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On March 30, 1853, the spring tulips of the Netherlands bloomed. A new life was ushered in in the homes of Protestant priests in the countryside of Zindert.
He was Vincent William van Gogh, an artistic genius as passionate and naïve as spring.
▲ Young Van Gogh
In the spring 111 years later, in the village of Chawan in Anhui Province, where rape flowers bloomed, a scholarly genius who led a new wave of poetry for China was born, and left an immortal hymn of spring for posterity.
He was admitted to Peking University at the age of 15, and he was also a poet Haizi.
▲Juvenile Haizi
Van Gogh and Haizi, a painter and a poet, are separated by a century and a half, but their lives are full of fateful coincidences:
They were all born in the spring of March,
Passionate, naïve and idealistic.
They have talents that are difficult for ordinary people to reach:
Haizi wrote poetry at the age of 18 and composed 2 million words of poetry in just 7 years;
Van Gogh created the 2051 paintings of his lifetime.
They are mentally tortured,
The living life has not yet bloomed and hurried away.
These two geniuses, who died young, met in a dream intertwined with art and poetry. Reading Haizi's poems, Van Gogh's landscape seems to emerge with brilliant colors in poetry:
"You come to earth, you have to see the sun."
Haizi "Summer Sun"
Van Gogh, The Sower, 1888
There's grain piled high up there,
Covered the windows."
"Spring, Ten Sea Sons"
Van Gogh's "Nap", 1889-1890
From tomorrow, care for grain and vegetables.
"Facing the Sea, Spring Blossoms"
Van Gogh, The Potato Eater, 1885
I have a house,
Facing the sea,
Spring.
"Facing the Sea, Spring Blossoms"
▲ Van Gogh works
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In addition to these commonalities, their mental condition has always been in a worrying situation. Born in the late 1980s, Haizi caught up with the qigong fever that set off a national boom, and Haizi hoped to get the sublimation of the soul in the study of qigong. In a book three days before his death, he still told his brother: "First of all, you must learn Qigong well." ”
In the process of practicing Qigong, Haizi's mental state was even more disordered, and in the last poem of his life, "Spring, Ten Haizi", which he composed in 1989, he began to dialogue with himself, splitting and shattering images, incoherent whispers, exuding a feeling of solitude and despair:
In the spring, ten haizi roared lowly
Dancing and singing around you and me
Rip your black hair and ride you away, dusty
The pain of your being split fills the earth."
"Spring, Ten Sea Sons"
Van Gogh has been plagued by epilepsy. Sometimes he was overwhelmed with energy, and sometimes he was depressed to the extreme. He regarded Gauguin as a confidant, and perhaps because he cared too much about each other's feelings, quarrels always broke out between them. During this time, Van Gogh's spirit began to become more and more abnormal, agitated, suspicious, and even heard someone speaking in his ear.
Van Gogh, Portrait of a Bandaged Ear, 1889
After arguing with him and being disillusioned, he impulsively cut off his own ears, a move that has long been seen as a manifestation of his madness. However, after calming down, Van Gogh actually painted two ear-cutting self-portraits in a row, as if reflecting on the impulsive behavior of the self. Fortunately, he gains the power of calm in the process of painting, and he is in dialogue with his inner self.
Why can't genius escape the mad pursuit?
In 2015, a paper published in the journal Nature noted that creativity and mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, share the same genetic basis.
The Swiss psychologist Jung believes that schizophrenia is caused by the split between the unconscious hidden in the human heart and the consciousness with a strong sense of individual existence.
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung
（1875—1961）
Swiss psychologist
In Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung says:
"While the things that appear violently in the confusion remain in the background in neurosis, they continue to affect consciousness. Thus, when analyzing the background of the phenomenon of consciousness, it finds the same archetypal image as the psychotic insanity that activates psychopaths. We are dealing with normal-type fantasies; in fact, these fantasies are everywhere, not the weird product of mental delusions. The case factor is not the presence of these thoughts, but the inability to control the unconscious and the split consciousness. Therefore, in all cases of schizoid division, the unity of unconsciousness and consciousness is necessary. ”
Consciousness is individual, unconscious is collective.
Geniuses have a strong sense of self, and the same is true of the desire to express themselves. They can't wait to show the secret of the world they see in their eyes, and if someone can understand or even appreciate it, he is willing to go to the soup for them.
However, it is this overly strong sense of self that makes it difficult for them to reconcile with the collective unconscious.
Van Gogh created 35 self-portraits in his lifetime
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The good news is that the fiery soul always attracts the messenger of light.
On July 27, 1890, in a golden wheat field on the outskirts of Paris, France, Van Gogh had just finished his painting. Suddenly, gunshots rang out, and half an hour later, the painter limped back to the inn where he was staying with his hands over his bleeding abdomen. The innkeeper called the doctor and informed the painter's brother, but the painter died in his brother's arms two days later, because of the infection of the wound.
Van Gogh, "The Wheat Field where crows fly", 1889
On March 26, 1989, a young man with a vicissitudes of life slowly walked to the tracks, lay calmly on the railway tracks, and was taken away by a train bound for spring in the howling wind.
He is a 25-year-old poet Haizi.
▲ Haizi
After Haizi's death, his close friend Luo Yihe was devastated and worked day and night to sort out his last works, pushing Haizi to the highest point of poetry, while he himself died suddenly due to exhaustion. The so-called "soldier dies for the confidant", which is probably the best interpretation.
In the great turbidity of the world, many people are swept into the endless void. But the poet and the painter have to negotiate and struggle hard with the fateful helplessness and the inescapable original sin.
In the spring, idealists don't die. Even if the body is destroyed, the soul lives on.
*The pictures in this article are from the network
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