Transience of Life

“Like vanishing dew,

a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning -- already gone --
thus should one regard one's self.”
― Ikkyu

Presentation by Jia Senchowa

Starry Night
by Vincent Willem van
Gogh
 Introduction
The Starry Night  is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter
Vincent Von Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window
of his asylum room at Saint-Remy-de-Provence just before sunrise, with the addition of an
imaginary village.[

Although it is one of his most famous works, it was not

recognized as a masterpiece during his lifetime. Van Gogh
himself felt the painting was a failure. However, since it was
purchased in 1941 by The Museum of Modern Art in
New York City, it has become one
of the most loved pieces of art of all time.
 Vincent van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) painted Starry Night in 1889,
one year before his death. The painting depicts a phase of his life where he
was in need of realism that had become the driving force in his life and work.
He became disillusioned with organized religion and adopted instead the scientific
method in his pursuit of truth.

 Starry Night is considered to be an iconography or as van Gogh called it a “poetic subject”

that translates the themes in the poems of Walt Whitman, an American author whose works
van Gogh read avidly and therefore had a big influence on his perception of nature. Van Gogh’s
reading of Whitman’s poetry drew his attention to the magnificence of the stars. Hence, in
"Starry Night," he was trying to imagine divine love and the majesty and supremacy of the
universe. It is clear in the painting that there is a reference to man’s temporal and terrestrial
existence which is then juxtaposed with the infinite nature underlying cosmic time. In stars, van
Gogh found hope and comfort. They have also given him a source of inspiration; hence van
Gogh observed that looking at stars always makes him dream.

In some ways, Starry Night has more meaning today than it did when it was first painted in
1889.
 A PHOTOGRAPH
The cardboard shows me how it was
When the two girl cousins went paddling
Each one holding one of my mother’s hands,
And she the big girl - some twelve years or so.
All three stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle with the camera, A sweet face
My mother’s, that was before I was born
And the sea, which appears to have changed less
Washed their terribly transient feet.
Some twenty- thirty- years later
She’d laugh at the snapshot. “See Betty
And Dolly," she’d say, “and look how they
Dressed us for the beach." The sea holiday
was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry
With the laboured ease of loss
Now she’s has been dead nearly as many years
As that girl lived. And of this circumstance
There is nothing to say at all,
Its silence silences.

BY SHIRLEY TOULSON
‘A Photograph’ by Shirley Toulson is a beautiful poem in which a speaker recalls memories of her deceased mother.

In the first part of ‘A Photograph,’ the speaker describes looking at a photograph of her mother as a child. Through
this, she is able to get across her feelings about time and how quickly it moves. Somethings, like the sea, stay the
same while her mother did not.

The second part of the poem takes the scene into the speaker’s own life when she was looking at the same photo
with her mother. She recalls the sound of her mother’s laugh and how she hasn’t heard it for twelve years. 

The most prominent theme of this poem are loss/mourning and memories.
The entire poem is centered around the speaker’s recollections from her
own life and her recollections of her mother’s memories. She feels both
sorrow and joy as she recalls her mother’s words when the two looked
at the photograph together. So much time has passed since the image was
taken, and since she looked at it with her mother. But, it’s clear from the
poem that the memories of those moments are still strong in her mind.
Thank You.