1r:1
My dear little sister,
I thank you for your letter, although for my part I so detest writing these days, however there are questions in your letter that I do want to answer.
I must begin by contradicting you where you say that you thought Theo looked ‘so wretched’ this summer.
For my part, I think on the contrary that Theo’s appearance has become much more distinguished in the last year.
You have to be strong to endure life in Paris the way he has for so many years.
But might it not be that Theo’s family and friends in Amsterdam and The Hague haven’t treated him and even not received him with the cordiality that he deserved from them and to which he was entitled?
I can tell you in that regard that he was perhaps a little hurt by this, but he’s otherwise not letting it bother him, and now, when times are so bad in paintings, he’s still doing business, so it could be there’s some professional jealousy on the part of his Dutch friends.
Now what shall I say about your little piece about the plants and the rain? You see for yourself in nature that many a flower is trampled, freezes or is parched, further that not every grain of wheat, once it has ripened, ends up in the earth again to germinate there and become a stalk — but far and away the most grains do not develop but go to the mill — don’t they?
Now comparing people with grains of wheat — in every person who’s healthy and natural there’s the power to germinate as in a grain of wheat. And so natural life is germinating.
What the power to germinate is in wheat, so love is in us. Now we, I think, stand there pulling a long face or at a loss for words when, being thwarted in our natural development, we see that germination frustrated and ourselves placed in circumstances as hopeless as they must be for the wheat between the millstones.
If this happens to us and we’re utterly bewildered by the loss of our natural life, there are some among us who, willing to submit themselves to the course of things as they are, nonetheless don’t abandon their self-awareness and want to know how things are with them and what’s actually happening.  1v:2 And searching with good intentions in the books of which it is said they are a light in the darkness,1 with the best will in the world we find precious little certain at all and not always satisfaction to comfort us personally. And the diseases from which we civilized people suffer the most are melancholia and pessimism.
Like me, for instance, who can count so many years in my life when I completely lost all inclination to laugh, leaving aside whether or not this was my own fault, I for one need above all just to have a good laugh. I found that in Guy de Maupassant and there are others here, Rabelais2 among the old writers, Henri Rochefort3 among today’s, where one can find that — Voltaire in Candide.4
On the contrary, if one wants truth, life as it is, De Goncourt, for example, in Germinie Lacerteux,5 La fille Elisa,6 Zola in La joie de vivre7 and L’assommoir8 and so many other masterpieces paint life as we feel it ourselves and thus satisfy that need which we have, that people tell us the truth.
The work of the French naturalists Zola, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, De Goncourt, Richepin, Daudet, Huysmans is magnificent and one can scarcely be said to belong to one’s time if one isn’t familiar with them. Maupassant’s masterpiece is Bel-ami; I hope to be able to get it for you.9
Is the Bible enough for us? Nowadays I believe Jesus himself would again say to those who just sit melancholy, it is not here, it is risen. Why seek ye the living among the dead?10
If the spoken or written word is to remain the light of the world,11 it’s our right and our duty to acknowledge that we live in an age in which it’s written in such a way, spoken in such a way that in order to find something as great and as good and as original, and just as capable of overturning the whole old society as in the past, we can safely compare it with the old upheaval by the Christians.  1v:3
For my part, I’m always glad that I’ve read the Bible better than many people nowadays, just because it gives me a certain peace that there have been such lofty ideas in the past.12 But precisely because I think the old is good, I find the new all the more so. All the more so because we can take action ourselves in our own age, and both the past and the future affect us only indirectly.
My own fortunes dictate above all that I’m making rapid progress in growing up into a little old man, you know, with wrinkles, with a bristly beard, with a number of false teeth &c.
But what does that matter? I have a dirty and difficult occupation, painting, and if I weren’t as I am I wouldn’t paint, but being as I am I often work with pleasure, and I see the possibility glimmering through of making paintings in which there’s some youth and freshness, although my own youth is one of those things I’ve lost. If I didn’t have Theo it wouldn’t be possible for me to do justice to my work, but because I have him as a friend I believe that I’ll make more progress and that things will run their course. It’s my plan to go to the south for a while, as soon as I can, where there’s even more colour and even more sun.
But what I hope to achieve is to paint a good portrait. Anyway.
Now to get back to your little piece, I feel uneasy about assuming for my own use or recommending to others for theirs the belief that powers above us intervene personally to help us or to comfort us. Providence is such a strange thing, and I tell you that I definitely don’t know what to make of it.
Well, in your piece there’s always a certain sentimentality and in its form, above all, it’s reminiscent of the stories about providence already referred to above, let’s say the providence in question, stories that so repeatedly failed to hold water and against which so very much could be said.  1r:4
And above all I find it a very worrying matter that you believe you have to study in order to write. No, my dear little sister, learn to dance or fall in love with one or more notary’s clerks, officers, in short whoever’s within your reach; rather, much rather commit any number of follies than study in Holland, it serves absolutely no purpose other than to make someone dull, and so I won’t hear of it.
For my part, I still continually have the most impossible and highly unsuitable love affairs from which, as a rule, I emerge only with shame and disgrace.13
And in this I’m absolutely right, in my own view, because I tell myself that in earlier years, when I should have been in love, I immersed myself in religious and socialist affairs and considered art more sacred, more than now. Why are religion or law or art so sacred? People who do nothing other than be in love are perhaps more serious and holier than those who sacrifice their love and their heart to an idea. Be this as it may, to write a book, to perform a deed, to make a painting with life in it, one must be a living person oneself. And so for you, unless you never want to progress, studying is very much a side issue. Enjoy yourself as much as you can and have as many distractions as you can, and be aware that what people want in art nowadays has to be very lively, with strong colour, very intense. So intensify your own health and strength and life a little, that’s the best study.
It would please me if you would write and tell me how Margot Begemann14 is doing and how they’re doing at De Groot’s. How did that business turn out? Did Sien de Groot marry her cousin? And did her child live?15 What I think about my own work is that the painting of the peasants eating potatoes that I did in Nuenen is after all the best thing I did.16 Only since then I haven’t had the opportunity to find models, but on the contrary have had the opportunity to study the question of colour. And if I do find models for my figures again later, then I hope to show that I’m looking for something other than little green landscapes or flowers. Last year I painted almost nothing but flowers to accustom myself to a colour other than grey, that’s to say pink, soft or bright green, light blue, violet, yellow, orange, fine red. And when I painted landscape in Asnières this summer I saw more colour in it than before. I’m studying this now in portraits.17  2r:5 And I have to tell you that I’m painting none the worse for it, perhaps because I could tell you very many bad things about both painters and paintings if I wanted to, just as easily as I could tell you good things about them.
I don’t want to be one of the melancholics or those who become sour and bitter and morbid. To understand all is to forgive all,18 and I believe that if we knew everything we’d arrive at a certain serenity. Now having this serenity as much as possible, even when one knows — little — nothing — for certain, is perhaps a better remedy against all ills than what’s sold in the chemist’s. A lot comes of its own accord, one grows and develops of one’s own accord.
So don’t study and swot too much, because that makes for sterility. Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don’t take art or love too seriously either — one can do little about it oneself, it’s mostly a matter of temperament. If I were living near you, I’d try to make you understand that it might be more practical for you to paint with me than to write, and that you might be more able to express your feelings that way. At any rate I can do something about painting personally, but as far as writing’s concerned I’m not in the business. Anyway, it’s not a bad idea for you to want to become an artist, because if one has fire in one, and soul, one can’t keep stifling them and — one would rather burn than suffocate. What’s inside must get out. Me, for instance, it gives me air when I make a painting, and without that I’d be unhappier than I am. Give Ma my very warmest regards.

Vincent

A la recherche du bonheur19 affected me very greatly. Now I’ve just read Mont-Oriol by Guy de Maupassant.20 Art often seems to be something very lofty and, as you say, something sacred. But that’s true of love too. And the problem is simply that not everyone thinks about it like that, and those who feel something of it and allow themselves to be swept away by it suffer greatly, firstly because of being misunderstood, but as much because our inspiration is so often inadequate or the work is made impossible by circumstances. One should be able to do two or preferably several things at the same time.
And there are times when it’s by no means clear to us that art should be something sacred or good.
Anyway, think carefully about whether it isn’t better, if one has a feeling for art and wants to work in it, to say that one is doing it because one was created with that feeling and can’t do anything else and is following one’s nature, than to say one is doing it for a good cause.
Does it not say in A la recherche du bonheur that evil lies in our own natures — which we didn’t create ourselves?21
What I think is so good about the moderns is that they don’t moralize like the old ones.
It seems coarse to many people, for instance, and they’re angered by it: vice and virtue are chemical products like sugar and vitriol.22

574

Br. 1990: 576 | CL: W1
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Willemien van Gogh
Date: Paris, late October 1887
more...

 
 
 
close
1. Biblical.
2. François Rabelais, famous for his entertaining books Gargantua (1535) and Pantagruel (1533). In his note ‘to the Reader’ in Gargantua Rabelais writes that he is not presenting any scholarly or literary feats, but a healthy dose of humour, for ‘laughter is peculiar to man’ (rire est le propre de l’homme). See François Rabelais, Les oeuvres romanesques. Ed. Françoise Joukovsky. Paris 1999, p. 5.
3. Victor Henri Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay wrote satirical articles. His groundbreaking style and controversial ideas led to his dismissal from Le Figaro. In 1868 he founded his own periodical La Lanterne, followed by La Marseillaise (1870), Le Mot d’ordre (1871) and L’Intransigeant (1880).
5. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt’s novel Germinie Lacerteux (1864) tells the story of the servant girl Germinie Lacerteux, who gets herself into debt and commits crimes for the man she loves, the swindler and blackmailer Jupillon. Eventually she succumbs to misery. Until her death she manages to conceal her double life from her employer Madame de Varandeuil who, when she discovers the truth about Germinie’s wretched life, arranges her funeral. In the famous preface, the authors say that henceforth they regard the novel as a ‘study’ (étude), as a ‘social investigation’ (enquête sociale); it is a plea for what became known as ‘naturalism’ not long afterwards.
6. In La fille Elisa (1877) Edmond de Goncourt narrates the tale of Elisa, a girl who has to support herself by prostitution. When she is raped by her lover, she stabs him to death and is sentenced to life imprisonment. Goncourt gives a minutely detailed description of life in prison and the novel is an indictment of an inhuman system of punishment: the governor uses a method of ‘silence therapy’, and as a result Elisa loses her mind, suffers delusions and dies.
7. Emile Zola’s novel La joie de vivre (1884) focuses on the tragic life of Pauline Quenu. ‘A chronicle of Pauline’s girlhood, puberty, and young womanhood, Zola’s narrative recounts in great detail her sexual awakening and emotional maturation, especially through her relationship with her ne’er-do-well cousin Lazare.’ The relationship fails and Pauline becomes the nursemaid in Lazare’s family. Despite her painful position and her lack of love, she is resigned to her isolation, full of self-sacrifice and servitude. ‘When, at the novel’s close, the family’s long-time servant hangs herself in despair, Pauline is nonplussed, unable to imagine why anyone would willingly relinquish the joys of life’. Zola also describes the thwarted artistic ambitions of the pianist Lazare, who impotently accedes to what society requires of him. See also Sund 1992, pp. 109-113 (quotations on p. 112).
Van Gogh had access to a copy in October 1885 – possibly even as early as April: he depicted it in Still life with Bible (F 117 / JH 946 [2535]) and may have alluded to it in letter 492.
[2535]
9. From remarks in the correspondence and in the light of comments made by other people it appears that Van Gogh liked the work of Joris-Karl Huysmans. As well as the books mentioned here – En ménage (1881) and A vau-l’eau (1882) – he may have been familiar with Croquis parisiens (1880). Cf. Sund, 1992, p. 144.
Emile Bernard mentioned A rebours (1884) in his ‘In memoriam’ of Van Gogh: ‘Huysmans had an inordinate attraction for him. It was En ménage in particular that he enthused over, then, later, A rebours.’ (Huysmans le captait outre mesure. Ce fut sur En ménage qu’il s’exalta surtout, puis sur A rebours, plus tard.) See Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui 1891, no. 390, vol. 8, p. 1. In A rebours the misanthropist Jean Floressas des Esseintes rejects the life of society. He withdraws to a mansion, where he tries to fulfil his most extravagant fantasies. Several chapters deal with the decoration and the different colours of the interior, and the symbolism of bricks, flowers, perfumes etc. With its extreme aesthetic preferences the book caused a literary scandal, but decadents and symbolists raved about it. For De Maupassant’s Bel-ami, see letter 568, n. 11.
12. After this Van Gogh crossed out: ‘which brought about so much good at the time’ (die toen zooveel goeds hebben teweeg gebragt).
13. This probably refers to his ‘love affair’ with Agostina Segatori.
14. In September 1884 Van Gogh had proposed to Margot Begemann, who lived next door to his parents in Nuenen – with dramatic consequences; see letters 456 ff.
15. The De Groot family lived in what is now Gerwenseweg, near De Roosdonck windmill, and consisted at that time of the mother, Cornelia de Groot-Van Rooij, and her children Hendrikus, Peter and Gordina (Van Gogh calls her ‘Sien’, but her first name must have been ‘Dien’); their father, Cornelis de Groot, had died by then.
Several other members of Cornelia de Groot-Van Rooij’s family lived in the cottage where Van Gogh got his idea for The potato eaters. On 20 October 1885 Gordina, who was unmarried, had a son, Cornelis; the birth certificate does not state who the father was. It can be inferred from Van Gogh’s question about Gordina’s marriage that he suspected that one of her cousins was the father, or that one of them would give the fallen woman the protection of his name. Cf. RHC, birth certificate of Cornelis de Groot; exhib. cat. ’s-Hertogenbosch 1987, p. 161; and De Brouwer 1984, pp. 81-83, 96.
16. The potato eaters (F 82/ JH 764 [2510]).
[2510]
17. The portraits Père Tanguy (F 363 / JH 1351 [2560]) and Père Tanguy (F 364 / JH 1352) and Etienne-Lucien Martin (F 289 / JH 1203) date from this time.
[2560]
18. Saying, associated with Mme de Staël, Corinne ou L’Italie (1807): ‘tout comprendre rend très-indulgent’ (book 18, chapter 5) and Terence, Eunuchus, prol. 42.
19. Ljev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, A la recherche du bonheur. Traduit et précédé d’une préface par M.E. Halpérine. Paris 1886. Van Gogh read either this edition or the 1887 reprint. We know from a letter from Theo to Willemien, dated Monday, 25 April 1887, that Tolstoy’s work was sent to Theo and Vincent from the Netherlands. Theo found it ‘magnifique’ and wrote that Vincent had also enjoyed it very much (FR b911). The anthology consists of a series of folk tales about divine omniscience and human vices and virtues, including forgiveness, compassion and greed; some of the stories are like fairy tales (with apparitions, an angel and talking animals), while others are realistic (about agricultural labourers and artisans).
20. In Guy de Maupassant’s Mont-Oriol (1887), the businessman William Andermatt discovers that in Enval, where his childless wife Christiane is staying, a healing, productive spring has been discovered in the vineyard belonging to the gentleman farmer Oriol. He transforms this find into a commercial enterprise with a luxury spa. Christiane meanwhile becomes pregnant after an affair with the eccentric Paul Brétigny, while Andermatt believes he has become a father thanks to the effects of the spring. By the time the first buildings are open for business, Brétigny’s ardour has cooled to such an extent that he marries the wealthy Oriol’s daughter. Demoralized, Christiane has the baby and prevents Paul from seeing it.
21. The story ‘D’ou vient le mal’ in A la recherche du bonheur ends as follows: ‘It is from our own nature that evil comes; for it is our nature that gives rise to hunger, and to love, and to malice, and to fear’ (C’est de notre propre nature que vient le mal; car c’est elle qui engendre et la faim, et l’amour, et la méchanceté, et la peur) (Paris 1886, p. 6).
22. This derives from Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Histoire de la littérature anglaise who said in his ‘Introduction’: ‘Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar’ (Le vice et la vertu sont des produits, comme le vitriol et le sucre). See 6th ed. Paris 1885, vol. 1, p. xv. In 1868, Zola had sent his novel Thérèse Raquin to Sainte-Beuve for his comments. In his written reply of 10 June 1868, Sainte-Beuve quoted this pronouncement of Taine’s, which was then included as the motto in the second edition of the novel. Van Gogh had read both Taine and Thérèse Raquin (see letter 359).