When Benjamin "dreamed" this painting, he was at the end of his road. It is the first of a series of three paintings that document his journey from despair to faith. Did he know at the time of painting it that the life he was living had to be dead and buried before a new life could spring up for him?
Many interpretations of the elements of his painting have been forthcoming over the years. The grassy mound could be a grave, the ten spears the Ten Commandments that are an insurmountable barrier, a confrontation with one's failure as a human being. Perhaps the meagreness of the light and warmth of the two primus stoves in that vast night indicate the inadequacy of mere human reason to illuminate one's existential darkness. And the sunset that is endless - the Götterdämmerung, that leaves man with no hope at all.
The motifs are arranged symmetrically around the sides of the painting, leaving the centre empty. A solid wall topped with ten forbidding spear points crowds the viewer to the very edge of the picture plane, where he shares a very shallow space with two primus stoves on either side of a small, grassy mound. From it incongruous, happy little flowers grow. Beyond the spears a dark night stretches into infinity.
