Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 20 May 1888) ... to do with the
feeling of collapse? Remember how last winter I was stupefied
to the point of being absolutely incapable of doing anything at
all, except a little painting, although I was not taking any
iodide of potassium. So if I were you, I should have it out
with Rivet if Gruby tells you not to take any. I am sure that
in any case you mean to keep on being friends with both.
I often think of Gruby here and now, and I am
completely well, but it is having pure air and warmth that
makes it possible. In all that racket and bad air of Paris,
Rivet takes things as they are, without trying to create a
paradise, and without in any way trying to make us perfect. But
he forges a cuirass, or rather he hardens one against illness,
and keeps up one's morale. I do believe, by making light of the
disease one has got. If only you could have one year of life in
the country and with nature just now, it would make Gruby's
cure much easier. I expect he will make you promise...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard (c. 20 May 1888) ... On top of all that I am working on new studies. And in the
evening I was often too beat to write. That's why my answer has
been delayed.
Listen, that sonnet about the women of the boulevard has
some good in it, but it isn't the real thing, the end is banal.
A “sublime woman”...I don't know what you
mean by that, neither do you when it comes right down to it.
Furthermore:
Dans le clan des vieux et des jeunes maraudeCeux qu'elle ammenera coucher le soir, très
tard
[Ensnaring among the tribe of the old and young ones
Those whom she will take to bed with her that night, very
late.]
Something like this is not characteristic at all, for the
women of our boulevard - the little one - usually sleep alone
by night, for they have five or six hauls during the day or in
the evening. and très tard there is that honorable
carnivore, their maquereau [pimp], who comes and takes them
home, but he does...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard (23 June 1888) ... the frame. Ah, what an inspired conception!
I would do a sketch of it for you, but because I've been
drawing and painting a model - a Zouave - for three or four
days now, I am all in. Writing, on the other hand, calms and
diverts me.
What I've been doing looks very ugly - a drawing of a seated
Zouave , a painted sketch of the Zouave
against a completely white wall , and finally
his portrait against a green door and some orange bricks in a
wall . It is harsh, and taking it all in all,
ugly and unsuccessful. Yet, because I was tackling a real
difficulty with it, it may pave the way for the future.
Nearly all the figures I do look abominable in my own eyes,
let alone the eyes of others. Yet the study of the figure is
the most useful of all, provided one does it in a different way
from that taught at, for instance, Monsieur Benjamin
Constant's.
Your letter pleased me very much, the sketch 1 is
very, very interesting, and I thank you very much for it. One
of...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard (24 June 1888) ... the enclosed sheet bearing on your last sonnet. The
fact is that I am so worn out by work that in the evening,
though writing is restful for me, I am like a machine out of
gear, so much, on the other hand, has a day spent in the full
sun tired me out. That's why I stuffed another sheet into my
letter instead of this one.
Reading over yesterday's sheet, my Lord, I'm sending it to
you just as it is, it seems legible to me, and so I'm sending
it to you.
A day of hard toil again today.
If you saw my canvases, what would you say of them? You
won't find the almost timid, conscientious brush stroke of
Cézanne in them. But as I am now painting the same
landscape, la Crau and Camargue - though at a slightly
different spot - there may well remain certain connections in
it in the matter of colour. What do I know about it? I couldn't
help thinking of Cézanne from time to time, at exactly
those moments when I realized how clumsy his touch in certain
studies is -...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (29 June 1888) ... possible
when I'm retouching.
But when I come home after a spell like that, I assure you
my head is so tired that if that kind of work keeps recurring,
as it has done since this harvest began, I become hopelessly
absent-minded and incapable of heaps of ordinary things.
It is at times like these that the prospect of not being
alone is not disagreeable.
And very often indeed I think of that excellent painter
Monticelli - who they said was such a drinker, and off his head
- when I come back myself from the mental labour of balancing
the six essential colours, red - blue - yellow - orange - lilac
- green. Sheer work and calculation, with one's mind strained
to the utmost, like an actor on the stage in a difficult part,
with a hundred things to think of at once in a single half
hour.
