But I myself do not think I cannot make mistakes – I am too conscious of my many errors to be able to say this or that is the right manner and this or that, the wrong one. That goes without saying. But I am not indifferent, I think it wrong to be so. I think it one’s duty to try to do the right thing, even knowing that one cannot go through life without making mistakes, without regret or sorrow. Somewhere I read, Some good must come by clinging to the right.
According to Theo, he is definitely making a name for himself. But we are under no illusions, and are only too grateful that he is having some slight success. You don’t know what a hard life he has had, and who can say what is still in store for him. His disappointments have often made him fell bitter and have turned him into an unusual person.
During the past few years he has been working at home with us; after my father’s death, Anna thought it would be more peaceful for Mother if he stopped living at home, and saw to it that he left us. He took that so badly that from then on he has not been in touch with us, and it is only through Theo that we have news of him.
In Antwerp I did not even know what the impressionists were, now I have seen them and though not being one of the club yet I have much admired certain.
In the first place, it pleased me enormously that Theo and Mr. Tersteeg have entered into business relations in order to make the work of the painters here who are called impressionists known in Holland too.
Because in a time of financial crisis like the present, money is what ammunition is to a soldier in a hostile country – don’t let’s waste our powder.
I shall have to produce an enormous number of things against next year – when the World’s Fair will be held – seeing that my friends will not fail to have many interesting things on hand by then. Not that I myself or any of the painters I hold regular or special intercourse with are going to exhibit along with the others, but it is to be expected that there will be a free exhibition besides the official one. Now, for.
In short it is not as good as your painting yet; never mind, it will come; you must certainly continue your sonnets. There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing – on the contrary, isn’t it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it? There is the art of lanes and colours, but the art of words is there nonetheless, and will remain.
There was a time when I loved Vincent a lot and he was my best friend but that is over now. It seems to be even worse from his side, for he never loses an opportunity to show me that he despises me and that I revolt him. That makes the situation at home almost unbearable.
Goodbye, write again between times if you can. As to the money, do what you can, but remember that we must try our utmost to succeed. And I won’t let that idea of painting portraits go, for it is a good thing to fight for, to show people that there is more in them than the photographer can possibly get out of them with his machine.
But always those same conventional eyes, noses, mouths – waxlike and smooth and cold. It cannot but always remain lifeless. And the painted portraits have a life of their own, coming straight from the painter’s soul, which the machine cannot reach. The more one looks at photographs, the more one feels this, I think.
I must tell you that even while working I think continually about the plan of setting up a studio in which you and I will be permanent residents, but which both of us want to turn into a shelter and refuge for friends, against the times when they find that the struggle is getting too much for them.
Thank you very much too for all the steps you have taken toward the exhibition of the Independents. On the whole I’m very glad that they’ve been put with the other impressionists.
Fortunately for me, I do not hanker after victory any more, and all that I seek in painting is a way to make life bearable.
O never think the dead are dead, So long as there are men alive, The dead will live, the dead will live.” That’s how I feel it. Nothing sadder than that.
Mind, as to Gauguin we must not give up the idea of coming to his aid if the suggestion is acceptable as it stands, but we do not need him. So do not think that working alone bothers me, and do not push the affair on my account, be very sure of that.
Contudo procuro sistematicamente evitar as brigas, e prossigo quietinho no meu caminho.
You have been lucky to meet Guy de Maupassant. I have just read his first book, Des Vers, poems dedicated to his master Flaubert; there is one, “Au bord de l’eau,” which is already himself. What Van der Meer of Delft is to Rembrandt among the painters, he is to Zola among the French novelists.
But if Gauguin and his Jewish bankers came tomorrow and asked me for no more than 10 pictures for a society of dealers, and not a society of artists, on my word I do not know if I’d have confidence in it, though I would willingly give 50 to a society of artists.
No entanto, por menos que diga, eu os irrito e eles me irritam.