Will Van Gogh’s lesson finally be learned?

A historical plea for support

It was the greatest of televisual scenes. Vincent in the Musée d’Orsay, back in time to see his work there displayed. Amidst the masterpieces, he answered; the tour guide waxing lyrical on the Dutch genius. “He was the greatest artist who ever lived”.

Upon hearing the verdict, so deserved but unexpected, Vincent wept. He had never thought of himself as “great”, his entire life being a time loop of dismissal and mockery. He knew what he desired. He followed his star –and painted it. But his was a genius unrecognised, leaving a trail of sadness uncaptured by paint.

Vincent’s question is a challenge to us all. We admire him –his vision, passion and perseverance. His determination to follow his destiny at all costs. His descent into madness as a price of his legacy. Yet in his life, he was less than nothing. So the question rears its persistent head: Is tragedy inevitable? Will tragedy repeat?

We act as if no-one knew – of Vincent’s talent, of his eye for innovation. Of course they did! But they rejected him nonetheless. Because it wouldn’t sell, because the Church was a more sensible profession. Whatever the excuse; it’s a rebuttal as old as time; a parental defence that defies evolution.

We expect our children to conform, to join their parent’s community, to join a sensible profession. We expect the precise opposite of human development; only stagnation at all costs; repetition from generation to generation.

We acclaim the admirable few. We recite the heroes of old. Yet only through their death do they achieve salvation; those wanting change now condemned to ridicule and abandonment.

The lesson of Vincent has never been learned, with tributes to the man being unvarnished hypocrisy. For there are Vincents now, right now amidst each of us in our communities. They shine unesclipsed, their talent unhidden in a den of mediocrity. Whilst the Jones became doctors and the Smiths fell into law, the innocent man stood vulnerable; unloved for his difference; banished for following his tragic destiny. They knew his legacy would one day shine, but they left his appreciation for future generations - far from now, safely unborn.

“Appreciation”? — a false etiquette indeed. For vanity guides him not nor a desire to be loved. All that he seeks is financial support, a chance to bloom in a world of beige, a chance to bring the change that everyone says they want.

Without the dollar, he will remain undeterred –forging onwards towards a magnet irresistible. There is no choice. Yet he does so in full knowledge of the consequences: the poverty, the despair, the familial tension. He rages against his society; those that buy art for fashion and admire the shortlisted few for approval. In their galleried displays of past genius, shown off to friends at glittering parties, they forget about Jeremiah —and they dutifully condemn him to the pit.

And so the wheel turns: imperceptibly, inevitably.

****

December 2008. I stood there granite-faced before the museum. A monument to tragic repetition. An obelisk to forgotten hypocrisy. In that snow-kissed square beside the Vltava, I saw the life of Franz Kafka before my eyes, not apart from the watcher, but within his lived experience.

I saw it all. My future in unblemished clarity. My hell, undenied for my sin. I would be Kafka! – if I weren’t to make that change; to finally advance beyond cowardice.

The symmetry was unmistakable. Both lawyers, failed and flailing; trained at great expense to no avail. Both condemned to insurance, in those offices of torment; each day a tear-filling agony of soulless repetition. Amidst the nightmarish filing cabinets, clanging like ghosts unchained in frozen purgatory, Kafka faced metamorphosis –into me. Into my present; and onwards to a heart-wrenching future.

We were the same. Jewish, depressed, unfulfilled. Estranged and foreign, even within our own families. We both hid a talent - a purpose - which was destined to depart with us. Or would it?

It is the fate of the artist to die undiscovered; to bequeath unloved works, admired only years hence. But I didn’t believe in fate. I couldn’t. For that would have condemned me: to a spiral of depression, to a death so tragically premature. I would have become Kafka reimagined. And I owed it to that Czech-German-Jewish genius never to relive his mistakes. When Kafka was given a second chance, this time there would be no mistake.

Repentance prayed once, no more divine quarter would be given. And so I went straight to work. Yet work leads to not to happiness in a world of Van Gogh. Your parents will never understand. “Your” community will scoff. The call for conformity will continue blaring on; screeching, grating, petrifying.

It’s a Greek tragedy. You escape Kafka to grieve as Van Gogh. There must be another way. There must be a world which embraces the change it prays for. Well perhaps so….

Status was once the enemy, but now we are released, the internet bringing anonymity with internationalist distance. Today we can support Van Gogh without the shame of our neighbour. Today we can acclaim Kafka without the priest’s watchful eye. We can do so in their lifetime. We can do so now! Hereafter devotees will at last believe in life before death.

*****

The hour has come upon me to move to Provence. Literally no, but in effect yes. There I will slave without pennies, work equivalent to rent. There I will continue to write, believing - without evidence? - that Vincent’s lesson has been learnt.

Each Van Gogh painting and each Kafkaesque book is testament to a world trapped in Greek tragedy –to a Sisyphus that growls as he ascends the mountain once more. So will my writing join them, a comedy to Zeus, a bonfire to insanity.

We shall see.

As I cross the seas once more in the face of necessity, you, the reader, are asked the uncomfortable question: are you passive observers of historical cliche, or will you finally change the record of human nature?

Will you support Van Gogh in his atelier?

Will you lift up Kafka in his need?

Or will you laugh and ignore and reject as did your ancestors before you?

We shall see.

On this the God of Abraham observes with attention; for it answers the ultimate interrogative: Are we Greeks or Hebrews? Believers in future fig trees or hands-up surrenderers to inevitable fate?

We shall see.

This author’s regular paid work will barely cover the rent. So it’s writing or poverty. Glory or hell. I’m all in on Substack. But will you support me? Will you support the change-makers that languish in the dust?

---

Become a Patron/ Founder Member of Guerre and Shalom today:

---

A SMALL SAMPLE OF THE GUERRE & SHALOM OFFERING: