율리우스 마이어-그라페, 반 고흐, 지상에 유배된 천사. (Julius Meier-Graefe, Vincent Van Gogh) [고흐 관련 서적]

Julius Meier-Graefe, Vincent Van Gogh, Dover

(Tr. by John Holroyd-Reece)

(율리우스 마이어-그라페, 반 고흐, 지상에 유배된 천사, 최승자, 김현승 옮김, 책세상)

고흐를 다룬 전기 중 가장 이른 글 중 하나인 이 책은 독일인인 율리우스 마이어-그라페가 쓴 것으로 1926년에 출간되었다. 우리나라에서는 최승자와 김현승의 공역으로, 반 고흐 사후 100주년을 기념하여 1990년에 출판되었었다. 나는 91년에 이 책을 사서 읽어 보았는데, 그 때 느낌이 어떠했는지 지금으로서는 알 수가 없다. 그러다가, 이번에 홀로이드 리스(Holroyd-Reece)가 영어로 번역한 것을 다시 읽어 보았는데, 우선 가장 먼저 떠오르는 것은 마이어-그레페의 문체가 갖는 힘이다(물론 영어 번역본이기 때문에, 원저자의 문체가 어땠는지 정확히 말할 수는 없겠지만, 번역이라는 베일을 통해서도 원저자의 문체가 갖는 힘이 전달되어 올 정도였다). 구어체이면서도 직접적인 대화는 거의 없는 점이 특이하고, 또 고흐의 편지와 저자 자신의 상상력을 교묘하게 결합하는 솜씨, 또 사람을 끌어들이는 다소 격정적이라고 해야 할 글쓰기 방식 등이 이 책이 갖는 흡인력의 첫째 요인이 아닌가 한다.

고흐의 미술관이나, 그의 작품이 갖는 특징 등에 관한 그의 서술은 물론 나로서는 왈가왈부할 입장은 아니나, 객관적이고 공정하다고 보기에는 힘든 구석이 있지 않나 하는 추측을 해본다. 이 책에 대해 서평을 쓴 Leando Fanzone은 다음과 같이 지적하고 있다.

His knowledge about art, on the other hand is uncertain. He makes a lot of comparisons, mainly with

Delacroix, Millet, and the Impressionist, and I don't know until which extend he is exceeding his role of

biographer. one thing is to give a piece of mind, and another is to judge as an art-expert, firmly, with no

doubt and sometimes with no aim.

<발췌>

*His drama is a drama of starvation. (1)

*Theo made these sacrifices (q: he supported his brother entirely with what he saved out of his salary) not

only for the sake of his brother, but for the sake of an ideal, which was perhaps not very definite, but his

spiritual happiness was in some way bound up in it. (16)

*His modesty was well founded. His talent seemed extraordinarily small. Scores of mediocrities started with greater gifts. He drew like a boy of twelve, not a line was straight, and in his drawings one can almost see

his awkward fingers tracing the lines across the paper. Little did he guess that his gawky scrawls already

contained the seeds of a painter's style, and he strove in vain to uproot them. (17)

*This was the second crisis [q: incident with K] of the same kind, but much more brutal than the first. He

suffered terribly, but it happened too late to break him. The artist in him had already been roused, and he

caught up his anguish with creative hands. He used his pain to strengthen his personality. (19)

*Earlier, in the Mauve period, painting in oils had been an exercise done at the bidding of his master and nothing more. But in 1882 nature occasionally forced the brush into his hand. (25)

*He began to pointiller, which was a bitter business for him. His hands slipped all too easily in obedience to his better instincts, and he lost the balance of his painfully constructed surface. Before he knew what had

happened he found himself using a colour that was not purely chromatic. He had to confess, gnashing his

teeth meanwhile, that his ego refused to submit to the rules of the craft. He failed to achieve the brilliance

of Signac's surfaces, and still more the quiet structure of Seurat's work. Nevertheless he managed to paint a number of landscapes which conformed more or less to the new canon. They were lukewarm Van Goghs, not without charm, but lacking all real substance. (55)

*To Vincent's mind he combined the craftsmanship of an old mosaic-worker with the intelligence of a man of to-day. Seurat was the child of Classic Ages. Vincent was awestruck, for Seurat had seen the Greeks. (55)

*Perhaps being a painter did not mean much, still less how you painted, Impressionism or Neo-

Impressionism. But it was marvellous that in this evil world there were still people who thought of God,

although they were foul-mouthed, and went to brothels, and swallowed alcohol in buckets. They fought on

God's side none the less, were reviled for His sake, praised Him with their coloured splodges, with curious

hieroglyphics, with dirty lips, and miserable habits--all for God and only for God! (58)

*There is nothing new in Van Gogh's method, and the attempt to ascribe the invention of a new theory to

him, such as ｅxpressionism, is to debase the artist. His method is the method of Rembrandt, Rubens, Greco, Delacroix, raised to a demoniacal pitch, because he spent his art upon a table with tobacco, candlesticks and onions, because this romanticist with the hurricane in his bosom turned the Pegasus of contemplation into a war-horse, because the Don Quixote fought for the fiery emblem of his spirit with sunflowers and peach

blossoms. The contrast between the old world and the new has never appeared more drastic or moved us so much. (75)