| | 37 letters relate to feelings - nostalgia... | Excerpt length: shorter longer | |
| Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(mid August 1879)
... we
are both still in the land of the living. When I saw you again
and walked with you, I had a feeling I used to have more often
than I do now, namely that life is something good and precious
which one should value, and I felt more cheerful and alive than
I have been feeling for a long time, because in spite of myself
my life has gradually become less precious, much less important
and more a matter of indifference to me, or so it seemed.
When one lives with others and is bound by feelings of
affection, then one realizes that one has a reason for living,
that one may not be utterly worthless and expendable, but is
perhaps good for something, since we need one another and are
journeying together as compagnons de voyage. But our proper
sense of self-esteem is also highly dependent upon our
relationship with others.
A prisoner who is condemned to solitude, who is prevented
from working, etc., will in the long run, especially if the run
is too long, suffer from the effects... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(30 April 1881)
... Theo,
My best wishes for your birthday. I often think of your
visit; I am glad that we saw each other again, and hope you
will come back this summer. I have been here a few days now and
it is splendid outdoors, but the weather does not as yet permit
drawing in the open air every day. Meanwhile, I have started on
the Millets. The Semeur is finished and
I have sketched the Quatre heures de la journée. And now
I still have to do les Travaux des champs.
As you know there was an exhibition of watercolours in
Brussels - it was rather interesting. Among the Dutch there
were 4 or 5 Mauves, “Woodcutters”; J. Maris,
“Dunes,” like a picture by Ruysdael or Van de
Velde; then J. H. Weissenbruch, 5 superb large drawings;
Roelofs, also 5 large ones; then Gabriël, and Van de Sande
Bakhuyzen, and Valkenburg, and Van Trigt, and P. Stortenbeker,
and Vogel, etc.
Then there was a Mesdag that kept one from looking at any
other drawing,... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(3 June 1882)
... (seen from my studio window) .
I have been thinking of you very often lately, and also of
that time long ago when, as you remember, you visited me once
at The Hague, and we walked together along the Rijswijk road
and drank milk at that mill [see Letter 10]. It may be this has
influenced me somehow when doing these drawings; I have tried
to draw the things as naively as possible, exactly as I saw
them before me. Looking back on those days of the mill, how
sympathetic that time always seems to me; however, it would
have been impossible for me to put what I saw and felt on
paper. So I say that the changes time brings do not alter my
basic feelings; I think they are just developed in another
form. My life, and perhaps after all yours, too, is not as
sunny now as it was then; but I would not go back, because
through that very trouble and adversity I have seen some good
arise, namely the ability to express that feeling.
Rappard was greatly pleased with a drawing similar to one
... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(6 July 1882)
... let us hope it will happen in August.
Before beginning to write about various other things, I want
to tell you that the part of your letter describing Paris by
night touched me very much. Because it brought back to me the
memory of when I too saw “Paris tout gris,” and was
struck by that very peculiar effect with the black figure and
characteristic white horse which gave the full value to the
delicacy of that unusual grey. That little dark note and that
toneful white are the key to the harmony. But by chance, while
I was in the hospital, I was greatly impressed by an artist who
describes this “Paris tout gris” with a master
hand. In Une Page d'Amour by Emile Zola I found some views of
the city so superbly painted or drawn, quite in the same mood
as the simple passage in your letter. And that little book
prompts me to read everything by Zola; up to now I knew only a
few short fragments of his works, for which I tried to make an
illustration - Ce que... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(23 July 1882)
... have given some details about
your visit. Do you approve of our arranging to spend the time
you have free from business and visits together, and both
trying to be in the same frame of mind as we were in the days
of the Rijswijk mill?
As for me, brother - though the mill is gone and the years
and my youth are gone as irrevocably - deep within me has risen
again the feeling that there is some good in life, and that it
is worth while to exert oneself and to try to take life
seriously. Perhaps, or rather certainly, this is more firmly
rooted than it used to be, when I had less experience. The
question for me now is how to express the poetry of that time
in my drawings.
Your letter to me crossed one of mine in which I told you I
had resolved to set to work again, sick or not sick. Well, I
have done so, and I find it does me no harm, though I must take
more medicine to brace me up. But of course the work itself
puts me in a much better mood. I could not bear staying away
... |
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