Van Gogh şi Dumnezeu

Cu cât sunt mai risipit, mai bolnav, mai aproape de starea unui vas spart, cu atât mă simt mai artist – Vincent Van Gogh

Tocmai am lecturat capitolul The Vulnerability of God din Van Gogh and God: a creative spiritual quest (Cliff Edwards, 1989, Loyola University Press, cu o introducere de Henri J. M. Nowen).

Lectura cărţii oferă o apropriere familiară şi totuşi atât de stranie faţă de caracter uman în care ne recunoaştem din ce în ce mai puţin. Unii artişti chiar aveau o viaţă creatoare, nu doar boemă, ofereau dăruire şi pasiune în actul trăirii, nu doar un simulacru vizual, dependent de aşteptările comerciale ale comanditarilor. Erau cândva timpuri ale dramelor şi eşecurilor umane care probau vulnerabilitatea lui Dumnezeu care germinează puterea dragostei, oferind cea mai bună posibilitate a speranţei umanităţii pentru viaţa de după moarte…

Iată doar câteva dintre zbaterile lui Van Gogh, desprinse din epistolarul său:

In the same way I think that everything which is really good and beautiful – of inner moral, spiritual, and sublime beauty in men and their works – comes from God, and that all which is bad and wrong in men and their works is not of God and God does not approve of it … But I think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something – whatever you like – you will be on the way to knowing more about Him; that is what I say to myself. But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strenght, with intelligence; and one must always try to know deeper, better and more. That leads to God, that leads to unwavering faith. (Letter 133)

And she never realizes, I fear, that God perhaps really begins whan we say the word with which Multatuli finishes his Prayer of an Unbeliever: “O God, there is no God!” For me that God of clergymen is as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me so … (Letter 164)

Christ … lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as color, working in living flesh. (Letter B8)

You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things. (Letter 625)

… but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live and others did not live; and then if we live, there is something mysterious in that. Now call it God or human nature ar whatever you like, but there is something which I cannot define systematically though it is very much alive and very real, and see that is God, or as good as God. (Letter 164)

Pentru a intra în pielea personajului care oferea un sens spiritual vieţii, dezamăgit în iubire, dominat de pictură şi hărţuit de boală, curios mai mult faţă de Dumnezeul Cel Viu decât de moştenirea unui creştinism anchilozat, atras de spiritul Orientului şi de budismul zen, se merită a fi vizionat Lust for Life (1956). Filmul îi are ca protagonişti pe admirabilii Kirk Douglas (Vincent Van Gogh) şi Anthony Quinn (Gauguin), în regia lui Vicente Minnelli. Iată o secvenţă: