The following pieces of literature are meant to give you a deeper insight into Van Gogh.
The first one was written after his death by a fan while looking at his piece below.
Vincent Van Gogh
(A Symphony of Blue)
The spectrum`s flaming colours shot on the
palette,
Weavers and ploughers reflected in the artist`s
eye.
Vincent celebrated their working lives in his paint,
Their souls eased on canvass under the oiled sky.
Vincent caught the weathered faces and daffodils,
The darkened wood on the loom from sweating
hands;
Swirling clouds and fleeting shadows on the hills,
All committed on canvass for others to
understand.
But they did not - and his talent wanted
recompense.
Vincent`s soul burned, painting skies changing
hue,
Blessed with all of the sun`s own bright radiance
Before suicide in wheat fields near the Cafe Ravoux.
I am Adeline Ravoux, subject of The Blue Symphony:
Nobody understood Vincent, it tormented his soul.
I watched my dear friend slowly losing his sanity
And killed himself because he was working in a hole.
This second poem was written from the perspective of the woman in Van Gogh’s
painting:
A memoir
Dressed in blue, I sat in a chair,
A blue ribbon tied back my long hair.
I have blue eyes and blue the background:
A symphony of blue, Vincent painted the sound.
1) What are the most powerful lines from the above poems? Choose 1 line from each
poem and explain its power.
On your computer, look up Van Gogh’s piece, “Starry Night”. Examine it before you
read the following poem inspired by it:
Poem about Starry Night
quiet night
a genius artist's trailblazing
strokes
quiet night
the heavens swirl
in the birth of a star
a country quietly sleeps
while the heavens swirl
in the birth of a star
silence pierces the sky
as the heavens swirl
in the birth of a star
Starry Night
Van Gogh's talent sweeps away
the stars
a country sleeps
through one artist's
starry dream
Starry Night
a genius trailblazes
through the sky
john tiong chunghoo
2) Why do you think Starry Night has become the most well known and easily
recognizable piece of Van Gogh’s art? Do you think it is his best?
The following 2 poems inspired Van Gogh to create Starry Night:
"On the Beach at Night Alone" Whitman
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought
of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different,
or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes,
the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe,
or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And this shall forever span them and compactly hold
and enclose them.
"Song of Myself" Whitman
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
Walking the old hills with the beautiful gentle God by my side,
Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring,
and the diameter of eighty thousand miles,
Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.
3) How can you relate to the poems above? Explain the relationship between the 2 poems
above to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. How did the poems inspire Van Gogh to create Starry
Night?
Perhaps the most insightful thing we have it this excerpt from a letter than Van Gogh
wrote to his brother:
From a letter from Van Gogh to his brother
Is the whole of life visible to us, or isn't it rather that this side of death we see only one
hemisphere?
Painters - to take them alone - dead and buried speak to the next generation or to several
succeeding
generations through their work.
Is that all, or is there more to come? Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter's
life.
For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it, but looking at the stars
always
makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and
villages on a
map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the
black dots
on the map of France? Just as we take the train to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to
reach a
star. One thing undoubtedly true in this reasoning is that we cannot get to a star while we
are
alive, any more than we can take the train when we are dead.
So to me it seems possible that cholera, gravel, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial
means oflocomotion, just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means. To
die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot. (#506)
4) What new insight did you gain about the meaning of Starry Night from Van Gogh’s
letter to his brother ? To you, what was the most powerful line in the letter ?
I know that the school computers don’t access youtube, so if you can, look up this link on
your phone. It will come up if you goodle “starry starry night song”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
5) what is the main message of this tribute song to Van Gogh?
Listen to the poem inspired by Starry Night while the author, Anne Sexton, recites it:
I know that the school computers don’t access youtube, so if you can, look this link up on
your phone or read the lines to the poem below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY7eKFgieY8
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:
into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.
6) What is the main message of Anne Sexton’s tribute pome to Van Gogh?
7) look up images of Van Gogh’s art. Choose 1 the 1 that you are most drawn to. Write a
journal entry about what draws you to it. What do you feel or think when looking at it?
What message do you believe Van Gogh was trying to transmit? Why do you think Van
Gogh is one of the most famous and popular artists of all time? Do you think he deserved
this attention?