My dear Vincent

I received your letter the very moment I was about to write to you.1 Excuse me if I write so infrequently and so briefly. I’m terribly bored and I’m suffering from stomach trouble; we have rain constantly. I work and I do nothing, in the sense that I draw with hand, head and heart, with a view to what I wish to do later. Yes, you’re right to wish for painting with a coloration suggesting poetic ideas, and in that sense I’m in agreement with you, with one difference. I don’t know any poetic ideas, it’s probably a sense that I lack. I find EVERYTHING poetic, and it’s in the corners of my heart which are sometimes mysterious that I catch a glimpse of poetry. Forms and colours brought into harmonies create a form of poetry in themselves. Without allowing myself to be surprised by the subject, when looking at a painting by someone else, I feel a sensation that leads me into a poetic state depending on whether the painter’s intellectual powers emanate from it.2 There’s no point quibbling about it; we’ll talk about it at length. In that respect, I’m very despondent at being detained at Pont-Aven; my debt is increasing every day, and making my journey more and more unlikely. The artist’s life is one long Calvary to go through! And that’s perhaps what makes us live. Passion enlivens us, and we die when it has nothing more to feed on. Let’s leave  1v:2 these paths full of thorny bushes, but they have their wild poetry all the same.

Cordially yours,