1. Letters 179 and 180.
2. Ironical reference to a remark made by Uncle Stricker; see letter 180.
3. Taken from Michelet’s L’amour; see letter 180, n. 5.
4. A reference to Petites misères de la vie humaine, a book written by Old Nick and Grandville; see letter 178, n. 6.
a. From the French ‘maladif’, meaning ‘sickly’, ‘unwholesomely weak’, ‘melancholy’.
5. During Theo’s holiday in Etten; see letter 170, n. 1.
b. From the French ‘imposer’, meaning ‘to impress’.
6. A tonic in the sense of a stimulant.
7. Theo was 24 at the time.
8. Michelet, L’amour, p. 268. It emerges from La femme that the saying is Pierre Proudhon’s: ‘Proudhon’s saying: “Woman is the desolation of the righteous man”’ (le mot de Proudhon: “La femme est la désolation du juste”) (Michelet 1863, p. 196). Also quoted in letters 415 and 474.
9. The passage ‘Tu... encore un’ is perhaps a quotation, but most likely something Van Gogh himself said.
10. In the chapter ‘Il n’y a point de vieille femme’ it says: ‘Every woman, at every age, if she loves and if she is kind, can give a man the moment of the infinite. More than the infinite of the moment. Often that of the future. She breathes upon him. It’s a gift. Everyone who sees him thereafter says, without explaining things, “But what’s the matter with him?… He was born gifted.” There were I don’t know how many Rousseaus before Rousseau, all arguers, quibblers, eloquent men. And not one of them carried the world with him. A woman breathes love, and maternal love, on him. And Jean-Jacques was the result’ (Toute [femme], à tout âge, si elle aime et si elle est bonne, donne à l’homme le moment de l’infini. Plus que l’infini du moment. Souvent celui de l’avenir. Elle souffle sur lui. C’est un don. Tout ceux qui le voient ensuite disent sans s’expliquer la chose: “Mais qu’a-t-il?... Il est né doué.” Il y avait eu je ne sais combien de Rousseau avant Rousseau, tous raisonneurs, ergoteurs, éloquents. Et pas un n’avait entraîné le monde. Une femme souffle sur lui, d’amour et d’amour maternel. Et Jean-Jacques en est resté) (Michelet, L’amour, p. 386).
11. Based on Michelet’s L’amour and La femme; see letter 180, n. 2.
12. Cf. 1 Cor. 15:55, ‘O Mort, où est ton aiguillon? O sépulchre, où est ta victoire?’ (O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?).
13. Ruth 1:16.
14. Cf. Rev. 21:5.
15. This phrase also occurs in letter 134.
16. Cf. Ps. 119:105.
17. A proverb meaning ‘he who is too quick to take pleasure in something will be disappointed in the end’. The English equivalent is ‘Sing before breakfast, cry before night’. See also the following note.
18. An allusion to the end of the poem ‘Vogeltjes, die zoo vroeg zingen, krijgt de poes’ (The cat gets the birds who sing too soon) by P.A. de Génestet:

Succumbing to wounds the poor finch,
Scratched and clawed to within an inch
Of its life, then met its sad end.
And the other? – it tore its attire
And shed bundles of feathers entire....
As it flew again higher and higher,
But it soon acquired feathers galore,
Yes, my fine sirs, furthermore,
Even lovelier than before.

(Het vinkje bezweek onder wonden
En klauwen, en werd verslonden,
En ’t was met het vinkje gedaan.
En de ander? – hij scheurde zijn kleêrtjes
En liet er een bundeltje veêrtjes....
Maar vloog toch weêr op in de sfeertjes,
En spoedig ook groeiden zijn veertjes
Veel mooier, Meneertjes,
Weêr aan.)

See De Génestet 1869, vol. 1, pp. 259-260.
c. Meaning: ‘me stil houden’, ‘doen alsof ik van niets weet’ (to keep quiet, to pretend I know nothing).
19. See for this quotation in Sully Prudhomme’s poem ‘A Alfred de Musset’: letter 180, n. 4.
20. Van Gogh must have drawn a fairly large number of rural types at this time. Cf. the remark he made in letter 186: ‘When I look round it’s full of all kinds of studies that all relate to one and the same thing, “Brabant types”’.
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