Vincent Van Gogh and The Uncanny by Mallory Rowe

Much scholarly focus has been placed on Vincent van Gogh and his short l
ife, and while much can be said of his early life and work, I will be focusing o
n his last year of life and how his later work was influenced by his admiration
of Edgar Allan Poe and Poe’s use of the uncanny. There have been many approache
s to looking at the work of van Gogh. Scholars like David Sweetman believe that
the biggest influence over Vincent’s work was his mental illness; by the last f
ew years of his life, van Gogh’s episodes played a huge role and even left him w
ithout a studio for some time (Sweetman 308). Sweetman describes a moment betwe
en Vincent and his doctor in Arles, Dr. Rey, when Vincent attempted to grab the
razor from Dr. Rey while he was shaving in an angry fit. Vincent later said reg
arding the situation, “I am unable to control myself. I feel quite different fr
om what I used to be” (Sweetman 302). Van Gogh was most certainly plagued with
psychological problems, but Sweetman stresses that such psychological episodes w
ere the source of Vincent’s unique swirls and strokes and color palette. He pep
pers his book with quotations from various doctors who had seen van Gogh during
his episodes, and he led the reader to believe that van Gogh was completely out
of his mind. “Dr. Albert Delon confirmed in the official report to the police t
hat Vincent was hearing accusing voices and did indeed believe he was being pois
oned” (Sweetman 298). A quote from Reverend Salles in April 1888 shows that v
an Gogh was not completely gone mentally: “He is entirely conscious of his cond
ition and talks to me of what he has been through and which he fears may return,
which is touching” (Sweetman 298). Sweetman goes on to mention that much of t
he town of Arles signed a petition to remove van Gogh from the Yellow House, whe
re he resided with Gauguin, due to his constant drinking, yelling at neighborhoo
d children, and touching of women (Sweetman 299). Sweetman uses many primary so
urces to validate his belief that Van Gogh was indeed a “madman,” but he never m
entions Van Gogh’s love of literature or his reading of Poe.
Rather than painting van Gogh as a monster, Dr. Humberto Nagera tries to see him
in many different lights. Nagera discusses Vincent’s lack of self-confidence a
nd extreme fear of failure and mentions that if Theo had not been so supportive,
van Gogh would never have picked up a paint brush, let alone show his art to an
yone (Nagera 152). During the last year of his life (1890), van Gogh receded mo
re and more away from people. Aside from visits to Dr. Gachet and his dinners w
ith the Revouxs—the family with whom he lived—Vincent’s activities rested solely
in his painting. Upon arriving in Auvers, van Gogh had long since had an episo
de and was hopeful to work harder than ever on his art, but he constantly doubte
d himself and rarely mentioned his paintings in letters to his brother (Nagera 1
53). Nagera believes that Vincent’s suicide was due to this underlying fear of
failure.
Another influence for van Gogh’s paintings that Nagera mentions is sexuality. “
There is no question that the sexual energy used by Vincent in his work was suff
iciently modified in some specific ways as not to interfere with the artist’s ab
ility to create” (Nagera 148). Using letters Vincent wrote to his friend, Emil
e Bernard, Nagera argues that van Gogh became increasingly aware that artists se
emed to create more and their work had deeper meaning once they ignored their se
xual urges. Van Gogh mentions to Bernard that Degas and Delacroix are artists t
hat went without sex in order to keep their minds focuses entirely on their work
(Nagera 144). Nagera continues:
[Van Gogh’s] looking at sexuality and painting as incompatible alternatives bec
omes comprehensible if we realize that in fact unconsciously, and for his own pa
rticular reasons, he has equated sexuality and painting. They are one and the s
ame thing. Thus if he paints as he does, in a frenzy, his sexual desire is exha
usted, and he becomes more or less impotent. Similarly, his perception that a m
ore frequent and freer sexual life than the very methodic, at best once a fortni
ght sexual outlet that he allows himself, will drain him of his creativity and a
bility to paint, is quite correct. (147)
Once in Auvers, van Gogh realized his art would suffer if he continued to let hi
mself be tempted by women. He stayed to himself, and thus his art flourished (N
agera 143). Vincent once wrote to Bernard that he could “do without God both in
my life and in my painting, but I cannot…do without the power to create” (Lette
r 530). Religion had played such a large part in Vincent’s early life, but afte
r his episodes in Arles and his stay in St. Remy, Vincent began to question his
religious beliefs. He was always fascinated by death and, ironically, disgusted
by suicide, but as he grew older and experienced his psychotic breakdowns, he b
egan to question the Christian idea of the afterlife. With each new painting, r
eligious symbolism was replaced with darker symbolism. He became obsessed with
cypresses, a known symbol for death, but the cypress paintings showed a more opt
imistic view of death. By 1890, van Gogh had completely abandoned his Christian
teachings, and the darker, more melancholic undertones came out (Nagera 180).
Roads lead to nowhere, the sun is absent, ominous skies are present in his later
paintings. Vincent began painting on two-square canvases, which allowed him to
paint more panoramas. This bigger space allowed him to invite the viewer to ste
p inside the scene he painted, and, in a sense, his frame of mind (Nagera 181).
The further Vincent distanced himself from others and the more he internalized
his thoughts and emotions, the stronger his urge to explore death became. Nager
a focuses completely on Vincent’s strong want to have sex and how his lack of se
lf-confidence prevented him from getting that sex, but Nagera never talks about
Van Gogh’s love of literature and his knowledge of Poe, which contributed greatl
y to Vincent’s new work confidence.
Other influences for his later work include women and other relationship
s. Carol Zemel argues that most of van Gogh’s depression was due to his poor ch
oice of women and the fact that he was in love with being in love (354). She me
ntions that Vincent “seemed to manage intimacy best at a distance” (Zemel 352).
Perhaps he was in love with the women in his life as models for his portraits t
han as serious lovers. Van Gogh had a love for portraiture, but not because he
wanted to capture a person’s soul or make a perfect reflection of the model, he
wanted to give his impression of modern life (Zemel 356). The models he used ha
d to be cheap, and therefore were usually prostitutes or young children. By the
last year of his life, however, van Gogh lost his confidence with women, and hi
s paintings became more pastoral in subject matter (Zemel 356). According to Ze
mel, his poor love life and constant rejection led to his deteriorating mental h
ealth and more chaotic paintings (358). While aspects of Zemel’s argument may be
true, she does not mention that later in his life, Vincent fell deeper and deep
er into his reading and eventually allowed his influence from Poe to take over h
is work.
Judy Sund, like Zemel, believed that van Gogh had a fascination with women but o
nly from a distance. Once close to a woman, Vincent often got anxious and paran
oid. His sister, Willemina, was the most functional relationship Vincent had wi
th a woman, and that was because it was long distance (Sund 260). Van Gogh thou
ght highly of Wil and often suggested novels for her to read. One of his favori
te authors was Emile Zola, and Sund believes van Gogh must have found his sister
very smart and modern for him to recommend such in-depth readings (261). Many
of his paintings have images of women who are generally unidentifiable, which is
due to his inability to be emotionally intimate with women. These anonymous wo
men stood in the place of the true love Van Gogh would never find (Sund 258). I
n the last years of his life, Vincent became more and more aware that he would n
ot be the family man his brother was, nor would he be successful in the art worl
d. He used reading to escape the reality of his lonely life (Sund 259). Sund al
so believes that Van Gogh used books as a way to connect with those around him (
264). Van Gogh was an intense reader and used the cultural, political, philosop
hical knowledge he gained from the books he read to try to feel “normal,” but ir
onically as he dove deeper into his reading, Vincent became less social and kept
almost entirely to himself (Sund 265). Despite his attempt to find a family li
fe and a better understanding of women through novels and other reading, Van Gog
h became increasingly judgmental of women. “His respect for the intellectual pot
ential of women clearly had diminished” (Sund 261). With each mental episode,
Van Gogh retreated into seclusion with only his books to entertain him. His rel
ationships became increasingly volatile; Van Gogh had taken himself out of the e
veryday social life and could no longer interact with others without becoming so
cially awkward and incredibly anxious. Van Gogh’s paintings of people reading w
ere intended to be realistic portraits of intellectuals and therefore, spark the
need to read in his viewers, but the result was a man sharing an activity that
proved to be his only connection to a normal life he would ever have (Sund 266).
Reading was just another catalyst for Van Gogh’s delve into isolation. He cou
ld barely cope with people in society, and escaping into the literary world allo
wed him to feel accepted. Books could not reject him. Sund is right about Vinc
ent’s love of literature, but she never mentions him reading Edgar Allan Poe, wh
o may have been his greatest inspiration during his last year of work.
Meyer Schapiro mentions that Van Gogh used portraits of his own shoes to
show that every part of him contributed to his paintings. Schapiro argues in h
is paper that the scholar Martin Heidegger was wrong when discussing Van Gogh’s
shoe still lifes as the shoes of peasant women. Looking at the still lifes, Sch
apiro notices that the shoes are not at all the type worn by peasants or women a
t the time Van Gogh painted, so Heidegger’s argument that Van Gogh was enamored
with peasant life and therefore felt compelled to paint their most important “eq
uipment” is false (Schapiro 429). Schapiro believes the still lifes of Van Gogh
’s shoes had a different meaning:
They mark our inescapable position on the earth. To ‘be in someone’s shoes’ is t
o be in his predicament or his station in life. For a painter to represent his
worn shoes as the main subject of a picture is for him to express a concern with
the fatalities of his social being. Not the shoes as an instrument of use, tho
ugh the landscape painter as a worker in the fields shares something of the peas
ant’s life outdoors, but the shoes as ‘a portion of the self’ are van Gogh’s rev
ealing theme. (431)
Van Gogh did not simply paint some object in front of him, he painted a part of
his life—an essential tool he used daily as an artist. His shoes were as import
ant to him as his brushes, canvases and paint.
Jacques Derrida also discusses Van Gogh’s shoes. He goes back and forth
between Heidegger and Schapiro’s arguments until he comes up with a theory on h
is own (Derrida 284). Derrida feels that Heidegger is right in assuming that th
e shoes represent past lives, but he feels that those past lives “haunt” the pai
nting, the shoes, and the viewer (258-259). He discounts fellow scholars who ha
ve said in the past that “there are no ghosts in Van Gogh’s pictures” and discus
ses that the past souls who have worn these shoes are returning to haunt those w
ho view the painting, but Derrida also mentions that his curiosity behind the “h
aunting” of Van Gogh’s shoes assumes that the shoes are not Van Gogh’s (Derrida
257-259). In a series of quick thoughts, Derrida follows his stream-of-consciou
sness for more than one hundred pages. Derrida discusses in depth each part of
the shoe, every use of the shoe, and every person who might wear a shoe.
Most of the peasants and especially the peasant women in Van Gogh’s paintings or
drawings wear clogs…if clogs are excluded in Heidegger’s very example; a simple
internal reading ought to suffice to conclude that there is no space left for p
easants’ shoes representable by Van Gogh. (Derrida 329)
Derrida comes to realize that the discussion is pointless once he had discovered
that all peasants in Van Gogh’s paintings are always obviously peasants. Heide
gger had no foundation to his argument that Van Gogh painted peasant shoes. Thi
s realization does not mean that Derrida sides with Schapiro, however. He belie
ves both men are too confident in their theories. Derrida asks many questions r
egarding the shoe paintings and feels that there will never be a definite answer
to the reason behind them (Derrida 335). He thinks and questions so much that D
errida shows us that any explanation is possible, but because anything is possib
le, one cannot argue one theory as true. Derrida’s comments on “haunting” image
ry and “ghosts” is interesting, but he does not go into depth as far as whether
or not Vincent used the ghostly as a theme in his painting. Derrida only brushe
s on the supernatural elements of Van Gogh’s work and fails to make the connecti
on between Van Gogh and Poe.
R. Meyer-Riefstahl believes Van Gogh’s biggest inspiration was Nature. Unlike o
ther Impressionists who simply wanted to paint the world in front of them using
pure colors, Vincent Van Gogh wanted to capture Nature as a living entity more t
han a palette of colors (Meyer-Riefstahl 155). Meyer-Riefstahl argues that Van
Gogh’s unique brush stroke style was not consciously stylistic but was how Van G
ogh truly perceived Nature (156).
Van Gogh knew well that a picture lacks inner power of arrest when certain syste
ms of lines are not thoroughly carried through. One is easily led to conceive Va
n Gogh as an artist who let himself be guided in his compositions only by colour
motives. That would represent his art somewhat incompletely. Although they are
re-markably hidden by the colour, strong lines are discoverable in Van Gogh s wo
rk which give his pictures an architectonic structure. (Meyer-Riefstahl 156)
Once Vincent moves to the southern part of France, he really begins to paint Nat
ure and allow himself to be fully a part of Nature. Meyer-Riefstahl believes Va
n Gogh used line and color to give a lyrical feeling to his work; he did not wan
t to merely paint a landscape—something that anyone could see any time—he wanted
to create a narrative of Nature at that moment in time for his viewers (Meyer-R
iefstahl 161). Vincent did want to share his moment in Nature with his viewers
, but Meyer-Riefstahl fails to realize that Vincent’s connection to Nature was b
ased on spirituality and an uncanny relationship with what he saw around him—a r
elationship Vincent fully realized through reading Poe.
Georges Bataille discusses the religious and psychological background to
Van Gogh’s self-mutilation in 1888. Bataille compares another artist, Gaston F
., with Van Gogh in order to explain the pathological progression for an artist
who self-mutilates. Both artists removed unimportant parts of their bodies, rel
atively speaking, but the motivation according to Bataille for such gruesome act
s is based on religion (67). For Van Gogh, the sacrifice of his ear was contrib
uted to the sun (Bataille 62). Most of Van Gogh’s sun paintings were done after
the mutilation, and the sun stopped appearing in his work after he left Saint-R
emy in January 1890. The time in between is when Bataille believes Van Gogh’s o
bsession with the sun fully developed (62).
In order to show the importance and the development of Van Gogh’s obsession, it
is necessary to link suns with sunflowers, whose large disk haloed with short pe
tals recalls the disk of the sun, at which it ceaselessly and fixedly stares thr
oughout the day…The close association between the solar flower obsession and the
most exasperated torment becomes all the more expressive when the heightened fa
ncy of the painter sometimes leads to the representation of the flower as wither
ed and dead…This double bond uniting the sun-star, the sun-flower, and Van Gogh
can moreover be reduced to a normal psychological theme in which the star is opp
osed to the withered flower, as are the ideal term and the real term of the ego.
(Bataille 63)
The ideal term to which Bataille is referring is related to the part of Van Gogh
’s ego that is god-like and self-actualized. The real term is the part of his e
go that is grounded in reality; therefore, the withered flower is represents Van
Gogh’s fragile self-esteem and self-confidence. In those months when Van Gogh
cut off his ear, he was at a point when he felt he needed to make a sacrifice to
the sun. Vincent was fascinated by the sun and appreciated it life saving ener
gy. His self-mutilation was a way for him to fully realize his obsession with t
he sun and attempt to escape the reality he had known—he could finally leave beh
ind the withering sunflower (Bataille 70). After the mutilation, he would stop
being the subservient sunflower, and finally become undifferentiated and one wit
h the sun. While Bataille’s argument is very interesting, he does not, like Mey
er-Riefstahl, make the connection between Van Gogh’s love of Nature and natural
elements with the supernatural and darker forces of the world. By incorporating
Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on Vincent, Bataille could have made that connectio
n.
According to Wallace Fowlie the tie to Nature was spiritual for Van Gogh (320).
By comparison with his disordered life, his work appears luminous and ordered. A
ll of the paintings are endowed and animated with a personal element that is unt
ranslatable and incommunicable. This personal force of the painter is probably t
he explanation of how he was able to harmonize every landscape he painted and le
nd to every face of his portraits the quality of the soil and inanimate matter.
Countless passages in his letters testify to his profound feeling for nature, fo
r his almost pantheistic view of nature. A perfect communion with it always mean
t a forgetting of himself…By the very act of painting, he tries to reach a way o
f living that will not be troubled with memories and harassing thoughts. (Fowlie
321)
Because Van Gogh’s early years had been spent studying and teaching the Bible, h
e would never be able to fully remove spirituality from his life—Christian or ot
herwise. Painting became Vincent’s religion, and he was completely devoted to i
t.
Vincent was the type of absolutist who had to give himself completely to whateve
r he undertook. This trait of total dedication in his character is unquestionabl
y the clue to his human destiny…No other painter has brought to art so blind a f
aith as Van Gogh, such a pure compulsion to paint and thereby justify his existe
nce…His life was sacrificial, at first a religious-humanitarian sacrifice, and t
hen an immolation to art which is also of a religious nature. (Fowlie 322)
Fowlie believes Van Gogh used Nature to communicate with God and shared that rel
ationship with everyone with his paintings. “He lived as if pursued by some und
efined demon… he painted picture after picture as if the practice of art were ab
le to exorcize him” (Fowlie 324). As years went by, Vincent continually isolate
d himself in order to be completely alone with Nature—an everlasting source of c
ommunion with God. His work depended on his relationship with Nature. Although
Van Gogh abandoned his Christian faith by the time of his suicide in 1890, his
spirituality was stronger than ever in his last days due to the overwhelming amo
unt of time he kept to himself and spent with Nature (Fowlie 324). Many of the
same contexts have been used to explain Van Gogh’s unique art, but no one has me
ntioned Van Gogh’s use of the uncanny and macabre and the important influence of
Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe was no stranger to haunting imagery and a sense or the uncanny i
n his literary works. Poe had a flare for using words to illustrate a scene for
his readers that was not blatantly gory, scary, or evil but strange and unsettl
ing. He was aware that the scariest moments for readers are not definitive; they
are uncanny, or preternatural. After a long period of time, objects to which p
eople held an emotional tie can hold residual energy. The idea of the uncanny h
as to do with the feeling of something being familiar and foreign at the same ti
me. In the case of Poe’s The Raven, the narrator is in awe of the raven that co
mes in through his window because there was something uncanny about the bird; so
me special strangeness intrigued the narrator. Anthony Vidler describes Poe’s u
se of the uncanny perfectly in his paper “The Architecture of the Uncanny: The U
nhomely Houses of the Romantic Sublime”:
In Poe’s description, the House of Usher, while evoking premonitions of ‘shadowy
fancies,’ exhibited nothing untoward in its out appearance. Its ‘bleak walls’
and ‘vacant eye-like windows’ were stark, but any sentiments of doom were more e
asily attributed to the fantasies of the narrator than to any striking detail in
the house itself…The slow realization that these were properties of the house,
embedded in the very stones, which possessed a fatality themselves, that the hou
se was itself an uncanny power, came unwillingly, against all reason, and was th
e more disquieting for the absolute normality of the setting, its absence of ove
rt terror. The effect was one of the disturbing unfamiliarity of the evidently
familiar (8).
By attaching an everyday object to the supernatural, Poe could scare his audienc
e with anything. A door, statue, chair, vase, or anything else could make a per
son wary. The idea was not to have the object actually do anything, but to have
his readers question everything around them. No part of any structure could be
trusted or be believed to be purely inanimate. In his poem “The City in the S
ea,” Poe shows his weariness of things man-made:
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down. (12-29)
Each element of the Gothic church Poe describes is associated with the negative.
Poe is not at all concerned with turning a church into something to be feared;
despite and because of the strong religious convictions of his readers during t
he nineteenth century, Poe shows the church as a vehicle for the uncanny.
In the nineteenth century, the notion of the uncanny was believed to be associat
ed with the “daemonic dread” (Pollin 40). “The daemonic was associated with for
ce, uncanniness, a paradoxical feeling of awe and fear, a positive emotional con
tent that could not be defined conceptually” (Ljungquist 151). Through the seve
nteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, Christians and non-believers alik
e believed that “demons” were not purely evil; “demons” were thought to be half-
mortals who communicated with people spiritually and psychically and led them to
certain decisions—good or bad. “Daemonic impulse became linked with inspiratio
n or inward energy without the attendant associations of orthodox Christian stri
ctures. “Poe’s knowledge of and exposure to this sense of the daemonic is clear
” (Ljungquist 154). The feeling of the uncanny was believed to be a supernatura
l intervention and prying into people’s lives. An uncertain but familiar feelin
g could come over someone in the presence of an animal, person, or inanimate obj
ect, but the source of such a feeling was from a demon (Dawson 294).
As American writers of the early nineteenth century attempted to address the str
onger emotions and to embrace the more irrational elements of art, the aesthetic
of the uncanny became a prominent vehicle for the explanation of novel situatio
ns (Krutch 157).
Poe, being aware of this theory, used demonic possession in his writing—as in Th
e Raven—to convey messages and evoke an unsettling feeling in his readers (Docto
row 243). “The eyes of Poe’s raven ‘have all the seeming of a demon that is dre
aming.’ In ‘Ulalume,’ the narrator is impelled to the grave of his last loved on
e and asks, ‘What demon hath tempted me here!’” (Ljungquist 156). By never asso
ciating demons or other preternatural elements with anything obviously evil or w
rong, Poe creates a lingering creepiness with which a reader cannot vehemently a
gree or disagree. “The general tendency in Poe’s work in the 1840s was away fro
m vastness and grandeur and toward more circumscribed settings” (Ljungquist 89).
The terror Poe readers feel is due to the underwhelming but well-known situati
ons and surroundings in Poe’s literature; absurd monsters and tales of satanic r
ituals are less frightening than reading a story full of unusual moments that on
e has been in himself.
Edgar Allan Poe realized early on in his career that by tapping into the psyches
of his readers, he could fully enthrall them and hopefully terrorize them as we
ll (Pollin 163). “As the texture of Poe’s later poetry becomes more thoroughly
pictorialized and the landscapes more circumscribed, the daemonic activity becom
es more internalized” (Ljungquist 159). By avoiding tangible terrors in his wor
ks, Poe’s sources of fright were limitless; any supernatural, preternatural, or
psychotic stretch of his imagination could be used.
“Suffice it to say that Poe’s Dark Romanticism partakes generously of a merging
of an explosive mental power and the ominous knowledge of personal daemonic drea
d. Poe’s works…display the attributes of the uncanny” (Ljungquist 157)
Sometimes the most frightening thing is one’s own mind, and if readers could see
that uncanny things could occur anywhere at any time, they would be more terrif
ied. Coming from a more socially confined time in history—the early nineteenth
century—Poe understood how useful the imagination was and how quickly a person’s
mind could wander; with this realization, Poe could tap into the minds of bored
readers all over New England (Krutch 110). “The Raven” is an example of how Po
e could use a simple setting with familiar objects to scare his readers. The na
rrator of the story is simply relaxing in his house, but Poe adds many elements
to fill the setting with eeriness; it is December, the room is dimly lit, and th
e cold wind is howling inside. The scene invites readers to remember such a tim
e in their lives when they have been in a similar setting. Poe gets his readers
to be in the situation and know what it is like to wonder what a creak was or s
hiver due to the cold wind or jump at the sound of a far away animal. Our minds
play tricks on us, and Poe is counting on that fact to lead us down the path of
terror. The raven, a bird already associated with the daemonic in folklore at
that time, was a perfect vehicle for the uncanny. Rather than fleeing from this
ominous creature, the narrator engages with the bird—almost out of curiosity.
The bird’s uncanny qualities seem to possess the narrator. “The utter profusion
of such elements probably invites a satirical interpretation, but the sequence
of the narrator’s confrontation with these elements also indicates a response to
the uncanny” (Ljungquist 49). Unlike other Gothic writers, Poe avoids the chea
p and easy scares. Sure, there is gore and obvious criminal activity in some pa
rts of his works, but the psychological and uncanny elements are woven throughou
t to ensure readers that this is not just some simple romance (Ljungquist 56).
Real situations and sometimes unexplainable occurrences happen within Poe’s narr
atives to make sure that his readers will remember what they have read for many
sleepless nights.
By addressing the uncanny is his works, Poe broadens his audience. The
religious and the non-believers can understand the haunting energy that a room,
object or animal might have. People have been afraid of seemingly nothing for c
enturies. In his poem “The Haunted Palace,” Poe turns an old estate into a haun
ted house easily:
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!- for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed. (41-48)
After reading this stanza, Poe readers would never look at vacant houses the sam
e, and he capitalized on this fact. Children are warned not to go out at night,
and everyone knows not to venture into the forest alone because both are associa
ted with the daemonic. Strange whispers and noises enter one’s ear when he or s
he is alone, and despite logical explanations for such occurrences, the experien
ce frightens the old and young. Poe is ambiguous in his writings as to whether
or not the terror comes from the psychosis of the narrator or the uncanny, but t
he nature of the uncanny is to be unexplained (Vidler 24). But the question of
whether or not the story could be real is the best part for readers. Because on
e cannot prove or disprove the paranormal, the use of the uncanny becomes a game
Poe can play with his audience; he challenges them to insert themselves into th
e situation. If such things were happening to the reader himself, would he be a
ble to sit and logically work out what was happening to him? Poe is aware of th
e emotional reactions to such unexplainable situations, and he knows that the ma
jority of the readers of short stories are women.
Edgar Allan Poe is known as a master of terror and the macabre because h
e understood exactly what frightened people most. With his attention to detail
and descriptive language, Poe’s stories ensured that many of his readers would a
lways be left wondering if what they just read could happen to them. The uncann
y has the ability to invade one’s mind; no object is just an object, no sound wa
s just something falling. Poe wrote of the possibility of everything in the wor
ld being darker than it seemed, and while many circumstances of the uncanny may
not be of the macabre, using them as such solidified Poe’s career and made him o
ne of the greatest Gothic writers of his time.
Vincent Van Gogh was aware of Edgar Allan Poe’s work; Vincent mentioned
reading Poe to his brother Theo in his letters to him July 11, 1883 and August 6
, 1888. While Van Gogh only briefly mentions the writer, Poe’s influence on Van
Gogh—especially in the last year of his life—is evident. Van Gogh added elemen
ts of the uncanny in his paintings in 1890. By that time, Vincent had abandoned
his Christian faith and had given up on finding normalcy in his own life, but V
incent had not lost is ties with the spiritual. His connection to nature was ve
ry intense, and Van Gogh tried to use his art to explain this connection. Havin
g read Poe’s works, Van Gogh would have seen how Poe used the uncanny to evoke e
motion. Many have made the claim that color was the most important way for Van
Gogh to evoke emotion from his viewers, but color was only the first step.
Vincent’s painting The Church at Auvers shows that, thanks to Poe, he wa
s fully aware of the uncanny and how powerful it could be when used subtly (fig.
1). Poe often used dilapidated architecture in his works to set the stage for
supernatural and preternatural occurrences. Van Gogh, too, uses an old structur
e for the setting of this painting. By using a Gothic church like the church me
ntioned in Poe’s “The City in the Sea,” Van Gogh will have viewers uneasy from t
he start. Gothic style architecture evokes so many emotions, and to Vincent, th
e style brought resentment. The Gothic church represents a time when The Church
ruled everyone and religion was second nature to most people. The common medie
val people did not question their religion; Van Gogh, though not a Catholic, res
ented over-powering Christian theology and began to see the religion as a symbol
for fear. Vincent creates a creature out of the church at Auvers; the structure
became a living, breathing monster that lures naïve church-goers but repels the
skeptical. The shadow of the great church—like the “shadowy long-forgotten bow
ers“ mentioned by Poe in “The City in the Sea”—oozes out and seems to destroy th
e living around it; the grass is no longer green and the dirt becomes a corpse-l
ike grey (Poe line 19). The windows are so dark that they prohibit anyone seein
g into the building; therefore, never being able to see into the Church. Contra
sting the deep blue sky are bright orange highlights all around the church almos
t making it glow. Van Gogh has the structure stand out to show its insincerity
and deception, not to showcase it as a vehicle of Truth. The building is covere
d in lines that meet to create arrows going up because there is the Truth; what
everyone is looking for is beyond the church. The monster in Auvers is not the
sinner, but the Church. This uncanny structure has the supernatural qualities o
f evil more so than good. Its presence cannot be ignored and neither can its li
es. Van Gogh has the road curiously splitting on either side of the church, and
the two roads lead the viewer’s eye to a competing source of spirituality—natur
e. Every brushstroke in the painting leads the viewer away from the church; the
uncanniness and symbolism of the Gothic structure is too terrifying to approach
. Although Van Gogh cannot hide from the church and what it represents, he refu
ses to directly made contact with it either.
Fig. 1: Vincent Van Gogh, The Church at Auvers, 1890
In Van Gogh’s painting Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky—painted a month after The C
hurch at Auvers—Vincent uses the same blues he used in many of his previous work
s, but the way he uses them changes (fig. 2). An element of terror and uncertai
nty lurk behind the ominous sky. The blues he used so many times before to evok
e solemn, melancholy emotions now leave the viewer unsettled. The vast sky is o
nly broken up by a few white brushstrokes; a simple white mass in the midst of d
arkness. The mass represents innocence, or in the case of Vincent himself, his
past naïveté about religion, while the darkness represents the unknown spiritual
world that terrifies him. The small trail of white brushstrokes which penetrat
es the darkness is the part of his consciousness that knows deep down that there
is supernatural world. Like Poe, Van Gogh has a knack for making a seemingly n
ormal environment terrifying. The ominous sky and the never-ending fields give
the viewer the feeling that they are completely vulnerable in this openness. Exc
ept for one strong diagonal line on the left of the painting, the fields are mad
e up of perpendicular lines that show that his physical presence has nowhere to
go. The diagonal line leads the viewer to realize that the wandering physical s
elf must look upward into the spiritual world to find
Fig. 2: Vincent Van Gogh, Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky, 1890
meaning; the meaning, however, cannot ever be fully known by those on earth and
leaves the viewer uneasy. Van Gogh knew that by using the uncanny, one might be
able to understand how he felt about nature—that nature had a supernatural qual
ity. With this painting Van Gogh wanted to provoke people’s biggest fear; what
is “beyond?” This painting is counting on viewers picturing themselves in the m
idst of so much emptiness while being surrounded by the uncanny; only then could
they feel Nature the way Vincent did. It is that first encounter with the unca
nny—that first terrifying moment when we are not sure what we have encountered—t
hat allows us to fully give into the notion of the spiritual. Poe used that mom
ent to convince his readers that what they fear is real; Van Gogh used that mome
nt to show his viewers that what they fear is only horrifying until you learn to
embrace it.
By July of 1890, Vincent had fully embraced the uncanny. Wheat Field wi
th Crows shows Van Gogh’s established relationship with the uncanny (fig. 3). T
he painting is chaotic, turbulent, and scary. By the look of the piece, one cou
ld assume Vincent was going through great turmoil and inner conflict, but the pa
inting is showcasing his knowledge of the uncanny. More than ever, Van Gogh unde
rstood what frightened him and others. The not-knowing aspect of the afterlife
and spirituality was very powerful and very scary. This scene of a stormy sky a
nd birds flying over a field is something everyone has seen, but
Fig. 3: Vincent Van Gogh, Wheat Field with Crows, 1890
something darker is lurking; there is an uncanny sense that something preternatu
ral is in the environment. Using a symbol right out of Poe’s work, Vincent show
s a flock of ravens entering the dark sky. The raven has long been known as a w
ise bird, and its presence is often an omen. Although this is not his last pain
ting, Vincent is using the bird to symbolize his departure into the sky. He is
aware of his destiny; all roads end inside the painting. As a reader of Poe, Va
n Gogh knew how important it is to set up a scene, and this painting encapsulate
s the meaning of the uncanny; it emanates certainty and uncertainty at the same
time. Van Gogh would have learned from Poe that the terror people feel from his
work would come more from themselves than the painting. The more ambiguous the
piece, the more potentially frightening it would become. Van Gogh was a scared
man who sought to use the uncanny in his paintings to provoke fear in others in
the hopes that by doing so, he could finally relate to people; maybe if others
were frightened like he was, he could feel as if he were truly a part of the wor
ld.
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