Though we are all familiar with the George Eliot's claim, reported from a conversation with F. H. Myers, that God is “inconceivable,” immortality “unbelievable,” and duty nonetheless “peremptory and absolute,” we would likely all agree that a concern with the definition and pursuit of duty plays a far more central role in her fiction writing than does her skepticism regarding either supernatural entities or postmortal promotions. No one took this moral concern more seriously than Eliot's devoted reader Vincent van Gogh (1853–90), who paralleled Eliot in his skeptical attitude toward metaphysics or faith and in his unrelenting self-scrutiny as a moralist and ethical human being. To review the deeply affecting course of van Gogh's responses to the Victorian novelist's writings, as analyzed with exemplary thoroughness by Naifeh and Smith, is to study one of the more engrossing spiritual kinships of the nineteenth century.
Discussing van Gogh's “inner pilgrimage,” during a...