I, as revolutionist or rebel

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, September 1884

I could not phrase my last letter differently than I did. But I want you to know that it always strikes me as being a difference between you and me imposed by fate, rather than one for which we ourselves are to blame. . . .

Now Quinet or Michelet, for instance, or Victor Hugo (later), was the difference between them and their opponents very great? Yes, but seen superficially one would not have said so. I myself have formerly admired at one and the same time a book by Guizot and a book by Michelet. But in my case, as I got deeper into it, I found difference and contrast, which is stronger still.

In short, that the one comes to a dead end and disappears vaguely, and the other, on the contrary, has something infinite. Since then much has happened. But my opinion is, if you and I had lived in 1848, you would have been on the Guizot side, and I on the side of Michelet. And both of us remaining set in our outlooks, with a certain melancholy, we might have stood as direct enemies opposite each other, for instance on such a barricade, you before it as a soldier of the government, I behind it, as revolutionist or rebel.

Letter 379
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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