I should like to find a real friendship
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 11 February 1883
It is sometimes difficult for me to give up a friendship, but if I go into a studio and have to think, Talk about inane things, don't mention anything of importance and don't express your real feeling about art - that would make me more melancholy than if I stayed away altogether. Just because I should like to find and keep up a real friendship, it is difficult for me to conform to a conventional friendship.
If there is a desire to be friendly on both sides, there may be some difference of opinion, but for all that, one doesn't fall out so easily, and if one does, it is easily made up. Where it is conventional, bitterness is almost unavoidable, just because one does not feel free, and even though one doesn't express one's real feelings, they are sufficiently apparent to leave a continuing disagreeable impression on both sides and to make it hopeless for one to profit from the other's society. Where there is conventional, there is mistrust, and mistrust gives rise to all kinds of intrigues. And with a little more mutual sincerity, our lives would be so much easier.
Letter 266
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what
It is sometimes difficult for me to give up a friendship, but if I go into a studio and have to think, Talk about inane things, don't mention anything of importance and don't express your real feeling about art - that would make me more melancholy than if I stayed away altogether. Just because I should like to find and keep up a real friendship, it is difficult for me to conform to a conventional friendship.
If there is a desire to be friendly on both sides, there may be some difference of opinion, but for all that, one doesn't fall out so easily, and if one does, it is easily made up. Where it is conventional, bitterness is almost unavoidable, just because one does not feel free, and even though one doesn't express one's real feelings, they are sufficiently apparent to leave a continuing disagreeable impression on both sides and to make it hopeless for one to profit from the other's society. Where there is conventional, there is mistrust, and mistrust gives rise to all kinds of intrigues. And with a little more mutual sincerity, our lives would be so much easier.
Letter 266
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what
Labels: fellowship
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