Oh, it’s simply unbearable. Why must passion drag a person’s heart through the mud, only to stand there afterward with such a nonchalant, composed face? Tell me, everyone—do you know the man called Eugène Delacroix? That painter who created those massive, heavy, fever-dream-like visions of France.
The world often calls him the “standard-bearer of Romanticism,” as if he were some star athlete at a school field day. But that’s a lie. The truth is, he simply kept a wild beast inside his heart that he couldn’t suppress. And a troublesome beast it was—one that insisted on washing its body with perfume and wearing silk shirts, yet let its eyes glint in the darkness of night.
When people think of Delacroix, they think of Liberty Leading the People. That woman with her breast bared, holding the tricolor flag high, marching boldly over a mountain of corpses. Gazing at it, your own heart begins to thud with an irregular rhythm, and for no reason at all, you feel tempted to make some grand, out-of-character resolution: “Right! I shall do something too!” But wait a moment. When Delacroix painted that, he didn’t exactly rush out into the streets shouting “Long live the revolution!” No, he stayed shut away in his studio, sipping cold tea, struggling desperately with the “colors” inside himself. He said, “If I haven’t fought for my country, at least I shall paint for her.”
What a sweet, exquisite excuse! Just hearing those words makes me want to rush over and shake his hand. He knew that the collision of blue and red on a canvas was a far more terrifying battle than any riot in reality.
He remained a bachelor his entire life. He deliberately rejected the peaceful harbor of a family. Why? Because to him, color, light, and shadow were far more selfish, stubborn, and beloved than any woman could be. In his journals, he left behind obsessively detailed notes—the weather of the day, petty complaints about people he met, or the exact way he mixed his pigments.
“Color,” he preached, “transmits emotion in itself, just like music.” Before any logic of shape or drawing, the “red” that leaps into your eyes makes your soul tremble. It isn’t logic. It’s like love. If you have a reason for liking someone, it isn’t true love yet. You are simply struck, helplessly, by that color, by that light. Delacroix swung his brush like a sword, exhausting his very life to capture that momentary shock and seal it into eternity.
The story of his journey to Morocco is also deeply fascinating. Under the intense sun of North Africa, he discovered that “shadows”—which he had previously believed in—were not merely black, but were filled with deep blues and purples. He must have danced with joy. To Delacroix, using only the word “sad” when you feel sorrow is a boorish thing to do. Within sadness, there is a sunken ultramarine, a flicker of expectant yellow, and a swirling, indecisive gray. To paint all of that is to truly paint a human being for the first time.
He did not believe in drawing the flawless, stainless lines favored by the Neoclassicist Ingres. He might have laughed and called those “dead lines.” Delacroix’s lines are always trembling, writhing, looking as if they might escape the canvas at any second. His paintings tell us that being imperfect, being trembling—that is the very proof of being alive.
So, everyone, if you ever lose your way in life, if your heart feels torn to pieces and you don’t know what to do, try standing still and gazing at a single painting by Delacroix. You won’t find any neatly organized justice there. You will only find chaos, passion, and the sheer stubbornness of a man trying to force those things into beauty.
They say “talent is a long patience,” but in his case, perhaps talent was “a desperate struggle to control passion.” It is said that even on his deathbed, he lamented that he didn’t have enough colors. Despite having built such a magnificent, gorgeous world, he was still struggling, feeling he hadn’t yet reached the true “light.”
Oh, isn’t that a comforting thought? Even that great master died without ever being satisfied. If that is the case, then it seems perfectly natural for nobodies like us to spend our days failing, feeling ashamed, and flailing about disgracefully.
Please, do not think of Delacroix’s paintings as mere old artifacts. They are blood-stained letters from a man who once walked this earth, who loved color with such intensity and such delicacy. We should read those letters, take a tiny bit of courage from them, and starting tomorrow, try placing one strange stroke of color on the clumsy canvas of our own lives. That would be quite enough, don’t you think?