lineaments of change
an ekphrasis: Self-Portrait without Beard, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
Today’s art comes from Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890).
Your Beard Vincent? You look different, I almost didn’t recognize you. Oh, you shaved your beard. How long did you have it, twenty years at least, right? Long enough to be greater than a mere appendage. But listen. You shouldn’t have done that, you understand? Not without permission, no. Yes, permission, mine. Not notification, no, that would not be enough, I’m afraid. I mean, don’t you know that a beard is not yours to do with as you please? For what else was it, twenty some years ago, but a gift, from you to me? And I accepted your gift, the image of it I carried, as the way to know you. A gift that is mutual, as much mine as it is yours. Oh no, don’t do that. Growing it back won’t help. You took it away without asking, but you’ve given something else, that is, a glimpse of you in time, the lineaments of change made visible. That, too, is mine to accept. So thank you, my friend, for your new gift. Let us cherish it together. Give me a while, though, to get use to your sudden transfiguration. I do need to know you are okay. I do need you, next time, to seek my permission.
Shocking, yes! How young he is, how vulnerable. I still maintain he didn’t kill himself, but taunted by the kids in the village for being “different.” He was too in love with painting to quit. Thanks for this. I’ll be writing about him in March.
He looks so much sadder without the beard. My husband had a beard when I met him and I cannot imagine him without it. It's funny how facial hair can be so mutable and yet can also feel so definitive. And how it can feel like such an affront when someone changes so radically, like they are doing it *at* you. I like how the speaker of your poem takes it so personally, it really makes me ponder how we relate to long-dead artists like Van Gogh, how we can feel so possessive of them. He did so many self portraits and I've only had a chance to really ponder a handful of them. It would not have occurred to me to write a poem about one of them, I tend to lean more towards landscapes than to portraits; but now I rather want to spend that kind of time pondering and writing about his portraits as well.