The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  If only we try to live righteously, we shall fare well, even though we are bound to encounter genuine sadness and real disappointments and shall probably commit real mistakes and do things that are wrong, but it is certainly better to be ardent in spirit, even though one makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and over-cautious.

  It is good to love as many things as one can, for therein lies true strength, and those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well. If one is affected by some book or other, let us say by Michelet’s ‘L’hiron-delle, L’alouette, Le rossignol, Les aspirations de l’automne, Je vois d’ici une dame, J’aimais cette petite ville singuliére’ - to mention just a few, then it is because that book was written from the heart in simplicity and meekness of spirit. Better to say but a few words, but filled with meaning, than to speak many that are but idle sounds and as easy to utter as they are useless.

  Love is the best and the noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and is sure of himself, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be. If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one’s love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger.

  The sooner one tries to become accomplished in a certain position in life and a certain field and adopts a relatively independent way of thinking and acting, and the more one keeps to set rules, the stronger in character one will grow, and that does not mean becoming narrow-minded. It is a wise thing to do this, because life is short and time passes quickly. If one is accomplished in one single thing, understanding one single thing well, then one has insight into and knowledge of many other things into the bargain.

  It’s as well to go out into the world from time to time and mix with other people (and sometimes one feels, in fact, obliged and called upon to do so) - or it may simply be one way ‘de se jeter dans le travail sans arriere pensee et de toutes ses forces’11 - but one who prefers to be quietly alone with his work and seems to need very few friends will go safest in the world and among people. One should never feel secure just because one has no difficulties or cares or handicaps, and one should never be too easy-going. Even in the politest circles and the best surroundings and circumstances one should retain something of the original character of a Robinson Crusoe or of primitive man, for otherwise one cannot be rooted in oneself, and one must never let the fire in one’s soul die, for the time will inevitably come when it will be needed. And he who chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure and will hear the voice of his conscience address him ever more clearly. He who hears that voice, which is God’s greatest gift, in his innermost being and follows it, finds in it a friend at last, and he is never alone!

  Happy is he who has faith in God, for he will in the end be tided over all life’s difficulties, albeit not without trouble and sorrow. One cannot do better than hold on to the thought of God come what may, in all circumstances, in every place and at all times, and try to get to know Him better. One can learn this from the Bible as well as from all other things. It is good to go on believing that everything is more miraculous than one can ever begin to understand, for that is the truth; it is good to remain sensitive and humble and tender-hearted even though one may have to hide one’s feelings, as is often necessary. It is good to be well versed in the things that are hidden from the wise and the learned of this world, but that are revealed as if by nature to the poor and the simple, to women and little children. For what can one learn which is better than that which God has given by nature to every human soul and which goes on living and loving, hoping and believing, in the depth of every soul, unless we wantonly destroy it.

  The need is for nothing less than the infinite and the miraculous, and a man does well to be satisfied with nothing less, and not to feel easy until he has gained it.

  That is what all great men have acknowledged in their works, all those who have thought a little more deeply and searched and worked and loved a little more than the rest, who have plumbed the depths of the sea of life. Plumb the depths, that is what we too must do if we want to make a catch, and if we sometimes have to work the whole night through without catch-

  Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 3 April 1878

  ing anything, then we do well not to give up and to cast the net once more at dawn.

  So let us go forward quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light, ‘sursum corda’,12 and in the knowledge that we are as others are and that others are as we are and that ic is right to love one another in the best possible way, believing all things, hoping for all things and enduring all things, and never failing. And not being too troubled by our weaknesses, for even he who has none, has one weakness, namely that he has none, and anyone who believes himself to be consummately wise would do well to be foolish all over again.

  ‘Nous sommes aujourd’hui ce que nous étions hier’, that is, ‘honnêtes homines’, yet men who must be tested in the fire of life to become fortified inwardly are confirmed in what, by the grace of God, they are by nature.

  So may it be with us, my boy, and may you fare well along your path and may God be with you in all things and help you to succeed, which, with a warm handshake on your departure, is the wish of

  Your very loving brother

  Vincent

  It is only a very small light, the one in the little Sunday-school room in Barndesteeg, but let me keep it burning. Even if I should not, however, I do not think that Adler is the man to let it go out.

  The Borinage

  Much as Van Gogh, during his career in the an trade, came increasingly to consider the gulf between the practices of that trade and his own love of art as unbridgeable, so in his study of theology he was more and more torn between book learning (he had seven years of study ahead of him) and a yearning to spread the Gospel. In the end, following a year of extreme austerity and self-chastisement, he turned his back on formal theological studies in July 1878. Once again he was having to face a fresh start in a relatively short time. Later he would insist that the stumbling block had not been Latin, for he had proved time and again that he had a strong bent for languages. In August 1879 he was to call the Amsterdam episode ‘the worst time of my life’.

  To his father, Vincent’s decision was a bitter blow. He acted as Vincent’s go-between for new jobs, but came up against what he felt was his son’s lack of ambition, for all Vincent now wanted was to resume the missionary work he had started in England. To that end, he enrolled in a Flemish school for prospective evangelists in Laeken near Brussels, but this attempt, too, came to nothing in the end: he was judged not to have the necessary qualifications for a missionary. Nevertheless, he found work almost immediately as a lay preacher in the village of Wasmes, among the coal miners of the Belgian Borinage. Van Gogh threw himself heart and soul into his new mission. Eloquently, he described the mine workers’ hard existence and the sufferings of man and beast, while at the same time keeping an eye on what the surroundings offered in terms of the picturesque. At Christmas 1878, shortly after a visit from Theo, he sent his brother a description of the Borinage that sounds like an account of a scene in a painting by Pieter Brueghel.

  Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 26 December 1878

  127[D]

  Petites Wasmes, 26 Dec. 1878

  Borinage Hainaut

  My dear Theo,

  It is time I wrote to you again, to wish you, firstly, all the best at the start of a New Year. May many good things be your lot and may God’s blessing rest on your work in the year on which we are now embarking.

  I very much long for a letter from you, to hear how things are going and how you are, and also if you have seen anything beautiful and remarkable of late. As far as I am concerned, you’ll be aware that there are no painti
ngs here in the Borinage, that by and large they do not even know what a painting is, so obviously I have not seen anything in the way of art since my departure from Brussels. But that does not alter the fact that the country here is very special and very picturesque, everything speaks, as it were, and is full of character. Lately, during the dark days before Christmas, snow was lying on the ground. Everything reminded one then of the medieval paintings by, say, Peasant Brueghel, and by so many others who have known how to depict the singular effect of red & green, black & white so strikingly. And often the sights here have made me think of the work of, for example, Thys Maris or Albrecht Dürer. There are sunken roads here, overgrown with thornbushes and gnarled old trees with their freakish roots, which resemble perfectly that road on Dürer’s etching, Le chevalier et la mort.

  Thus, a few days ago, the miners returning home in the evening towards dusk in the white snow were a singular sight. These people are quite black when they emerge into the daylight from the dark mines, looking just like chimney sweeps. Their dwellings are usually small and should really be called huts; they lie scattered along the sunken roads, in the woods and on the slopes of the hills. Here and there one can still see moss-covered roofs, and in the evening a friendly light shines through the small-paned windows.

  Much as we have coppices & shrubby oaks in Brabant and pollard willows in Holland, so one sees blackthorn hedges around the gardens, fields and meadows here. Lately, with the snow, the effect is that of black lettering on white paper, like pages of the Gospel.

  I have already spoken several times here, both in a fairly large room especially designed for religious meetings and also at the meetings they usually hold in the evenings in the workmen’s cottages, and which may best be called Bible classes. Among other things, I have spoken on the parable of the mustard seed, the barren fig tree and the man born blind. At Christmas, of course, on the stable in Bethlehem and Peace on earth. If, with God’s blessing, I were to get a permanent position here, I should welcome that with all my heart.

  Everywhere round here one sees the large chimneys & the tremendous mountains of coal at the entrance to the mines, the so-called charbonnages. You know that large drawing by Bos-boom, Chaudfontaine - it gives a good impression of the countryside in these parts, except that here everything is coal while to the north of Hainaut there are stone quarries and in Chaudfontaine they have iron.

  I still keep thinking of the day you came to Brussels and of our visit to the Museum. And I often wish you were a bit nearer and that we could be together more often. Do reply soon, I keep looking at that etching of Un jeune citoyen, over and over again.

  The miners’ talk is not very easy to make out, but they understand ordinary French well, provided it is spoken quickly and fluently enough, for then it automatically sounds like their patois, which comes out with amazing speed. At a meeting this week, my text was Acts 16: 9: ‘Et Paul eut de nuit une vision d’un homme macedonien qui se presenta devant lui et la pria disant: “Passe en Macédonie et nous aide”.’1 And they listened attentively when I tried to describe what that Macedonian was like who needed and longed for the comfort of the Gospel and for knowledge of the Only True God. That we should think of him as a workman, with lines of sorrow and suffering and fatigue on his countenance, without pomp or glory but with an immortal soul and needing the food that does not perish, namely God’s word, because man liveth not by bread alone, but by all the words that flow from God’s mouth. How Jesus X2 is the Master who can strengthen and comfort and enlighten one like the Macedonian, a workman and labourer whose life is hard. Because He Himself is the great Man of Sorrows who knows our ills, Who was called the son of a carpenter, though He was the Son of God and the great Healer of sick souls. Who laboured for 30 years in a humble carpenter’s shop to fulfil God’s will. And God wills that in imitation of X, man should live and walk humbly on earth, not reaching for the sky, but bowing to humble things, learning from the Gospel to be meek & humble of heart.

  I have already had occasion to visit some of the sick, since there are so many of them here. Wrote today to the President of the Committee of Evangelization asking him if my case could be dealt with at the next meeting of the committee.

  It is thawing tonight. I can’t tell you how picturesque the hilly country looks in the thaw, with the snow melting and now that the black fields with the green of the winter wheat can be seen again.

  For a stranger, the villages here are real rabbit warrens with the countless narrow streets and alleyways of small workers’ houses, at the foot of the hills as well as on the slopes and the tops. The nearest comparison is a village like Scheveningen, especially the back streets, or villages in Brittany as we know them from pictures. But you have travelled through these parts by train on your way to Paris and may have fleeting memories of them. The Protestant churches are small, like the one at De Hoeve though a little larger, but the place where I spoke was just a large bare room which could hold 100 people at most. I

  also attended a religious service in a stable or shed, so everything is simple and original enough.

  Write soon if you can find the time, and know that you are again and again, indeed constantly, in my thoughts. Wishing once more that God’s blessing be yours in the New Year, and shaking your hand in my thoughts, believe me, always,

  Your very loving brother

  Vincent

  My regards to everyone at the Rooses’ and wish them all the very best for the New Year, as well as anyone who may ask after me.

  When you write, please address your letter care of M. van der Haegen, Colporteur, à Pâturages prés de Mons (Borinage Hainaut).

  I have just visited a little old woman in a charcoal-burner’s home. She is terribly ill but fall of faith and patience. I read a chapter with her and prayed with them all. The people here have something unique and attractive about them thanks to their simplicity and good nature, not unlike the Brabant people in Zundert & Etten.

  In the middle of July 1879 Van Gogh was told that his appointment in Wasmes could not be extended and so he moved to the nearby village of Cuesmes. He read a great deal of Dickens {Hard Times), though drawing had meanwhile become his main interest. He asked Theo for books on the basic principles of draughtsmanship and he was sent a box of paints by Mr Tersteeg, his former employer at Goupil’s. One sketch book after another was filled. In the middle of August Theo paid him a visit and, as after all such meetings between the brothers, Vincent wrote a revealing letter soon afterwards. Its principal themes were gratitude for the visit and uncertainty about the permanence of the close relationship he now enjoyed with his brother, his ‘compagnon de voyage’, travelling companion.

  Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, c. 15 August 1879 | 61

  132 [D] [part]

  [c. 15 August 1879]

  My dear Theo,

  I am writing to you expressly to tell you how grateful I am for your visit. It had been quite a long time since we had seen each other or had written as we used to do. Still, it is better to be close than dead to each other, the more so as, until one is truly entitled to be called dead by virtue of one’s legal demise, it smacks of hypocrisy or at least childishness to carry on as if one were. Childish in the manner of a young man of 14 who believes that his dignity and rank in society oblige him to wear a top hat.

  The hours we spent together have at least assured us that we are both still in the land of the living. When I saw you again and walked with you, I had a feeling I used to have more often than I do now, namely that life is something good and precious which one should value, and I felt more cheerful and alive than I have been feeling for a long time, because in spite of myself my life has gradually become much less precious, much less important and more a matter of indifference to me, or so it has seemed.

  When one lives with others and is bound by feelings of affection, then one realizes that one has a reason for living, that one may not be utterly worthless and expendable, but is perhaps good for something, since we need one another
and are journeying together as compagnons de voyage. But our proper sense of self-esteem is also highly dependent upon our relationship with others.

  A prisoner who is condemned to solitude, who is prevented from working, &c, will in the long run, especially if the run is too long, suffer from the effects as surely as one who has gone hungry for too long. Like everyone else, I need friendly or affectionate relationships or intimate companionship, and am not made of stone or iron like a pump or a lamppost, and like any man of culture or decency I cannot do without these things and not feel a void, a lack of something - and I tell you all this to let you know how much good your visit has done me.

  And just as I would not want us to become estranged, so I would want to keep in with all at home. For the moment, however, I am not very keen on going back there and would much rather stay on here. Yet it may well all have been my own fault and you could be right about my not seeing things straight. And so, despite my great reluctance and though it is a hard course for me to take, I may yet go to Etten, at least for a few days.

  As I think back with gratitude to your visit, my thoughts return to our discussions as well, of course. I have had similar ones before, even a good many and often. Plans for improvement and change and generating energy - and yet, do not be offended, I am a little frightened by them, not least because I have sometimes acted upon them only to have my hopes dashed.