Under the Starry Night

Extract

I once had the opportunity to travel to St.-Rémy-de-Provence and to celebrate Mass in the chapel of the convalescent home where Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) spent two years of his life painting some of his most striking canvases (e.g., Cypress Trees, The Sower, Starry Night). An epileptic who suffered from erratic bouts of depression, Van Gogh came to this former abbey-turned-sanatorium in a futile attempt to ward off the disquieting shadows that haunted him in both his sleeping and waking hours and which eventually caused him to take his own life. The space created by the stone walls of the chapel’s romanesque nave has a chilling effect on the heart. It seems haunted by the spirit of a man whose delicate sense of life’s inner beauty was strangely (and inexplicably) heightened by the tragic circumstances of his waning sanity.

The spirit of Van Gogh haunts the air and environs of his one-time place of refuge. During my short time there, I half-expected to catch his passing shadow in the comer of my eye ducking behind a column or escaping upon human detection into the lonely spaces of the nearby cloister. He lurks there, yes, in the chapel and adjoining gardens, down the long row of sycamores and beyond, in the surrounding fields. He lurks there, yes, in solitary isolation, always on the periphery—and never without evoking a deep sense of sadness. This place of healing could do nothing for the very man, whose brilliant swirling strokes and swift, contrasting colours continues to awaken a sense of wonder and yearning for transcendence in millions upon millions of searching admirers.