Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art Part 6

On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Ma.r.s.eilles with four francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the height of summer, during which three unfortunate pa.s.sengers died of heat in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to its owner, as well as others, only misfortune.

III

Paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the world. Since her spoiled darling Napoleon fell, there has been no one to whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Hugo, because he lived in exile; Balzac, because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; and of recent years Verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafes, the vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a prison. Such men may be the idols of Paris. For the rest, Paris is willing only to think of her children as sons for a day.

Gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of Paris. But he had already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his.

Had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength of the sensation his pictures had created in Denmark and subsequently in Sweden, Norway, and Germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his work. But Gauguin demanded all or nothing! And, as was the case before with his mother and her Peruvian relatives, the result was nothing.

He decided to give a general exhibition of his entire Tahitian work, forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. Durand-Ruel gave him a gallery and Charles Morice, chief of the young symbolists whom Gauguin had met after the Volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which probably only served to mystify the public still further.

For the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce frank bewilderment. Of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three remained unsold. What misled visitors more than anything else were the t.i.tles that Gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. These t.i.tles were in the Tahitian language. Every one immediately supposed that in order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of Tahiti. Naturally therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archaeological and ethnological puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key.

Gauguin, of course, had intended something else. Just as he had used Brittany to suggest the somber pa.s.sion and suffering of Christ, so he had used Tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery of life as it was lived in Eden and in the days of man's awakening--in that Golden Age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. But it was useless for him to try to explain that Tahiti had merely given him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures.

Morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of the crowd. It was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the Indian who smiles at the stake. Only Degas came and understood. To him on the last day of the exhibit, Gauguin said: "Monsieur Degas, you have forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured handed it to the astonished painter.

The bitterness of sheer starvation would a.s.suredly have been his, had not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save Gauguin for better things, sent him means of salvation. A brother of his father died in Orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. From his estate, Gauguin inherited thirteen thousand francs.

The exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly.

Instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle Paris. Morice admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. If this was the case Gauguin would have done well had he uttered the well-known prayer, "Deliver me from my friends!" For Morice, even, admitted later that it was, under the circ.u.mstances, a mistake.

About Gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have grown with the years. It is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with Tahitian subjects in imitation of stained gla.s.s (these same windows were, by the way, on exhibition at a dealer's in Paris a few years ago). It is true that his rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. It is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said to have come from Java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than anything else. It is true also that he wore a strange costume, consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl b.u.t.tons, a blue waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat with a blue ribbon. But the importance of these and of similar details is very slight. Gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the attention of heedless Paris were dead also and forgotten.

Despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, Gauguin found himself ill-at-ease. The facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. He wandered off to Bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before Memling and astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of Rubens. He lost interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, Seguin and O'Connor.

After a vain attempt to get a post from the Government as a resident in Oceania, he again drifted back to Pont-Aven.

There, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. In a moment, all his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him.

He was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way.

He attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin.

The mulatto fled, took a train to Paris, entered the empty studio, seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. As for Gauguin, he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and smoking a cigarette.

IV

Little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at Pont-Aven, this understanding became a conviction.

He saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to accomplish and why he had failed. He knew now what his art had been; a great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had gone on in his soul. What he had fought against was the cunning extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of nineteenth century Europe. And nineteenth century Europe had risen against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. He must either submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul.

Among the people of Tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else.

Among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists nor theologians could ever pierce. Among these savages he had found a dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own soul.

On September 20, 1894, he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid:--

"As you say, I have not given any news of myself recently and every one is complaining. The reason is, you see, that I have lost all my strength through suffering, above all at night, which I frequently pa.s.s without any sleep. And into the bargain naturally I have done nothing this infernal month except spend money. For the rest, I have made a fixed resolve to go back and live always in Oceania and shall return to Paris in December in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my bazar at no matter what price. If I succeed I shall leave as soon as possible in February. I can then finish my days without care for the morrow and without the external struggle against fools--Farewell to painting, except as a means of distraction. My house will be in sculptured wood."

The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint against Gauguin:

"You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, behind the Inst.i.tute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, close to the Cemetery of Montparna.s.se! I would have willingly given you this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a breathing s.p.a.ce, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, more brutally, by an 'I will not.'

... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it--I know that this avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain partisans, either they will rank you or cla.s.sify you or give to your art a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate a super-annuated style of painting.

... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and men which only you can create.

"A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no G.o.d can live--Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or two!

"This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not desire this pitiful G.o.d who accepts blows. My G.o.d is rather Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men.

"No, Gauguin is not formed from the work of Chavannes, nor from that of Manet, nor from that of Bastien-Lepage.

"Who is he then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome civilization; something of a t.i.tan who, jealous of his Creator, in his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Calvary.]

"Bon voyage, Master: but come back here to me. I shall by that time perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since I am beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating a new world."

To this letter, Gauguin replied-with the following profession of faith:--

"I have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for my catalog. I had the idea of asking you for a preface, when I saw you the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. I had then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization and my barbarism.

"You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of youth.

"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day.

This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana?

"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil and a sorrow."

In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back.

V

It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he ent.i.tled "Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best commentary on and the final a.n.a.lysis of his mind.

We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his refers in pa.s.sing to events that took place as late as 1897.

Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery--the conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying.

To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others feel, in the incidents of a nave story, the essence of Tahiti--the soul of the native.

It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the royal funeral and was struck by the att.i.tude of the natives to that event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial triumph in France.

These facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon which the fascinating story of Gauguin's spiritual development is bit by bit, built up. He made use of these facts in the same way as he made use of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful forms. All art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are at liberty to believe or not as we choose.

So we follow him from Papeete into the backwoods. We find him holding aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple hospitality. We see him making his first tentative attempts at establishing a community of thought. He tries to persuade the natives to sit for their portraits--with little success. He tries to find solace in the companionship of the half-caste t.i.ti, in vain. Then Jotefa comes upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of s.e.x, and thereby rendered s.e.x more dangerous, more artificial, more unnatural. So he gets his first gleam of intelligence. The next comes, when Jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others.

This further enlightens him. He contrasts this opinion on art as something useful to man with art as the European sees it, a mere freakish amus.e.m.e.nt. Finally, he hazards everything. He takes a young native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. All goes well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the natives. They laugh at his luck. He asks them why. Because his line has caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife being unfaithful to him. He returns home, half-believing the superst.i.tion. The native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. He cannot beat her. He can only forgive and understand. So the story closes.