The conscience of Vincent Van Gogh

The letters that Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his younger brother, Theo, document this painter's thoughts over a period of 20 years with the same brilliance and clarity of his canvases. As a contribution to literature, these letters stand on the same level as Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and far above Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography. They reveal that Van Gogh was stifled by depression often through a life ending at age 37 by his committing suicide. What accounted for his mental illness, I believe, was primarily that he had the conscience of a Christian clergyman, and it tormented him.

Freud believed that a person's mind consists of an ego, or self, that is subject to three masters (1). The first is the external world, or reality. The second is one's libido, or id. The third is one's conscience, or super-ego. Regarding the external world in which Van Gogh lived, all but a few people failed to appreciate his work, and the artist lived in poverty all his adult life. Regarding his libido, it was sublimated, for the most part, to artistic creativity (2). Regarding his conscience, it confined him and was the chief force in his self-destruction. If a thin, transparent sheet of ice were a metaphor of his ego, the blistering wind above would represent the external world, the fathoms beneath would represent his artistic instinct, and the foot that cracks the ice would be his conscience.

The conscience of a person, or what Freud called the super-ego, consists of those moral beliefs instilled by one's parents. It is a collection of ideal standards to which one aspires. Van Gogh's Christian conscience was fully shaped at age 24 when he wrote:

In our family, which is a Christian family in the full sense of the word, there has always been, as far as one can remember, from generation to generation, one who preached the Gospel. Why should not a member of that family feel himself called to that service now? It is my fervent prayer and desire that the spirit of my father and grandfather may rest upon me, and that it may be given me to become a Christian and a Christian laborer, that my life may resemble more and more the lives of those named above, for behold that the old wine is good and I do not desire a new one (3).

Both his father and paternal grandfather were clergymen educated at a university, and through his early 20s, Van Gogh held both men in high esteem. He valued his father's work higher than that of Millet and Rembrandt and sought his father's satisfaction with each major decision.

Having spent 6 years as an art dealer in his uncle's business, 1 year teaching literature, and 1 year in a bookstore, Van Gogh embarked on a career in the church at age 24. As an evangelist preaching the Gospel to the poor, Van Gogh settled in the Boringe, a mining region in Belgium. While earlier in life he had drawn pictures only to adorn letters or clarify in his mind what he saw, Van Gogh began to draw the peasants in the Boringe as if it were his vocation. What occurred there was also a change in attitude toward the clergy. While his esteem for art and artists rose, that for Christianity and clergymen fell. Though the morals and culture of the Dutch clergy were firmly stationed in his conscience, an amoral artistic drive began to overwhelm him. He emerged from the Boringe at age 27, 10 years before his death, having abandoned the church to paint.

From age 27 to 37, Van Gogh moved 10 times, his life characterized by periods of depression and periods of a sort of mania. His depression occurred when he allowed his severe conscience to punish him. Of his father's “system,” he now wrote, “it oppresses me,” there being a “lasting deep-rooted misunderstanding between Father and myself” (3). He fought with questions, answering, “That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail” (3). Clergymen and their wives he called “unbelieving, hard-hearted, worldly people” (3). But his conscience, with its Dutch morals and culture, I believe, had already been established. He became melancholy, weary, and idle, suffering from guilt, boredom, and insomnia. He became extremely dissatisfied with his work. He wrote that he couldn't breathe, his thoughts were tangled, his canvases blank. He thought soberly about debts and duty.

When he could paint, he used a great deal of grey. His head in self-portraits is swallowed in grey backgrounds; his eyes are grey (Figure). Black and white were used more, and severe cypress trees frame his landscapes. He referred occasionally to the French mistrals, winds that swept through the hills and shook his easel, preventing him from painting in the field. He thought of these mistrals ironically as “purifying” (3).

Figure.

Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait from 1889.

During his periods of almost manic productivity, Van Gogh would write, “I work in a rage” (3). His artistic drive, emanating from what Freud called the id, overwhelmed him quite as easily as his conscience. He became inspired, strengthened, and active and feeling a kind of innocence and animation. He drew confidence from his work. He could breathe freely, his thoughts untangled, his canvases covered. He thought drunkenly about character and audacity and likened himself after Monticelli, a decadent painter who died by suicide, and Wagner, the composer.

The colors he used most were those of Delacroix, lemon yellow and Prussian blue. He wrote, “What color is in painting, enthusiasm is in life” (3). He knew that he had an instinct for color and wrote, “I see it fresh, through a grey haze,” which is a telling phrase (3). His self-portraits are wet with blue background, coat, and eyes, and with yellow face, beard, and hair. Stars and books, which were his passion, were painted yellow. The brilliant sunflower became his symbol. A soothing day to Van Gogh was a day without a mistral, when he could paint.

Van Gogh's first psychotic break occurred at age 35 in Arles, France, following a rife with Paul Gauguin, with whom he had been living for less than a year. Van Gogh had been spending the afternoon in conversation with prostitutes (4). When he came home, he opened his Bible without thinking and came upon the passage that says that if one of your organs offends you, you should cut it off and throw it into the fire. Applying the text to himself, Van Gogh took a razor and cut off one ear. He wrapped it in a piece of paper and took it to the brothel, where he handed it to a woman saying, “Keep this and treasure it” (5). The woman fainted and Van Gogh was hospitalized. His brother, Theo, who was his only friend and only consistent support throughout his life, had announced his engagement to a lady shortly before this event. That this act of Van Gogh was self-destructive and related to the Bible leads me to believe that it was the punishing work of his Christian conscience.

Van Gogh had at least six subsequent psychotic episodes, during which his mind “wandered” and was “deranged” for about a week (3). Each was followed by about a 2-month period of relative calm. There is no evidence of psychoses in his letters, but he was unable to write during his severe illness. In fact, his letters are remarkably eloquent and intelligent. He committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun at age 37, a kind of victory for his conscience. Its firmly established moral tenets could no longer tolerate the creativity.