Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (22 May 1889) ... a week now, and stay in it for two
hours; my stomach is infinitely better than it was a year ago;
so as far as I know, I only have to go on. Besides, I shall
spend less here, I think, considering that I have work in
prospect again, for the scenery is lovely.
What I hope is that at the end of a year I shall know what I
can do and what I want to do better than now. Then little by
little the idea of a fresh start will come to me. Going back to
Paris or anywhere at all in no way attracts me. I think my
place is here. Extreme enervation is, in my opinion, what most
of those who have been here for years suffer from. Now my work
will preserve me from that to a certain extent.
The room where we stay on wet days is like a third-class
waiting room in some stagnant village, the more so as there are
some distinguished lunatics who always wear a hat, spectacles
and a cane, and travelling cloak, almost like at a watering
place, and they represent the passengers.
I...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to His Parents (19 September 1889) ... health during the intervals
is so good, and
my stomach so much better than before, that I
believe it will still take years before I am quite incapable,
which I feared in the beginning would be the case
immediately.
However, I fear I shall again find out in the course of time
that not every procrastination is a thief of time when one has
to do with illness. But there seems to be no rule for it, and
the physician repeated to me several times that one cannot say
anything about it beforehand. But if one knows that it is a
chronic disease, you will understand that one, though
absolutely perplexed in the beginning, gets used to the
thought, and then considers what one can still do. And this
might be even more than one expects.
In the beginning I was so dejected that I had no desire even
to see my friends again and to work, and now the desire for
these two things is stirring, and then there is the fact that
one's appetite and health are perfect during the...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (19 September 1889) ... off, as if it were a lost
cause.
As for eating a lot, I do - but if I were
my doctor, I'd forbid it.
I don't see any advantage for myself in enormous physical
strength, because I am absorbed in the idea of doing good work
and wishing to be an artist and nothing but that would be more
logical.
Both Mother and Wil, after Cor's departure, have moved- they
were absolutely right. It is not necessary that grief gathers
in our heart like water in a swamp - but it is sometimes both
expensive and impossible to change.
Wil wrote beautifully that it is a great grief to them,
Cor's departure.
It is odd, just when I was making that copy of the
“Pieta” by Delacroix, I found where that canvas has
gone. It belongs to a queen of Hungary, or of some other
country thereabouts, who has written poems under the name of
Carmen Sylva. The article mentioning her and the picture was by
Pierre Loti, and he made you feel that this Carmen Sylva as a
...
Article by Max Braumann (1928) ... done and in fact inedible. All the same, he consumed the hardly
inviting food, unless he preferred to drink spirits to relieve
his stomach.”
...
