Van Velde. 1936-41. Collection Samuel Beckett.

One of the joys of the Graduate Liberal Studies program is “discovering” connections between seemingly disparate people and their works. Of course this is the purpose, the raison d’etre, of interdisplinary courses, but it still comes as a pleasant surprise to locate parallels where perhaps one hadn’t imagined finding them. Such is the case with an essay (and its more compact cousin, a journal article) I’m writing now, comparing John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who didn’t want to belong to any club.

A curious book arrived in the mail several weeks ago: Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde, by Charles Juliet (Dalkey Archive, 2009). I am embarrassed to admit that I have yet to read Samuel Beckett’s novels, although the trilogy comprising Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable sits on my bookshelf; I have, however, read and seen performed Waiting for Godot and, recently, listened to an excellent audio version. But who the heck is Bram van Velde?

Bram Van Velde, Sans titre, 1936/1941

In 1968 the writer Charles Juliet visits Beckett in his Paris apartment. He knew that Beckett had been friends with the painter, that they were old friends, but van Velde lived in Geneva, and Beckett was unwell, and they rarely saw one another.

He asks about him.

One of Bram van Velde’s paintings is opposite his desk, behind where I am sitting, and I stand up to take a look at it.

It is an enigmatic piece, painted before World War II, during a period of transition.

I know how much Beckett likes this painting, but I am tempted to think that he also acquired it because he wanted to help a painter who was nearly destitute.

Juliet meets Beckett four times over nine years, the last time on 11 November 1977 in a hotel across the street from his apartment. Their meetings are replete with awkward silences: reminding me of the inarticulate moments in Godot. Juliet meets van Velde over roughly the same decade.

April 25, 1977, Geneva:

…we went up to his room for a moment. The only belongings he has there are the slim volumes of Beckett’s latest work, sent to him by Beckett himself.

I see for the first time a picture he painted just after the war, in which he tried to express the darkness and violence of the time.

“We lived like ghosts.”

Bram van Velde speaks in epigrammatic sentences: “A painting is always a bit of a preliminary sketch”; “I am held prisoner by my eyes”; “I paint to kill off the word”;  Juliet manages to frame the pieces of these fragmentary conversations to create a portrait of a singular painter who never put the market before his vision.

Bram van Velde. photo © Marc Trivier

Van Velde and Beckett lived in abject poverty in 1930s Paris, where they met. Juliet quotes Beckett on meeting the painter: “He was living alone in his studio with his canvases, which he never showed to anyone….” He recounts this conversation to van Velde as they walk in Geneva.

A winter’s day, gray and cheerless. Bram is gloomy, his thoughts elsewhere. I talk to him about Van Gogh…”Doubt is at the root [van Velde says]. Since Van Gogh, doubt has increased. Now, pain is the only source.”

Later, on another walk, when van Velde is “relaxed, grave and sprightly,” Juliet asks him the reason for his despair. “Because it’s an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it’s never enough.” Is he talking about life, or painting?

He lived in Paris for thirty-five years but only ever had one friend, Beckett, and even they did not meet very frequently.

Conversations is a beautiful, short (182pp) book which can be read and reread: in fact, it demands this type of periodic reading, partly because of the brevity of the entries, but also the density of Van Velde’s comments on painting, which require time to process. I wished there had been more about Beckett, but either Juliet is reticent to reveal all that they spoke of, or they simply did not speak much when they met:

He almost answers me two or three times, but finally does not. Protracted silence. The contact between us has been broken,…When we leave, I cannot help but feel frustrated and disappointed.

Samuel Beckett © Marc Trivier

Although I, too, was frustrated by Beckett’s silences, Juliet’s interviews gave me new insight into the man and his work. Sometimes an enigma is all the answer we’ll get, and perhaps it is all we can expect.