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  3. The story of Vincent Van Gogh’s life is more heartbreaking, and heart-liftin

The story of Vincent Van Gogh’s life is more heartbreaking, and heart-liftin

游客2023-12-14  10
问题     The story of Vincent Van Gogh’s life is more heartbreaking, and heart-lifting, than the romantic myth that has enshrouded him for decades. It is told, in his own words and works, in the six-volume Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, his 819 surviving letters (and the 83 addressed to him) form the core. The first letter was written when Vincent, aged 19, was a trainee at The Hague Branch of Gospel & CIA, a firm of international art dealers. Like most of the letters, it was sent to his brother, Theo, then 15. The two remained close. Theo became an art dealer and Vincent’s main source of financial and emotional support.
    Van Gogh is irascible,  engaging,  intelligent, touchy, high-minded, well read, rebellious and pigheaded. When he started dressing like a tramp he claimed it was, in part, to advertise his refusal to join polite, i. e. , hypocritical society. (Equally, it may have been because polite society was refusing to accept him. ) He was often miserable, occasionally love-struck, almost always fiercely committed to something or other and sometimes mad.
    Art and literature were his constant companions. He wrote often about what he was reading and seeing. His concern was never a book’s place in the canon or a painting’s in art history. He judged a work on what it communicated, and how. From Antwerp he wrote that the religious paintings of Rubens are "theatrical. . . But what he can do is paint a queen, a statesman, well analyzed, just as they are. " He wrote beautifully about landscapes and peasants. In time, he gave a vivid, perhaps unequalled, account of an artist making art.
    He set off at 16, a seemingly conventional young man, to make his way as a dealer first in The Hague and then, via Paris, in London. There, a prickly instability, characteristic of his childhood, re-emerged, perhaps brought on by a rebuff from his landlady’s daughter. He lost the job he had had for seven years. Other failures followed, as a preacher and a teacher.
    His religious fanaticism grew. Indeed, the letters offer a rare look at obsession from the inside. His pursuit of a young widow was so unrelenting he would be called a stalker today. But to him, her repetition of "No, nay, never!" was "a piece of ice that I press to my heart to thaw. "
    When he was 26 his fixation became art. By then he was a penniless, eccentric loner. This coincides with a year-long break in the correspondence. He had fallen out with Theo following a "discussion" about his future. When the letters resume, Vincent refers to himself as a prisoner, a caged bird. "I know I could be quite a different man!" he writes. "There’s something within me, so what is it?" Two months later he bent himself to the study of drawing and painting as others would bend to the plough. It was as if he had to labor, and metaphorically sweat, before his genius could, or was allowed to, emerge. Five years later, in the spring of 1885, came The Potato Eaters. Movingly, triumphantly, Van Gogh had broken through.
    After two years in Paris, living with Theo (only nine letters~ no images), Vincent moved to Arles in 1888. Color now floods the pages. This was the beginning of the legendary period of prodigious, radiant creativity. Yes, he cut off his ear. He also painted nearly 200 pictures, among them The Night Care and The Yellow House.
    In 1889, after a series of crack-ups (in reaction to Theo’s marriage or perhaps just too much absinthe), he spent a year in the asylum at Saint-Remy-de-Province. The work continued to pour out (about 150 paintings). Sunflowers and Irises but also Starry Night, in which viewer and artist are pulled up over the rooftops, and tumble round and round across the dark sky.
    The very last letter reproduced, addressed to Theo but unfinished, was written on July 23rd, 1890. He was staying in Auvers-sur-Oise, not far from Paris where Theo lived with his wife and child. The note was found in Vincent’s pocket after he shot himself. He died, aged 37,on July 27th.
    Fifteen years were devoted to this publication. The Dutch, English and French editions are the joint project of the Huygens Institute and Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. Letters and illustrations fill five books; the sixth has commentaries, maps and indexes.
    This is not the first attempt to publish the complete letters but it is the best. There were editions in 1914; an expanded version appeared in English in 1958; 20 newly discovered letters were added for the 1990 Dutch centenary edition. Now the letters have been retranslated, comprehensively annotated and there are 20 new items.
    But what really sets this edition apart from, and above, all others are the illustrations. Sketches are embedded in many of Van Gogh’s letters; the drawings and "scratches" he sometimes tucked into envelopes before posting are reproduced. So are thumbnail illustrations of every work the artist mentions (whether by himself or by others) plus larger reproductions of paintings based on these letter sketches. [br] To some extent, Van Gogh began to dress like a street waif because
选项 A、he wanted to show his longing for the up-class society.
B、he regarded the polite society as hypocritical.
C、the polite society was willing to take him as a member.
D、he often lived a miserable life.
答案 B
解析 细节题。回文定位到第二段。题干“从某种程度上说，梵高开始穿得像个街头流浪者是因为”，是对原文“When he stai‘ted dressing like a tramp(流浪者)”的改写，答题线索就在此句附近；原文指出“他穿得像流浪者时，自称一部分原因是以此来表明自己拒绝加入上流(即虚伪的)社会”。由此可判断选项[B]“他认为上层社会是虚伪的”符合题意，故为答案。选项[A]“他想显示自己对上流社会的渴望”，与原文“拒绝加入上流社会”正好相反，故排除；选项[C]“上层社会愿意接受他为其中的一员”，而原文说的是“同样地，也许是因为上流社会拒绝接受他……”，因此与原文相反，故排除；选项[D]“他往往过着悲惨的生活”，是干扰项，此句话出现在本题线索之后，不是题干要找的原因，属于对题干较肤浅的理解，而且原文中的“he was often miserable”是从精神层面，而非物质层面描述的，因此从这两个角度都可以排除[D]。
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