The loneliness, the understanding

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, c. 11 March 1882

Israëls', “An Old Man” (if he were not a fisherman, it might be Thomas Carlyle, the author of the French Revolution and Oliver Cromwell, for he decidedly has a head characteristic of Carlyle) is sitting in a corner near the hearth, on which a small piece of peat is faintly glowing in the twilight. For it is a dark little cottage where that old man sits, an old cottage with a small white-curtained window. His dog, which has grown old with him, sits beside his chair - those two old friends look at each other, they look into each other's eyes, the dog and the man. And meanwhile the old man takes his tobacco pouch out of his pocket and lights his pipe in the twilight. That is all - the twilight, the silence, the loneliness of those two old friends, the man and the dog, the understanding between those two, the meditation of the old man - what he is thinking of, I do not know, I cannot tell, but it must be a deep, long thought, something, but I do not know what; it comes rising from a past long ago - perhaps that thought gives the expression to his face, an expression melancholy, contented, submissive, something that reminds one of Longfellow's famous poem with the refrain: But the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

Letter 181
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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