Please allow me to come

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Antwerp, 1st half February 1886

Just think, if all goes well, and if I had good food, etc., all that time, which certainly will leave something to be desired, even in that case it will take about six months before I shall have recovered entirely.

Now, at this moment, I am feeling terribly weak, even worse than that, from reaction after overwork, but that is the natural course of things and nothing extraordinary; but as it is a question of taking better nourishment, etc., you see in Brabant I shall again spend my last penny on models; it will be the same story all over again, and I do not think that will be right. In that way we stray from our path. So please allow me to come sooner, I should almost say at once.

Letter 452
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A path to travel through life

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Drenthe, 19 November 1883

When I consider our temperament and type of physiognomy, I find similarity, and a very pronounced resemblance between, for instance, the Puritans and ourselves besides. I mean the people in Cromwell's time or thereabouts, the little group of men and women who sailed from the Old World to America in the Mayflower, and settled there, firmly resolved to live simple lives.

Times are different - they cut down forests - we would turn to painting. I know that the initiative taken by a small group, called in history The Pilgrim Fathers, however small in itself, had great consequences; and as to ourselves, I think that in the first place we should philosophize but little about great consequences, and only try to find a path for ourselves to travel through life as straightforwardly as possible. To meditate on consequences is not our way, neither yours nor mine.

Letter 338
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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