This line is an allusion to
painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), who cut off his ear
lobe on December 23, 1888 after an argument with his
room-mate, fellow artist Paul Gauguin.
He then presented the severed portion to a prostitute.
The act is not at all important in itself, but it is wildly
disconcerting, and obscures the whole picture of the artist. Even the most sophisticated reader, on picking up a book about Van Gogh, cannot help but wonder when he will come to the part about the ear. In anticipating it, he may skim over information that is a hundredfold more pertinent. Having got past it, he may feel that all else is anticlimactic.
(source: Robert Wallace, The World of Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Time-Life Library of Art, 1977, p.7)
Van Gogh painted two
self-portraits showing himself with a bandaged ear. The one
here is Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, painted less
than two weeks after the event.
At the time of his self-mutilation Van Gogh was suffering
severe and recurring hallucinations and depression, for which
many diagnoses have been offered, including epilepsy, the
ravages of syphylis, and intermittent porphyria.
Van Gogh went into an asylum at his own request in 1889.
Less than two years after lopping off his ear, the beauty of
the Garden totally overwhelmed him, and he committed suicide.
There is a precious irony in Partridge's line -- although Van Gogh couldn't stand the beauty, he left a great many works that help reveal the beauty of the world to the rest of us.
