunate. " No, never, never ! " says the woman whom, above all others, he wants to marry. " I will hold her ' No, never, never ! ' to my heart like a block of ice till it thaws," he writes. But it does not thaw. He sets up house with a woman of the street who has already had one child and is about to have another. Our charity to such women should, he writes in answer to Theo's remonstrance, have no limits ; it should be infinite. Theo pays. Such a liaison could not satisfy Vincent's soul for long. Life exasperates him more and more. In his studio, if he cannot get the effects he is seeking he will " reach out for something and smash it." In a frenzy of nerves he leaves the poor woman and joins his friend Guigain at Arles. By grace of his genius he is able always to turn his sufferings to account. They do, indeed, but deepen his artistic insight. His friends quarrel with him, even Theo cannot bear his society for long. Guigain is afraid of him. Mauve has long since told him plainly what he thinks of his manner of life. Vincent drinks, to drown his unhappiness. In a moment of delirium he cuts off his ear and sends it to a woman in a house of ill fame. Plainly he is unfit for liberty and is placed under control. The doctor is kind. He does not know what to say of Vincent's mental condition. The religious sisters who nurse him and see in his countenance " an under expression " of the man who once loved God, say that he is possessed. Like him they seek " ce qui ne passe pas dans ce qui passe." More than once he recovers, not so much his reason, which he never really loses, but his reasonable- ness, such as it was. In a new access of desperation, however, he seeks deliverance in alcohol and finally in death. The shot does not kill him at once. He lives to see Theo and tells him that he wants to go home. Poor. Theo l It is part of the tragedy of the whole story that he only outlived his brother by six months and never saw his work recognized. Without the "Life" by Herr Meier Graefe these letters are not easy nor particularly interesting to read. With it we cannot know too much of Vincent. The truth is, Van Gogh was a genius and cannot be judged as other men are. He had his divine moments. When the sparks fly upwards, we stand at gaze accepting the miracle that to him of all men (as that far greater genius St. Francis said of himself) should be given the power and the glory of creating beauty.