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753 To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Friday, 29 March 1889.

metadata
No. 753 (Brieven 1990 757, Complete Letters 582)
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Arles, Friday, 29 March 1889

Source status
Original manuscript

Location
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b629 V/1962

Date
Vincent writes: ‘A few more words before you leave’ (l. 1*) and ‘If I want this letter to leave today I must end it’ (ll. 97-98). Theo took the night train to the Netherlands on 30 March, which is why we have dated the letter, as did Jo van Gogh-Bonger in Brieven1914 – she perhaps relied on a postmark – to Friday, 29 March 1889.

Ongoing topics
Theo’s journey to the Netherlands in connection with his marriage (750)
The petition of the neighbourhood residents in Arles (750)
Possible move to another part of town (750)
Theo’s engagement and marriage to Jo Bonger (728)

original text
 1r:1
Mon cher Theo,
avant que tu ne partes encore quelques mots. de ces jours ci cela va bien. Avant-hier & hier j’ai sorti une heure en ville pour chercher de quoi travailler. En allant chez moi j’ai pu constater que les voisins proprement dits, ceux que je connais, n’ont pas été du nombre de ceux qui avaient fait cette petition.1 Quoi qu’il en soit d’ailleurs j’ai vu que j’avais encore des amis dans le nombre.
M. Salles en cas de besoin se fait fort de me trouver d’ici quelques jours un apartement dans un autre quartier.
J’ai fait venir encore quelques livres pour avoir quelques idées solides dans la tête. j’ai relu la case de l’oncle Tom – tu sais le livre de Beecher Stowe sur l’esclavage2 – les contes de Noel de Dickens3 et j’ai donné à M. Salles Germinie Lacerteux.4
Et voila que pour la 5me fois je reprends ma figure de la Berceuse.5 Et lorsque tu verras cela tu me donneras raison que ce n’est qu’une chromolithographie de Bazar et encore cela n’a même pas le mérite d’être photographiquement correct dans les proportions ou dans quoi que ce soit.
Mais enfin je cherche à faire une image tel qu’un matelot qui ne saurait pas peindre en imaginerait lorsqu’en pleine mer il songe à une femme d’à terre.–
à l’hospice ils sont très très prévenants pour moi de ces jours ci, ce qui – comme bien d’autres chôses – me confond et me rend un peu confus.
Maintenant je m’imagine que tu préférais te marier sans toutes les ceremonies et felicitations d’un mariage et suis bien sûr d’avance que tu les eviteras autant que possible.
Si tu vois Koning ou d’autres et surtout les cousines Mauve & Lecomte6 n’oublie pas de leur dire bien le bonjour de ma part.
Comme ces trois derniers mois me paraissent étranges. Tantot des angoisses morales sans nom, puis des moments où le voile du temps et de la fatalité des circonstances pour l’espace d’un clin d’oeil semblait s’entre ouvrir.
 1v:2
Certes après tout tu as raison, bigrement raison – même en faisant la part à l’espérance il s’agit d’accepter la réalité bien désolante probablement.
J’espère me rejeter tout à fait dans le travail qui est en retard.
Ah il ne faut pas que j’oublie de te dire une chôse à laquelle j’ai très souvent pensée. Par hasard tout à fait dans un article d’un vieux journal je trouvais une parole écrite sur une antique tombe dans les environs d’ici à Carpentras.
Voici cette epitaphe très très très vieille, du temps mettons de la Salambo de Flaubert7

“Thebe, fille de Thelhui, prêtresse d’Osiris, qui ne s’est jamais plaint de personne”.8

Si tu voyais Gauguin tu lui raconterais cela.– Et je songeais à une femme fânée, tu as chez toi l’étude de cette femme qui avait des yeux si étranges, que j’avais rencontree par un autre hasard.9
Qu’est ce que c’est que ça “elle ne s’est jamais plaint de personne”.–
Imaginez une éternité parfaite, pourquoi pas – mais n’oublions pas que la réalité dans les vieux siècles a cela.... “et elle ne s’est jamais plaint de personne”.
 1v:3
Te rappelles tu qu’un Dimanche le brave Thomas venait nous voir et qu’il disait, ah mais – c’est-il des femmes comme cà qui vous font bander.–
Non cela ne fait pas précisément toujours bander mais enfin – de temps en temps dans la vie on se sent épaté comme si on prenait racine dans le sol.
Maintenant tu me parles du “vrai midi” et moi je disais que enfin il me semblait que c’était plutôt à des gens plus complets que moi d’y aller.–10
Le “vrai midi”, n’est ce pas un peu là où l’on trouverait une raison, une patience, une sérénité suffisante pour devenir comme cette bonne “Thèbe – fille de Telhui – prêtresse d’Osiris – qui ne s’est jamais plaint de personne”.
À côté de cela je me sens je ne sais quel être ingrat.
A toi et à ta femme à l’occasion de ton mariage voilà le bonheur, la sérénité que je demanderais pour vous deux, d’avoir intérieurement ce vrai midi-là dans l’âme.
Si je veux que cette lettre parte aujourd’hui faut que je la termine. poignée de main, bon voyage, bien des choses à la mere & la soeur.

t. à t.
Vincent

translation
 1r:1
My dear Theo,
A few more words before you leave. Things are going well these days. The day before yesterday and yesterday I went into town for an hour to find things to work with. When I went home I was able to learn that the real neighbours, those whom I know, weren’t among those who got up that petition.1 However it may be, anyway I saw that I still had friends among them.
If need be Mr Salles is pretty sure he can find me an apartment in another district in a few days.
I’ve had another few books brought in order to have a few solid ideas in my mind. I’ve re-read La case de l’oncle Tom — you know, the book by Beecher Stowe on slavery2Dickens’s Contes de Noël,3 and I’ve given Mr Salles Germinie Lacerteux.4
And here I am, going back to my figure of the Berceuse for the 5th time.5 And when you see it you’ll agree with me that it’s nothing but a chromolithograph from a penny bazaar, and what’s more, it doesn’t even have the merit of being photographically correct in the proportions or in anything.
But anyway, I’m trying to make an image such as a sailor who couldn’t paint would imagine it when he was in the middle of the sea and thought of a woman on land.
They’re very, very attentive to me at the hospital these days, which — like many other things — mixes me up and makes me a little confused.
Now I imagine that you’d prefer to marry without all the ceremonies and congratulations of a wedding, and am quite sure in advance that you’ll avoid them as much as possible.
If you see Koning or others, and above all cousins Mauve and Lecomte,6 don’t forget to give them my warm regards.
How strange these last three months appear to me. Sometimes nameless moral anguish, then moments when the veil of time and of the inevitability of circumstances seemed to open up a little way for the space of a blink of an eye.  1v:2
Certainly, you’re right after all, darned right — even allowing for hope, one probably has to accept the rather distressing reality.
I hope to throw myself back completely into work, which has fallen behind.
Ah, I mustn’t forget to tell you a thing I’ve often thought about. Utterly by chance, in an article in an old newspaper, I found a line written on an ancient tomb at Carpentras, near here.
Here is this very, very, very old epitaph, let’s say from the time of Flaubert’s Salammbô:7

‘Thebe, daughter of Telhui, priestess of Osiris, who never complained about anyone.’8

If you were to see Gauguin you could tell him that. And I was thinking of a faded woman, at your place you have the study of that woman who had such strange eyes, whom I met by another chance.9
What does it mean, that ‘she never complained about anyone’?
Imagine a perfect eternity, why not — but let’s not forget that reality in the old centuries has that... ‘and she never complained about anyone.’  1v:3
Do you remember that one Sunday good old Thomas came to see us and said, ah but — is it women like that who give you a hard-on?
No, that doesn’t always produce a hard-on precisely, but anyway — from time to time in life one feels amazed, as if one was taking root in the ground.
Now you talk to me of the ‘real south’ and as for me, I was saying that after all it seemed to me that it was rather for people who were more complete than me to go there.10
Is the ‘real south’ not to some degree the place where one might find a reason, a patience, a serenity sufficient to become like that good ‘Thebe — daughter of Telhui — priestess of Osiris — who never complained about anyone’?
Beside that I feel like some kind of unworthy being.
To you and your wife on the occasion of your marriage that is the happiness, the serenity I would ask for you two, to have that true south inwardly, in your souls.
If I want this letter to leave today I must end it. Handshake, bon voyage, kind regards to Mother and Sister.

Ever yours,
Vincent
notes
1. Van Gogh must be referring to the café proprietor Joseph Ginoux and his wife, Marie, who were friends of his. Ginoux had not signed the petition, but the statement he made to the police confirmed the neighbours’ complaints about Van Gogh’s indecent behaviour. See letter 750, nn. 2 and 3, Documentation, shortly before 27 February 1889, and Ill. 2278 -2280 .
2. Regarding Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s cabin, see letter 152, n. 9.
3. Charles Dickens’s Christmas books (1843-1845) contained five Christmas stories: ‘A Christmas carol’, ‘The chimes’, ‘The cricket on the hearth’, ‘The battle of life’ and ‘The haunted man’. The book was published in French as Contes de Noël. Traduits de l’anglais avec l’autorisation de l’auteur sous la direction de P. Lorain. Paris n.d.
4. For Edmond and Jules de Goncourt’s Germinie Lacerteux, see letter 574, n. 5.
5. Preceding his hospitalization on 26 February, Van Gogh had painted four versions of Augustine Roulin (‘La berceuse’): F 508 / JH 1671 , F 505 / JH 1669 , F 506 / JH 1670 and F 507 / JH 1672 . See letter 748, n. 2. The fifth and last version, which is the one discussed here, was F 504 / JH 1655 . See Hoermann Lister 2001, p. 73.
6. Jet Mauve-Carbentus and Anna Lecomte-Carbentus.
7. Flaubert’s historical novel Salammbô (1863) takes place in ancient Carthage. It is the story of rebellious mercenaries at the end of the First Punic War (264-241 BC). Their indignation at their paltry pay causes them to launch an attack on Carthage. They threaten the capital with the help of African tribes, but ultimately suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of Hamilkar Barkas.
8. This refers to the so-called ‘Pierre de Carpentras’ (Musée de Carpentras), the Carpentras Stele, commemorating Taba, daughter of Tahapi, an Aramaean lady who was a convert to Osiris. The inscription is in Aramaic and is translated into Latin in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Ab academia inscriptionum et litterarum humaniorum conditum atque digestum. Pars 2. Inscriptiones aramaicae. Paris 1889, tab. xiii, no. 141. The stone dates from the period between the end of the 5th century and the 3rd century BC.
The museum provides the following translation: ‘Blessed be you, Taba, daughter of Tahapi, who have achieved perfection with the god Osiris. You have done no evil deed and you have maligned no one on this earth. May Osiris in person bless you. Receive the waters in the house of Osiris. [Be received at the table of Osiris[?]. Pray, my love, and [be perfect[?] among souls dear to the god’. (Bénie sois-tu Taba, fille de Tahapi, parvenue à la perfection auprès du dieu Osiris. Tu n’as accompli aucune mauvaise action et tu n’as jamais calomnié personne sur cette terre. Qu’Osiris en personne te bénisse. Reçois les eaux chez Osiris. [Sois reçue à la table d’Osiris[?]. Prie, mon amour, et [sois parfaite[?] parmi les âmes chères au dieu).
Van Gogh probably copied the deviant spellings of the names from the untraced ‘old newspaper’ in which he read about this. He mentions the inscription again in letters 764 and 785.
9. This is possibly Portrait of a woman (F 357 / JH 1216). It is not known who the woman was, but she was also the model for the nude studies F 1404 / JH 1213, F 329 / JH 1215 and F 330 / JH 1214, and possibly F 328 / JH 1212. See cat. Amsterdam 2001, pp. 252-253 and cat. Otterlo 2003, pp. 165-167. According to Bernard, this lady was a ‘pierreuse’ (streetwalker) ‘picked up by Vincent, and who was very willing to agree to pose for him’ (récoltée par Vincent qui voulut bien consentir à poser pour lui). See Paul Gachet, Souvenirs de Cézanne et de Van Gogh. Auvers 1873-1890. Paris 1928, unpaginated.
10. On this subject, see letter 752.