It is mid-June, and this crescent moon graces the sky above my home.
In another mid-June, another crescent moon hovers over Vincent van Gogh as he paints his “Starry Night” . It is 1889 and he is in St Remy, southern France, striving to recover his mental health. I sense Vincent is creating both a painting and a vision. He paints a hillside and a valley that he can see with his eyes out his hospital window. With his mind’s eye includes a village in the valley. It is much like the of his youth in Holland, and unlike the local ones of southern France. The large cypress evokes both prayerfulness and mortality – maybe even his own mortal self ; lit, held and comforted by the cosmos around him. The stars loom larger than life – reflecting the light they brought to Vincent’s soul. As he kept painting, they kept growing.
The crescent moon offers Vincent and us a thin but enduring light midst much darkness…
He even draw a crescent moon beside a verse in his hymnbook of Psalms
L’Eternel seul est ma lumiereMa deliverance et mon appui:Qu’aurai-je a craindre sur la terrePuisque ma force est toute en lui. The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid
As Lauren Soth commented , this “is a verse of faith and consolation. Thus the crescent alongside it presumably is an emblem of faith and consolation… It is as such an emblem that the crescent moon in the Starry Night should be understood: an emblem of consolation in a painting meant to be consoling. (Lauren Soth, “Van Gogh’s Agony”, The Art Bulletin , Jun., 1986, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 301-313)
May gentle, beautiful light of the cosmos shine into our nighttime, and lighting and enlightening our souls.
This is Vincent’s vision, Vincent’s passion.
His painting now lives in New York, you can see it here.
May this radiant life and hope glow midst whatever night we are in.