My Father, Paul Gauguin

MY FATHER PAUL GAUGUIN by POLA GAUGUIN Translated from the Norwegian by Arthur G. Chafer NEW YORK ALFRED A KNOPF 1 9 3 7 Copyright 1937 by Alfred A . Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writirtg from the publisher, ex cept by a reviewer w to may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a r vte w to be printed in a maga zine or nevuspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST AMERICAN EDITION PHOTO, frAW, ROSENBERG, PARIS PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Certain of the material contained in this volume ori ginally appeared in The Intimate Letters of Paul Gauguin, translated by Van Wyck Brooks, and is sued by the Liveright Publishing Corporation and in Letters of Paul Gauguin to Georges Daniel de Monfreid, translated by Ruth Pielkovo, published by Dodd, Mead Company, to both of which pub lishers acknowledgment is made. PREFACE I AM the son of Paul Gauguin and a mother brought up in good bourgeois surroundings. In her home I grew up and predictions as to my future were many and various, ranging from solicitous doubts of how I might turn out, being the son of my father, to the somewhat too facile but dubious renown his name brought me later. A purely external resemblance in appearance and manner intensified the opinions people formed about me. The mystery which sur rounded fathers existence during my childhood and even in my adolescence was of great significance a mystery which was deepened every time a letter came from him to mother missives from far away, which for a little while rendered the strong and ever active woman silent and reflective. We children, without beingtold what was in these letters, instinc tively felt the weight and significance of the words, and with the aid of the pictures we had at home, to us so familiar, t others strange, we freshened up vii PREFACE the image of him derived from a short visit he paid to Denmark when I was barely seven a memory which remains with me to this day, clear and vivid as ever. Even now I recall with surprise how strange his language and his manner then seemed to me. That this was a father was something that was quite beyond my comprehension. The image has grown ever clearer and more alive with the passing of years. But it is always the same just as he stood there, reserved, short-spoken, but moved, in the presence of his youngest son, whom he did not know and who, as he was aware, could not understand him so do I see him still, the grown-up man, the stranger, Paul Gauguin, my father But the impression was sharply defined on the childs retina and gave him a feeling for every little thing which might in any way concern his fathers life and work Every idle word and every grain of gold that was let fall in connection with his name was gathered up and preserved. And the exclamation one heard so often c Why, youre just like your father bound one closer to the image and spt off its char acter even if at times it retreated into the obscurity of the subconscious, it invariably returned each time to the light of consciousness, clearer, stronger, and more penetrating. No doubt while I was a child and right up to my fathers death, when I was twenty, it was a fancy portrait, based on a few facts only. But the picture was a consistent whole. Then the wii PREFACE facts were added. First his two books, Noa-Noa andAvant et Apres, with the commentaries I was able, as a grown man, to coax out of my mother. Com mentaries that were remarkably clear, impartial, and revealing, supported by an excellent mefnory and stirred by a powerful but cool temperament, inter spersed with a good deal of wit and humour and much practical self-esteem, born of family pride and ambition. But they were accompanied by a very human and frank understanding of the man to whom she had borne five children...