对于死亡的领悟

taschen
Metzger
The painting of himself lacks the remote sublimity of a twinkling night sky; but the self-portrait anticipates, intuits and includes it. "I view this portraint as that of a buddhist.
I must declare that I know nothing about them, but when I look at the stars I always start dreaming, as readily as when the black points that indicate towns adn villages on a map always start me dreaming. Why, I wonder, should the shining points of the heavens be less accessible to us than the black dots on a map of France? Just as we take a train in order to travel to Tarascon or Rouen, we use death in order to reach a star, In one respect this thought is undoubtedly true: we can no more travel to a star while we are alive than we can take a train once we are dead. At all events, it does not strike me as impossible that cholera, kidney stones, cancer and consumptionshould be means of celestrial transport as steamers and railways are earthly ones. To die peacefully of old age would be the equivalent of going on foot" This passage from Letter 506 is crucial to an understanding of the suicide that ended van Gogh's life but for the moment we can take it as defining two areas: a remote one (longed for and unattainable) out in the universe; and one in this world, quite concretely located in Arles, involving all the routine drudgery of everyday life