Conversations with Van Gogh - Madness

HS: I wish I could ask you why you went mad.

VG: You can.

HS: I didn’t expect you to come.

VG: …

HS: Why did you go mad?

VG: How can a mad man ever answer that question?

HS: Well. I don’t know. I think I know what will send me mad.

VG: Then you’ve clearly never been mad or come close to it. Of course you won’t know what will send you mad. That is the point. If you had any idea you wouldn’t be mad.

HS: How did your madness show itself?

VG: I cut off my Earlobe and gave it to a Prostitute.

HS: But that was just one act of your madness. What about the illness itself.

VG: The acts of the illness are the illness. And that was the act in which I saw my madness.

HS: Why did you shoot yourself?

Silence