1. The sentence ‘This letter... won’t you?’ was added after writing the letter.
2. Van Gogh borrowed this phrase from Jules Michelet, who wrote in the ‘Introduction’ to La femme about his earlier book L’amour: ‘Love came naïvely to throw itself into divorce, called upon good nature and said: “Love on ... We must love, and love strongly”’. (L’Amour venait naïvement se jeter dans le divorce, invoquait la bonne nature et disait: “Aimez encore ... Il faut aimer, aimer fortement”). Michelet 1863, pp. 7, 18; cf. also pp. 67, 435.
In L’amour itself he wrote: ‘A woman’s work, for her, must also be to love on, because she is not good for anything else. What is her natural goal, her mission? The first one, to love. The second, to love but one man. The third, to love for ever.’ (Il faut que le travail de la femme soit pour elle de l’amour encore, car elle n’est bonne à autre chose. Quel est son but de nature, sa mission? La première, aimer. La seconde, aimer un seul. La troisième, aimer toujours.) And: ‘Would you love, and love on a great deal, in other words, be happy?’ (Veux-tu aimer, aimer beaucoup encore, c’est-à-dire être heureux?) (Michelet, L’amour, pp. 61, 261).
a. A saying.
3. Van Gogh will repeat this word used by Uncle Stricker in subsequent letters (see letters 181, 182 and 183). Uncle Stricker and Aunt Cornelie had evidently suggested to Van Gogh that he should ‘meanwhile’ look for another girlfriend (letter 189).
4. Cf. Sully Prudhomme, ‘A Alfred de Musset’ in Stances et poèmes (1865). Ed. Paris 1877, p. 306. Also quoted in letter 181, n. 19.
5. Based on ‘Elle, et non une autre’ (She, and no other), in Michelet’s L’amour (‘Conception’, part 3, chapter 1), p. 201. This phrase occurs many times in the correspondence.
6. Taken from the poem ‘De edelmoedige wedervergelding’ (The noble retaliation) by Hieronymus van Alphen; see letter 179, n. 8.
7. Possibly a quotation.
8. Cf. Mark 9:23.
9. Biblical; cf., for example, Matt. 5:43, Matt. 19:19 and Matt. 22:39.
10. Cf. Matt. 7:7 and Prov. 8:17.
11. Variant of the saying ‘De duivel is zoo zwart niet, als hij wel geschilderd wordt’ (The devil is not so black as he is sometimes painted); cf. letter 99, n. 6.
top