Very well, but the beast has a human history, and although he is a dof he has a human soul, and what is more one so sensitive that he can feel what people think about him, which an ordinary dog cannot.
And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog, accept them for what they are.
This house is also far too good for me, and Father and Mother and the family are so exceedingly refined (though not sensitive underneath), and - and - there are clergymen, lots of clergymen.
The dog appreciates that if they do keep him, they are only putting up with him, only just tolerating his presence ‘in this house’, so he will try to track down a kennel elsewhere.
In fact this dog used to be Father’s son once upon a time, and it was Father who left him out in the streets a little too long, so he was bound to become rougher, but seeing that Father forgot this many years ago and has never thought deeply about what the bond between father and son means, we had best say nothing about it.
And then - the dog could easily bite - he could easily become rabid - and the village policeman would have to come round and shoot him.
Oh yes, all that is perfectly true, no doubt about it.
On the other hand, dogs can also be guard dogs. But there’s no need for that, they say, it’s peaceful here, there’s no question of any danger. So I shall say no more about that idea.
The only thing the dog regrets is that he came back, because it wasn’t as lonely on the heath as it is in this house - despite all the kindness. The poor beast’s visit was a weakness, which I hope will be forgotten, and which he will avoid repeating in the future.
Because I have had no expenses since I have been here and because I have twice received money from you, I paid for the journey myself and also for the clothes Father bought me because mine weren’t good enough, and at the same time I have repaid the 25 guilders to friend Rappard. I’m sure you’ll be pleased about this, everything was such a mess.
Dear Theo, enclosed is the letter I was writing when I received yours. Which I shall now answer, having carefully read what you say.
I shall start by saying I think it noble of you that, believing that I am making things difficult for Father, you take his part and give me a brisk dressing-down. I value this in you, although you are taking up arms against one who is neither Father’s enemy nor yours but who would nevertheless like to present a few serious questions for Father’s consideration and yours, who tells you what I am telling you because that is the way I feel, and who asks: why is this so?
In many respects, your answers to various passages in my letter bring out certain aspects of the matter with which I am not unfamiliar myself. Your objections are partly my own objections, but they are not sufficient. So once again I appreciate your goodwill and likewise your desire for reconciliation and peace -which, indeed, I have never doubted.
Even so, brother, I could easily raise a great many objections to your suggestions, except that I think that would be tedious and there is a shorter way. There is a desire for peace and reconciliation in Father and in you and in me. And yet we do not seem able to bring peace about.
Well, it is my belief that I am the stumbling block, and so it is up to me to find a way of not ‘making things difficult’ for you or for Father any longer. And I am now prepared to make things as easy as possible and as peaceful as possible, for both of you.
So you are also of the opinion that I am the one who is making things difficult for Father and that I am a coward. So…
Well, I shall do my best in future to keep everything from you and from Father, I shan’t visit Father again and, if you approve, shall stick to my proposal that (for the sake of our mutual freedom of thought, and for the sake of not making things difficult for you as well, a view I fear you are inadvertently beginning to take) we put an end to our financial arrangement by March. I ask for a little grace for the sake of order and to allow myself time to take a few steps which, though they have very little chance of success, my conscience does not allow me to put off in the circumstances.
You must take this calmly and in good heart, brother - it is not an ultimatum to you. But if our feelings differ too greatly, well then, we must not rush to sweep everything under the carpet Isn’t that more or less your opinion as well?
You- do realize, don’t you, that I’m sure you have saved my life and I shall never forget that. Even after we have put an end to relations which, I fear, would place us in a false position, I shall still not only be your brother, your friend, but I shall also owe you an infinite debt of loyalty because you held out your hand to me and because you have gone on helping me…
Money can be repaid, not kindness such as yours.1
So leave me to carry on by myself - I am only sorry that a complete reconciliation has not proved possible, and wish it might still come about, but you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.
Please send me the usual by return, if you can, then I shan’t have to ask Father for anything when I leave, which I ought to do as soon as possible.
I gave all the 23.80 guilders you sent on 1 Dec. to Father, for 14 guilders borrowed and 9 guilders for shoes and trousers. I gave all the 25 guilders you sent on 10 December to Rappard. I still have a quarter and a few cents in my pocket. So that is the financial position, which you will understand if you also take into account that I paid for the expenses in Drenthe over a long period out of the money from 20 November, which arrived on 1 Dec, because of some hitch that was later put right, and that I paid for my journey, etc., out of the 14 guilders (which I borrowed from Father and have since returned).
From here I shall go to Rappard’s. And from Rappard’s perhaps to Mauve’s. My intention is thus to try to do everything in a calm and orderly fashion.
There is too much in my candidly expressed opinion of Father which I cannot take back in the circumstances. I appreciate your objections, but many of them do not convince me, others I have already thought of myself, even though I write as I do. I have put my feelings in strong terms, and they have naturally been modified by my appreciation that there is much good in Father - that modification has been substantial, of course.
Allow me to tell you that I never knew that someone of 30 was ‘a boy’, particularly when he has probably had more experience than most during those 30 years. But do think of my words as the words of a boy if you want. I am not responsible for how you view what I say, am I? That’s your business.
And as far as Father is concerned, I shall take the liberty of putting what he thinks of me from my mind the moment we part.
It may be politic to keep what one feels to oneself, but it has always seemed to me that sincerity is a duty, especially for a painter - whether people understand what I say, whether they judge me rightly or wrongly, is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned, as you yourself once pointed out to me.
Well, brother, even if there is a separation in whatever way, know that I am your friend, perhaps much more than you realize or understand - and even Father’s friend. With a handshake,
Ever Yours,
Vincent
In any event I am neither Father’s enemy nor yours, nor shall I ever be.
347 [D] [part]
[c. 17 December 1883]
My dear Theo,
Mauve once told me, ‘You will find yourself if you persist at your art, if you go more deeply into it than you have been doing up to now.’ He said that 2 years ago.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about those words of his. I have found myself - I am that dog. The notion may be a bit overstated - real[ity] may have less pronounced, less starkly dramatic, contrasts - but I believe that fundamentally the rough character-sketch applies.
The shaggy sheepdog I tried to portray for you in yesterday’s letter is my character, and the animal’s life is my life, if, that is, one omits the details and merely states the essentials. That may seem exaggerated to you - but I do not take it back.
Personalities aside, just as an impartial character study - as if I were tal
king about strangers and not about you and me and Father - for the sake of analysis I draw your attention once more to last summer. I see two brothers walking in The Hague (look upon them as strangers, as other people, do not think of yourself or of me or Father).
One of them says, ‘I am getting more & more like Father - I have to maintain a certain social position - a certain affluence (very moderate both in your case and in Father’s) - I must stay in business. I don’t think I’m going to become a painter.’
The other says, ‘I am getting [less and less] like Father - I am turning into a dog, I feel that the future will probably make me uglier and rougher still and I foresee “a degree of poverty” as my lot - but, but, man or dog, I shall be a painter, in short a creature with feeling.’
So, for the one, a certain position or affluence, and a dealer. For the other, a degree of poverty and exclusion, and a painter.
And I see those same two brothers in earlier years - when you had just entered the art world, had just begun to read, &c, &c. - near the Rijswijk mill, or, for example, on a winter outing to Chaam across the snow-covered heath early one morning! Feeling, thinking and believing the same to such an extent - that I wonder: can those be the same two? Wonder: what will the outcome be - will they separate for ever or will they take the same path once and for all?
I tell you, I am choosing the said dog’s path, I am remaining a dog, I shall be poor, I shall be a painter, I want to remain human, in nature. To my mind anyone who turns away from nature, whose head is forever filled with thoughts of keeping up this and keeping up that, even if that should remove him from nature to such an extent that he cannot help admitting it - oh, going on like that, one so easily arrives at a point where one can no longer tell white from black - and, and one becomes the precise opposite of what one is taken for or believes oneself to be.
For instance: at present you still have a manly fear of mediocrity in the worst sense of that word. Why then, in spite of that, are you going to kill, to extinguish the best in your soul? Then, yes, then your fear might well come true. How does one become mediocre? By complying with and conforming to one thing today and another tomorrow, as the world dictates, by never contradicting the world and by heeding public opinion!
Do not misunderstand me, what I am trying to say is just that basically you are better than that - I see this when, for example, you take Father’s part once you think I have made things difficult for Father. If I may say so, to my mind your opposition in that case is misdirected. I do appreciate what you are doing, and I say, do be more sensible, direct your anger elsewhere and fight with the same strength against other influences than, of all things, mine, and, and then you will probably be less upset.
I don’t mind Father when I consider him on his own, but I do mind him when I compare him with the great Father Millet, for instance. His doctrine is so great that Father’s way of thinking looks extremely petty by comparison. Now you will think this is terrible of me - I can’t help that - it is my deep conviction and I confess it freely, because you confuse Father’s character with Corot’s, for instance. How do I see Father? As someone with the same kind of character as Corot’s father - but Father has nothing of Corot himself. Anyway, Corot loved his father, but did not follow him. I love Father, too, so long as my path is not made too difficult by differences of opinion. I do not love Father at the moment, when a certain petty-minded pride stands in the way of the generous and satisfactory accomplishment of a complete, permanent and most desirable reconciliation.
I had no intention whatever of putting you or Father to expense by the steps I had in mind when I came back home. On the contrary, I wanted to use the money to better advantage so that we should lose less, that is, less time, less money and less energy.
Am I to be blamed when I point to the Rappards who, although richer than Father or you or I, manage things more sensibly and get better results from acting in concord, though it is probably not always very easy for them either?
Am I to be blamed for wanting to put an end to the discord in the family with a ‘thus far but no further’? In what respect am I wrong for wanting this to be brought about thoroughly and conclusively and for not being content with a sham or a too halfhearted reconciliation? Reconciliation with mental reservations, conditions, etc., bah! It just won’t do. Readily or not at all - with empressement,1 otherwise it is absolutely useless and worse may be expected.
You say you think it cowardly of me to rebel against Father. In the first place this is a verbal rebellion - no violence is involved. On the other hand it might be argued that I am all the sadder and more disappointed and speak all the more gravely and resolutely precisely because Father’s grey hairs make it evident to me that the time left to us for reconciliation is perhaps, in truth, not very long. I do not much care for deathbed reconciliations, I prefer to see them during life.
I am quite prepared to grant that Father means well, but I should far rather it didn’t stop at meaning well but might, for once, lead to a mutual understanding, though it has been left very late. But I fear it will never happen! If you knew how sad I think that is, if you knew how much I grieve over it!
You say: Father has other things to think about - oh, really, well, to my mind those things preventing Father from thinking matters through, year in, year out, are quite unimportant. And that is just the point - Father doesn’t feel that there is anything to be reconciled about or to be made up, Father has other things to think about - very well - leave him to his other things, I am beginning to tell myself. Are you, too, sticking to your ‘other things’? Father says, ‘We have always been good to you,’ &c, and I say, ‘Oh, really, you may be satisfied, I am not.’
Something better than the days of the Rijswijk mill - namely the same thing but for good and all - two poor brother artists -bound up in one and the same feeling, for one and the same nature and art - will it ever come to that? Or will the certain social position, the certain affluence, win the day? Oh, let them win it - but I foresee that it will only be for a while, that you will grow disillusioned with them before you are 30. And if not, well, if not - then, then, then - tant pis.2 With a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
[enclosed in letter 347]
Since writing the enclosed letter, I have thought some more about your remarks and have spoken to Father again. I had as good as made up my mind not to stay on here - regardless of how they might take it or what the result might be. But then the conversation took a fresh turn when I said, I have been here now for 14 days and feel I have got no further than during the first half hour, had we understood each other better we should have settled all sorts of things by now - I have no time to waste and must reach a decision. A door has to be either open or shut, I cannot see how there can be anything in between, and in fact there cannot.
It all ended with the little room at home where the mangle now stands being put at my disposal for storing my bits and pieces and if need be for use as a studio too. And a start has been made with clearing the room, which nad not been done while things were still in the air.
I want to tell you something that I appreciate better now than when I wrote to you what I thought about Father. My opinion has softened, not least because I can see that Father (and one of your hints seems to bear this out to some extent) is genuinely unable to follow me when I try to explain things to him. He hangs on to a part of what I say, and that makes no sense when it is taken out of context. This may all be due to more than one cause, but old age must bear most of the blame. Well, I respect old age and its weaknesses as much as you do, even though it may not seem so to you or you may not credit me with it. What I mean is that some of the things I should take amiss in a man in full possession of his mental powers, I shall probably put up with in Father’s case - for the above-mentioned reasons.
I also thought of Michelet’s saying (who had it from a zoologist), ‘Le mâle est trés sauvage’.3 And because at this time of my life I know myself to have strong pas
sions and believe that I should have them, I grant that I may well be ‘tres sauvage’ myself. And yet my passion subsides when I face someone weaker than myself, and then I don’t fight. Although, mark you, taking issue in words or over principles with a man who holds a position in society, and please note, as a guide to man’s spiritual life, is not only permissible but cannot possibly be cowardly. After all, our weapons are equal.
Do please think it over, the more so as I tell you that for many reasons I want to give up even the verbal struggle, because it occasionally occurs to me that Father no longer has the full mental power it takes to concentrate one’s thoughts on a single point. Yet in some cases a man’s age grants him additional power.
Getting to the heart of the matter, I take this opportunity of telling you that, in my view, it was Father’s influence that made you concentrate on business more than is in your nature. And that I believe, no matter how certain you may now feel that you must remain a businessman, that a certain something in your original nature will endure and may well produce a stronger reaction than you bargain for.
Since I know that our thoughts coincided during our early days at G. & Cis, that is, that both you and I then thought of becoming painters but so deep down that we didn’t dare tell even each other straight out, it might well happen, in these latter years, that we draw more closely together. The more so because of circumstances and conditions in the trade itself, which has undergone a change since our early years and in my view will change even more.
At the time I did violence to myself, and was moreover so oppressed by the preconception that I was no painter, that even after I had left G. & Cie, I never thought of becoming one but turned to something else (which was a second mistake on top of the first), feeling discouraged about my prospects because my timid, very timid, approaches to a few painters were not even acknowledged. I am telling you this, not because I want to force you to think as I do - I do not force anybody - but only out of a sense of fraternal and friendly concern.
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh Page 27