Total annihilation

Vincent van Gogh to Anthon van Rappard, from Nuenen, second half of August 1885

For the rest - you will experience it yourself - it is less a golden age than an iron age for painters - I mean, it is not exactly easy for them to keep alive - no more than that. At least as far as I am concerned it is open misery - but despite that my courage, and perhaps my powers too, are greater rather than smaller than they were before. Don't think you're the only one who considers or considered it his duty to criticize me, you know, even to the limits of total annihilation; on the contrary, it's about the only thing I have encountered so far. For the very reason that you are, or were, not the only one to speak in this way and no other, your criticism is connected with other criticism to which I on my part oppose the conviction that my endeavors have a raison d'etre, and to which I shall continue to oppose it more and more strongly.

Letter R57
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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