My aim is infernally difficult to achieve

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 21 July 1882

Today I promised myself something, that is, to treat my illness, or rather what remains of it, as if it didn't exist. Enough time has been lost, work must go on. So, well or not well, I am going back to drawing regularly from morning until night. . . .

Art is jealous, she does not like taking second place to an illness. Hence I shall humor her. . . .

People like me really should not be ill. I would like to make it perfectly clear to you how I look at art. To get to the essence of things one must work long and hard.

What I want and have as my aim is infernally difficult to achieve, and yet I don't think I am raising my sights too high. I want to make drawings that touch some people.

Letter 218
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I should be ruined in my work

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 196 July 1882

I will not leave Sien; I should be a broken man without her, and then I should also be ruined in my work and everything; then I should never get over it, and not wanting to be a nuisance or trouble to you any longer, I should say, Theo, I am a broken man, and everything is lost; it's no use your helping me any more. Living with the woman, I have good courage, and then I say, The money from you will make a good painter of me. With Sien I shall work with all my strength and energy, but without her I shall have to give up. So that's the way things are.

Letter 216
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I am so anxious to set to work

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 15-16 July 1882

It disappoints me to feel so weak still, but it is always that way after an illness such as mine.

The two drawings I did recently are both watercolors because I wanted to try it. However, it seems to me that even now I must work harder on actual drawing, which is the foundation of all the rest. But as you saw from the last one, I am beginning to wash in by degrees.

. . . I cannot work for a long enough stretch, which worries me a great deal; I am so anxious to set to work, especially in the open air. In the meantime, as things are, I am glad to be able to do at least a little.

Letter 215
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I have a good side too

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

Do not imagine that I think myself perfect or that I think that many people taking me for a disagreeable character is no fault of mine. I am often terribly melancholy, irritable, hungering and thirsting, as it were, for sympathy; and when I do not get it, I try to act indifferently, speak sharply, and often even pour oil on the fire. I do not like to be in company, and often find it painful and difficult to mingle with people, to speak to them. But do you know what the cause is - if not at all, of a great deal of this? Simply nervousness; I am terribly sensitive, physically as well as morally, the nervousness having developed during those miserable years which drained my health. Ask any doctor, and he will understand at once that nights spent in the cold street or in the open, the anxiety to get bread, a continual strain because I was out of work, the estrangement from friends and family, caused at least three-fourths of my peculiarities of temper, and that those disagreeable moods or times of depression must be ascribed to this. But you, or anyone who will take the trouble to think it over, will not condemn me, I hope, because of it, nor find me unbearable. I try to fight it off, but that does not change my temperament; and even though this may be my bad side, confound it, I have a good side too, and can't they credit me with that also?

Letter 212
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Constant practice

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

To me it is as clear as day that one must feel what one draws, that one must live in the reality of family life if one wishes to express that family intimately - a mother with her child, a washerwoman, a seamstress, whatever it may be. Through constant practice the hand must gradually learn to obey that feeling. But to try to kill that feeling - that strong wish to have a household of my own - would be suicide. Therefore I say “Forward,” notwithstanding dark shadows, cares, difficulties.

Letter 212
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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My real self is developing

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

I have done my best, brother, to take care that you will see (and not only you, but anyone with eyes in his head) that I aim at and sometimes succeed in doing things practically. . . . The house is neat and bright and clean and well kept, and I have most of my furniture, beds and painting materials. It has cost what it has cost - indeed, I shall not minimize it - but then your money has not been thrown away. It has started a new studio which cannot do without your help even now, but which is going to produce more and more drawings, and which is full of furniture and working materials that are necessary and retain their value.

. . . You know my life has not always been happy, but very often miserable; and now through your help my youth has returned and my real self is developing.

I only hope that you will keep this great change in mind, even when people think it foolish of you to have helped me and to continue helping me. And I hope that you will continue to see the germ of the next drawings in the present ones.

Letter 212
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A studio rooted in real life

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

What exists between Sien and me is real; it is not a dream, it is reality! Look at the result. When you come, you will not find me discouraged or melancholy; you will enter an atmosphere which will appeal to you, at least it will please you - a new studio, a young home in full swing. No mystical or mysterious studio but one that is rooted in real life - a studio with a cradle, a baby's crapper - where there is no stagnation, but where everything pushes and urges and stirs to activity.

Letter 212
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Take heart and find a remedy in work

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

I then felt an inexpressible melancholy inside, which I cannot possibly describe. I know that then I often, often thought of a manly saying of father Millet's: It has always seemed to me that suicide was the deed of a dishonest man.

The emptiness, the unutterable misery within me made me think, Yes, I can understand people drowning themselves. But I was far from approving this, I found strength in the above-mentioned saying, and thought it much better to take heart and find a remedy in work. And you know how I put this into practice.

Letter 212
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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You don't believe in yourself

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

There is “color” in your short description which is palpable and visible to me, though you did not carry your impression through till it assumed a more robust form, and stood visible and palpable to everybody. The real throes and anguish of creating begin at the point where you drop the description; but you possess a damn good creative intelligence. Right now you can go no further because you don't believe in yourself in this respect; otherwise you would jump the ditch, that is to say, you would venture further. But enough of this; there is a je ne sais quoi in your description, a fragrance, a memory, for instance, of a watercolor by Bonington - only it is still vague, as if in a haze. Do you know that drawing with words is also an art, which sometimes betrays a slumbering hidden force, like small blue or grey puffs of smoke indicate a fire on the hearth?

Letter 212
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Deep, genuine affection

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives. Moreover, the prison is sometimes called prejudice, misunderstanding, fatal ignorance of one thing or another, suspicion, false modesty.

But to change the subject - if I have come down in the world, you have in a different way come up in it. And if I have forfeited sympathy, you have gained it. I am glad of that, I say that it in all sincerity, and it will always give me pleasure. . . .

But if you could see me as something other than a idler of the bad sort, I should be very happy.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Will it be for ever?

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage.

I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortune, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity?

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I am good for something!

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

I should be very happy if you could see in me something more than a kind of idler. For there is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Tossed to and fro on a stormy sea

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

The dreamer sometimes falls into the doldrums, but is said to emerge from them again. And the absent-minded person also makes up for it with bouts of perspicacity. Sometimes he is a person whose right to exist has a justification that is not always immediately obvious to you . . . . Someone who has been wandering about for a long time, tossed to and fro on a stormy sea, will in the end reach his destination. Someone who has seemed to be good for nothing, unable to fill any job, any appointment, will find one in the end and, energetic and capable, will prove himself quite different from what he seemed at first.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Think about everything

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting. Just read the Bible and the Gospel, that will start you thinking, thinking about many things, thinking about everything, well then, think about many things, think about everything, that will lift your thoughts above the humdrum despite yourself. We know how to read, so let us read!

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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That man will surely know there is a God

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

One man will love Rembrandt, genuinely, and, he will really believe it. Another will make a thorough study of the French Revolution - he will not be an unbeliever, he will see that there is a supreme authority that manifests itself in great affairs. Yet another has recently attended a free course of lectures at the great university of sorrow and has heeded the things he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears, and has reflected upon them. He too will come to believe in the end and will perhaps have learned more than he can tell.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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The best way of knowing God

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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“What a dreadful person you are”

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

But, you will say, what a dreadful person you are, with your impossible religious notions and idiotic scruples. If my ideas are impossible or idiotic then I would like nothing better than to be rid of them. . . .

I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Things are going very badly for me

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A great fire in our soul

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Well, that's how it is, can you tell what goes on within by looking at what happens without? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney, and they walk on.

All right, then, what is to be done, should one tend that inward fire, turn to oneself for strength, wait patiently - yet with how much impatience! - wait, I say, for the moment when someone who wants to comes and sits down beside one's fire and perhaps stays on? Let him who believes in God await the moment that will sooner or later arrive.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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What am I good for?

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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More real than reality itself

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

There are many different things worth believing and loving, you see - there is something of Rembrandt in Shakespeare, something of Correggio or of Sarto in Michelet and something of Delacroix in Victor Hugo, and there is also something of Rembrandt in the Gospel or, if you prefer, something of the Gospel in Rembrandt, it comes to much the same thing, provided you understand it properly, do not try to distort it and bear in mind that the elements of the comparisons are not intended to detract in any way from the merits of the original individuals.

And in Bunyan there is something of M. Maris or of Millet, a reality that, in a manner of speaking, is more real than reality itself, something hitherto unknown that, if only you can read it, will tell you untold things.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Prejudice and convention

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

There is an old academic school, often odious and tyrannical, the ‘abomination of desolation’, in short, men who dress, as it were, in a suit of steel armor, a cuirass, of prejudice and convention. When they are in charge, it is they who hand out the jobs and try, with much red tape, to keep them for their protégés and to exclude the man with an open mind.

This is a bad state of affairs for anyone who differs from them and protests with heart and soul and all the indignation he can muster. . . .

Now, one of the reasons why I have no regular job, and why I have not had a regular job for years, is quite simply that my ideas differ from those of the gentlemen who hand out the jobs to individuals who think as they do. It is not just a question of my appearance, which is what they have sanctimoniously reproached me with. It goes deeper, I do assure you.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Keep going come what may

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

And I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may.

But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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“You have done nothing”

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Now for the past five years or so, I don't know how long exactly, I have been more or less without permanent employment, wandering from pillar to post. You will say, ever since such and such a time you have been going downhill, you have been feeble, you have done nothing. Is that entirely true?

What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came. It is true that I have forfeited the trust of various people, it is true that my financial affairs are in a sorry state, it is true that the future looks rather bleak, it is true that I might have done better, it is true that I have wasted time when it comes to earning a living, it is true that my studies are in a fairly lamentable and appalling state, and that my needs are greater, infinitely greater than my resources. But does that mean going downhill and doing nothing?

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I admit it is ‘shocking’

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

Now anyone who becomes absorbed in all this is sometimes considered outrageous, ‘shocking,’ sinning more or less unwillingly against certain forms and customs and proprieties. It is a pity that people take that amiss.

You know, for example, that I have often neglected my appearance. I admit it, and I also admit that it is 'shocking.' But look here, lack of money and poverty have something to do with it too, as well as a profound disillusionment, and besides, it is sometimes a good way of ensuring the solitude you need, of concentrating more or less on whatever study you are immersed in.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I believe in a God

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

And look here - just between us - without sermonizing - if there is no God, there is nevertheless one very close by somewhere, and one feels His presence at moments like this. Which is tantamount to saying something for which I would happily substitute the straightforward statement: I believe in a God, and that it is His will that man does not live alone but with a wife and child, if everything is to be normal.

Letter 213
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A dangerous person, unfit for anything

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

I am a man of passions, capable of and given to doing more or less outrageous things for which I sometimes feel a little sorry. Every so often I say or do something too hastily, when it would have been better to have shown a little more patience. Other people also act rashly at times, I think.
This being the case, what can be done about it? Should I consider myself a dangerous person, unfit for anything? I think not. Rather, every means should be tried to put these very passions to good effect. . . .
So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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You can also emerge reborn

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, July 1880

To the family, I have, willy-nilly, become a more or less objectionable and shady sort of character, at any rate a bad lot. How then could I then be of any use to anyone? And so I am inclined to think the best and most sensible solution all round would be for me to go away and to keep my distance, to cease to be, as it were. What the moulting season is for birds - the time when they lose their feathers - setbacks, misfortune and hard times are for us human beings. You can cling on to the moulting season, you can also emerge from it reborn, but it must not be done in public.

The thing is far from amusing, not very exhilarating, and so one should take care to keep out of the way. Well, so be it.

Letter 133
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Serenity despite everything

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

This much, however, I believe about you, and this much I know about myself, notwithstanding my nervousness, that in both our characters there is a foundation of serenity - serenity despite everything, so that neither of us is unhappy, our serenity being based on the fact that we truly and sincerely love our trade and our work, and that art occupies a large part of our thoughts and makes life interesting.

Letter 213
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A small iron cradle with a green cover

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 6 July 1882

This last piece of furniture is something I cannot look at without emotion - because a man is gripped by a strong and powerful emotion when he sits down next to the woman he loves with a baby in the cradle beside them. And although it was a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her - it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it, and Millet and Breton - a light in the darkness, a brightness in the middle of a dark night.

Letter 213
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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All those convalescent people

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 1 July 1882

The most delightful thing about the whole recovery is that the love for drawing revives, and also the feeling for things around me which seemed almost extinct for a long time and had left a great void. I am again interested in everything I see. . . . I cannot tell you how happy I am to sit here in the studio again after having been surrounded by chamber pots, etc., for so long, though the hospital is also beautiful, very beautiful, especially the garden with all those convalescent people - men, women and children. I made a few scratches, but as a patient one is not free to work as one should, nor is one fit for it.

Letter 209
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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