The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Page 13
However, I do believe that they are positively against it & I wanted to make that clear to you. They will try to make sure that Kee & I can neither see nor speak nor write to each other, because they know very well that if we saw, spoke or wrote to each other, there would be a chance of Kee changing her mind. Kee herself thinks she will never change her mind, the older people are trying to convince me that she cannot change it, and yet they fear such a change.
The older people will change their minds about this affair, not when Kee changes her attitude but when I have become somebody who earns at least 1000 guilders a year. Once again, forgive the hard contours with which I am outlining matters. If I receive little sympathy from the older ones, I believe that some of the younger ones will be able to understand my position.
You may, Theo - you may hear it said of me that I want to force things, and expressions like that. Yet everyone knows how senseless force is in love! No, nothing is further from my thoughts.
But it is neither unfair nor unreasonable to wish that Kee and I, instead of not being allowed any contact with each other, might see, speak or write to each other so that we could come to know each other better, and even be able to tell whether or not we are suited to each other. A year of keeping in touch with each other would be salutary for her & for me, and yet the older people have really dug in their heels on this point. Were I rich, they would soon change their tune.
By now you will realize that I hope to leave no stone unturned that might bring me closer to her, and that it is my intention:
To go on loving her
Until in the end she loves me too.
Plus elle disparait plus elle apparaît.4
Theo, are you by any chance in love as well? I hope you are, for believe me, even its ’petites misères’ have their value. One is sometimes in despair, there are moments when one is in hell, so to speak, yet there is also something different & better about it. There are 3 stages -
Not loving & not being loved.
Loving & not being loved (the present case).
Loving & being loved.
Now, I tell you that the second stage is better than the first, but the third! That’s it!
Well, old boy,5 go and fall in love yourself and tell me about it some time. Keep your own counsel in the present case and have some sympathy for me. Of course I would much rather have had a yea and amen, but I am almost pleased with my ’never, no, never’. (I take it for something, though older & wiser heads say it is nothing.)
Rappard has been here, and brought some watercolours that are coming on well. Mauve will be calling soon, I hope, otherwise I shall go to him. I am doing a good deal of drawing and have the feeling it is improving. I am working much more with the brush than before. It is so cold now that I do almost nothing but indoor figure-drawing, a seamstress, a basket-weaver, &c. A handshake in my thoughts & write soon and believe me,
Ever yours,
Vincent
If you ever do fall in love and get a never, no, never, don’t resign yourself to it whatever you do! But you are such a lucky dog that nothing like that will ever happen to you, I hope.
They tried to make me promise that I would speak or write absolutely nothing more about this business, but I refused to promise that. In my opinion no one in the world should in fairness demand such a thing of me (or of anyone else in the same position). All I did do was to give Uncle Cent the assurance that for the time being I would cease writing to Uncle Strieker unless unforeseen circumstances should necessitate it. A lark cannot help singing in the spring.
I56 [D]
[10 or 11 November 1881]
Dear brother,
I have received your letter, but think it is only an answer to my No. 1.
In No. 2 and No. 3 you will have found a ’talking-to’ as my thanks for your advice, ’Take care not to build too many castles in the air before you are sure the work is not in vain.’
And since you have had that talking-to already, I shall not repeat it. Bien te fasse, old boy!1
It’s lucky at any rate that you haven’t been guilty of ’in the meantime’ thinking, isn’t that so?
No, neither you nor I are guilty of that sort of thinking. To the best of our belief, yours and mine, someone who lacks courage, or uses a won’t-commit-myself approach, or doesn’t dare stake his life with a smile, would be better off not even trying to win a real woman’s heart. From the very beginning of this love I have felt that unless I threw myself into it sans arrière pensée,2 committing myself totally and with all my heart, utterly and for ever, I had absolutely no chance, and that even if I do throw myself into it in this way the chance is very slight. But what do I care if my chance is great or small?
I mean, should I, can I, take that into account when I am in love? No, no reckoning up, one loves because one loves.
Being in love - quelle chose!3
Imagine what a real woman would think if she found that someone was courting her with reservations; wouldn’t she say something worse to him than ’never, no, never!’? Oh, Theo, don’t let’s talk about it, if you and I are in love then we are in love, voilà tout.4 And we keep a clear head and do not becloud our mind, nor curb our feelings, nor douse the fire and the light, but simply say, ’Thank God, I am in love.’
Again, imagine what a real woman would think of a lover who came to her confident of success. I wouldn’t give tuppence for his chances with someone like Kee Vos, and not for a hundred thousand guilders would I swap his chances for that ’no, never, ever’.
I sent you a few drawings because I thought you might find something of the look of Heike5 about them. Now tell me, please, why don’t they sell and how can I make them saleable? For I should like to earn some money now and then for the fare to go and look into that ’never, no, never’.
But be sure not to mention this plan of mine to the Most Rev. and Very Learned Mr J. P. S.!6 For when I do arrive entirely
. Someone like the Most Rev. and Most Learned Mr J. P. S. becomes quite a different person from what he was before once one falls in love with his daughter, at least as far as the one involved in ’the present case’ is concerned. He becomes quite gigantic and assumes unheard of proportions! But that does not alter the fact that, as one who loves his daughter, one is more afraid of not going to him than of going to him, even though one knows that he is capable of doing terrible things in the circumstances.
Anyway, right now I can’t help feeling ? have a draughtsman’s fist’, and I am very glad that I have such an implement, even though it is still unwieldy. The Ingres paper is really excellent.
And so you are popularly known as a lucky dog. For all the petites misères de la vie humaine.7
And you are not sure whether you really are one or not? But why should you doubt it?
Now look, what I should like to know is this: what sort of petites misères do you have? I know some of them in part or in full, others I don’t.
Do you also have petites misères to do with a lady from time to time? Of course you do, but I should like to hear what they are! Surely none of the never, no, never sort? Or perhaps, on the contrary, too many heavy-handed yeas and amens?
Well, your petites misères with the ladies interest me exceedingly. Especially because I think of your petites misères what I think of my own, namely, that in many cases we do not quite know how to take them, when, in fact, they contain hidden treasure provided we know how to find and take possession of it. The petites or grandes misères are riddles. Finding the solution is well worth the trouble.
A lucky dog who complains - without reason! And they call me ’the melancholy one’, and I ask you to congratulate me on my ’never, no, never’! And I get very cross when people tell me that it is dangerous to put out to sea, observing that one might drown in it. I don’t get cross because I think they are wrong to say that, but because they seem to forget ’that there is safety in the very heart of danger’.8
So, you lucky dog: what is wrong with your luck? You were able
to tell me with much piquancy what falling in love is like by your comparison with a strawberry. It was nicely put indeed, but to be in love in the teeth of a triple ’no never ever’ as well as of a Most Rev. and Very Learned Mr J. P. S. who makes inquiries about the means of existence in the ’present case’, as His Reverence calls it, or rather, does not even make inquiries about them because he (being into the bargain a Philistine when it comes to art) thinks that they are nonexistent - to be in love like that, I say, is not quite like picking strawberries in the spring.
And that ’never, no, never’ is not balmy as spring air but bitter, bitter, bitter as the biting frost of winter. ’This is no flattery,’9 Shakespeare would say. However Samson said something else: ’Out of the strong came forth sweetness.’ And the question is very much whether Samson was not much wiser than I am. Proudly he seized hold of a lion and overpowered him, but could we do the same? ’You must be able to,’ Samson would have said, and rightly so.
Enough, the strawberry season has not yet arrived, I can indeed see strawberry plants but they are frozen. Will spring arrive and thaw them out, and will they come into bloom, and then — then — who will pick them?
Still, that ’never, no, never’ has taught me things I did not know: 1. It has brought home to me the enormity of my ignorance, and 2. women have a world of their own, and much more. Also that there are such things as means of existence.
I should think it more considerate of people if they said (as the Constitution says: ’Tout homme est considéré innocent jusqu’à sa culpabilité soit prouvée’10) that it should be assumed that others have the means of existence until the contrary is proved. It could be said: this man exists - I see him, he speaks to me, a proof of his actual existence is even that he is not uninvolved in a certain case, e.g. ’the present case’. His existence being clear and obvious to me (since I am aware that the person in question is not a mere ghost, but is made of real live flesh and bones) I shall take it as axiomatic that he owes that existence to means he obtains in some way or other and for which he works. So I shall not suspect him of existing without any means of existence. However that is not the way people reason, least of all a certain person in question in Amsterdam. They have to see the means in order to believe in the existence of the person in question, but the existence of the person in question does not prove to them that he has means. Well, this being so, we are obliged to hold up a draughtsman’s fist, though not to attack or even to threaten them with it. Then we must use that draughtsman’s fist as best we can.
But the ’no never ever’ riddle is still by no means solved in this way. Trying the direct opposite of certain pieces of advice can often prove practical and do one good. That is why it is in many cases so useful to ask for advice. But some pieces of advice can be used in their natural state and do not need to be turned inside-out or upside-down. This latter kind is very rare and desirable, however, for it still has some special characteristics. The former kind thrives everywhere in profusion. The latter sort is expensive. The former costs nothing and is sometimes delivered unsolicited to one’s home by the sackful. ’In the meantime!!!’
Yours truly, 11
Vincent
Iclose this letter with some advice of my own.
If ever you fall in love, do so without reservation, or rather, if you should fall in love simply give no thought to any reservation.
Moreover, when you do fall in love, you will not ’feel certain’ of success beforehand. You will be ’une âme en peine’12 and yet you will smile.
Whoever feels so ’sure of his ground’ that he rashly imagines ’she is mine’, even before he has waged the soul’s battle of love, even before, I say, he has become suspended between life and death on the high seas, in the midst of storm and tempest - there is one who knows little of what a real woman’s heart is, and that will be brought home to him by a real woman in a very special way. When I was younger, one half of me once fancied that I was in love, and with the other half I really was. The result was many years of humiliation. Let me not have been humiliated in vain.
I speak as one ’Who has been down’,13 from bitter experience, from learning the hard way.
Lucky dog! What’s the matter? What aileth thee?14 Perhaps, after all, you have not been such a lucky dog so far, but I think you are well on the way to becoming one. That much I gather from the tone of your letters.
It is just as if there is a small lump in your throat, in your voice. What kind of small lump is it? Could you not tell me for once, now that I have told you so much?
Theo, every girl’s father has something called the key to the front door. A very terrible weapon, which can open and shut the aforesaid front door as Peter and Paul open and close the gates of heaven. Well, does that implement also fit the heart of the respective daughters in question? Can that be opened or shut with the key to the front door? I think not, God and love alone can open or close a woman’s heart. Will hers open? Brother, will she ever let me in? Dieu le sait.15 I cannot tell such things in advance.
IJ8[D]
Friday 18/9— 18811
Dear brother,
If I did not give vent to my feelings every so often, then, I think, the boiler would burst.
I must tell you something that, were I to keep it bottled up inside me, might distress me, but which, if I just come straight out with it, may turn out to be not too bad.
As you know, Father and Mother on the one hand and I on the other do not see eye to eye about what should or should not be done with regard to a certain ’no, never, ever’.
Well, after I’d been listening to the fairly strong expressions ’indelicate and inopportune’ for some considerable time (just imagine that you were in love and they called your love ’indelicate’, wouldn’t you, with a certain amount of pride, take exception and say, ’Enough!’), at my urgent request that these expressions be no longer used, they stopped, but only to come up with a new order of the day. Now they say that ? would be severing family ties’.
Well, I have told them over and over again, seriously, patiently and with feeling, that that is not the case at all. This helped for a time and then it started all over again. Now the complaint was that I kept ’writing letters’.
And when — rashly and wantonly in my view — they kept using that wretched expression ’severing ties’, I did the following. For a few days I said not a word and took no notice at all of Father and Mother. A contrecoeur,2 but I wanted them to see what it would be like if ties really had been severed.
Of course they were amazed at my behaviour, and when they said so, I replied, ’You see, that’s what it would be like if there were no tie of affection between us, but luckily there is one and it will not be broken so easily, but I beg you to appreciate how dreadful that phrase “severing ties” really is, and not to use it any longer.’ The result was, however, that Father grew very angry, ordered me out of the room, and, and cursed me, or at least that is exactly what it sounded like!
Now while I am very distressed and sorry about it all, I simply cannot- agree that a father who curses his son and (remember last year) proposes tö send him to a lunatic asylum (which naturally I resisted with all my might) and who calls his son’s love ’inopportune and indelicate’ (!!!), is in the right.
Whenever Father loses his temper he is used to having everyone, myself included, give in to him. However, I had made up my mind in God’s name to let this fit of temper rage on for once.
In anger Father also said something about my having to move away somewhere else, but because it was said in anger I do not attach much importance to it. I have my models and my studio here, elsewhere life would be more expensive, working more difficult and the models dearer. But if Father and Mother were coolly and calmly to tell me, ’Go,’ of course I would go.
There are things a man simply cannot let pass. If one hears people saying ’you are mad’ or ’you are someone who severs family ties’ or ’you are indelicate’, then anyone with a heart in his body will prot
est with all his might. To be sure, I have told Father and Mother a thing or two as well, namely that they were quite wrong about this love of mine, that they had hardened their hearts, and seemed absolutely incapable of a gentler and more humane way of thinking. In a word, that to me their way of thinking seemed narrow-minded, neither full nor generous enough, and also that to me ’God’ would ring nothing but hollow if one had to hide one’s love and were not allowed to follow the dictates of one’s heart.
Now I am quite ready to believe that there have been times when I have been unable to suppress my outrage upon hearing ’indelicate’ or ’severing ties’, but who would keep calm when that sort ofthing never stops?
Quoi qu’il en soit.3 In his anger, Father muttered nothing more nor less than a curse. But then, I had already heard something of the sort last year, and thank God, far from being properly damned, felt new life and new energy springing up within me. And I firmly believe that it will be the same this time, only more so, and more forcefully than last year.
Theo, I love her, her and no other, her for ever. And, and, and, Theo, although the ’no, never, ever’ still ’seems’ to be in full sway, there is a feeling of something like redemption within me, and it is as if she and I had stopped being two and were united for all eternity.
Have my drawings arrived? I made another yesterday, a peasant boy in the morning lighting the fire in the hearth with a kettle hanging over it, and another, an old man laying dry twigs on the hearth. I am sorry to say there is still something harsh and severe in my drawings, and I think that she, that is, her influence, is needed to soften that.
Well, my dear fellow, it seems to me there is no reason to take ’the curse’ so terribly hard. Perhaps I used too harsh a method to make Father and Mother feel something they did not want to hear, yet is not ’a father’s curse’ a great deal stronger and harsher, going indeed a little too far? Enfin, je te serre la main, et crois-moi,4
Ever yours, Vincent
Because of the estrangement from his parents through the Kee Vos affair, Vincent decided not to return to Etten for the time being. He reported instead to his cousin Anton Mauve for painting lessons in The Hague.