All the same, I’m sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one’s will and love of self. But that’s no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life – artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don’t think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment.
And then there are painters who never do anything that is no good, who cannot do anything bad, just as there are ordinary people who can do nothing but good.
But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.
And although it was in a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her – it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it and MIllet and Breton – a light in the darkness, the brightness in the middle of a dark night. And so I hung a large etching after Rembrandt over it, the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by candlelight, while the great shadows cast a deep chiaroscuro over the whole room.
Don’t regret that your life is too easy, mine is rather easy too; I think that life is pretty long and that the time will arrive soon enough in which “another shall gird thee and carry thee where thou wouldst not.
Everything on earth changes – we have no abiding city here – it is the experience of everybody. That it is God’s will that we should part with what is dearest on earth – we ourselves change in many respects, we are not what we once were, we shall not remain what we are now.
I have had no “guidance or teaching” from others to speak of, but taught myself; no wonder my technique, considered superficially, differs from that of others. But that’s no reason for my work to remain unsaleable. I feel pretty sure that the large “Sorrow,” “The Old Woman of the Geest,” the “Old Man,” and others, will find a purchaser someday.
If I should later come to see that I did wrong, well, then I shall of course be sorry, but as it is I have been unable to see how else I could possibly have acted. When somebody tells me decisively, ‘Get out of my house, the sooner the better, in half an hour rather than an hour,’ well then, my dear fellow, it doesn’t take a quarter of an hour for me to leave, never to return either.
What am I in the eyes of most people –a nonentity or an eccentric or an obnoxious person –someone who has no position in society and never will have, in short the lowest of the low. Well, then –even if that were all absolutely true, I should one day like to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.
Anyone who leads an upright life and experiences real difficulty and disappointment and yet is not crushed by them is worth more than one for whom everything has always been plain sailing and who has known nothing but relative prosperity.
The clergymen call us sinners, conceived and born in sin. Bah! What confounded nonsense that is. Is it a sin to love, to feel the need for love, not to be able to live without love? I consider a life without love a sinful and immoral state.
To me, that book has been both a revelation and a gospel.
Spero di avere un po’ di fortuna con quel quadro dei mangiatori di patate.
It is true, however, that first impressions often change, for we know only too well that all is not gold that glitters and that though there may be a bright dawn, there is also a dark midnight and a burning, oppressive heat at noon.
You may know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.
You don’t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, ‘You can’t do a thing’.
Well, being sorry and giving up doesn’t help us on; the only thing to do is to push forward.
Avevo incominciato a firmare i quadri, ma ho smesso subito, mi sembrava troppo cretino.
In the midst of life we are near death, that is a phrase which touches each one of us personally, it is a truth we see again confirmed in what you tell me about Carolien van Stockum, and formerly we saw it in another member of the same family. It has touched me, and with all my heart I hope she may recover. Oh! what sorrow, what sadness and suffering there is in the world, in public as well as in private life.
Painting a picture is as difficult as finding a large or a small diamond. Now, however, whereas everybody recognizes the value of a louis d’or or a pure pearl, those who cherish pictures and believe in them are unfortunately rare. But they exist nonetheless.