Much Madness is divinest Sense

L'Arbre de vie by Seraphine Louis
Oil on Canvas, 1928

Much Madness is divinest Sense-

To a discerning Eye -

Much Sense - the starkest Madness -

"Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail -

Assent - and you are sane -

Demur - you're straightway dangerous-

And handled with a Chain -

                            - Emily Dickinson 1862

George's post Whistle while you work sparked some lively conversation and also got me thinking in top gear. It reminded me of a film we saw a while back and which made an indelible impression on me. That of the life of the French artist, Seraphine Louis. To draw you into the conversation that led to this post, please follow the link above that will also take you to the comments at the end of the post.

An excerpt from Medicographia 103  explains her tragic life this way:
"What a singular destiny that of Séraphine Louis. Born into a needy peasant community in Picardy, France, in 1864, who could have foreseen that life’s path would lead her to the pantheon of French
naïve artists between the two World Wars? Mystical, prone to visions, this fey artist praised by the surrealists painted, she said, at the behest of the Virgin Mary. Ever more mysterious enlaced flowers, leaves, and fruits thrived in the heaven bound “garden of paradise” that grew out of the ramblings of her unconscious mind. Provided for and encouraged by Wilhelm Uhde, the German art collector who discovered Picasso and Henri Rousseau, her works exhibited, Séraphine over the years drifted through visions and fancies and on into madness. Committed to a lunatic asylum in 1932, she died there 10 years later, utterly destitute, leaving to the world of art her numinous experience incarnate in paintings of the “Good Lord’s garden.”
Medicographia. 2010;32:210-216 (see French abstract on page 216)"

What struck me in the film was the way she sang canticles while painting obsessively in her studio with windows flung open over the town's rooftops. It is said that townspeople knew from her singing when a painting was completed.

Her genius was described by Uhde as "An extraordinary passion, a sacred fervor, a medieval ardor." It seemed the line between passion and insanity, in her case, got blurred and finally gave way.

How little we understand of each other's inner worlds.

Matilda