The story of Nietzsche and Van Gogh

Author: Fu Ma

Nietzsche and Van Gogh are these two stars, one lighting up the night sky of human thinking, One that interprets the starry sky of human art more profoundly.

They were both born in religious families in remote villages. They received benevolent thoughts from an early age. Their not-rich and melancholy childhoods created their same lonely characters.

The withdrawn and introverted character makes them equally unlucky in love and life.

I also studied theology in my 20s, and then realized the falseness of God and abandoned God.

Nietzsche said: "God is dead, and I am God!" Van Gogh said: "God is gone, and I am the Holy Spirit!" In December 1888, the 35-year-old Van Gogh cut himself off One of his ears was taken to the hospital. Nietzsche suffered a complete schizophrenia on January 3, 1889, when he was 45 years old. Van Gogh's doctor said: You have never been normal... Nietzsche's medical records record: This patient likes to hug and kiss anyone on the street.

1888 was the peak of Nietzsche's creation. He wrote five pamphlets in succession: "The Twilight of the Idols", "The Wagner Affair", "Nietzsche Against Wagner", "Antichrist", "Look, That Man" ! "There is also a set of lyric poems "Ode to Dionysus". 1888 was also the peak of Van Gogh's art. Most of his classic paintings were produced in this year: "Sunflowers", "Blooming Orchard", "Suspension Bridge in Arles", "Harvest Scene", "Sunset and Sowers" ", "Cafe at Night", "Postman Rollin", "Self-Portrait", etc... In 1888, when Nietzsche was on the verge of a mental breakdown, the world "discovered" him, and for the first time someone began to introduce his philosophy . In 1889, on the eve of Van Gogh's end, his brother sold his paintings for the first time, and he was "discovered" by the world. In July 1890, Van Gogh ended up facing the sun in a wheat field in Auvers, France. Two days later, he bid farewell to this world completely and was buried in a small cemetery under the sunflowers. He was 37 years old.

On August 25, 1900, Nietzsche breathed his last in Weimar, Germany, and was buried in his hometown of Loken on August 28. He was 56 years old.

His life actually ended in 1889. During their lifetime, they were also unknown to the public. People who knew them almost all said that they were madmen and abandoned them outside the crowd. They were also drifters at the end of the century and early children of the new century! A hundred years ago, two lonely masters completed their short life journey, leaving behind splendid brilliance and countless regrets. Heraclitus said: "A person's character is his destiny.

" The personalities of Nietzsche and Van Gogh doomed the tragedy of their fates.

For the sake of art and the revelation of life, they pursue their dreams alone, a real dream. With restless souls, they search hard, and the constant spiritual crises make them... A short life was spent in turmoil.

They have no family, no income, no love, or even friends. They endure the unbearable loneliness and hardships of ordinary people. In the sorrow of the end of the century, they prepare for the next century... and even the next few years. People in the century have lit the torch. Let us understand Nietzsche and how to understand Van Gogh. In addition to passion, there is love. True love is the loneliest, and the most profound love is also the loneliest. It is precisely because of The reason for love, Nietzsche's arduous journey among all living things. It is precisely because of the desire for love that Van Gogh calls for the arrival of love in his colorful paintings. Nietzsche once said: "With your love and your creation Go into your loneliness, and justice will lamely follow you after a long time." A mediocre soul has no connotation worthy of others' understanding, so it will not feel true loneliness. On the contrary, a person's understanding of life and The world has truly unique feelings. Truly original thoughts and art must be understood, but they must not be easily understood, so I feel deeply lonely. The loneliest soul often contains the most passionate love. Love life, Selfless exploration of the true meaning of life, climbing higher and higher on the dangerous peak of truth, with fewer and fewer companions. Loneliness is a soul worth understanding. It is tragic to seek understanding but not get it. Boredom is an empty soul. Looking for entertainment but not getting it is comic. Loneliness is looking for ordinary human warmth but not getting it. It is neutral. The reason why Nietzsche and Van Gogh are lonely is: "Because they feel that there is a terrible gap that separates them." Separate from all traditions and place them in eternal glory." This is the loneliness of a real person surrounded by hypocrisy. This is the loneliness of an ideological warrior who challenges all traditions. What dominates them on their lonely journey Defeat yourself? It is because they want to transcend their own beliefs, and the meaning of this belief is higher than the meaning of life itself. Humanity is a dream of God, and God is also a dream of humanity.

So, what does God represent in the world of Nietzsche and Van Gogh? Here, God represents the inherent, traditional concept of faith.

God is dead! It triggered an unprecedented collapse in the spiritual world of Nietzsche and Van Gogh.

They saw unprecedented freedom in the Great Collapse.

The value of everything must be re-evaluated. Nietzsche repeatedly spoke of the epoch-making significance of the death of God.

For Nietzsche and Van Gogh, this was a new creative field.

Who killed God? It's them! It was Nietzsche and Van Gogh who killed their respective gods with their own hands.

It is also us who killed our own God with our own hands.

God is dead! New hope emerged.

As a result, Nietzsche and Van Gogh were awakened like sleepwalkers.

They created a new world for themselves; then, they shouted loudly: "God is dead! I am God! I am the Holy Spirit!" Nietzsche and Van Gogh are romantic realists.

The lonely situation and the will to love have made them unrestrained and unrestrained with the passion of life with a brave heart. In Nietzsche's philosophical poems, we see the innocence of human childhood, his dreams, intoxication and salvation

Similarly, the soul-shaking paintings created by Van Gogh with passion are also full of The romance of the poet and the melody of the music.

A century has passed quickly, and the figures of Nietzsche and Van Gogh are getting further and further away from us.

However, their footprints are clearly left on our path... Nietzsche: "Melancholy heart, why do you refuse to rest, what is it that makes your feet bleed... ...What are you expecting?" "Where did he go? All I know is that he disappeared."

Nietzsche is the most arrogant person, the most intelligent person in history. A lonely person. His extreme sensitivity to art, philosophy, religion, morality, culture and other fields, his extraordinary ability to control words, and the rebelliousness and arrogance of his thoughts are enough to prove that he is a rare genius. Perhaps in the longer term, His thoughts and writings will further illuminate the true value of this genius.

But I think Nietzsche is first of all a rare arrogant person, and then a genius. In a large part of his writings and letters to his friends, he tried his best to control language and words, exaggerating and exaggerating his achievements and important role in philosophy.

For example: "Why am I so smart?" "People will understand that I am the most important philosopher of this era, and it may not even be that. I may be a bridge that connects two thousand years of history with a great mission." In view of the fact that in the near future I must raise the most solemn challenge ever faced by mankind, it is important to clarify who I am. There is a huge difference between the grandeur of my mission and the insignificance of my contemporaries. This is because they have neither heard me speak nor seen me in person. "In fact, I would rather be a professor in Basel than become God." "I am a god dressed like this!" ...Such words can be seen everywhere in his works. Has any genius in ancient and modern times spoken more arrogantly and arrogantly than these words? If his arrogance is removed, then there is no essential difference between him and Schopenhauer, Hegel and others, and he can be collectively called a great philosopher.

But on the other hand, Nietzsche was a man full of inner contradictions and a very fragile soul. He lived under the careful care and protection of his mother and sister all his life, and was often negative, pessimistic, depressed and bored. . When he broke with his friend Wagner, and when his works were ignored and criticized, his arrogance disappeared and he showed more loneliness, confusion and hesitation than ordinary people. Nietzsche's life was full of desolation. He never married, had few relatives and few friends, and lived a "isolated" life. Apart from being obsessed with his own philosophy like a madman, he rarely had the pleasure of ordinary people's life, but he tasted All the rare loneliness in the world. In 1889, the 45-year-old Nietzsche went crazy. During his illness, he would suddenly hug and kiss any pedestrian on the street, and shout to passers-by: "I am God, dressed like this!" He kept writing letters to friends. , the content is incoherent and illogical, leaving friends confused, and sometimes lying dying like a fatally wounded beast. Nietzsche died in 1900 at the age of 56.

Human sociality and Nietzsche's arrogance determine that he will inevitably suffer such a fate. All his tragedies are probably the price he paid for his arrogance. All this proves that Nietzsche is a man, not a god.

Nietzsche once said: "Everything, while everyone is still looking up, I have begun to look down." Yes, he was so smart that he had the loneliness of "being too talented to be a common man." . I often think that maybe his extreme intelligence led to his loneliness that is rare for ordinary people, and it was his loneliness that is rare for ordinary people that led to his fragile nerves. I also often think that if a person is as smart as Nietzsche, life will not have much meaning. All the happiness in life will be eclipsed in his sharp eyes, and everything that makes people eager to try will disappear under his gaze. It seems so childish and ridiculous. What's the point of such an uninteresting life? Such a smart person must be as lonely as Nietzsche, as nervous as Nietzsche, and perhaps as crazy as Nietzsche.

I still want to be an ordinary, happy person.

In the ninth year after Nietzsche was born, in a small village called Sundant in the Brabant province of the Netherlands, an equally great figure was born. The most dazzling and brilliant star: Vincent Van Gogh.

Van Gogh is not as gentle, gentlemanly, smart and arrogant as Nietzsche. He is a waste at the end of his life. It seems that God forgot to give him a place when he arranged for him to come to the world. He will face poverty and embarrassment all his life. He pursued them fiercely, surrounded and intercepted them. He has no family and children, no love, friendship and health, no money, no reliable source of material life, and even no God. He is like a pile of garbage, surrounded by flies and mosquitoes, emitting a foul stench that makes people despise and disgust him.

But he is also a genius, a superstar, a star that will never die in the European painting world.

Van Gogh's life was a life of poverty and misery, a life of numbness and dullness, a life without happiness and meaning. When he was around 20 years old, he worked as a salesperson in a gallery, but he did not like painting or drawing. He only sold paintings for others, and he was not better than others. He is relatively melancholic and easily suppresses his inner feelings. Just to escape the blow of broken love, he chose to run away from home and taste the pain to forget the girl who rejected him. From then on, he fell into a desperate situation of long-term struggle for survival.

During his exile, he tried to be a teacher, a pastor, learned speech, and received an education, but the results showed that he was not suitable for it. He often puts himself at the end of his rope, with no job, no money, no healthy body, no strength, no thoughts, no enthusiasm and ideals, and the worst thing is that he has lost the fulcrum on which to maintain his life and has failed countless times. And the barren life left him without the courage to start a new life. "I'm a waste, I should die," he often muttered to himself when he was so hungry that his head was dizzy and his eyes were black.

When Van Gogh was 26 years old, he was at the end of his rope and seemed to see a faint light in the darkness of life. He suddenly realized that he was missing the art world. The beautiful oil paintings in the museum gradually regained their vitality in his stiff mind. So he started painting. He did not expect that this sudden idea would cost him his whole life, nor did he expect that this sudden idea would write such a brilliant page in the long history of art in Europe.

But Van Gogh definitely did not like painting, nor did he want to make a living through painting, nor did he want to become famous through it. He just wanted to find a reason for himself to live - I am learning to paint. . The result of painting was that his life became more embarrassment and it was difficult to make a living. The pain at this time was no longer caused by broken love, but by the inability to be self-sufficient and the constant denial of the value of his own survival. Therefore, his learning to paint was mechanical and aimless. He had no foundation in painting and started too late. He had no teachers or classmates. He fiddled with drawing boards, pencils and paints in solitude to create something that no one had ever seen before and that was not recognized by contemporary people. Hidden deep in his heart is pain and disaster as deep as the sea, and suppressed in his heart is anger and power like fire. He pours the pain and disaster, anger and power into the brush without any scruples. He does not want to create He doesn't want to get anything from it, just because there is nothing else for him to do, just to give himself a reason to live, just to numb his painful thoughts in painting, so as to forget The pain of life, forgetting the embarrassment of life, forgetting his own existence, he can only paint, keep painting, paint desperately, paint without scruples, day after day, month after month, year after year. Painting, painting without any interference or stimulation, until the moment when he passed away from the world with exhausted mind and body, the painting stopped abruptly.

If life is compared to a funnel, then ordinary people want to climb up from the bottom of the funnel, hoping to gain a larger living space for themselves. Forced by the sword of life, Van Gogh crawled through the details of the funnel and found his own sky in the boundless wilderness.

No one thought that he would be successful during his lifetime. Although his rich brother had been paying for his living expenses, it was only out of sympathy for him and thought that his painting would be better than his permanent career. His wandering life was better, who knew he would be so dazzling and brilliant after his death.

Today, his paintings are rare treasures, but none of these precious works were sold during his lifetime. Those treasures were regarded as waste at that time and were worthless.

Nowadays, anyone who wants to own an authentic painting by Van Gogh can become a millionaire, but the people who painted back then never had any chance of wealth, and lived in poverty all their lives, unable to sustain their food and clothing.

A doctor once said seriously to Van Gogh: "You are a very neurotic person and you have never been normal." A neurotic person who has never been normal has achieved such high artistic achievements, while so many people who think they are smart and normal people are doing nothing.

So, friend, if one day you see a sad and disheveled person on the street, then please don’t despise him, maybe he is a truly great artist and genius!

Nietzsche and Van Gogh, one is an aristocratic scholar who has no worries about food and clothing, and is arrogant and uninhibited; the other is an ascetic who has tasted all the wind and frost in the world; the other is a precocious and precocious genius who has a great interest in literature and literature. They all have great interests and hobbies in music, drama, language, philosophy, etc., and their outstanding talents are beyond the reach of others; one is a dull and numb genius, who can't even protect himself and so on; the other is as magnificent and elegant as the window of a boutique. A masterpiece of art, like a listless beggar outside the store.

What's interesting is that both of them are paranoid and overly sensitive to their surroundings. In the end, they both went crazy and died because of their madness. What’s even more interesting is that both of them never married, never started a family, and drifted both physically and mentally. Nietzsche left a few words to curse women, and Van Gogh gave one of his ears to a prostitute he once fooled around with.

Nietzsche's life is like a tragedy, and Van Gogh's life is like a comedy.