Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Vincent's Lament" by Jacques Prevert is a haunting ode to Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch post-impressionist painter known for the brilliance of his art and the turmoil of his life. Set in Arles, a place Van Gogh once called home, the poem is a blend of the beautiful and the grotesque, echoing the painter's own struggles with mental illness and artistic genius.

The poem begins with a vivid setting: Arles in "the atrocious midday light," a landscape where the Rhone River flows. This intense light is mirrored by the "man of phosphor and blood," unmistakably Vincent himself. He is depicted as a volatile, living element-both luminescent and bloody-reflecting his emotional and psychological complexities. The first stanza sets up Vincent as a suffering figure, groaning "like a woman giving birth," a metaphor that equates the torment of his inner life with the act of creation.

In this narrative, Vincent flees "pursued by the sun," which is described as a relentless force of "strident yellow," mirroring Van Gogh's own complex relationship with light and color. His journey leads him to a "whorehouse near the Rhone," and here the narrative takes a surreal turn. Vincent arrives "like a Christmas king" bearing an "absurd present"-his own severed ear, a historical detail that is both grotesque and deeply sad. The description of his eyes as "blue and gentle" yet bearing a "true mad lucid look" encapsulates the paradox of Van Gogh: a deeply sensitive and brilliant artist plagued by mental instability.

The imagery of the "frightful tender shell" of the ear amplifies the grotesqueness of Vincent's act. It is described as containing "the moans of dead love / And the inhuman voices of art," suggesting that his emotional turmoil and his artistic genius are inextricably intertwined. The woman's reaction-a blend of incomprehension, fear, and perhaps pity-mirrors the public's ambivalent response to the intensity of Van Gogh's art and persona.

The poem reaches a climax in the vivid imagery of the "red eiderdown" blending with Vincent's "much more redder blood," forming his "most beautiful painting." This tragic tableau becomes a metaphor for Vincent's life, wherein his misery and genius are inextricably linked. The image of Vincent's "storm" that "runs out indifferent" suggests the callous indifference of the world to individual torment, even when that torment results in breathtaking art.

"Vincent's Lament" portrays a man simultaneously revered and misunderstood, caught in a personal tempest that is both his curse and his legacy. It is a powerful poetic testimony to the agony and ecstasy of artistic creation, capturing the essence of Vincent van Gogh's life-a blaze of color, love, and inexorable sadness. The poem serves as a darkly luminous tribute to an artist whose genius was both a blessing and a form of damnation, epitomizing the often tragic relationship between art and the human condition.

POEM TEXT:

At Arles where rolls the Rhone

In the atrocious midday light

A man of phosphor and blood

Gives a haunting groan

Like a woman giving birth

And the man flees howling

Pursued by the sun

A sun of strident yellow

To a whorehouse near the Rhone

The man comes like a christmas king

With his absurd present

He has the blue and gentle look

The true mad lucid look

Of those who give life everything

Of those who are not jealous

And shows the poor child

His ear couched in the cloth

And she cries without understanding anything

Imagining sad omens

And looks without daring to take

The frightful tender shell

In which the moans of dead love

And the inhuman voices of art

Mix with the murmurs of the sea

And die on the tiling

In the room where the red eiderdown

Of a sudden bursting red

Blends this red so red

With the much more redder blood

Of half-dead Vincent

And wise as the very image

Of misery and love

The nude child all alone and ageless

Looks upon poor Vincent

Stricken by his own storm

Which spreads on the tile

Onto his most beautiful painting

And the storm runs out indifferent

Rolling before it its great barrels of blood

The dazzling storm of Vincent's genius

And Vincent stays there sleeping waking croaking

And the sun over the whorehouse

Like a mad orange in a nameless desert

The sun on Arles

Howling turns around.

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...