Two Students Of Mankind: Nietzsche And van Gogh

Markus Srik

27 January 2010, 15:02

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Vincent Willem van Gogh worked in completely different fields and were not aware of each other’s existence. On the face of it, they have nothing to do with each other and no attempt has been made to discuss them within a single context. However, there was a bond between them, perhaps entirely coincidental, but perhaps not. This is not to say that anyone who attempts to replicate these circumstances will be blessed with the same level of artistic and philosophic achievement, but these influences do help us (or can help us) to better understand the partly tragic, partly joyous, but almost always extreme lives of these two men.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in a village called Röcken, by Lützen (scene of the famous battle of 1632), not far from Leipzig, in Prussia on 15 October 1844. Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in the village of Groot-Zundert, close to Breda, in Holland, not quite nine years later, on 30 March 1853. The two villages are separated by around 400 miles.

Along with sharing a middle name (the one named for the Prussian King, and the other after a grandfather), both men had Protestant clergymen for fathers. Nietzsche lost his younger brother, Ludwig Joseph, aged two, in 1850. Van Gogh’s parents had their first child in 1852, unfortunately stillborn, also called Vincent.

Both grew up with an intense love of the Bible and the Christian Religion, intending to devote their lives to it. Both rejected the Christian God, when still young, one becoming famous for it.

Both had difficult and inconstant relations with their families (not least on account of their radically altered religious beliefs): Nietzsche with his mother (Franziska) and sister (Elisabeth), and van Gogh with his parents, and other relatives.

Nietzsche was conversant with many languages (including Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Italian, and French), of course, and van Gogh could converse in at least four (French, Dutch, German and English).

They were both unsuccessful in forming lasting alliances with women. They made multiple offers of marriage, and were not immune from terrible loneliness. This loneliness played a vital part in their creative work.

They spent many years away from their home country (van Gogh in England and France, and Nietzsche in Switzerland and Italy), but never lost their affection for their roots.

Both van Gogh and Nietzsche suffered from ill-health for a significant part of their creative periods. However, whereas Nietzsche restricted himself to a frugal diet, van Gogh followed Dickens’ advice apropos alcohol and tobacco.

The two men required financial support over many years, and were almost never free from the want of money: van Gogh was almost exclusively supported by his younger brother (the faithful Theo), while Nietzsche received a pension from the University of Basel and donations from his friends and admirers.

Their creativity was often inspired by the outdoors: van Gogh painted his landscapes outside, with the winds threatening to blow away his canvas, and under the full-glare of the summer sun, whilst Nietzsche carried his notebooks with him on long, long walks, also in the cold.

Both treasured the influence of other thinkers before them, in the various arts: Heine, Shakespeare, the French novelists, Martin Luther, Cranach and Dürer etc.. One musician in particular exerted a strong influence on both: Richard Wagner. Van Gogh wished he could do in painting what Wagner had done in music. Nietzsche, of course, knew Wagner personally, and intimately, rejecting him in later years. Van Gogh was particularly excited about the Far East (Japan) as a source of intellectual stimulation, spurred on by the de Goncourts. Nietzsche too examined Buddhism, and the Vedic tradition, through Schopenhauer first, and later through the works of Paul Deussen.

The year 1888 was special for both of them, with van Gogh painting some of his most well-known works, and Nietzsche authoring a significant part of his oeuvre. It was, for both of them, the beginning of the end.

Largely unsuccessful (financially, in van Gogh’s case, and by his own high standards, in Nietzsche’s) in their lives, fame and recognition came their way towards the end. There are now museums, archives and societies in their memory.

Van Gogh started having attacks of madness towards the end of his too-short life, culminating with periods spent in an asylum, and suicide (in 1890), while Nietzsche spent almost ten years in an incommunicative state (from 1890 onwards).

Van Gogh’s paintings, and Nietzsche’s books, poetry and music live on, and are studied around the world. However, in both cases, one perhaps comes closest to them through their correspondence with their admirers.

Comment

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