#books The waltz of the trees and the sky, by Jean Michel Guenassia, would have, and I say would have, all the credentials to be a wonderful and fascinating romantic tale, instead - either because it is a man who writes it, or because it is continually interspersed with references to letters and diaries that have an alienating effect on the reader - except for rare moments in the finale and the passionate descriptions of the paintings, the pathos it releases is scarce and the interest is all documentary. Undoubtedly, thanks to this book we take a dip in that France end of the nineteenth century traversed by impulses of female emancipation and artistic and social ferments that gave birth to the masterpieces now enclosed in the Orsay museum and the unmistakable iron lace of the Eiffel tower.

The story is based on an intriguing hypothesis, on "how it could have gone". The plot reconstructs the last sixty days of Vincent Van Gogh's life, those spent at Ausers sur Oise, investigating the doubts surrounding his end, and assuming a love, never confirmed, with Marguerite, the nineteen year old daughter of the doctor patron of Impressionists, Paul Ferdinand Gachet, the one who took care of the Dutch painter in recent months and who found himself facing the fatal gunshot wound. Guenassia's hypothesis is that Gachet was not the friend of the Impressionists but an opportunist who contributed to Van Gogh's death and the spread of fakes on which he made a profit.

As we said, the love story, although tormented and romantic, does not catch us as much as the representation of Van Gogh's painting. The description of the paintings, stormy, moved, tormented, is more vivid and successful than the characterization of the characters and their feelings a little of way. Van Gogh himself remains in the background as a person, highlighting only in the act of painting, or rather, attacking the canvas. Standing in front of the landscape - among wheat fields, haystacks, flights of crows, roofs and sunflowers - Van Gogh paints without ever glancing outside, at what he has to portray, concentrated on a vision only mental, following the wave of a stormy inner symphony. Van Gogh's personality eludes us, his mental illness does not show through, the need to paint canvases on canvas remains central, flooding them with light and color with obsessive delirium. His character is a mystery, we do not understand if he is only a selfish prey to internal demons or if, in his way, he loves Marguerite and tries to save her from herself. Marguerite, on the other hand, is the image of the naive, free, rebellious girl who courageously and with youthful unconsciousness breaks for love all the bonds that bind her to the bourgeois and conformist world represented by the petty father and the vile brother.

For love she is willing to do anything and sees in the man with whom she has fallen in love not only the embodiment of romantic passion but also the master who could reveal her to herself, shape her, untie hert from chains and make her shine with the flame of an art that in reality she does not possess, because she only knows how to imitate her favorite painters but is unable to paint something original. Vincent calls her "my little sunflower", they make love in the bohemian pension where he is staying and they talk tightly holding each other, but they remain two irreconcilable solitudes. “But he knew that our time was counted. Not me. Instinctively, he knew long before I admitted that we are alone on Earth and that we cannot do anything against this. Alone in front of ourselves. Alone among the others. Whatever you can invent to believe otherwise. And Vincent managed to paint the beauty of this profound loneliness “

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