Van

Gogh's

Japan

Tahiti

and

Gaug uin'

reconsidered

Shigemi

INAGA

Mie University

If the mountain paradise represents one type of ideal place, the other can be
categorized as the island paradise. Both in the East and in the West, it has been a
common gardening practice to create an isle in the middle of a lake or a pond of a
garden. In Japanese the word island ("shima") was literally a metonymical substitute
for the "garden". A small and isolated "tops" surrounded by water is a miniaturized version, or a regressive form, of the desire for marvelous possessions, to use
Stephen Greenblatt's expression, which prompted people to venture into the ocean
in search of hidden paradise. From the Greek Hesperides down to William Buttler
Yeat's Innisfree (or rather down to its parody as "Lake Isles" in the "Whispering
Glades" by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One [1948]), the imagery of islands is abundant in Western literature. As the roccoco "Embarquement pour Cythere" by Watteau or J.-J. Rousseau's solitary meditations at the Ile St. Pierre, or the tropical
beauty of Paul et Virginie (1787) depicted by Bernardin de St.Pierre, the island
paradise constitutes in itself a vast topic which defies any easy attempt at global
overview'. With this huge background in mind, I restrict my topic in this paper to
the case-study of Van Gogh's Japan and Paul Gauguin's Tahiti revisited. In the visions of these two painters, I shall try to analyse how the topography of utopia in
the Pacific Ocean overlaps the pathography of the European civilization at the fin du
siecle.

Van Gogh's Japan represents the utopia of an ideal community of artists maintained
by their mutual emulation and brotherhood, free from any mischievous conspiracy.
As he wrote to Emile Bernard: "Since long I have thought it touching that the
Japanese artists used to exchange works among themselves very often. It certainly
proves that they liked and upheld each other, and that there reigned a certain harmony among them; and that they were really living in some sort of fraternal community, quite naturally, and not in intrigues "2.
153

INAGAShigemi
The
supposed exchange of works which Van
Gogh beleives Japanese artists practiced remains a
mystery among specialists. According to my personal
hypothesis, Van Gogh must have seen some example
of surimono prints put together and bound as an
album. One such album is kept intact today at the
Cabinet des estampes in the Bibliotheque nationale in
Paris. This album, composed in three volumes by a
Kyoka satirical poet Nagashima Masahide in token of
his collaboration with other poets, contains rare
surimono print illustrations by such famous artists
like Santo Kyoden, Hokusai, Shunman, Kiyonaga
and Utamaro. Van Gogh might have seen this while
he was in Paris, because this album belonged to the
former collection of Theodore Duret [fiig. 1], who is
supposed to have had his collection deposited with the
Brothers Goupil, where Theo van Gogh was working
as the director of their Montmartre branch3. One
glimpse would have been enough for Van Gogh to be
convinced of the practice of exchange by the
Japanese, as many prints of different size from several
artists were assembled togather on the face of the
folder composed of 8 panels each [fig. 2, 31. Van
Gogh expresses his desire to
realize such an album: "Des
albums de six ou dix ou
douze [dessins a la plume],
comme
les albums
de
dessins originaux japonais./
J'ai grand envie de faire un
tel pour Gauguin, et un
pour Bernard "4 [fig. 4].
Inspired by this imagined habitual exchange of
work between Japanese artists, Van Gogh fostered the
idea of "Gemeinschaftsideal" (to use N. Pevsner's
terminology)5, and dreamed

Fig. 1. James McNeill

Whistler,
Arrangement
in Flesh
Colour
and
Black, Portrait of Theodore Duret, 183-84, Oil
on Canvas, 193.4 x 90.8 cm,
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. 2. The surimono album composed by Nagashima

Masahide, ca. 1797-1812. Former collection of Theodore Duret, donnated to the Bibliotheque
naionale in
Paris in 1900. Tome I. Paris, Bibliotheque
nationale,
cote: Od.171.
154

VanGogh'sJapanand Gauguin'sTahitireconsidered
of realizing an artists' community at the
Yellow House [Maison j aune] in Arles
with his collegues like Emile Bernard and
Paul Gauguin. The following phrase in
his letter to Bernard, mentioned above,
must be understood at its face value: "The
more we are like them in this respect, (i.e.
in "living in a sort of fraternal community, quite naturally, and not in intrigue"),
the better it will be for us"6. This was a
counterproposal
to Bernard's
idea of
establishing a kind of "freemason" (sic.)
type community of painters. "The more
we discuss on the matter, the worse the
result is"7.
Fig.
3. Katsushika
Hokusai,
Surimono of calender depicting a
poster
for
a kabuki
theater,
19.6 x 13.7 cm, the unique piece to be
known, found in the Duret album
mentioned above, Fig. 2).

2
When

Van

idealizing
made

Gogh
the

drawings

was

writing

this

letter,

Japanese

artist

as one

like a "simple

worker",

who
he

was looking at the first issues of Le Japon artistique, recently published by S. Bing:
'Tai la r
eproduction (publication Bing) (Un seul brin d'herbe) [fig. 5]. Quel exemple de conscience! Tu le verras un jour" (B. 18). The same anecdote is also reported
to Theo, where Vincent develops his philosophy a la japonaise:
"If

we

philosophic
between

study

Japanese

and intelligent
the

earth

and

who
the

art

spends

moon?

we

see

his time

No.

In

man

doing

studying

who
what?

is

In studying

Bismarck's
studies

4. Vincent Van Gogh, Album of drawings conceived by Vincent Van Gogh. Sketch in letter 492,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh.

Fig.

155

undoubtedly

the distance

politics?
a

single

wise,

No.

He

blade

of

grass (un seul brin d'herbe).

But this blade of grass leads
him to draw every plant and
then every season, the great
views of the countryside,
then animals,
then the
human figure. So he passes
his life, and life is too short
to do the whole. Come now,

INAGA

Shigemi

isn't it almost a true religion which these simple Japanese teach us, who live in nature as
though they themselves were flowers?" 8 [fig.
6].
Dr. Tsukasa Kodera and I have
already indicated the source of this passage9
and demonstrated that it was a re-interpretation of S. Bing's "programme" in the first
issue of Le Japon artisitque where Bing
writes that according to a Japanese, "there
is nothing in creation, not even the smallest
blade of grass, which does not deserve a
place in the elevated conceptions of art" ("il
n'existe rien dans la creation, fut-ce un infime brin d'herbe, qui ne soit digne de
Fig. 5. anonym. Sketch of "un brin
d'herbe", which Figures in the first
tome of Samuel Bing (ed.), Le Japon
artistique, Tome I, Nr. 1, May 1888.

trouver la place dans les conceptions elevees

de fart"lo.
The lesson Van Gogh got from this
"J
apanese" philospophy must also be read
at face value, for he is literally saying that
by studying Japanese art, people should
become much gayer and happier. Here is a
magical statement. By his act of drawing
and painting like a Japanese, he believed he
would become much happier". By his work
he believed he would be able to carry this
Japanese philosophy into effect; his handling of the brush and pigment literally realizing on the canvas his Japan as ideal
paradise.
"if th

e weather were always as

beautiful as it is, it would be better than the

Fig. 6. Vincent Van Gogh, Study of a

Sprig of Periwinkle, Black chark,
pen and ink, washed on paper,
47.5 x 40 cm, [May/June
1890],
Amsterdam, Vincent Van Gogh Fondation.

paradise of artists, it would be fully in

Japan"12. By this time Vincent was experiencing an almost euphorical and hallucinatory
sense of identification with the surrounding
nature of Arles: "From time to time I have a
terrible lucidity, when the nature is so
156

Van

beautiful

these

longer

feel

painting

days and

myself

comes

by

me

like

in a dream"

this

was

why

following
ly insisted

the

itself

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

to

13. And
in the

so earnest-

on his brother

and

collegues

coming

to Arles,

if it were

the only

remedy

getting

Japan

I no

and

Vincent,

passage,

Gogh's

rid of the

as
for

sickness

of

civilization14
In
the

Vincent's

Arlesian

artists

Japan
repetitive

community

was

transposition

mind,

the

of
exact

Fig. 7. Vincent Van Gogh, La Crau, jardins de

Maratchers, Oil on Canvas, 72.5 x 92 cm, June 1888,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh.

of the dreamed

as u-topia.

Hence

declaration

the

. "Here

in Arles,

I am in Japan"

[fig. 71.

This imaginary identification leads

him to disguise himself into a Japanese
buddhist monk in the famous
(Autoportrait en bonze) [fig. 8],
which was destined for exchange with
Gauguin's self-portrait [fig. 9]. Here
Vincent at first aimed at depicting "the
character of the simple monk ["bonze"]
admiring the eternal Buddha, and exaggerated his personality by rendering
the eyes oblique in a Japanese
fashion16, as if incarnating that image
of the Japanese philosopher, contemplating a single blade of grass.
Further, even the model is contaminated by this Japanization: it is a
well known fact that (La Mousoume )
[fig. 10] was named after the Japanese
word for a young girl, which Vincent

Fig.

8.

comme

Vincent

vam

Bonze,

Oil

1888, Cambridge,
Art Museum.
157

Gogh,
on

Autoportrait

canvas,

Massachusetts,

62 x 52 cm,
Fogg

INAGA

Shigemi

found in Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysantheme

(1887).
Vincent
adds
pseudoethymological
explanation
by saying after Loti that the
"mo
ue" has the same connotation
as the French
"moue"
, meaning "pout" in
English. By a curious coin-

Fig. 9. Paul Gauguin,

Autoportrait
dit "Les
Miserables", Oil on Canvas, 45 x 56 cm, Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh.
tion

was to be found
But,

ly proved

on the wall

as we all know,

to be more

illusory

of Vincent's

room

this spell of magical

than

real

cidence, the June issue of Le

Japon artistique contained a
folded huge color reproduction of (Usugumo) [fig. 11]
by Kaigetsudo,
with the
mouth of the girl pouting".
It is said that this reproducat the hospital

identification

with Gauguin's

arrival

with

in Saint
Japan

in Arles.

Remy.

is ironicalWithin

only

Fig.
11.
Kaigetsudo,
Usugumo,
color
reproduction
from Le Japon artistique,
June
1888, Paris,
Bibliotheque
de la
Maison
du Japon,
Cite internationale
universitaire
de Paris.

Fig. 10.
Vincent van Gogh, Portrait
de
Mousoume,
Oil on Canvas,
74 X 60 cm,
July 1888, Washington,
National Gallery.
158

Van

two

months,

Vincent

the dream

cut

off part

of ideal

of his left

community

Gogh's

in Arles

ear on December

Japan

and

Gauguin's

was doomed

22, shortly

before

Tahiti

reconsidered

to disaster,
the Chrismas

when
of

188818.

The (Portrait de Vincent au tournesol) [fig. 121 executed by Gauguin in Arles

represents the crisis of illusory identification between reality and painting. The crisis
of illusionism is directly connected with the mental crisis. Vincent in the painting is
painting a canvas, the surface of which is hidden to the beholder, as the canvas is
positioned vertically to the pictorial plane. Curiously enough the brush he is handling is not only touching on the invisible canvas but also pointing at the image of a
sunflower at the same time. Is Vincent painting a canvas or a "real" flower in the
painting? Suspended between this double register, the position of the brush is impossible to locate and this indeterminability is crystalized as such in this two-dimensional picture plane. No one can say for sure what is really depicted on Vincent's
painting in this portrait by Gauguin. It seals off an enigma from our access19
Due to this ambiguous double position of Vincent's brush, the relation between reality and painting can be reversed. The sunflower can no longer be interpreted as a usual still life. Instead this flower is being created by Vincent's hand in
the painting, as if the secret of the invisible canvas were transmitted to the "real"
flower created by painting. This work therefore can no longer be a simple copy of
the real three-dimensional world. It conceals a secret which can only be maintained
by and in its two-dimensionality.
secret

From
on,

the

act

tion represented
ting

can

power

out
creates

the

longer

of

the
the

outer

stay
that

of the

it

is

the

depicted

which

in

generates

creation.

on this
but

world.

we, who

but

Vincent

me,

magical

painting,

the painting

Theo

hand

the whole

of depic-

"reality"

painting,
painter's

initial

in this pain-

enact

over

It is no

this

who

wrote
painting:
got mad".

to
"it is
The

Fig. 12. Paul Gauguin, Portrait de Vincent aux tournsols, Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm, 1888, Rijksmuseum
Vincent Van Gogh.
159

INAGA

Shigemi

sunflower which remains alive, although the painting was executed at the end of
November also explains that it was not a copy of outer reality but was an artistic
"
creation" in the strongest sense of the word. Moreover, this sunflower has, undoubtedly, the same kind of eye as that of Odilon Redon's (Il y eut peut-titre une vision premiere essayee dans la fleur) [fig. 13] which gazes at us, the beholder.
Without the eye which sees, there is no visual world possible. As Gauguin's spiritual
mentor, Redon put it, painting is a privileged place which makes the invisible world
visible20.
According to this magical thinking, the canvas is nothing but the theater of
trans-substantiation where the miracle of making the invisible thing visible was performed by the painter. The ideal place, by definition u-topia, was found nowhere
else but on this pictorial plane by and in which Vincent (and also Paul Gauguin)
were literally "possessed", in a demonological sense of this expression. To put it in
an ordinary context of aesthetic explanation, the end of mimesis has thus prepared
to bestow upon the painting the power of directly influencing the beholder's mental
state ("etat d'ame"). Let us recall here that Georges Seurat's psychological scientism
and theoretical approaches were nothing but another version of the same desperate
effort to capture this magic power of painting21.

Gauguin shared Vincent's idea of making

a portable album of images and visual
sources for study. We read in the
Diverses Choses, notes and reflections
written during his first stay in Oceania,
the following observation on his portable
museum: "Croquis japonais, estampes
d'Hokousai,
lithographies de Daumier,
[cruelles observations de] Forain, ecole
de Giotto, groupes en ce recueil [en un
album], non par hasard, de par ma
[bonne] volonte, tout a fait intentionnee
(not by accident but by my own will quite
intentionally). J'y joins une photographie d'une peinture de Giotto]. Parce que
d'apparences
differentes je veux en
demontrer les liens de parente [for, from
the apparent
differences, I want to
160

Fig. 13. Odilon Redon, Il y eut peut-etre

une vision premiere essayee dans la
fleur, dans Les Origines, lithography,
22.3 x 17.2 cm, 1883, Paris, Collection
Dina Vierny.

Van

Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

demostrate the affinities which tie them together] "22.

This passage reveals the secret of Gauguin's ars combinatoria, practiced during his stay in Oceania. He freely and intentionally extracted various iconographical
sources out of their original context so as to combine them for his own purposes in
his artistic creation.
Art historians have made great contributions in identifying many of these hidden visual sources ranging from an Egyptian frieze of oxen [fig. 14-a], which was to
be found transposed in the snow-covered Brittany village landscape [fig. 14] left at
his Maison de jouir in Atuona at the artist's death in 1903 and bought by Victor
Segalen at the Parisian auction the same year; or the Parthenon frieze of horses [fig.
15-a], which will reappear in Tahitian sceneries [fig. 15] and up to the images of Buddhist statues of Borobudur
which Gauguin had discovered at the Exposition universelle in 1889. It would be
superfluous to mention his
transposition
of Hokusai's
wrestlers [fig. 16-a] into the
biblical
image of Jacob
wrestling with the Angel
Gabriel [fig. 16], and which
Camille Pissarro
severely
Fig. 14-a. Tombeau de Ti in Sakkarah,
from,
criticized as the imitation of
"Japanese
Labourage, Bas-relief egyptien, Ph. Giraudon.
, Byzantin painters
and others "23.
But as for the logic of
this ars combinatoria,
no
substantial
remarks have
been given by art historians,
as far as I know. I propose to
call it a "creolization
in
visual combinations", by extrapolating the idea of syntactical transformation and lexical de-contextualization
which
are observed
by
linguists in the process of
hybridization and syncretism
Fig. 14.
Paul Gauguin, Nuit de Noel, Oil on canvas,
of languages24.

72 x 83 cm, 1894-,
161

Lausanne,

Private

Collection.

INAGA

Shigemi

Fig. 15-a.
"Detail du cortege des Panathenees",
Les Frieses du Parthenon,
by
Charles Yriarte, Planches photographiques
par Arosa. Paris, Bibiliotheque
nationale.

Fig. 15.
Paul Gauguin,
Le Cheval blanc,
Oil on canvas, 141 x 91 cm, 1898, Paris,
Musee d'Orsay.

Among many relevant works, let us analyse here, as a typical example, Te arii
vahine [fig. 17]. Francoise Cachin, among others, has already pointed out two major
iconographical sources: Diana [fig. 17-a] by Lucas Cranach elder and of course
Manet's Olympia [fig. 17-b] .
The tree at the center with a
serpent which coils up its
trunk indicates without ambiguity the tree of knowledge
and temptation. The subject
matter can only be "L'Eve
tahitienne",
as Gauguin
himself suggests. Although
the explanation
given by
Gauguin does not encourage
such an interpretation,
the
black dog with his red lewd
eyes and the ripe mangoas exFig. 16. Paul Gauguin, La Vision apres le sermon ou,
hibiting their red fruity pulp
la Lutte
de Jacob
avec l'ange,
Oil on canvas,
inevitably connote the loss of
73 x 92 cm, 1888, Edinbourgh,
National
Gallery of
Scotland.
virginity (Perte du pucerage
162

Van Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

[fig. 17-c] to use the title of one of

Gauguin's paintings)25. Still, the message
Gauguin would have hoped to transmit remains equivocal, and all the more equivocal
as the posture of the model also suggests the
image of Nirvana drawn from one of the
photographs of the Borobudur stupa in
Gauguin's possession [fig. 17-d]. How can
the fall of human beings be reconciled, in
this tropical setting of Tahitian society, with
the Buddhist idea of nirvana? Should nirvana not represent the opposite and "the
other side of the shore" of such an infamous
human degeneration which characterized
the "European Civilization" Gauguin had rejected while being himself rejected from it?
Fig.
16-a.
Katsushika
Hokusai,
Hokusai Manga, Book III, fol. 6/7,
before 1819.

To answer this question, it would be approriate to quote from the interview published in Echo de Paris (13 mai 1895). "The Eva of my choice is almost an animal, and
that's why she is chaste. All the Venuses exhibited in the Parisian Salon [fig. 18] are
indecent and odiously sensual [lubriques] "26. Here is a radical upside-down operation of moral judgement, inevitably tinted with the mythological figure of the immaculate nature of "bon sauvage" Gauguin aspired to be identified with.
This confession seems
to have been based on a
shocking initiation Gauguin
had the chance to experience
on the occasion of the Areois
ritual throne succession after
the death of Pomare V, on
June 1892, shortly
after
Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti.
In his ethnological note "Ancien Culte Maori", Gauguin
depicts with vivacity the last
moment of the ritual of abFig. 17.
Paul Gauguin,
Te arii vahine, Oil on canvas,
97 x 130 cm, 1896, Leningrad,

Ermitage

Museum.
163

jection

where

the

newly

INAGA

Shigemi

throned king is covered with

urine and feces27.
According to Alain
Babadzan,
this
ritual
sacrilege is interpreted as the

Fig. 17-a.
Lucas Cranach,
Le Repos de Diana,
1537, Besancon, Musee des Beaux-Arts.

ca.

process of symbolic death

and resurrection of the newly
nominated
king. The enthusiastic sexual orgy played
in extasy, which accompanies
the ritual
as a
manifestation of human intercourse with divinity, was

Fig. 17-b.
Paul Gauguin's
copy of Edouard Manet's
Olympia,
Oil on canvas,
83 x 130 cm, Feb. 1891,
Private Collection.

probably
what astonished
Gauguin at first and led him
later to the revelation of the
"
savage" notion of chastity.
The apparent obscenity was
revealed to be free from any
European sense of lubricity.
This ethical conversion permitted Gauguin to conceive
the Tahitian Eva as immaculate even after having
committed
"original sin".
Let us quote from the
original French:
"Ell

e est bien subtile,

tres savante dans sa naivete,
1'Eve tahitienne.
L'enigme
refugiee au fond de leurs
yeux d'enfants me reste incommunicable.
(...) C'est
1'Eve apres le peche, pouvant
encore marcher nue sans imFig. 17-c.
canvas,

Paul Gauguin,
90 x 130 cm,

La Perte du pucelage,
1891,

Norfork,

Chrysler

Museum.

Oil on
Art

pudeur, conservant toute sa

beaute animale comme au
premier jour.

164

(...)

Comme

Van

Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

l'Eve, le corps est reste

animal, mais la tete a pro-

Fig.17-d.
Photograph
of The scenes from The
Awadenas and The Jatakas,
Javas, Temple of
Borobudur, from Beshrijving van Barbuden, II series
(B), 111. VI. Here from the Exhibition catalogue
Gauguin, Paris, R.M.N., 1989, p. 388.

gresse avec l'evolution,

la
pensee a developpe la subtilite, 1'amour a imprime le
sourir ironique sur ses levres,
et, na1vement, elle cherche
dans sa memoire le pourquoi
des temps passes, des temps
d'aujourd'hui. Enigmatiquement, elle vous regarde.C'est de l'intangible, a-t-on
dit./Soit, j'accepte"28.

This passage leads to

the fundamental criticism of
the Western and institutionalized Christian morality, while already suggesting the
basic idea of Gauguin's most famous masterpiece D'ou venons-nous, qui sommesnous, oiu allons-nous? In his note "Question de droit? Les enfants sont-ils responsables des fautes de leurs parents?", written during his second stay in Tahiti,
Gauguin violently denounced the catholic
and protestant authorities. According to
Gauguin, the legal mariage imposed by
the church as a moral duty is the source of
all kind of hypocrisy,
which has
engendered such hideous things as trade
of human flesh ("negoce de la chair") and
mental prostitution
("prostitution
de
fame")29. This seems to be the virus born
from the civilization, for, he maintains,
such a question is not asked by the savage

Fig.
18.
William
Bouguereau,
Naissance
de Venus, Oil on canvas,
300 x 218 cm, 1879, Paris, Musee d'Orsay.

people in Oceania or in Africa. Moreover,

as soon as the Christianity is propagated
among them, the vice which had never
been known before appears at the same
time as the grape leaves below the navel.
Gauguin concludes that such a morality
had been preached neither in Buddhist
165

INAGA

Shigemi

sutras

nor

in the

Gospels3o.

Gauguin tried to justify his seeming a-morality by radically re-interpreting

the Biblical texts: "Grow and multiply" ("Croissez et multipliez") is regarded as a
carnal promise ("parole charnelle"); for Gauguin, "multiply" is the imperative for
coupling ("accouplement") without questioning its legality and which is applicable
not only to human beings but also to all animals and plants. And the fact that "no
woman could stone the adulterous Mary Magdalene indicates that "human being
cannot exist without sin and that sin is a necessary condition for humanity"31.

Gauguin's illustrations for Ancient culte Maori or Noa Noa [fig. 19] eloquently expresses this "savage" ethics. The nude (figure below, borrowed from the Peruvian
Mummy Gauguin copied at the Musee d'ethnologie [fig. 23-a]), represents Death
which is also the soil for the Tree of Life of the upper part, with its anthropomorphism modeled after the Hina divinity. The scene of sexual intercourse on the top of
the flower petals represents procreation and regeneration. The mystery of the life cycle is pure from any notion of vice imposed by the civilization: "L'inconnu du vice
chez des sauvages". Moreover Gauguin was fascinated by the Tahitian notion of

Fig. 19.
Paul Gauguin,
Album
fol.75. Paris, Musee du Louvre,
dessins.

Noa Noa,
Cabinet des

166

Fig. 20.
Paul Gauguin,
Oviri, gritstone,
partly
enamelled,
75 x 19 x
27 cm, 1894, Paris, Musee d'Orsay.

Van

Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

"sa

uvage" and hoped to identify himself with the divinity called Oviri [fig. 20],
which meant "savage" in Tahitian. Gauguin explains this "enigmatic divinity" as
"the monste
r which, grasping its creatures, fecundates them with its semen from its
generous flanks so as to engender Seraphitus-Seraphita"32.
As is already well-known, Seraphitus-Seraphita
was an androgynous angel
created by Balzac under the influence of Swedenborg. A note in his manuscript clearly indicates Gauguin's interest in, and seduction to, androgynous features of the
"savage" people ("le cote androgyne du sauvage
, le peu de difference de sexe chez les
animaux") suggesting also his own desire to become female for a moment ("Desir
d'etre un instant faible, femme")33.
It is in this mystical novel by Balzac that we find the famous phrase: "Do you
understand the destination of humanity by means of this visual thought ? from
where it comes and where it goes"34. The word "visual thought" ("pensee visible") is
suggestive, as Gauguin himself left at his notebook the following remark which is
supposed to have been written for the canvas in question: "Mon Dieu, que c'est
difficile la peinture quand on veut exprimer sa pensee avec des moyens picturaux et
non litteraires"35 [fig. 21].
Is it then really adequate to try to decipher this huge panel by way of literary
approach, as if to suppose that the whole composition conceals a meaning to be
analyzed as allegorical symbolism ? Instead of this conventional approach, I here
want to propose to follow the process of ars combinatoria as Gauguin proceeded it.
Faithful to Gauguin's title, let us try to reconstitute the genealogy of icongraphical
elements which constitutes Gauguin's creation: we shall ask: where did the images
come from, what the images are, then where the images are to go.

For this purpose, let's have a look at The Portrait de Meyer de Haan [fig. 22]. On
the table rendered by the diagonal lines subdividing the composition lie two books:
one is Milton's
Paradise
Lost; the other is Carlyle's
Sartor Resartus,
where a
recurring question was asked: "Who am I ? what is me?
A Voice, A Motion, an Ap-

Fig. 21. Paul Gauguin, D'oic venons-nous? Qui sommes-nous?

ou allons-nous?
Oil on canvas,
139 x 374.5 cm, 1897, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.
167

pearance-some
embodied,
visualized Idea in the Eternal
mind ? (...) Sure enough I
am; and lately was not: but

INAGA

Shigemi

whence

? How?

Whereto?"

which

had

been

translated
into French
by Hypolitte
Taine as
"Mais d'ou venons -nous ? 0 Dieu
, ou allonsnous

?36
It

was

therefore

on

this

portrait

of

Meyer de Haan
that the haunting
question
of
"Where
do we come from
, who are we, Where
are we going
the idea

to"

periencing

Gauguin
the

catholic

of

and

Gauguin

tinction

of a race
assistons

the

last

paradise

in the

local
was

a ce triste

by a cruel

struggling
French

near

tinction

de la race en grande

les reins

infecondes

partie

et les ovaires

on
of
the

colonial
of the ex-

future.

spectacle

ex-

letters
with

convinced

in the

time

was actually

observed
days,

church

authorities.

nous

loss

last

And

in Tahiti

as is clearly

Gauguin's

Fig. 22.
Paul Gauguin, Portrait
de
Meyer de Haan "Sartor Resartus,
Carlyle,
Le Paradis
perdu,
Milton",
Oil on board,
79.6 x
51.7 cm, 1889, Private Collection.

for the first

of the loss of paradise.

coincidence,

earth,

encountered

"Aussi

qui est l'expoitrinaire,

detruits

par le

mercure"37.
This observation

proved

to be a tragical-

ly faithful description of the disastrous situation the Marquesas Islands were suffering, its inhabitants being contaminated by all kinds of unknown diseases like
syphilis, leprosy and especially tuberculosis imported by the commericial whale-catching white fishermen and sailors (which reminds us Herman Merville's Typee: A
Peep of Polynesian Life [1846] or Omoo: A Narrative of Adventure in the South
Seas [1847]). The population which counted about 80 thousand at the begining of
the 19th Century had come down to only 3.500 when Gauguin arrived there at the
end of the century. The paradise was literally on the edge of extinction38.
These circumstances permit us to understand that Gauguin's works, however
idealized and therefore faithless to the reality of the islands, as some post-colonial
criticism goes, were nonetheless the ultimate images which could be created at the
very last moment of the islands history, when the discovery of paradise was only the
reverse of its definitive and irremediable loss. It was on this irreversible point of
human history that Gauguin's vision took its shape. The end of the European exploration of the planet coincided with the loss of the last unknown world. With this
second paradise lost, as it was called by a visionary Japanese non-academic scholar
Aramata Hiroshi, we are convinced that to "know" paradise amounts to its loss, and
that paradise is the name of a place which cannot be known without the price of its
168

Van

disappearance;
marvellous

In the final analysis,

Gogh's

the possession

Japan

and

Gauguin's

of the marvellous

Tahiti

reconsidered

is no longer

possession39

9
Quite paradoxically Meyer de Haan, whose portrait had predicted Gauguin's
destiny to assiste at the loss of the Paradise of Tahiti, reappeared in a panel named
Nirvana [fig. 23] (1890). The background rendering Death, modeled by the same
Peruvian mummy [fig. 23-a], was to be re-utilized at the left side of D'ou venonsnous,

ou

sommes-nous...

[fig. 21]. De Haan, who was

to die in 1895, also seems to
haunt the Manao Tupapau
(Esprit des morts veille) [fig.
24] as the personified Death,
rather than as a dead soul,
who was going to deprive
Gauguin of his newborn son.
Quite blasphemously for the
narrow-minded faithful, the
scene clearly imitates the
Fig. 23.
Paul Gaugin, Portrait
de Jacob de Haan ou
Nirvana,
oil on canvas, 20 x 29 cm, 1889, Hartford,
Wadsworth
Atheneum.

Fig. 24. Paul Gauguin, Manao tupapau [L'esprit des

morts veille], oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm, 1892,
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
169

Fig. 23-a.
Peruvian
Mummy,
Paris, Musee de 1'homme.

INAGA

Shigemi

Nativity [fig. 25] or the birth of the Jesus-Christ. As a Messenger of the Dead world,
De Haan thus repeatedly appeared so as to induce Gauguin to meditation on Life
and Death.
The second genealogical line to be traced back here is a series of pastoral landscapes represented by Pastoral tahitienne and Arearea [fig. 26], which provide
miniatuarized archetypal images of an island paradise with a tree of life at its center.
Around the tiny isle is a vast panorama of ocean irradiating brocade-like primary
colors with vivid contrasts of decorative effect like an "old tapestry". It is irresitible
to

quote

from

passage

from

Diverses

Choses:

"la tout

dre et beaute,
volupte"

West

luxe,

qu'or-

calme

oute

perspective

d'eloignement

serait

sens;

suggerer

voulant

nature

un non-

luxuriante

donnee,

embrase

lui,

it me fallait

a mes

en plein

tout

autour
bien

intime,

dans

ruisseaux

les fourres,

palais

nature

elle-meme,

tes

richesses

couleurs

par
avec

que
la,

mais

la
tou-

Tahiti

toutes

fabuleuses,

embrase,

fem-

un im-

decore

De

les

ces
dans

mense

renferme.

la vie

cependant

ombres,

chuchotant

les

cadre

bien

mais

de

donner
un

/ C'est
air,

desor-

du tropique

personnages

en accord.

une

et

un soleil

qui

mes

et

.. .
"T

Fig. 25.
Paul Gauguin, Nativite tahitienne, Oil on canvas, 66 x 76 cm 1896, Leningrad,
Ermitage Museum.

famous

ces

cet

air

tamise,

silencieux"4o

guin's
Fig.

26.

Paul

75 x 94 cm,

Gauguin,
1892,

Paris,

Arearea,
Musee

Oil

on

canvas,

tings
of

d'Orsay.

170

the

According

to

Gau-

aesthetics,

these

pain-

can be typical
"Truthfulness

examples
of the

Van

Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

falsehood" ("verite du mensonge"). Fully to express the "grandeur and profundity

of the mystery of Tahiti" by a canvas as small as one meter square, an unusual density and intensity are required in order to aquire an effect as strong as that of nature
itself. To obtain the "equivalent" of Nature, condensing it within a small pictorial
plane, the use of primary colors with exaggerated and unnatural crudeness is
justified41. Painting here is clearly conceived of as the "equivalent" of the real world.
The dog at the foot of the tree in Pastoral
tahitienne, to be transposed into the right
side of D'ou venons-nous must be Gauguin's
double, in guise of his own signature. Inspiring faithfullness, he looks like waiting for his
master, who finally arrives in Arearea making the pose of Buddhist meditation at the
foot of the Tree of Life. This posture, applied from a photograph
of Borobudur
statues faithfully follows the traditional
iconography of the personage under the
sacred tree as an invitation to the phase of nirvana [fig. 27-a].
These two genealogic lines, one, the
figures of Meyer de Haan,
Fig. 27.
bares,

Paul Gauguin
Contes baroil on canvas,
131.5 x
90.5 cm,
1902,
Essen,
Folkwang
Museum.

the other, the

posture of Buddhist meditation, are finally

combined in Comtes barbares [fig. 27], supposed to be one of the last paintings by
Gauguin. Once again, there is no clear key to
decipher

the message

scene

remains

Meyer

de

Haan's

transformed

into

claws

or talons.

figure

at the

man

in

whose

as

And
tion
read

alone

The

right

meditation,

of
is

Tohotaua,

husband

as a magician

are

hooked-

female

identified

171

feet

shaped

the

Fig. 27-a. Borbudor (Java), details of the bas-reliefs,

photos by Van Kinsbergen, 1910, Paris, Bibliotheque
nationale, Archives.

and the

enigmatic.

is recorded
doctor42.

yet this
cannot

the message

informahelp

us

of the pain-

INAGA

Shigemi

ting. Still, the provenance of these three figures reveals us the plain
messenger of Paradise Lost and the enigma of Life of Sartor Resartus
ed with a Tahitian girl around a meditation on the Nirvana. And this
istence is itself a testimony of a mysterious configuration which would

fact that the

are juxtaposspatial coexnot have been

possible were it not for Gauguin's quest for paradise.

These heterogeneous elements are summoned there together for the moment,
evoking some "affinity" ("lien de parente") as Gauguin put it, to be separated from
each other at the next moment, to configure another affinity. The migration and
"
creolization" of these iconographical elements in Gauguin's Work can been seen as
a metaphor for Life, which is nothing but the enigma of an eternal succession of configuration and disfiguration, assemblage and dis-assemblage, insemination and
dissemination. D'oiu venons-nous, qui sommes-nous, oic allons-nous [fig. 21] is no
longer a mere title of one of a Gauguin's paintings; in its perpetual "oeuvrement"
and "desoeuvrement", by its process of "creolized syncretism", Gauguin's Work as
a whole constitues the allegory of this question of Life which has no petrified
answer.

10
Gauguin

replied

to Emile

Bernard

when

the latter
in 1890.

Fig. 28.
Odilon Redon, Portrait
de
Paul
Gauguin,
Oil on canvas,
66 x 54.5 cm, 1903-5, Paris, Musee
d'Orsay.

told
"To

him of the death

die

at that

moment

of Vincent
is a great

o fhappiness
for
d him,
it'sexact
thee
suffering and if he comes back in another
life, he shall carry the fruit of his good
behavior in this world--according to the
Law of Buddha"a3.
13 years later, when the news of
Gauguin's death was transmitted to France,
Odilon Redon compared Gauguin's ceramic
work to such "an initial region where each
flower would be an archetype of one
species" and remarked that Gauguin's
strong virtuality and originality would be
recognized in the repercussion among other
artists around him" [fig. 28].
The mechanism of successive insemination and dissemination, configuration and disfiguration we observed in and
within the personal creation of Gauguin is,
172

Van

Fig. 29.
Odilon Redon, Bouddha,
Pastel
on carton, 90 x 73 cm, ca. 1905, Paris,
Musee d'Orsay.

Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

Fig. 30.
Odilon Redon,
Le Sommeil
de
Caliban,
Oil on canvas,
48.3 x 38.5 cm,
1895-1900,
Paris, Musee d'Orsay.

according to Redon, applicable to a wider range of history and the spiritual migration goes on beyond the limit of an individual creator. Redon was also an artist who
hoped, one year after the death of Gauguin, to be reincarnated in India45.
A huge tree is recognized as Redon's source of visual imagination. Swallowing up all the hidden souls from the invisible world of subterranean water currents,
the tree lets us see what would have otherwise remained invisible. Beside the tree,
Redon is known to have posed Caliban and Buddha as twins46. Is it too far-fetched
to see in each of them the reincarnation of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin: Vincent as a Japanese Buddhist monk [fig. 29] and Gauguin as a savage Caliban in an
island paradise [fig. 30] ? Even though this hypothesis is too hazardous, at least we
can conclude without hesitation that the dream of Metempsychosis and longing for
nirvana were hidden motifs (or rather motives) generating the visual imagination of
these three artists who searched for the realization of an ideal-place on and by their
pictorial planes conceived as a theater of magical trans-substantiation47.

Notes
Unless

otherwise

generale,
Gauguin

mentioned,

Letters

by

Vincent

Van

Gogh

are

from

Correspondance

3 tomes, Paris: Gallimard,

1960/1990,
and Writings
and letters by Paul
are from Oviri, ecrits d'un sauvage, ed by Marcel Guerin, Paris: Gallimard,
173

INAGA

Shigemi

1970, which are translated by me into English in the present paper. It is a well known
fact that both of these French editions contain some (partially serious) editorial problems which remain to be revised. Although the manuscripts have not been accessible to
us, I could rectify several details thanks to the advices of specialists who have direct access to the manuscripts.
1. cf. Toshihiko Kawasaki, Niwa no Ingurando [The England of the Garden], ch. 7 "Umi
no nakano niwa [Garden in the sea]", 1983, University of Nagoya Press, pp. 207-246;
Toshihiko Kawasaki, "Tooi shima harukana omoi [Isles far away, Longing insatiable]",
in Nagoyadaigaku Kenkyuronshu,
Faculty of Letters, University of Nagoya, LXX,
1977, pp. 231-254.
2. 'Tai depuis longtemps ete touche que les artistes japonais ont pratique tres souvent
1'echange entre eux. Cela prouve bien qu'il s'aimaient et se tenaient et qu'il regnait une
certaine harmonie entre eux; qu'ils vivaient justement dans une sorte de vie fraternelle,
naturellement, et non pas dans les intrigues" (B. 17, Sep. 1888).
3. cf. Shigemi Inaga "Van Gogh no mita surimono [Surimono prints as Van Gogh could
have seen them]?", Honno mado, Dec. 1993, pp. 16-19. Professor John Clark suggeted
that Van Gogh could have consulted Illustrated London News where Charles Wirgman
reported the sessions of Kangwakai (1884-88), organized by E. Fenollosa, Okakura Tenshin and other artists like Kano Hogai or Hashimoto Gaho, where the participants made
expert appraisal of old masterpieces and critical appreciation of newly conceived pieces.
Van Gogh's Letters do not make sure of Van Gogh access to this information. And
Kangwakai did not necessarily imply exchanges of works among participants.
4. lettre a Theo, 492.
5. N. Pevsner "Gemeischaftsideale unter den bildenden Kiinstern des 19 Jahrhunderts",
Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft
and Geistesgeschichte, 9 (1931),
pp 125-154.
6. "Plus nous leur ressemblerons sous ce respects-la mieux l'on s'en trouvera" (B. 17).
7. "L'idee de faire une sorte de Franc-Maconnerie des peintres ne me plait pas enormement.
Je meprise profondement les regles, les institutions etc., enfin je cherche autre chose que
les dogmes, qui, bien loin de regler les choses, ne font que causer des disputes sans fin
(...) Ce sera plus beau si cela se cristalise naturellement, plus on en cause moins cela se
fait" (B. 18).
8. "Si 1'on etudie l'art japonais, alors on voit un homme incontestablement
sage et
philosophe et intelligent, qui passe son temps a quoi ? A etudier la distance de la terre a
la lune ? Non. A etudier la politique de Bismarck? Non. Il etudie un seul brin d'herbe
[He studies a single blade of glass]. /Mais ce brin d'herbe le porte a dessiner toutes les
plantes, ensuite les saisons, les grands aspects des paysages, enfin les animaux, puis la
figure humaine. 11passe ainsi sa vie et la vie est trop courte a faire le tout"./ Voyons, cela
n'est-ce-pas presque une vraie religion ce que nous enseignent ces Japonais si simples et
qui vivent dans la nature comme si eux-memes etaient des fleurs ?" (542).
9. Tsukasa Kodera, Vicent van Gogh, Christianity versus Nature, John Benjamins
Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philaderphia,
1990, p. 57; Shigemi Inaga, "Vincent
van Gogh et le Japon-au
centenaire de la mort du peintre", Jinbun Ronso, The Faculty
of Humanities and Social Sciences, National University of Mie, Nr. 8 1991, p. 79.
10. By the way, is it a mere coincidence that Peter Altenberg was making the same remark in
Wiener Fin de siecle context ? : "Die Japaner malen einen Blutenzweig and es ist der
ganze Friihling. Bei uns malen sie den ganzen Fluhring and es ist kaum ein Blutenzweig.
Weise Okonomie ist Alles!" The words by Altenberg being cited by Hermann Bahr, in
his "Japanische Ausstellung", Sezession 1900, ss. 216-224; reproduced in Klaus Berger,
174

Van

Gogh's

Japan

and

Gauguin's

Tahiti

reconsidered

Japonismus, Miinchen, Prestel Verlag, 1980, ss. 224-226.

11. "Et on ne saurait etudier fart japonais, it me semble, sans devenir beacoup plus gai et
plus heureux, et it nous faut revenir a la nature malgre notre education et notre travail
dans un monde de convention" (542).
12. "le temps ici reste beau, et si c'etait toujours comme cela, ce serait mieux que le paradis
des peintres, ce serait du Japon en plein" (543, Sep. 1888).
13. 'Tai une lucidite terrible par moments, lorsque la nature est si belle de ces jours-ci et
alors je ne me sens plus et le tableau me vient comme dans un reve" (543).
14. "Mon Dieu it faudrait que ce fut possible que to vecusses dans le Midi aussi, car je pense
toujours qu'il nous faut a nous autres et du soleil et du beau temps et de fair blue comme remede le plus solide (...) Que je pense a toi et a Gauguin et a Bernard a tout moment
et partout. Tellement c'est beau et tellement je voudrais y voir tout le monde" (543).
15. "Ici, je suis au Japon" (W.7).
16. "le caractere d'un bonze simple adorateur du Bouddha eternel (...) seulement j'ai oblique
un peu les yeux a la japonaise" (545).
17. Shigemi Inaga, "Kyodotai no mokuyaku aruiha hohotekitaiko [Tacit Connivance of the
Community or a methodological Regression: van Gogh et/ou le Japon] ", Eureka, Dec.
1990, pp. 156-173, esp. p. 166.
18. A blind spot still remains unnoticed in the hypothesis mounted by specialists on the
famous incident of Van Gogh's cutting off the ear is further investigated in our Japanese
version of the same quarry, to be published in Togenkyo to U-topia (tentative title), ed.
by Toru Haga, PHP kenkyusho.
19. Philippe Junod, "(Auto) Portrait de l'artiste en Christ", L'Autoportrait
a lage de la
photographie, Musee cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, 1985, pp. 3-23.
20. "Toute mon originalite consiste donc a faire vivre humainement
des etres invraisemblables selon les lois du vraisemblable, en mettant autant que possible, la logique
du visible au service de l'invisible". Odilon Redon, A Soi-meme, Paris: Librairie JoseCorti, 1979, p. 28.
21. Andre Chastel, "Une Source oubliee de Seurat", Archives de l'art francais, XXII 195057, pp. 400-407; Fables, Formes, Figures, tome 2, Paris: Flammarion, 1978, pp. 385392.
22. Oviri, p. 162. The texts between [...] are the published version in Avant et apres.
23. "Je ne reproche pas a Gauguin d'avoir fait un fond vermillion, ni deux geurriers luttant
et les paysans bretonnes au premier plan, je lui reproche d'avoir chipe cela aux Japonais
et aux peintres bysantins et autres." Lettre de Camille Pissarro, 20 avril 1891, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, ed. Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Paris: Valhermeil, tome 3, 1988,
p. 66; John Rewald's edition: Lettres [de Camille Pissarro] a son fils Lucian, Paris:
Albin Michel, 1950, p. 234.
24. On this problematics of "creolisation" as a metaphor of cultural transformation,
see,
among others, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphael Confiant, Lettres creoles: Tracees antillaises et continentals de la litterature, 1635-1975, Paris: Hatier, 1991. Imafuku Ryuta,
Kureorushugi [Creolisme, or The Heterology of CulutreJ, Tokyo: Seidosha, 1991.
25. En dernier lieu, Francoise Cachin, Gauguin "Ce malgre moi de sauvage", Paris:
Gallimard, 1989, pp. 108-109.
26. "L'Eve de mon choix est presque un animal; voila pourquoi eelle est chaste, quoique nue.
Toutes les Venus exposes au Salon [en France] sont indecentes, odieusement lubriques..." (Oviri, p. 140).
27. "Le chef ou roi, place sur des nattes, pres de l'image du dieu, y recevait ce qu'ils nommaient le dernier hommage du peuple. C'etaient des danses et des representations de la
plus choquante salete, de l'obscenite la plus grossiere, oft plusieurs hommes et femmes
175

INAGA

Shigemi

entierement nus entouraient le roi et s'efforcaient de le toucher des differantes parties de

leur corps, au point qu'il avait peine a se preserver de leur urine et de leurs excrements
dont ils cherchaient a le couvrir. Cela durait jusuqu'a ce que les pretres recommencassent a sonner de leurs trompettes et a battre de leurs tambours, ce qui etait le signal de la
retraite et de la fin de la fete" (Oviri, pp. 86-87).
Cf. Alain Babadzan, Les depouilles des dieux, Essai sur la religion a l'epoque de la
decouverte, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme,1993, gives some relevant insight into this ritual.
28. Oviri, p. 170.
29. Oviri, pp. 182-190.
30. "Oeuvre de chair ne feras qu'en mariage seulement. Qui ne connaIt aujourd'hui le
manuel du parfait confesseur, d'un sadisme si effrayant [as the moral of imposing legal
mariage]? En consultant les textes, soit de Bouddha, soit de l'Evangile, on peut se convaincre qu'il Wen est jamais question, comme ne faisant pas partie de la sagesse, ne contribuant ni au bonheur, ni au perfectionnement de 1'homme. Source de toute hypocrisie,
de bien des maux physiques, cette Morale [called legal mariage] engendre le grand
negoce de la chair, la prostitution de fame; et it semble meme que ce soit un virus ne de
la civilisation, car chez les races sauvages d'Oceanie, les peuplades noires de l'Afrique, it
Wen est pas question. De plus, aussitot l'apparition de la chretiente parmi eux, le vice

31.

32.

33.
34.

35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.

44.

qui leur etait inconnu apparait chez eux en meme temps que la feuille de vigne audessous du nombril" (Oviri, pp. 186-87).
"Croissez et multipliez" semble meme dire en tant que parole charnelle (...) multipliez,
c'est-a-dire accouplez-vous [et it ri'indique aucune forme legale d'accouplement], loi qui
s'applique aussi bien a l'homme qu'aux animaux et aux plantes (...) Que celui qui se
trouve sans peche lui jette premiere la pierre", it [Jusus] semble indiquer que personne
West sans peche, qu'il faut admettre comme une necessite de l'humanite" (Oviri, p. 187).
"le monstre, etraignant sa creature, feconde de sa semance des flancs genereux pour
engendrer Seraphitus-Seraphita"
(Sourire, aout,1899), first indicated by Merete
Bodersen in her Gauguin's Ceramics, London, 1964, pp. 146-152.
Oviri, p. 113.
"Comprends-tu par cette pensee visible la destinee de 1'humaniteV d'ou elles vient, oft elle
va ?" Passage indicated in H. R. Rookmaaker, Gauguin and 19th Century Art theory,
Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1972, p. 232; p. 351.
Oviri, p. 166.
Rookmaaker. op. cit. (note 34), p. 233.
Oviri, p. 326.
Bengt Danielsson, Gauguin a Tahiti et aux ils marquises, Papeete, Les editions du
pacifique, 1975, pp. 244-248.
Hiroshi Aramata, Hoa Hoa, Tokyo, Shinchosha, 1995, p. 28.
Oviri, p. 169.
Oviri, p. 177.
See Gauguin, catalogue de 1'exposition, Paris: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais,
1989, Editions de la Reunions des musees nationaux, p. 474.
"Mourir dans ce moment c'est un grand bonheur pour lui, c'est la fin justement des
souffrances, et s'il revient dans une autre vie, it portera le fruit de sa belle conduite en ce
monde (selon la loi de Bouddha)" (s.d. A Poldu, aout 1890, Oviri, p. 64).
"Je les compare [les oeuvres ceramiques de Gauguin] a des fleurs d'une region premiere
ou chaque fleur serait le type d'une espese, laissant a des artistes prochaines le soin de
pourvoir par affiliation a des varietes. Le sculpteur sur bois fut un raffine, sauvage, grandiose ou delicat, et surtout libre de toute ecole. Peintre, it fut le chercheur tres conscient
176

Van Gogh's

Japan

and Gauguin's

Tahiti reconsidered

de ses virtualites; it trouva cette forte originalite dont on peut suivre la repercussion chez
d'autres. Tout ce qu'il a touche a sa griffe apparente, ce fut un maitre". (Odilon Redon,
"Q
uelques opinions sur Paul Gauguin", Mercure de France, nov., 1903, pp. 428-430).
45. "Le neant n'est point dans les fleurs, ni les betes. Moi, J'attends une immense
misericorde pour nous, si petits dans l'univers. Devenons-nous lui demander la raison de
notre titre ?-Mais je voudrais revivre dans l'Inde, tout de meme" (Odilon Redon, lettre
a Gabriel Frizeau, Nov., 1904; cf. Odilon Redon, catalogue d'exposition, Paris: Editions des Musees nationaux, 1956/7, p. 91).
46. Cf. Shigemi Inaga, "Le Sommeil de Caliban", Jinbun Ronso, Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Mie University, Nr. 10, 1993, pp. 37-44 gives a new interpretation of the
painting.
47. Cf. Werner Hofmann, "Reflexions sur 1'Iconisation", Revue de Part, Nr.71, 1986,
pp. 38-42.
* My thanks
and gave

to Professor

many

useful

John

Clark

and

Professor

advices.

177

John

Dykes

who kindly

checked

the draft