“Strict obedience” - I cannot give that

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, c. 15-27 April 1882

Things have happened with Tersteeg which made me write Mauve: “Let us shake hands and not feel animosity or bitterness toward each other, but it is too difficult for you to guide me and it is too difficult for me to be guided by you if you require ‘strict obedience’ to all you say - I cannot give that. So that's the end of the guiding and being guided. But it does not alter my feeling of gratefulness and obligation toward you.”

Mauve has not answered this and I have not seen him since. What urged me to say to Mauve, We must each go our own way, was the evidence that Tersteeg really influenced Mauve. I learned it from Tersteeg himself when he told me he would see to it that you stopped sending me money, “Mauve and I will see to it that there is an end to this.”. . .

Theo, I am a man with faults and errors and passions, but I don't think I ever tried to deprive anyone of his bread or his friends. I have sometimes fought people with words, but attempting a man's life because of a difference of opinion is not the work of an honest man - at least, these are not honest weapons.

Can you understand now that I am sometimes grieved over many things, grieved to the heart; and that I am grieved about Mauve? For though I shouldn't want to have the same “guidance” from him again, I should like to shake hands with him once more, and I wish he would do the same with me.

Letter 189
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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