a disgraced and fired missionary . . . .
the world lost so much.
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
Van Gogh's religious zeal grew until he felt he had found his true vocation.
To support his effort to become a pastor, his family sent him to Amsterdam to
study theology in May 1877, where he stayed with his uncle Jan van Gogh, a naval
vice admiral. Vincent prepared for the entrance exam with his uncle Johannes
Stricker, a respected theologian who published the first "Life of Jesus" in the
Netherlands. Van Gogh failed the exam, and left his uncle Jan's house in July
1878. He then undertook, but failed, a three-month course at the Vlaamsche
Opleidingsschool, a Protestant missionary school in Laeken, near Brussels.
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They did not listen, They did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frame less heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They did not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
In January 1879, he took a temporary post as a
missionary in the village of Petit Wasmes in the coal-mining district of
Borinage in Belgium at Charbonnage de Marcasse. Taking Christianity to what he
saw as its logical conclusion, Van Gogh lived like those he preached to,
sleeping on straw in a small hut at the back of the baker's house where he was
staying. The baker's wife reported hearing Van Gogh sobbing at night in the hut.
His choice of squalid living conditions did not endear him to the appalled
church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the
priesthood." He then walked to Brussels, returned briefly to the
village of Cuesmes in the Borinage, but gave in to pressure from his parents to
return home to Etten. He stayed there until around March the following
year, a cause of increasing concern and frustration for his parents.
There was particular conflict between Vincent and his father; Theodorus made
inquiries about having his son committed to the lunatic asylum at Geel.
He returned to Cuesmes where he lodged until October with a miner named
Charles Decrucq. Increasingly interested in the people and scenes
around him, Van Gogh recorded his time there in his drawings and followed Theo's
suggestion that he should take up art in earnest. He traveled to Brussels that
autumn intending to follow Theo's recommendation to study with the prominent
Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him, in spite of his aversion to
formal schools of art, to attend the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels,
where he registered on 15 November 1880. At the Académie, he studied anatomy and
the standard rules of modelings and perspective about which he said, "...you
have to know just to be able to draw the least thing." Van
Gogh aspired to become an artist in God's service, stating: "...to
try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious
masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told
it in a book; another in a picture."Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They did not listen, They did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frame less heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They did not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
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