A great love
Vincent van Gogh to Anthon van Rappard, from The Hague, c. 5 March 1883
Do you have the portrait of Carlyle - that beautiful one in the Graphic? At the moment I am reading his Sartor Resartus - "the philosophy of old clothes." Among the "old clothes" he includes all kinds of forms and in the matter of religion all dogmas; it is beautiful - and faithful to reality - and humane. There has been a lot of grumbling about this book, as about his other books. Many consider Carlyle a monster - a joke about his "philosophy of old clothes" runs like this: Carlyle not only strips mankind to the skin, he even flays it. Something like that. Well, this is not true, but it most certainly is true that he is honest enough not to call the shirt the skin - and very far from seeing a tendency to belittle man in his works, I find, on the contrary, that he raises man to a high position in the universe. And much more than bitter criticism I find in him a love of humanity besides - a great love. He - Carlyle - has learned much from Goethe - but still more, I believe, from a certain man who did not write books, but whose words, though he did not write them down himself, have endured - namely Jesus . . . who, long before Carlyle, included many forms of all kinds of things among the "old clothes" too.
Letter R30
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what
Do you have the portrait of Carlyle - that beautiful one in the Graphic? At the moment I am reading his Sartor Resartus - "the philosophy of old clothes." Among the "old clothes" he includes all kinds of forms and in the matter of religion all dogmas; it is beautiful - and faithful to reality - and humane. There has been a lot of grumbling about this book, as about his other books. Many consider Carlyle a monster - a joke about his "philosophy of old clothes" runs like this: Carlyle not only strips mankind to the skin, he even flays it. Something like that. Well, this is not true, but it most certainly is true that he is honest enough not to call the shirt the skin - and very far from seeing a tendency to belittle man in his works, I find, on the contrary, that he raises man to a high position in the universe. And much more than bitter criticism I find in him a love of humanity besides - a great love. He - Carlyle - has learned much from Goethe - but still more, I believe, from a certain man who did not write books, but whose words, though he did not write them down himself, have endured - namely Jesus . . . who, long before Carlyle, included many forms of all kinds of things among the "old clothes" too.
Letter R30
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what
Labels: humanity, spirituality
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