Moments of melancholy

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 11 March 1883

You write in your letter something which I sometimes feel also: "Sometimes I do not know how I shall pull through."

Look here, I often feel the same in more than one respect, not only in financial things, but in art itself, and in life in general. But do you think that something exceptional? Don't you think every man with a little pluck and energy has those moments?

Moments of melancholy, of distress, of anguish, I think we all have them, more or less, and it is a condition of every conscious human life. It seems that some people have no self-consciousness. But those who have it, they may sometimes be in distress, but for all that they are not unhappy, nor is it something exceptional that happens to them.

And sometimes there comes relief, sometimes there comes new inner energy, and one rises up from it, till at last, some day, one perhaps doesn't rise up any more, que soit*, but that is nothing extraordinary, and I repeat, such is the common human fate, in my opinion.

*So be it

Letter 274
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what