Abstract
This chapter will treat, from a Baudelairean perspective, the unexpected link between Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Vincent Van Gogh as pointing to some crucial questions in modern art: the interplay between the past and the present, the discrepancy between reality and language, and the attempt to express this very discrepancy through the link between literature and painting.1
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Notes
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), p. 134.
Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la vie moderne, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 684. The Painter of Modern Life, and other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1964, 1995), p. 3.
Georg Trakl, Selected Poems, trans. R. Grenier, M. Hamburger, D. Luke and C. Middleton (London: Cape, 1968), pp. 18–19.
Vincent Van Gogh, Lettres à son frère Théo (Paris: Grasset, 1982), pp. 34 and 37 (letter dated July 1880).
Hofmannsthal, ‘Die Bühne als Traumbild’, Reden und Aufsätze I (1891–1913), Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1979), pp. 490–1.
Walter Benjamin, Briefe, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 852.
Van Gogh, Lettres, p. 202 (Aug. 1888).
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© 2003 Patrizia Lombardo
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Lombardo, P. (2003). Van Gogh and Hofmannsthal: Colours and Silence. In: Cities, Words and Images. Language, Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230286696_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230286696_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40206-9
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