VII. Are there hints in Gauguin's writings, too?

 

Yes, there are. The most interesting one is a passage of his "Intimate Journals" (Avant et Après) where Gauguin states: "I had to look for detours in order to avoid going to prison". He goes on by giving an example of his rhetoric ingenuity, followed by two lettered quotations. The first is taken from the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes (in Greek letters), meaning "When it was night (dark)", the second is a slightly modified verse from the tragedy "Athalie" by Jean Racine: "It happened in the horror of a gloomy night" ("C'était pendant l'horreur d' une profonde nuit").

This passage must be read as an indirect confession: Racine's drama deals with the fate of the wrongful and tyrannical Hebrew queen Athalia who follows the pagan cult of Baal and tries to force the Jewish people away from their God. But in the end she becomes scared and is haunted by nightmares; and she is finally killed during an uprising of the people under the leadership of the young king Joas.

Gauguin cites here a verse from the scene where Athalia speaks about her nightmares and her fears that follow her everywhere despite all her efforts to avoid them, just like God's eye follows Cain until his end in Victor Hugo's poem "La Conscience" (The Conscience).
In this passage of his memoirs Gauguin obviously hints at the "horror" of that crucial night when he injured Van Gogh, and confirms that only by his rhetoric skill he had succeeded in convincing the police and everyone else of his innocence, thus avoiding going to prison.

The original passage in the handwritten memoirs "Avant et Après"...

... read more

Another interesting hint in Gauguin's writings is a passage in his letter to his friend André Fontainas (1865–1948), written in September 1902, eight months before his death on the isle of Hiva Oa. Gauguin wrote:
"As to van Gogh's noble character, I had to congratulate myself, being the artist with sealed lips."30 (question XI)

Here, Gauguin confirms the existence of that "pact of silence" with regard to Vincent Van Gogh. At the same time, he pays deference to his late colleague who had shown his "noble character" by withholding the truth about the sabre cut by which Gauguin had severed his ear.

 

  

<< previous Next>>  

 

 

a hasty escape

  • Gauguin was eager to leave Arles as fast as possible. The situation had become too hot for him. After having alerted Vincent’s brother Theo by wire, he left for Paris that evening of the same day, 24 December 1888. In his hasty departure, he left behind not only his wounded friend and the Yellow House, but also most of his personal belongings such as studies, sketchbooks, some of his fencing equipment masks and gloves, even his keys
  • ... read more

special:

Vincent van Gogh and the series La Berceuse, Arles 1888–1889.

The period that Vincent van Gogh spent in Arles and Saint-Rémy from 1888 to 1890 undoubtedly belongs to the most creative phase of his artistic career. The existence of the almost identical paintings of Madame Augustine Roulin, the wife of the Arles postmaster, is consequently all the more surprising.
... read more

The Corpus Delicti Is a Corpuscle

  • It can be said that with the exception of the sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who had family-related reasons for playing down the injury, not a single witness speaks of a severed earlobe. On the contrary, the mutually independent statements by the principal witness Paul Gauguin, the prostitute who was given the ear, the gendarme who was on duty in the red-light district, the investigating police officer and the local newspaper report, accord with the evidence that the artist’s unfortunate “self-mutilation” involves the entire (left) ear.
    ... read more