history why must you be so intriguing

[rinue]

Ciro says Gaugin is maybe the one who cut off Van Gogh's ear, and not Van Gogh, and I believe him because I hate Gaugin.

Meanwhile:

3692 / 50000 words. 7% done!

Yes. Let us all feel glorious about 350 or so words in six days, which works out to a little more than my 50-word-a-day natural pattern with this thing. I introduced two whole new characters and everything, and one of them I just made up.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

...I believe him because I hate Gaugin.

This is just how rumors get started!


(I can't say I hate Gaugin, but he gives me the creeps and I find his art too like Mission District murals to be interesting. Although some of the sculpture passes muster.)

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Some of his art is lovely, and some of it is boring. Mostly I just dislike the man himself, who was violent, boorish, appropriating, and ridiculously excited about being able to sleep with a lot of disadvantaged 14-year-old Tahitian girls, because that was clearly paradise, unlike all these French women who wanted to talk and have some control of the finances. He and Van Gogh kind of improved each other as artists, but after they stopped living together Van Gogh had to go do a madhouse to get over it. Technically, the papers of the time simply say that Van Gogh lost his ear during a fight with Gaugin, and neither of the two say who took the ear off. But my money is on Gaugin.

Van Gogh did send the ear to somebody else, though. That was all him.

"You hit in me in the ear?! No, that's perfect!"

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the self-mutilation story also started as rumor (although he did actually lay the dismembered ear at the doorstep of the woman he fancied). All we actually know about the night in question is that Gaugin, an aggressive and violent man prone to drinking, got into a horrible fight with his friend the pacifist. They separated that night, never spoke to each other again, and neither one ever spoke of or wrote (to scholarly satisfaction) who cut off the ear. Van Gogh later convalesced for mental illness, so everyone assumed he was crazy and did it to himself.

Objectively, though? Equally likely that Gaugin cut off the ear.

Ahem.
--

Ciro

[achates.livejournal.com]

Yay! More work on Digby!

[rinue.livejournal.com]

It is my objective to be at 10% by the end of the month, also known as 5000 words. This may however prove to be impossible, and certainly seems unlikely.