French Literature Reviews - 2026

V. Forrester, Van Gogh ou l'enterrement dans les blés (Reissue)
Art and Visual Culture

Van Gogh ou l'enterrement dans les blés
Viviane Forrester
Chantal Thomas (Preface)

PUBLICATION DATE: 06/03/14 PUBLISHER: Seuil SERIES: Fiction & Cie ISBN: 978-2-02-116265-3 EAN: 9782021162653 FORMAT: Paperback NO. OF PAGES: 391 p.

At the heart of Viviane Forrester's exploration of the life and work of the brilliant painter—whom Antonin Artaud famously described as "suicided by society"—lies a precise and consequential biographical fact: Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, exactly one year to the day after his older brother of the same name, who was stillborn on March 30, 1852. This gave rise to his persistent, obsessive sense of usurping the life of another, an elder brother who haunted him like a ghost.

When he set out on his own and left his paternal home, he remarked: "The murderer has left the house." A misunderstood genius who shared a passionate bond with his other brother, Theo, hopelessly enamored with a life he did not know how to live, battered, flayed, and abandoned by all, Vincent Van Gogh created a monumental body of work. He died on July 29, 1890, in Auvers-sur-Oise, at the age of thirty-eight. "I still see him on his narrow bed in the little attic room, tortured by terrible pain.

"Is there no one to open my belly?" It was stiflingly hot in the room under the roof." And there was no one... In the morning, before Theo's arrival, a final visit: two gendarmes. Standing rigidly at the foot of the bed, looking stern, they interrogated the dying man: why had he committed suicide? Where had he gotten his gun? Propped up against the pillows, Vincent smoked his pipe. He replied in a calm voice that he had acted of his own free will; the others persisted, unrelenting.

Vincent looked on in silence, straight ahead, ignoring the representatives of an authority he was finally escaping. This book was originally published in 1983. New edition with a preface by Chantal Thomas.

This biographical study examines the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh, focusing on the profound influence of a haunting familial circumstance. The painter was born exactly one year after his stillborn older brother of the same name, a detail that instilled in him a persistent sense of usurping another's existence. Viviane Forrester traces how this early psychological shadow, combined with his intense bond with his brother Theo and his tragic final days in Auvers-sur-Oise, shaped the trajectory of a misunderstood genius who created a monumental body of work despite being battered and abandoned by society.

Readers interested in biographical approaches to nineteenth-century art and literature may find this reissue relevant. The volume features a preface by Chantal Thomas and revisits the painter's troubled existence, from his departure from the paternal home to the harsh questioning by authorities on his deathbed. Through attention to these historical and personal elements, the text illuminates the complex interplay between Van Gogh's personal suffering and his artistic creation, reflecting on a figure famously linked to the complexities of creative isolation.