4. This very approximate quotation is taken from
Michelet’s
L’amour (‘Les aspirations de l’automne’): ‘Socrates was born a real satyr; and through his deep thinking, through the sculpting of reason, virtue, devotion, he remade his face so thoroughly, that on the last day, a God was to be seen there, by whom the
Phaedo was illuminated’ (Socrate naquit un vrai satyre; et par sa profonde pensée, par la sculpture de raison, de vertu, de dévouement, il refit si bien son visage, qu’au dernier jour un Dieu s’y vit, dont s’illumina le
Phédon) (Michelet,
L’amour, p. 393). See also
letter 738, n. 7 and A. Verkade-Bruining, ‘More about Michelet’,
Vincent. Bulletin of the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh 4-3 (1975), pp. 22-23.
In one of the poetry albums Van Gogh transcribed this passage correctly. See Pabst 1988, p. 30. Also quoted, with a few slight differences, in Jules Michelet’s
La femme (Michelet 1863, p. 175). Incidentally, in this book the Parthenon is mentioned (on p. 227).
Van Gogh may have borrowed the phrase ‘rayon d’en haut’ from the foreword to Michelet’s
Histoire de la Révolution (1847). There he says he wrote the book with ‘just such a ray from above, so luminous a beam from the sky’ (un tel rayon d’en haut, une si lumineuse échappée du ciel). See
Oeuvres de J. Michelet. Histoire de la Révolution. Paris 1888, vol. 1, p. 32. See also
letter 143, n. 5.