Living in the Furnace of his Heart

 

I picked up this battered biography of Vincent Van Gogh, one of my favourite artists, at an op-shop in the Lake District. It cost all of £2. It was written in the 50s, by L. and E. Hanson, which makes it charming, since it lacks the modern conventions of biographies of revered figures.

To be sure, the Hansons revered Gauguin (they had done a biography of him before the one on Van Gogh) and in the text, you can see they are anxious to defend his actions in abandoning Vincent, which was one of the factors that was said to have caused his suicide. But as they take pains to point out, Vincent was mad long before that and he had actually threatened Gauguin with a knife, apparently sleepwalking and it wasn't until that artist called out his name sharply that he came to himself and went home to carve off a portion of his ear to present it to his favourite prostitute (she was the only one at the brothel to prefer him to Gauguin), whereupon she screamed and fainted and there was much hubbub in that place of pleasure.

Here is how that famous scene is described: 

That morning - two days before Christmas -- Gauguin was crossing the Place Lamartine when he heard familiar footsteps, short quick, uneven, behind him. Gauguin looked back. Vincent was coming for him with an open razor in his hand. Gauguin spoke to him sharply as he had spoken when Vincent approached his bed. (Van Gogh had sleepwalked his way to Gauguin's bed and although there are hints in this text about possible homosexual leanings, they are never openly referred to, both men being so masculine and frequenting brothels as a matter of course. Vincent had also painted a picture of their two chairs which seemed to suggest that he saw Paul as the husband and himself, the wife). Vincent turned away without a struggle. He ran back into the yellow house, stood before the mirror as he had stood so often when painting a self-portrait, and hacked off a part of his left ear with the razor. He tied a scarf tightly round his head, dragged his round fur cap over it, wrapped the ear in paper, put it in an envelope, put the envelope in his pocket and walked out of the house.

He walked to the brothel. He gave the envelope - his phallic symbol - to the girl who preferred him to Gauguin. When she opened the envelope the girl fainted. Within a few minutes the brothel was in an uproar. In the centre of it stood Vincent, a ghastly figure, glassy-eyed, dead white, swaying on his feet, blood pouring down his cheek from the soaked bandage - for he had severed an artery.

There, with a brief economy of words, the Hansons lay down one of the most famous scenes in art history.

And most people who read about Van Gogh, would flip to this scene, the most gory in the book, and read it first.

And yet, if you do that, you would be as guilty as a young boy I met once, who picked up Arthur Miller's autobiography, Timebends, flipped to the parts about Marilyn, and then put the book away with a cynical smile on his face, thinking, well, he knew the man, he really knew the man.

The most interesting thing about Vincent are his violent passions, how single-mindedly he pursued his art in the face of all opposition (well, not all, his brother Theo supported him and his parents tried to) and his letters...oh my, his letters, which are so terribly interesting. I remember reading just the letters and wondering about many things, like the prostitute Sien he had taken up with and whether he dumped her and called her "bad" after she gave birth because he simply wanted to go along with everyone. This biography actually told me what Sien did to him and how she treated him...how he tried to hold it all together...but the thing is, Vincent was used to starving. In fact, he even starved when he didn't have to, because he wanted to be a champion of the peasants and he felt he could not do that by not eating the way they did. Which was very little. For some idea, you could read Zola's Germinal which is about a lot of things, but what struck me most, was the hunger.

After the rather tepid, colourless biography of Renoir, I enjoyed this book immensely. It was something to sink my teeth into and I wondered if that was because it was less academic than the other. The writers were not afraid to forward opinions, even controversial ones about what happened. They liked some people, did not like others so much, and even Vincent came in for his fair share of brickbats.

The Hansons did not seem to like his mother (she had a nervous complaint) but they pitied his poor father and suggested that Vincent's exploits sent him to an early grave. I can understand if the female members of his family hated him. He was so difficult to be around. You can admire his art from the safety of another century, but being in the same room with someone as difficult as him (even if you admired him tremendously) would have been tough.

I think this book is probably out of print. I bought it in 2019, the last time I went to England, and it took me two years to get around to reading it. But once I started, I was riveted. It was not like the Renoir book where I had to force myself to read a prescribed number of pages a day.

I would recommend this book. If you can find it. Which you probably can't. So the point is moot.

"People are like corn; both are ground between millstones to make bread. Happiness or unhappiness, what is the difference if one looks to the result? Both are necessary both useful. Death, life, all is relative." (Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to Theo)