It's lucky for me

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, 2 January 1884

As to what you say about my perhaps becoming quite isolated, I do not say that this will not happen, I expect little else, and shall be content if life remains possible and bearable for me.

But I declare to you that I should not consider this a deserved fate, for I believe that after all I have never done, and shall never do, anything to make me lose the right to feel one with my fellow creatures.

Others would be greatly to blame for it too. Well, I try to look at myself as if I were somebody else, that is to say, objectively, so that I try to see my own shortcomings as well as perhaps their compensations.

Isolation is bad enough, it is a kind of prison. To what extent I shall become so cannot be guessed now with any degree of certainty. Nor do you say so, in fact.

I for my part often prefer to be with people who do not even know the world, for instance the peasants, the weavers, etc., rather than being with those of the more civilized world. It's lucky for me.

Letter 351
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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