Vincent's View
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
Vincent’s View And yet I have only seen the garden and what I can look at through my window. —Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo van Gogh, from the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, early June 1889 The winter of his symptoms was shocking, catching him out with their intensity. They diagnosed epilepsy and exhaustion; he knew it was mental illness, though. He had to leave his house in Arles, prized canvases in that bedroom he captured so poignantly in oil, that simple floor and the sky-blue walls. The sign that he accepted his sickness was that he went freely to Saint-Rémy, allowed himself to be called unwell and unable to cope with ordinary life. The storm left him shattered like those he saw each day in the asylum, idling like old horses no longer fit to plough, this idleness he feared and fought hard. Depersonalisation, derealisation: modern words for what the psyche does when it is prey to the utter dread that anxiety brings to body and mind. Somehow, he worked out that it was all part and parcel of his plight, seeking sanctuary in the old monastery walls, painting his way out of a dreadful corner. The terrible fear of madness receding in the glorious greens of the garden, the pebbled paths and cloister leading to a round of walked and plodded calm. He knows his illness may well come back, but he is not braced rigid against it. No, he is breathing out the garden that he inhaled onto the stretched new canvas. He says it is bravery to live this way. His brush is chasing the essential, the true likeness, strokes keeping up with sight, and the reaper in the barred window’s field.
Hear Adrian recite this poem in the garden of the Asylum in San Remy de Provence 2018
I have claimed the moniker ‘The Anxious Poet’. I have a podcast under that name. You can listen to it here: The Anxious Poet's Podcast In 2014 I had a crashing breakdown, a sudden onset of crushing anxiety. It was partly due to a physiological condition (Hyperparathyroidism) and the repression of the anxious part of my psyche over many years. I always tried to present the persona of a calm and wise man. I relegated any feelings of uncertainty and fear to a dark place and in 2014 that shadow invaded my conscious life.
In the depts of my distress I turned to two figures that I discerned had been through something similar. One was St Francis, who I perceived, behind all the hagiography had experienced at least two major breakdowns. The other was Vincent Van Gogh, whose letters I had read in my youth and came back to me, along with visions of his paintings completed whilst incarcerated in a mental asylum in San Remy in the South of France.
As I was already in the habit of writing poetry it was a real curative to try and write my way through my breakdown. In one piece I spoke of:
lines gleaned from a dark and no-mooned night,
when only my pen knew its way
Writing as Therapy - A Night Sea Journey
As I began to recover and in honour of these two broken companions we went on a pilgrimage down through France to San Remy and the asylum which is still a working mental hospital as well as a museum and then on to Assisi. I was still in a bit of a fractured state but it was another very curative experience.
The picture above is Vincent breathing out onto the canvass the gardens he describes in his letters to his beloved brother Theo and that he inhaled into his soul each day. The green world is another curative when we are in an anxious state. I say curative as there is never a complete cure, in my personal experience. We will always carry the scars of our breakdowns, but they do open a door to another life, a life where we can engage in curative activities that lead to both accommodation and transformation. I found this quote from a great Jungian analyst and writer very helpful.
If we are sometimes filled with and beset by profound existential angst or afflicted with the torment of depression, such an experience can intimate that even now, beneath the threshold of consciousness, the germ of a psychic content is struggling to emerge from the collective unconscious to cause a decisive change in our lives. There is no reason to be ashamed of such anxiety or depression. Quite the contrary, someone who never knows such anxiety is most likely cut off from the deeper levels of his or her soul. It is only natural to fear the darker aspects of the self.
—Andreas Schweizer, The Sungod’s Journey through the Netherworld
When I came to write my poetry collection about this period I wrote two cycles of poems dedicated to these two broken yet luminous companions Francis and Vincent. The Vincent Cycle begins with this quote: ‘Van Gogh’s indefatigable determination to paint had never been greater than in the Asylum at Saint-Rémy’1 He inspired me to pursue a creative outlet for all the feelings the storms of anxiety that were raising in me. He too, was beset by his own internal angst and torments of depression. The paintings and letters from that period are extraordinary. One of the last paintings from that period is this one.
He saw this image from his window in the Asylum and this is what he said of it to Theo:
"A reaper, the study is all yellow, terribly thickly impasted, but the subject was beautiful and simple. I then saw in this reaper – a vague figure struggling like a devil in the full heat of the day to reach the end of his toil – I then saw the image of death in it, in this sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped. (...) But in this death nothing sad, it takes place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold."
He is facing’s deepest fears and finding in it nothing sad, but rather they were full of light. All of this felt deeply curative to me. So as the Anxious Poet, in my podcasts and in this substack I try to offer an invitation to see our mental health struggles not just as an affliction but an opportunity to find the curative resources hidden in the depths of our psyche - the angels in the recesses of our soul.
Walter and Metzger, Van Gogh—The Complete Paintings
I know what you speak of, the not knowing free fall of anxiety, and how my backbone and my story carries me forward. Thriving on poetry, song and dance, as remedy, is my belongingness.
I just listened to American Odyssey part one, superb Mr. Scott, the eye of a poet, the ancestors are happy.
All blessings to you and yours during this drawing in time of Winter, Geraldine