Just a word to tell you that — partly in response to your letter in which you mentioned pen drawings — I have five weavers for you which I’ve made after my painted studies and are slightly different — and I think livelier — in execution than the pen drawings of mine you’ve seen so far.1
I’m working on them from early till late, for have also started more new watercolours of them as well as the painted studies and the pen drawings.2
I thought about you a lot these last few days, partly on account of a little book that originally came from you and that I borrowed from Lies — the poems of François Coppée.3 I knew only a very few by him, and they’d already struck me at the time. He’s one of the true artists — who put their heart and soul into it4 — evident from more than one painful confession. All the more an artist because he’s touched by so many very different things, and is capable of painting both a 3rd-class waiting room full of emigrants who spend the night there — everything drab and gloomy and melancholy — and yet in another mood draws a little marquise who dances a minuet, as elegant as a little figure by Watteau.5
That absorption in the moment — that being so wholly and utterly carried away and inspired by the surroundings in which one happens to be — what can one do about it? And even if one could resist it if one wanted to, what would be the point, why shouldn’t one give oneself over to that which is in front of one, as this, after all, is the surest way to create something?
1v:2
I was struck by the last one in the little book, entitled Désir dans le spleen, which I copy to remind you of it.6
Everything lives, everything loves! And I, sad and alone,
Stand like a dead tree against the vernal sky
I can no longer love, I who have lived but thirty years,
And have my mistress lately quit without regrets.
I am like a sick man, his thoughts grown dull
And wearying of his stale, familiar room,
His sole amusement, stupid and mechanical,
To count inside his head his carpet’s flowers.
Sometimes I wish my end were near,
And all these recollections — once so sweet,
I thrust away, as from the portrait of an ancestor
Whose gaze disturbs us, we turn away our eye.
Even of that old love, that drew so many tears,
No trace remains in this, my jaded heart.
O, thou figure in my thoughts, veiled and dim,
Whom I may meet tomorrow, whom I know not yet,
A courtesan, leaning at table ’mid the remnants of a meal,
Or — a woman, sober-minded, eyes downcast and pale.
Appear! — if yet this wretched heart, empty of desire,
Its flame extinct, you can again ignite,
Give me again the infinite within a woman’s glance
And all of nature blooming in a kiss.
Come! — As sailors on a foundering ship
Throw — to win an hour’s respite — a treasure to the deep —
Come! — I promise you all, heart and soul — blood and flesh,
All — for but a moment of faith — or yet of drunken rapture.
And would you be like a convict, dragging his ball and chain,
Who, though released, yet hobbles still?
Be silent — well you know the sentence she has passed on you.
I will no longer suffer, and thus I order you:
If I should feel you swell once more and writhe,
May I — with a stifled sob — crush you;
And — no one shall know of it — and — to still my cries,
They’ll see me — for that ghastly minute,
Clench my teeth — just like a soldier during amputation.9
This is certainly poetry, and among the best — I find Désir dans le spleen, in particular so true, paints how, in those very souls who are wearied and those who almost fall, there arises at times that infinite renewal of desire, as if they had no past behind them — I thought of Rembrandt’s Jewish bride10 — and what Thoré says about it.11Thoré (in his prime) and Theo Gautier12 and so many others — how much has changed since them — and how much duller it’s become. If one wants to preserve something of the fire in one, nowadays one must show it to others as little as possible. But anyway.
Did you get the little consignment I sent last week?13
I have to keep the pen drawings for another week or so because I still need them to finish off other things that I started at the same time. But you’ll get them soon — but do please let me know whether the parcel arrived safely, and whether there were enough stamps on it. Because drawings possibly count as written matter and more has to be paid on them.
Regards — I hope you’ll be able to do something with all of this.
Yours truly,
Vincent
Pa already wrote to you about Ma a few days ago. All remained normal since, and the doctor said today he hadn’t dared hope at the beginning that it would have gone so well.
When we go home, at night, through empty city streets,
And see upon the wet, green, greasy mud
Long streaks of gaslight, more of them every day,
Often a stray dog with matted coat, a dreadful, doleful sight,
An old dog from hereabouts, which its master, penniless,
Has thrown out with a kick — perhaps mourning it —
Will stick its stubborn nose into your heels,
And if you should turn back, give you a look,
And what a look — long, fearful, all cajolery,
A mistress’s, a poor man’s touching gaze,
Yet hopeless, with that uncertain air belonging to
A woman scorned and a poor man who feels his shame.
And if you stop, he’ll stop with you, and
Feebly wag his wet and drooping tail,
Timid, knowing his fate lies in your hands.
He seems to say: ‘Come on — take me with you — please?’
We’re moved — and yet we don’t quite dare;
We’re poor ourselves — and rabies is a fearful thing.
And then — unkindly — making as if to raise
Our stick — we tell the dog: ‘Go on, be off with you!’
And — all contrite — he goes to plead his cause elsewhere.
This also applies to art.
Ill-omened meeting! and what times are these,
These savage
– Prussians
what they have done to us
– decent people
– too well-fed people
(something like that)
That the poorest folk now cast their dogs aside,
And when, distracted from the public show of grief, we must yet
Pity these animals – who turn upon us their imploring gaze.