Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), The Starry Night, 1888, Oil on canvas, © Musée d'Orsay
The Starry Night
That does not keep me from having a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. — Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother
The town does not exist except where one black-haired tree slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky. The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry night! This is how I want to die.
It moves. They are all alive. Even the moon bulges in its orange irons to push children, like a god, from its eye. The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die:
into that rushing beast of the night, sucked up by that great dragon, to split from my life with no flag, no belly, no cry.
~ Anne Sexton
The poem reconfigures Van Gogh’s Starry Night not as a serene vision but as a violent, consuming force, transforming celestial beauty into a metaphor for self-annihilation. Stars are not tranquil; they “boil,” suggesting psychological unrest rather than awe. The single tree, likened to a drowned woman, evokes female suffering and bodily dissolution, recurring motifs in the author’s work.
