Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard (c. 18 June 1888) ... weeks it has started to circulate again.
However, my dear friend, at the same time I have had, just like you, a fit of
melancholy, from which I would have suffered as much as you,
had I not welcomed it with great pleasure as a sign that I was
recovering - which is indeed what happened.
So, don't go back to Paris but stay in the countryside, for
you will need your strength to come through the trial of
serving in Africa. Well then, the more blood you produce
beforehand, good blood, the better it will be, for over there
in the heat you may not be able to do it quite so easily.
Painting and fucking a lot don't go together, it softens the
brain. Which is a bloody nuisance.
The symbol of St. Luke, the patron saint of painters, is, as
you know, an ox. So you just be patient as an ox if you want to
work in the artistic field. Still, bulls are lucky not to have
to work at that foul business of painting.
But what I wanted to say is this: after the period of
melancholy...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh (c. 22 June 1888) ... often or of encouraging you to do the same. All this
correspondence does not tend to keep us, who are of a nervous
temperament, vigorous in case of possible immersions in
melancholy of the type you mention in your letter, and to which
I myself fall victim now and then.
An acquaintance of ours used to assert that the best
treatment for all diseases is to treat them with profound
contempt.
The remedy for the immersion which you mention is not, as
far as I know, to be found growing among the herbs with healing
powers.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (17 October 1888) ... when you tell me what they are doing.
However that may be, my dear boy, look here - if you
complain of having nothing in your noodle in the way of
producing good stuff, just imagine how very much more
reason I have for feeling the same depression. I could not
even do a stroke of work without you, and we must not go and
get excited over what the two of us manage to produce, but just
smoke our pipes in peace and not torment ourselves into
melancholia because we are not productive separately and with
less pain.
Certainly I have my own moments when I should dearly like to
change and be in business for a bit, and by so doing be able to
earn some money myself.
But since for the moment we can do nothing to change it,
let's accept this fate, that you on your part are condemned
always to do business without rest or change, and that I on my
part also have a job without rest, wearing enough and
exhausting to the brain. I hope that within a year you will
feel...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 5 April 1889) ... He expects to stay in Marseilles.
I am well just now, except for a certain undercurrent of
vague sadness difficult to define - but anyway - I have rather
gained than lost in physical strength, and I am working.
Just now I have on the easel an orchard of peach trees
beside a road with the Alpilles in the background . It seems that there was a fine article
in the Figaro on Monet, Roulin had read it and been struck by it, he said.
Altogether it is a rather difficult problem to decide whether
to take a new flat, and even to find it, especially by the
month.
M. Salles has spoken to me of a house at 20 francs which is
very nice, but he is not sure if I could have it. At Easter I
shall have to pay three months' rent, the removal, etc. All
this is not very cheering or convenient, especially as there
seems no prospect of any better luck anywhere.
Roulin said or rather hinted that he did not at all like the
disquiet which has reigned here in Arles this winter,
considered...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Paul Signac (c. 10 April 1889) ... consisting of two very small
rooms.
But at times it is not easy for me to take up living again,
for there remain inner seizures of despair of a pretty large
caliber.
My God - those anxieties - who can live in the modern world
without catching his share of them? My best consolation, if not
the best remedy, is to be found in deep friendships, even
though they have the disadvantage of anchoring us more firmly
in life than would seem desirable in the days of our great
sufferings.
Once more many thanks for your visit, which gave me so much
pleasure.
A hearty handshake in thought,
Yours sincerely, Vincent
March 1889 (sic)
Address until the end of April: Place Lamartine, Arles
[Page four of the letter was a sketch
of La Crau Plain with Peach Trees. ]
...
