INTRODUCTION
Why did Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear? It is a unique and bloody method of self-mutilation. Theories abound. Van Gogh’s emotional state was the primary factor—major stressors were at play—as well as some form of mental disease. But what did the demon whisper to Van Gogh that prompted him to cut off his ear?
That is our mystery.
I’ve reviewed the many theories and found each unsatisfactory. I’ve read the biographies and the artist’s correspondence. Based on that, I have arrived at two possible explanations of my own, which I believe are the most reasonable given the state of the evidence. I think they are the most likely, but also not likely. There are just too many possibilities.
BACKGROUND
At the age of thirty-five, Vincent van Gogh moved to Arles, France to paint in the Southern light. His dream was to found a colony of artists; a big dream for a man whose only financial support came from his younger brother. He spent a few months in a cramped hotel room and then rented the famous Yellow House.
This would be the headquarters for his artist commune.
1888 was the year in which the first engine-powered airship flew over Germany, a London murderer became famous around the world, and Susan B. Anthony opened the Congress for Women’s Rights in the American capital. Anton Mauve, a Dutch painter and instructor to Vincent van Gogh, died, but T.S. Eliot and Eugene O’Neill were born.
Van Gogh pleaded with Paul Gauguin to join him in Arles. By October 23, 1888, he does. The relationship became strained almost immediately. At first, Vincent accepted the role of Gauguin’s student, but quickly chafed at the arrangement.
On another front, Van Gogh’s younger brother Theo would soon become engaged, and with that, the artist’s financial support was threatened.
All of this came to a head on December 23, 1888. It is believed that Vincent received a letter from his brother containing the engagement announcement that day, and later, Gauguin told him that he was leaving, betraying Van Gogh’s dream of an artist colony.
These are the stressors that affected the young artist, but they don’t explain why he mutilated his ear. One clue may exist in an earlier episode in Van Gogh’s life. I believe this earlier betrayal might be important additional background for us to consider.
AN EARLIER BETRAYAL
A little more than six years before, Vincent received formal training from Anton Mauve, the Dutch painter. Van Gogh wrote this to his brother Theo: “[A]bout a fortnight after my arrival here, … Mauve’s attitude towards me suddenly changed very much — as unfriendly as he had been friendly.”
Van Gogh and Mauve made up for a short while, much like Van Gogh and Gauguin would make up and then fight again six years later. In that same letter to his brother:
But one evening shortly afterwards he started talking to me again in such a totally different way that it seemed to me that I was confronted with a completely different man. I thought, my dear friend, it’s just as if someone has poured poison in your ear….
Letter to Theo van Gogh, April 21, 1882 (emphasis added). Vincent continued to complain in his letter about how Mauve had begun to imitate his speech and mannerisms in a deprecatory way, “but he’s very good at it, and I must admit it was a striking yet hatefully drawn caricature of me.” Id. At least in his own mind, Vincent had a similar event happen in his later relationship with Gauguin, except that Gauguin’s hateful caricature took the form of a portrait:
Van Gogh accused Gauguin of having painted him as a madman. It was a caricature that he did not appreciate. The earlier episode with Mauve made a distinct impression on Van Gogh: “I didn’t know that such things are called ‘good manners’, I thought it was BETRAYAL.” Id. (All caps in original).
Betrayal. I believe that that is an important concept for us to keep in mind.
So, with this background to consider, let us examine the major theories for why Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear—or had it cut off for him.
1. The Bullfight Analogy.
According to local legend in Arles, "Van Gogh gave his ear to a girl because that's what the matador does at the end of a bullfight." Bernadette Murphy, VAN GOGH'S EAR, at p. 5 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). That was written inartfully. The matador presented the ear of the bull to a lady in the crowd. He didn’t mutilate himself.
Vincent van Gogh moved to Arles, France to paint in the Southern light. In that area and time, bullfights still occurred, and Van Gogh went to at least one. He painted it. However, it is believed that the tradition of cutting off the bull’s ear came from Spain to Arles after Van Gogh left.
In a letter to Dutch painter Arnold Koning, he described two bullfights:
At present there are bullfights almost every Sunday. Last Sunday a bull jumped over the barrier and he jumped up against the terraces where the spectators were sitting, but the arenas here are so high that it can do no harm. Meanwhile, in a village near here a bull jumped out of the enclosure, made its way through the spectators and injured several of them, then ran through the village. At the end of the village, which is built on a rock, there’s an enormously high, steep cliff. In its rage the bull just kept running and — plunged to its death below.
Letter to Arnold Koning, May 29 or 30, 1888. Vincent van Gogh wrote the letter approximately seven months before he cut off his ear. Only three and one-half months before his self-mutilation, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about having seen “some very fine things at the bullfights and outside the town.” Letter to Theo van Gogh, September 3, 1888.
As you can see, bullfights were on his mind, and they were on his itinerary. Yet, out of the many letters we have, these are the only three that mention bullfights. He does allude to bulls in ten older letters, and, most poignantly, describes himself as “an intelligent” bull in one of them, a letter that offers advice to his brother:
[D]o NOT go to America, because it’s exactly the same there as in Paris. No, beware of reaching that point where one says: I’ll make myself scarce; I had that myself, I hope that you won’t have it. If you had it, I say again, beware of it, resist it with great coolness, say to yourself, this point proves to me that I’m running into a brick wall. This is a wall for bulls to run into; I am a bull too, but an intelligent one, I am a bull about becoming an artist. Anyway, get out before you smash your head to pieces, that’s all.
Letter to Theo van Gogh, October 12, 1883 (all caps and emphasis in original). The bullfight theory is plausible. In that time and place, the gift of a bull’s ear was a romantic gesture in Spain, and one of allegorical significance. We might not think of cutting off an ear, but in an agrarian community—especially one that practiced the traditional bullfight—the idea is somewhat less shocking.
2. Gauguin!
Another popular theory posits that painter Paul Gauguin, in a fit of rage or in self-defense, cut off Van Gogh’s ear with a sword. There is evidence to support this proposition, and there’s evidence that appears to negate it. Gauguin, you see, was a practiced fencer, and he brought those tools of the trade with him to Arles to live with Van Gogh.
Also, it is undisputed that Gauguin and Van Gogh had a stormy relationship, one that came to a head—suspiciously—on the very night that Van Gogh lost an ear. Gauguin left Van Gogh the next day, never to visit him again.
It all started with a beautiful dream.
The great dream of Vincent van Gogh was to establish a community of artists in Arles, France. He worked with amateur and young artists who passed through or lived in the town, but he saw his plan coming to fruition when seasoned painter Paul Gauguin agreed to live and work alongside him.
Purportedly because of Van Gogh’s increasingly erratic behavior, Gauguin decided after nine weeks that he would leave. He had allegedly awoke with the Dutch artist hovering over his bed. This undoubtedly stressed Gauguin and Vincent. According to Gauguin, they argued, and Van Gogh followed him onto the street, carrying a barber’s razor. The theory is that it could have been self-defense or a Gauguin fit of rage. Gauguin was a stormy fellow.
But, there were letters.
Van Gogh actually wrote to Gauguin after the incident, and the two corresponded about life and Art. In that first letter after the incident, Van Gogh told Gauguin, “I will keep quiet about this and so will you.” Was Van Gogh protecting a friend? It is certainly possible. In fact, that is the whole premise of the beautiful but fictional movie Loving Vincent, which details the death of Van Gogh. In Loving Vincent, Van Gogh covered up for the person or persons who accidentally killed him.
The major proponents of the Gauguin theory are two German professors named Dr. Hans Kaufmann and Dr. Rita Wildegan. They’ve created a website entitled, appropriately enough, Van Gogh’s Ear. The professors detail their theory and pitch their book (only printed in German).
I am a bit flummoxed by their theory.
It seems to me that they have taken the second-best explanation for every action, and then woven all of these runners-up into a grand theory. For example, the best evidence that Gauguin did it is that he left Arles immediately afterwards. That is actually pretty good evidence, and it would be recognized in a courtroom as “evidence of flight.” However, the better explanation for flight would be Van Gogh hovering over Gauguin as he slept and coming after him with a straight razor.
The authors claim that Gauguin stressed Van Gogh’s “insanity” as part of his attempt to cover up his swordplay. They put the word “insanity” in quotes and then somehow have reached the conclusion that Gauguin telling a couple of friends and Theo of Van Gogh’s delicate emotional state is proof that Gauguin was creating an alibi, even though the better explanation is that Van Gogh did undergo a temporary loss of faculties. He was, after all, hospitalized because of this incident, and he would go back into the hospital a month later and then self-admit to a psychiatric hospital four months later.
They have argued that Gauguin painted, doodled and sculpted clues to his evil deed, including a guilty eye, an ICTUS fish and ceramic mugs without ears and blood drizzled down the side. Yet, the better explanation for Gauguin having a guilty conscience—if in fact he had one—is his having punched a wife in the face and left her to parent their five children.
That is, if you agree with the argument that Gauguin had a guilty conscience. The best explanation for the artwork is coincidence. Even the “pact of silence” between the two artists is best explained by Van Gogh’s embarrassment and the way mental health was viewed at that time.
I don’t like Paul Gauguin as a painter or as a person, so I could live with pinning the rap on him, but the theory simply has too much going against it for me to believe it. Moreover, in a letter to Gauguin written as soon as he was released from the Arles hospital, he wrote:
I’m taking advantage of my first trip out of the hospital to write you a few most sincere and profound words of friendship…. I want you to refrain from saying bad things about our poor little yellow house until more mature reflection on either side. Please reply.
Letter to Gauguin, January 4, 1889. That’s a very friendly letter to send to an erstwhile attacker. The better explanation for the penultimate sentence, I believe, is that Van Gogh was embarrassed by the situation, and he didn’t want to further ruin his dream of an artist colony. The most illuminating letter came from Van Gogh as soon as he could write after the ear episode. Vincent wrote to his brother, Theo:
Now let’s talk about our friend Gauguin, did I terrify him? In short, why doesn’t he give me a sign of life? He must have left with you.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh (and his doctor) to Theo, January 2, 1889.
Finally, in terms of forensics, it is important to note that Vincent van Gogh was almost certainly right-handed. It would be much easier to cut off one’s left ear if one was right-handed. This fact doesn’t clear Gauguin, but it also doesn’t detract from the self-inflicted wound theory. Furthermore, if an attack occurred in the street, there would have been blood. The authorities were on the scene the first thing in the morning and did not report finding any there. They found lots of it in the Yellow House.
3. The Religious Angle.
Vincent van Gogh had been very religious. His father was a minister for the Dutch Reformed Church in Holland, and Vincent studied for a short time at divinity school. When that fell through, he became a missionary, spending years in England and on the continent proselytizing.
The fire that consumed Van Gogh as a painter had been the fire of an evangelist.
There are about one hundred verses in the bible that mention ears or hearing, and Van Gogh was very familiar with that book. The verse at Mark 4:23 is very famous: “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” At Mark 8:18, there is this question: “Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?” Matthew 13:16: “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.”
In his massive oeuvre—over 900 paintings and drawings are thought to exist—only a few dealt with patent religious subjects. You see tiny examples of each in the sidebar.
Those who believe that Van Gogh cut off his ear for religious reasons usually point to the story of Peter. John 18:26 provides: “One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, ‘Did I not see you in the garden with him?’” John 18:10 — “Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear.”
Van Gogh removed most of his left ear.
There are verses in the bible which intimate that the ears and hearing were gifts from god. Would the religious painter destroy one of god’s gifts? Psalm 94:9 — “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” Proverbs 20:12 — “The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both.”
Then, Deuteronomy 14:1 admonishes: “You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves….”
I personally believe that Van Gogh did not have a religious “reason” for cutting off his ear. But if he did, I would point to a verse not mentioned by others. Was there a romantic, lovelorn biblical connection? Consider Deuteronomy 15:17: “Then you shall take an awl, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever.”
Van Gogh brought his ear to the door of a possible lover.
That passage in Deuteronomy explains how you are supposed to deal with slaves who wish to stay in your household after their term of bondage has ended. According to that book, if the slave wished to stay, then you must pin him or her to the door by his or her ear. Was Vincent van Gogh a love slave? Was his love unrequited? Did he leave his ear at the door of the lover with whom he wished to stay? Again, not likely, but possible.
I am less likely to believe a religious angle was involved because of this 1888 letter from Van Gogh to his brother:
I’m thinking more and more that we shouldn’t judge the Good Lord by this world, because it’s one of his studies that turned out badly. But what of it, in failed studies — when you’re really fond of the artist — you don’t find much to criticize — you keep quiet. But we’re within our rights to ask for something better. We’d have to see other works by the same hand though. This world was clearly cobbled together in haste, in one of those bad moments when its author no longer knew what he was doing, and didn’t have his wits about him.
Letter to Theo, May 26, 1888. Van Gogh wrote those words seven months before the ear mutilation. And from his very next letter: “To me, it seems that we haven’t any proof of such a direct guidance from above." Letter to Theo, May 28, 1888. Perhaps the fire of evangelism was subsumed in the fire of Art?
4. Jack the Ripper!
Another theory claims that the notion entered Van Gogh’s mind because of the then-current headlines about a London murderer named Jack the Ripper. Vincent van Gogh had worked in England for an art dealer, travelled its streets and alleys and stood, pondering the meaning of life, on the banks of the Thames.
News travelled quickly across the Channel, especially salacious news. In this iteration, I assume, Vincent van Gogh would have been the anti-Ripper, a sort of Robin Hood of Rippers.
Five of the Ripper murders occurred between August 31 and November 9, 1888. Van Gogh lost his ear on December 23, 1888, right after news of the Ripper became ubiquitous:
“Rumors that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer.”
One of the later of those first five victims, Mary Jane Kelly, had her ears partly removed. Another victim, Catherine Eddowes, was found with “the lobe and auricle of the right ear cut obliquely through.”
Van Gogh did not mention the murders or Jack the Ripper in his letters, and, moreover, there is new evidence that the young lady to whom Vincent presented his ear was not a prostitute. She worked at a house of prostitution in some other capacity, perhaps cleaning rooms or serving drinks. See Bernadette Murphy, VAN GOGH'S EAR, at p. 223-25 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).
5. The Empathy Model.
In her recent book, Bernadette Murphy provides a theory based upon Van Gogh’s empathetic nature. It is compelling to me because I believe that Vincent van Gogh died of empathy. He felt keenly the sorrows and losses of others, and he regularly tried to help, only to frequently make things worse or at least uncomfortable.
Murphy believes that the young woman presented with Van Gogh’s ear was disfigured.
The logic is that Vincent felt the young lady’s pain and embarrassment, and in a show of solidarity—of empathy—he disfigured himself. The author’s research regarding the young woman was meticulous. I believe that Bernadette Murphy has the young lady figured out. The logical leap to create a motive for Van Gogh, though, is too far for me to jump. The proof is that the woman was possibly disfigured, and that Van Gogh was empathetic.
I want that to be right, but it’s not enough for me to go on. Perhaps if the young lady had a missing ear, but there’s no specific disfigurement cited by Murphy beyond a dog bite from a rabid dog. Moreover, a dog bite could have healed up without too much obvious scarring. Finally, it is known that Van Gogh visited houses of prostitution while in Arles, but, at least at the moment, he explicitly claimed to be using his “creative juices” for painting rather than fornication.
6. Christmas.
One aspect of the incident that is remarkably unremarked upon by Van Gogh experts (with an exception pointed out below) is its proximity to Christmas and the stress involved with that holiday. The season has two attributes that potentially could figure into Van Gogh’s mindset. First, it is a time of gift-giving, and I’m not being facetious here: He presented his ear to the young lady, some say, as a gift.
Second, based upon statistical studies, we have learned that the holidays—and especially Christmas—can be filled with stress, although the effects of that built-up stress usually emerge after the holiday. Study after study shows that there are fewer than expected incidents of self-harm, suicide or hospitalizations leading up to Christmas and a relative explosion immediately thereafter.
Van Gogh loved Christmas from early childhood. As a devout Christian, he celebrated the birth of his religious savior. He also found other redemptive reasons to glorify the holiday:
This week I bought a new 6-penny edition of Christmas carol and Haunted man by Dickens (London Chapman and Hall) with about 7 illustrations by Barnard, for example, a junk shop among others. I find all of Dickens beautiful, but those two tales — I’ve re-read them almost every year since I was a boy, and they always seem new to me.
Letter to Anthon van Rappard, March 5, 1883. The artist mentioned or alluded to “Christmas” in eighty-nine of his letters, a disproportionate number. As early as 1873, fifteen years before his breakdown, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about Christmas:
“How pleasant those days of Christmas were, I think of them so often; they’ll also long be remembered by you, as they were also your last days at home.”
I believe that Van Gogh’s fondest memories centered around his brother, Theo, and his fondest memories of Theo revolved around Christmas. We have about 200 letters written by Van Gogh from 1873 to 1881. In those letters, he used the phrase “longing for Christmas” twice, the phrase “looking forward to Christmas” once, the phrase “long for Christmas” four times, and the phrase “long so much for Christmas” three times. He stopped using those phrases in 1881.
So, Van Gogh used some kind of “yearning for Christmas” phraseology ten times in his first two hundred letters. In his next six hundred letters, after 1881, he used a similar phrase zero times. I think the reason for this is evidenced in a letter he wrote to his brother on December 29, 1881, stating:
At Christmas I had a rather violent argument with Pa, and feelings ran so high that Pa said it would be better if I left home. Well, it was said so decidedly that I actually left the same day.
Now, let’s return to the evening of December 23, 1888. It was the eve of Christmas Eve, and Vincent van Gogh was about to spend the holiday away from family and, most especially, away from his dear brother. Moreover, it is believed that the artist may have been aware that he might miss many future Christmases with his brother, who had just become engaged.
Sometimes such elation was ominous, for Van Gogh worked towards the deadlines of nervous crises. There was panic at the thought of intrusion or change, depression at Christmas. But he also speeded up when the mood seized him, when the irises nodded at him, the fields shivered and the sun brought on the harvest.
VAN GOGH: THE MASTERWORKS, William Feaver, at p.28 (Portland House,1990) (emphasis added). A year after the ear episode, Van Gogh himself noted a holiday pattern:
I don’t know if you’ll remember, I find it quite strange, that about a year ago Mrs Ginoux was ill at the same time as I was; and now it has been so again since – just around Christmas –for a few days I was again taken quite badly this year, however it was over very quickly; I had it less than a week.
Letter to Joseph Ginoux and Marie Ginoux-Julien, January 20, 1890. The young artist would not live to see another Christmas.
It seems to me, based upon anecdotal evidence—the worst kind of evidence—people who experience a psychotic break fall into two major categories in dealing with their frightening new condition: There are those who revert to a more comfortable time in their lives, and there are those who assume a more powerful persona, such as Lincoln, Jesus, Napoleon, etc. This is my very amateurish Fight or Flight theory. Christmas had been a very comfortable time for Van Gogh.
My next theory suggests that he may have adopted a more powerful persona.
7. The Shakespeare Theory.
While thinking about this subject, I tried to imagine the influences on the mind of Vincent van Gogh. What did he like? What moved him? Moreover, what moved him and referenced the human ear? Back in 1888, it would have to involve paintings, books, newspapers, folklore, the bible, song or plays. The first thought that came to my mind was William Shakespeare:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
JULIUS CAESAR, Act III, Scene II (as spoken by Marc Antony). This is a leading example of emotionally charged rhetoric, was almost certainly known to Van Gogh, and it mentions the act of lending one’s ear. Could this have been an influence upon the mind of Vincent van Gogh?
Did he like Shakespeare?
I found that Vincent van Gogh placed Shakespeare on a pedestal alongside Rembrandt.
In his letters, Vincent reserved the highest praise for Shakespeare and Rembrandt. About the Bard, Van Gogh wrote on three occasions that his writings were alive, that they LIVE. Here he equates the Stratfordian to a great painter:
Shakespeare — who is as mysterious as he? — his language and his way of doing things are surely the equal of any brush trembling with fever and emotion. But one has to learn to read, as one has to learn to see and learn to live.
Later, Van Gogh drew the comparison to a very particular great painter:
I took up the study of this writer a long time ago now. It’s as beautiful as Rembrandt. Shakespeare is to Charles Dickens or to V. Hugo what Ruisdael is to Daubigny, and Rembrandt to Millet.
He used analogies to Shakespeare to make his points, including how his fight to become an artist and draw from nature was similar to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in that only perseverance would carry the day:
Letter to Theo, October 15, 1881. How did Vincent van Gogh become enamored with Shakespeare? Because of melancholy and despair. But let him tell you in his own words:
So instead of giving way to despair, I took the way of active melancholy as long as I had strength for activity, or in other words, I preferred the melancholy that hopes and aspires and searches to the one that despairs, mournful and stagnant. So I studied the books I had to hand rather seriously, such as the Bible and Michelet’s La Révolution Française, and then last winter, Shakespeare and a little V. Hugo and Dickens and Beecher Stowe….
That is Vincent van Gogh tying Shakespeare to his own mental state. He studied Shakespeare to fight off despair. In a letter to his brother Theo, explaining that he had not changed, Vincent again referred to Shakespeare. He had not changed because his love for Rembrandt and Shakespeare had not changed:
So it would be a misunderstanding if you were to persist in believing that, for example, I would be less warm now towards Rembrandt or Millet or Delacroix, or whomever or whatever, because it’s the opposite. But you see, there are several things that are to be believed and to be loved; there’s something of Rembrandt in Shakespeare, … a reality more real than reality, so to speak, but you have to know how to read him; then there are extraordinary things in him, and he knows how to say inexpressible things; ...
If now you can forgive a man for going more deeply into paintings, admit also that the love of books is as holy as that of Rembrandt, and I even think that the two complement each other.
I really love the portrait of a man by Fabritius, which one day, also while taking a walk together, we looked at for a long time in the Haarlem museum. Good, but I love Dickens’s ‘Richard Cartone’ in his [A Tale of Two Cities] just as much, and I could show you other strangely vivid figures in yet other books, with more or less striking resemblance. And I think that Kent, a man in Shakespeare’s King Lear, is just as noble and distinguished a character as any figure of Thomas de Keyser, although Kent and King Lear are supposed to have lived a long time earlier. To put it no higher, my God, how beautiful that is.
Additionally, there are a few clues in the Marc Antony speech from Julius Caesar that give some credence to the Shakespeare theory. The main point, of course, is that Antony asks that his friends “lend” him their ears.
What Van Gogh said to the maid to whom he gave his ear was compelling. He supposedly phrased it like this: "Guard this object carefully." Those words better express a lending than a giving.
Van Gogh decided to lend her his ear.
Most importantly, I think, the players in Julius Caesar were roles played by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Remember, Van Gogh stated in a letter that Shakespeare’s characters, though centuries old at the time, represented people as they are today. Vincent van Gogh was Caesar/Marc Antony, and Paul Gauguin was Brutus/Cassius.
Brutus-Gauguin was beloved by Caesar-Van Gogh. He was Caesar's "angel." From the play:
"For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel:
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart.
...
I am no orator as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man...."
Remember that beautiful dream of Van Gogh’s? He was going to found a colony of artists, and they would immerse themselves in Art. Paul Gauguin was the linchpin. But Gauguin changed his mind. He turned against the idea and said he was going away. He metaphorically stabbed Van Gogh in the back, which was the “unkindest cut of all.”
In two paintings of this period, Van Gogh’s Chair at Arles and Gauguin’s Chair at Arles, Vincent showed a pair of empty chairs, and succeeded in representing not only the differences between the personalities of the two artists—Vincent’s chair is much more spartan, but with brighter, sunnier colors—but also his fear of solitude, or his awareness of the inevitable collapse of all his hopes that the departure of Gauguin would have provided.
VINCENT VAN GOGH: HIS LIFE AND WORKS, Stefano Roffo, p.26 (Grammercy Books, 1994). This is a self-portrait of Van Gogh or Marc Antony, the plain spoken one:
Marc Antony said in Julius Caesar: “I am no orator as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man...." Van Gogh showed himself to be a plain, blunt chair. The following is a portrait of Gauguin or Brutus, the gaudy one, who was a flowery speaker and became a traitor to his friend:
As far as I can tell, Vincent van Gogh never used the phrase “lend me your ears” in his letters. But his mother did. It was in a letter to her son Theo, which, coincidentally, was about her son Vincent. Mrs. Van Gogh hoped that Vincent would pay more attention to his father’s advice:
Pa will write to you about Vincent, how much it will cost him to make the sacrifice, and yet Pa wrote to him so faithfully, it seems to me he must lend an ear to it. If only he passed his exam when the time comes, how it would encourage him.
Letter of April 21, 1878 (See note 14). In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare had more than one thing to say about the human ear, and our resident Stratfordian, Yasuragi, tells us about it:
[W]hen Cassius first approaches Caesar to speak with him, Caesar tells him to walk on his right side, because he's deaf in his left ear. There's no historical basis for this, as far as I can tell—the scholars I've read either find none, or don't comment on the incident at all. So why make Caesar deaf in his left ear? Remember the connection of "left" and "sinister"—Caesar literally hears no evil in the play: he flatly rejects all warnings, save for a brief bit of waffling over Calpurnia's anxieties the morning of the assassination. I cannot see any other reason for Shakespeare to have added this detail to the character.
It was the left, or “sinister” ear, that Van Gogh cut off.
The artist also referenced specific Shakespeare characters and plays in his letters. He quoted from Hamlet in two letters, and Theo’s new wife wrote to Vincent about having seen that play and Macbeth. Letter from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger to Vincent van Gogh, July 5, 1889. Vincent displayed a thorough understanding of Macbeth, describing a woman in detail as a “Lady Macbeth” type. Letters to Theo, September 21, 1883 & December 1, 1883. Van Gogh was sympathetic to King Lear, who, in the end, went mad. Letter to Willemien van Gogh, July 2, 1889.
Mitigating against this theory is the fact that there are many possible reasons or no reason at all for Van Gogh to have cut off his ear. The artist mentioned or alluded to Shakespeare in twenty-three of his letters. On the other hand, he mentioned or alluded to Charles Dickens in fifty-four letters. Rembrandt was a subject in twice that number of letters. Finally, having looked at all of the paintings attributed to Van Gogh, I cannot point to a single one that has an explicit Shakespearean theme.
Conclusion
I am partial to my Shakespeare theory, as well as my ruminations about Christmas and lovelorn biblical slaves. I think those theories are better than the bullfight, empathy or Gauguin alternatives. Does all of this prove that Vincent van Gogh mutilated himself with Shakespeare or Christmas in mind? Hardly. If I were to analogize to a criminal case, I think I have enough probable cause to obtain a warrant from a less-than-diligent judge, but not nearly enough evidence for a conviction before any somewhat discerning jury.
Postscript
I hope you haven’t found this Art Mystery too flippant or facetious. It was not meant to be so. My family struggled through the torment of a loved one, and perhaps this isn’t what I should write at the end of a supposed mystery, but there were no answers! There was stress and a betrayal, and I imagine some biological chemicals did what they weren’t supposed to do, or they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, but, in the end, there was no tidy answer.
And there probably never will be.