CHAPTER THREE What Holds at the Centre

Freedom

The paradox that freedom requires commitments that in turn impose limits on freedom is central to Van Gogh’s reflections on this topic. As he well knew, freedom is exercised within the bounds of a particular undertaking, with specific requirements and obligations.

Insofar as freedom is non-coercive (and uncoerced), Van Gogh typically associates it in his writing with the flight of birds, sea journeys, and the creative imagination. Yet these activities are not safely undertaken without skill and knowledge—the necessary limitations by which freedom is both enabled and enhanced. He also represents the condition of being unfree with images of forcible restraint such as cages, imprisonment, and oppressive systems of various kinds. Thus, he sets up a counterpoint between the limits entailed by freely undertaken commitments and the restraints imposed merely to effect curtailment or suppression.

Van Gogh realized that the ideal combination of freedom and equality that he hoped would occur “after the revolution” was a utopian dream. Still, he insists on the value of working with others in the interests of a future that he knew could be better imagined than realized. He returns often to the uncertainly defined space between the ideal and the actual, and in this context, his reflections on the meaning of home are especially interesting. On the one hand, Van Gogh thought of home as providing particular material comforts for the creative adventurer returning from the dangerous freedoms of a sea voyage or a flight that braves the perils of a storm. On the other hand, he treats home as a state of mind, as when he talks about being homesick for the land of paintings or being a cosmopolitan who is at home anywhere and tied to no place in particular.

The various oppositions by which Van Gogh explores the question of freedom are thus best seen as a set of binaries, each of which carries a trace of the other: liberty-constraint, commitment-obligation, journey-home, ideal-actual, local-cosmopolitan. The result is a vivid and captivating evocation of how we are required constantly to negotiate the difficult path between freedom and necessity.

From his earliest surviving letters until those written at the end of his religious phase in 1880–81, Van Gogh returns often to what home means to him. As a young man, he had aspirations to be a cosmopolitan traveller. And yet in the years after he left his native Netherlands, he was homesick; his letters are filled with poignantly solicitous enquiries and concerns about family members left behind. Yet the call to new freedoms and new horizons also rings out clearly, as Van Gogh seeks to fashion a new kind of home, whether “the world as my mother country” (1), or a place of fellowship (2), or “the country of paintings” (3), or even “everything that surrounds you” as well as all that “you have loved” (4). Later, he declares straight out that “painting is a home” (5)—in contrast to his actual parental home in Nuenen, which had been the scene of a major crisis in Vincent’s relationship with his family, culminating in his father’s death there in 1885. When he subsequently went to Antwerp, Vincent expresses to Theo his relief at being free from the “family stranger than strangers” that his own family has become (6). Still, he admits also to being distressed at this separation from the home to which he had been closely attached.

In counterpoint to the restrictions that we know Vincent felt were imposed by his family, he imagines journeying into the open sea. As a result, he experiences “the secret of the deep”—“the intimate, serious charm of the Ocean,” which is also that “of the artist’s life” (7), a life that, because free, is truly capable of sustaining love (8). Although the sea journey is dangerous, it brings serenity, which for Van Gogh is everywhere also a hallmark of freedom (9).

In 1877, Van Gogh likened freedom to the song of a lark (10) and, in 1880, to a bird longing to fly free (11). But he realized that impediments to such freedom lie everywhere. They might be the steel armour of convention and prejudice (12), the entrapments of circumstance (13), the confinements of systems and schools (14), or, in general, whatever prevents him from acting in ways that are not harmful to others (15). Specifically, he objects to his father’s icy coldness and hardness (16), which is equated to “the black ray” (17), the “everlasting no” that extinguishes the higher reason, a harbinger of freedom (18, 19).

Throughout his life, Van Gogh was convinced that liberation is best effected by people working together, because the power of goodness is enhanced by co-operation (20). He thought that the revolution (when it came) would liberate people and ensure their equality (21). Yet he was also skeptical about the effectiveness of actual revolutions (22), and he settled instead for friendship and co-operation (23) as the most effective means of providing a foretaste of the utopian free society to which he aspired and of which he thought painting a harbinger. In Arles, he hoped that an artists’ co-operative would be a new kind of family, a new home that would realize his ideal of serenity and freedom (24). But, yet again, Van Gogh’s utopian aspiration became a means for him to discover the negative contrast by which the world opposes utopianism in general. His confinement in St. Rémy was a reminder of the failed artists’ co-operative in Arles, but it was also a new awakening—now, as at the beginning of his artistic career—to a special camaraderie among his confined and suffering companions.

(1) I have a rich life here, “having nothing, yet possessing all things.” Sometimes I start to believe that I’m gradually beginning to turn into a true cosmopolitan, meaning not a Dutchman, Englishman or Frenchman, but simply a man.

With the world as my mother country, meaning that tiny spot in the world where we’re set down. But we aren’t there yet, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend.

And as our ideal that which Mauve calls “that’s it.” [18]

London, Monday, 9 February 1874. To Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek

(2) The country and the people here appeal to me more each day, one has here a familiar feeling as though on the heath or in the dunes, there’s something simple and kind-hearted about the people. Those who have left here are homesick for their country, just as, conversely, foreigners who are homesick may come to feel at home here. [150]

Wasmes, between Tuesday, 4 March, and Monday, 31 March 1879. To Theo van Gogh

(3) When I was in different surroundings, in surroundings of paintings and works of art, you well know that I then took a violent passion for those surroundings that went as far as enthusiasm. And I don’t repent it, and now, far from the country again, I often feel homesick for the country of paintings. [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(4) You’ll find in Souvestre’s Le philosophe sous les toits how a man of the people, a simple workman, very wretched, if you will, imagined his mother country, “Perhaps you have never thought about what your mother country is, he continued, putting a hand on my shoulder; it’s everything that surrounds you, everything that raised and nourished you, everything you have loved. This countryside that you see, these houses, these trees, these young girls, laughing as they pass by over there, that’s your mother country!” [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(5) But otherwise—painting and, to my mind, particularly painting peasant life, gives peace of mind, even though one has a lot of scraping along and wretchedness on the outside of life. I mean painting is a home, and one doesn’t have that homesickness, that peculiar thing that Hennebeau had. [509]

Nuenen, on or about Monday, 22 June 1885. To Theo van Gogh

(6) But anyway—the family stranger than strangers—is one fact—Holland behind me. THAT COMES AS QUITE A RELIEF. You see that’s my only feeling, and yet I had been so attached that at first the estrangement drove me mad, as it were.

But I’ve seen through it all too well to hesitate. And I’ve recovered my self-confidence and serenity. [551]

Antwerp, on or about Saturday, 2 January 1886. To Theo van Gogh

(7) If, on the contrary, you now persevere even more, you seek your own diligence, your own craft even more and say, I won’t hesitate, I’ll risk it, I’ll push off from the shore into the open sea, you’ll get a certain sombre seriousness straightaway—something mightily serious rises up from inside—one looks at the calm shore, very well, it’s very pleasant—but the secret of the deep, the intimate, serious charm of the Ocean, of the artist’s life—with the SOMETHING ON HIGH above it—has taken hold of you. [396]

Nieuw-Amsterdam, on or about Monday, 15 October 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(8) Now you’ll say that I’m actually a headstrong person and that I’m in fact preaching a doctrine.

Well, if you want to take it that way, so be it, I don’t necessarily have anything against it, I’m not ashamed of my feelings, I’m not ashamed of being a man, of having principles and faith. But where do I want to drive people, especially myself? To the open sea. And which doctrine do I preach? People, let us surrender our souls to our cause and let us work with our heart and love what we love. [188]

Etten, Monday, 21 November 1881. To Anthon van Rappard

(9) [. . .] sometimes when cares weigh heavily on me it’s as if I were on a ship in a storm. Anyway, though I know very well that the sea holds dangers and one can drown in it, I still love the sea deeply and despite all the perils of the future I have a certain serenity. [307]

The Hague, on or about Sunday, 4 February 1883. To Anthon van Rappard

(10) And yet we are so attached to that old life because there is cheerfulness to counter despondency, and our heart and our soul are gladdened, just as the lark who cannot help singing in the morning, even if our soul is sometimes cast down within us and is disquieted in us. [117]

Amsterdam, Wednesday, 30 May 1877. To Theo van Gogh

(11) In the springtime a bird in a cage knows very well that there’s something he’d be good for; he feels very clearly that there’s something to be done but he can’t do it; what it is he can’t clearly remember, and he has vague ideas and says to himself, “the others are building their nests and making their little ones and raising the brood,” and he bangs his head against the bars of his cage. And then the cage stays there and the bird is mad with suffering. “Look, there’s an idler,” says another passing bird—that fellow’s a sort of man of leisure. And yet the prisoner lives and doesn’t die; nothing of what’s going on within shows outside, he’s in good health, he’s rather cheerful in the sunshine. But then comes the season of migration. A bout of melancholy—but, say the children who look after him, he’s got everything that he needs in his cage, after all—but he looks at the sky outside, heavy with storm clouds, and within himself feels a rebellion against fate. I’m in a cage, I’m in a cage, and so I lack for nothing, you fools! Me, I have everything I need! Ah, for pity’s sake, freedom, to be a bird like other birds! [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(12) You must know that it’s the same with evangelists as with artists. There’s an old, often detestable, tyrannical academic school, the abomination of desolation, in fact—men having, so to speak, a suit of armour, a steel breastplate of prejudices and conventions. Those men, when they’re in charge of things, have positions at their disposal, and by a system of circumlocution seek to support their protégés, and to exclude the natural man from among them. [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(13) Then there’s the other idler, the idler truly despite himself, who is gnawed inwardly by a great desire for action, who does nothing because he finds it impossible to do anything since he’s imprisoned in something, so to speak, because he doesn’t have what he would need to be productive, because the inevitability of circumstances is reducing him to this point. Such a person doesn’t always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! I feel I have a raison d’être! I know that I could be a quite different man! [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(14) As far as Mauve is concerned—yes of course I’m very fond of M., and sympathize with him, I like his work very much—and I consider myself fortunate to learn something from him, but I can’t shut myself up in a system or school any more than Mauve himself can, and in addition to Mauve and Mauve’s work, I also like others who are very different and work very differently. [199]

The Hague, Sunday, 8 January, or Monday, 9 January 1882. To Theo van Gogh

(15) Know, in short, that I believe I’m allowed to do anything that doesn’t harm anyone else, and that freedom, to which not just I but, in my view, every human being has the full, self-evident right—that freedom, I say, I have a duty to uphold as being the only position that I have to uphold. I really do ask: will I harm someone with this or that before I act? But unless people really prove to me that I would harm someone with something that I do, I don’t have to refrain from doing it. So, I who don’t coerce also don’t want to be coerced—I who respect others’ freedoms also insist on my own. [418]

Nuenen, on or about Friday, 28 December 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(16) [. . .] there’s a certain steely hardness and icy coldness, something in Pa that grates like dry sand, glass or tin. [410]

Nuenen, on or about Friday, 7 December 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(17) My youth has been austere and cold, and sterile under the influence of the black ray. And, brother, your youth too, in fact. Old chap—I don’t want to flatter you this time. Anyway, but I don’t want to blame anyone for it but myself. All the same, the black ray is unspeakably cruel—unspeakably. And at this moment I feel as many pent-up tears about many things as there are in a figure by Mantegna! [403]

Nieuw-Amsterdam, on or about Monday, 5 November 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(18) To me Tersteeg will I think remain the everlasting NO.

Not only I but almost all who seek their own way have something like this behind or beside them as a perpetual discourager. Sometimes one is burdened by it and feels wretched and, so to speak, overwhelmed.

But, as said, it’s the everlasting no. Against that, one finds an everlasting yes in the example of men of character, and sees collier’s faith in them. [358]

The Hague, Monday, 2 July 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(19) Live—do something—and that’s more enjoyable, that’s more positive.

In short. A kind of taking society as it is but feeling oneself completely free, not believing in one’s own intellect but in “reason”; believing my own intellect, although I don’t confuse that with “reason”—(my intellect is human, reason is divine, but there’s a link between the one and the other), my own conscience is the compass that shows me the way, although I know that it doesn’t work exactly accurately. [400]

Nieuw-Amsterdam, Sunday, 28 October 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(20) [. . .] the influence exercised by a good person sometimes extends a long way. The comparison with leaven is well taken. Two good people—man and woman united—wanting and intending the same, steeped in the same earnestness, what couldn’t they achieve! I’ve thought about that often. For by uniting, the force for good is not only doubled but doubled many times—as if raised to a higher power, to put it in mathematical terms. [331]

The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 21 March 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(21) For me personally, there’s a cardinal point of distinction between before and after the revolution—the reversal of the social position of the woman, and the collaboration one wants between men and women with equal rights, with equal freedom. [473]

Nuenen, on or about Saturday, 6 December 1884. To Theo van Gogh

(22) And particularly the one you mentioned, Turgenev, and Daudet—they don’t work without a goal or without looking towards the other side.

Only they all, and rightly, avoid prophesying utopias and are pessimists in so far as if one analyzes, one sees so terribly in the history of this century the way the revolutions fail, no matter how nobly they begin.

You see, where one gets support is when one doesn’t always have to walk alone with one’s feelings and thoughts, when one works and thinks in a group of people together. [560]

Antwerp, on or about Tuesday, 9 February 1886. To Theo van Gogh

(23) The more energy the better. And in hard times—one must especially seek a way out in friendship and collaboration. [558]

Antwerp, on or about Thursday, 4 February 1886. To Theo van Gogh

(24) There is and there remains and it always comes back at times, in the midst of the artistic life, a yearning for—real life—ideal and not attainable.

And we sometimes lack the desire to throw ourselves head first into art again and to build ourselves up for that. We know we’re cab-horses and that it’ll be the same cab we’re going to be harnessed to again. And so we don’t feel like doing it and we’d prefer to live in a meadow with a sun, a river, the company of other horses who are also free, and the act of generation. [611]

Arles, on or about Sunday, 20 May 1888. To Theo van Gogh

Love

For Van Gogh, love liberates us from the prison house of “prejudice, misunderstanding, fatal ignorance of one thing or another, distrust, false shame” (155/1:199). During his religious phase, and then while he was infatuated with Kee, Van Gogh remained an idealist about love, but when he took up with Sien he encountered head-on the daily challenge of actually getting along with her and her children. Later, in Nuenen, his disastrous relationship with one of his father’s parishioners, Margot Begemann, confirmed how difficult it was for him to find the love he desired. In the affecting struggle, recorded in his letters, between a continuing belief in the redemptive power of love—a belief shaped especially by his reading of Jules Michelet—and his increasing realization of how severe were the impediments to its realization, Van Gogh extended his understanding of love itself, equating it eventually to the “germinating force” in nature.

After he went to Paris in 1886, Van Gogh increasingly proclaimed his love of painting as the central concern of his life. In his last years, however, he became concerned that his dedication to art had prevented him from finding the personal kind of love that he had once desired and that he now realized was more important to him even than painting.

During his religious phase, Van Gogh maintained that the love of many things is the way to God (1, 2) and that loving things by way of a “high serious intimate sympathy” and with “intelligence” (2) and “serious attachment” frees us from prejudice, ignorance, and distrust (3). Later, he virtually identifies love with freedom, insisting that without love there is no liberty (4).

During his infatuation with Kee, Van Gogh’s high opinion of love is strongly foregrounded, as he proclaims his dedication (5), his sense of discovery (6), and his total commitment (7). Even being an artist seems impossible to him without love (8).Yet Van Gogh also realized that this kind of intensity might lead to dangerous extremes. He explains to Theo that the passions of youth are like the sails of a small boat catching too much wind and threatening to capsize the vessel. Still, he prefers this condition to the “despair” of those whose excessive prudence has prevented their sails from catching any wind at all (9). The main warning here is against “extremes”—either giving or receiving too much (10). Repeatedly, Van Gogh insists that love is a moral force counteracting the lovelessness exemplified by his parents’ religion. Without love, he writes, life is sinful (11).

(1) It is good to love as much as one can, for therein lies true strength, and he who loves much does much and is capable of much, and that which is done with love is well done. [143]

Amsterdam, Wednesday, 3 April 1878. To Theo van Gogh

(2) [. . .] I’m always inclined to believe that the best way of knowing God is to love a great deal. Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. 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. That leads to God, that leads to unshakeable faith. [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(3) You know, what makes the prison disappear is every deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn’t have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.

And the prison is sometimes called Prejudice, misunderstanding, fatal ignorance of this or that, mistrust, false shame. [155]

Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 June, and Thursday, 24 June 1880. To Theo van Gogh

(4) But I seriously think that your attention, meaning your best, your most concentrated attention, should be focused at this time on the development of a vital force not yet fully awakened in you: Love. Your best efforts must be directed at that wing which is the weakest, the least developed in you. For truly, it is of all powers the most powerful, it makes us only seem to be dependent—the truth is, there is no true liberty, no true freedom, no irrefutable independence, than through it. Without it, sooner or later we fall. With it, we win in the end. [189]

Etten, Wednesday, 23 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(5) Love is indeed something positive, something strong, something so real that it’s just as impossible for someone who loves to take back that feeling as it is to take one’s own life. If you reply to this by saying “but there are in fact people who take their own life,” then I simply answer: I don’t really think that I’m a man with such inclinations.

I’ve acquired a great appetite for life and I’m very glad that I love. My life and my love are one. [180]

Etten, Monday, 7 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(6) I think that nothing sets us down in reality as much as a true love. And he who is set down in reality, is he on the wrong path? I think not. But what should I compare it to, that strange feeling, that strange discovery of “loving”? For it’s truly the discovery of a new hemisphere in a person’s life when he falls seriously in love. [180]

Etten, Monday, 7 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(7) If you ever love, don’t refuse to commit yourself, or I’d rather say, if you ever love, you won’t think of not committing yourself. [182]

Etten, Thursday, 10 November, or Friday, 11 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(8) You will understand what I tell you, that to work and be an artist one needs love. At least someone who strives for feeling in his work must first feel and live with his heart. [186]

Etten, Friday, 18 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(9) I maintain that love, if it develops, fully develops, produces people of better character than the opposing passion Ambition & Co.

But precisely because love is so strong, we are, especially in our youth (I mean now, 17, 18, 20 years old), usually not strong enough to maintain a straight course.

The passions are the ship’s sails, you see. And someone of 20 who gives himself over completely to his feelings catches too much wind and his boat fills with water and—and he founders or ..... he surfaces again.

On the other hand, someone who hoists the sail of Ambition & Co. and none other, sails through life on a straight course without mishap, without rocking the boat until—until at last—at last circumstances arise in which he notices, I don’t have enough sail—then he says, I would give everything, everything I have, for one more square metre of sail and I don’t have it! He despairs. [183]

Etten, Saturday, 12 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(10) It is written, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. One can turn aside to the right or to the left, and that’s just as bad.

It seems to me, exchanging everything for everything is the real, true thing, that’s it, and now both extremes, first asking everything without giving anything, second asking nothing and giving everything.

Two wholly—fatal—bad things. Both damned bad. [183] Etten, Saturday, 12 November 1881. To Theo van Gogh

(11) Clergymen call us sinners, conceived and born in sin. Bah! I think that damned nonsense. Is it a sin to love, to need love, not to be able to do without love? I consider a life without love a sinful condition and an immoral condition. [193]

Etten, on or about Friday, 23 December 1881. To Theo van Gogh

Van Gogh realized that his love for Sien was different from the love he had for Kee: “my feelings for her are less passionate than my feelings last year for Kee Vos, but a love like mine for Sien is the only kind I’m capable of, especially after being disappointed in that first passion” (234/2:84). He explains to Van Rappard that although disappointment in love can inflict an incurable wound, a new kind of sympathy might emerge for some other, equally unhappy person (12). Van Gogh does not name names (Van Rappard was not sufficiently a confidant), but he is clearly writing here about Kee and Sien.

Van Gogh realized that love isn’t just a feeling (13), nor, he says, is it always as delightful as picking strawberries in spring (14). Rather, it has to be tested and it can be depressing and difficult (14). Still, he remains positive about love (15), and he affirms the irreducible sacredness of a personal love relationship beyond the inquisitive eyes of others (16). Despite hardships, love is as natural and enduring as the sea (17), and, like the sea, it ebbs and flows but does not die (18). In its essence, it is untouched by the vicissitudes of life, and it makes a person clearer, more active, and better able to work (19).

Love also calls for discernment, and Van Gogh explains the different appeal of a “true love,” such as is offered by Dame Nature, and a “mistress,” such as the Academy (20). “Let us love what we love” (21), he advises Van Rappard, and let us give ourselves wholeheartedly to whatever task fulfills us, mindful that anyone who does not do so is doomed (22).

The scope of this broad view of love differs from the similarly all-encompassing view expressed in the letters written during Van Gogh’s religious phase, because his early idealism has been chastened by experience. And so he corrects the idea that love cannot die, affirming instead that its revival gives strength (23), just as its difficulties can be energizing (24). Referring to Tolstoi’s call for a new religion, he recommends a renovated love as an antidote to suffering and despair (25).

Towards the end of his life, Van Gogh again affirmed the broad view that love is the source of vitality itself, equating it to the “power to germinate” in a grain of wheat (26). In 1887, he writes that love is more important than art (27) and that he is saddened, at age thirty-five, to think that he might never have a wife and children. Writing to Bernard in 1888, he acknowledges that art has indeed cost him love, and yet he allows himself also to hint at another, scarcely imaginable transfiguration that might bring his love of art to some further glorious fruition, as improbable and yet as real as the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly (28).

(12) [. . .] suppose someone experiences a disappointment through wounded love so deep that he’s calmly desperate and desolate—such a condition is possible and is something like white-hot steel or iron. To feel that one is irrevocably and absolutely disappointed, and to carry the awareness of that in one like a mortal, or at least irreparable, wound, and to still go about one’s business with an impassive face.

Would you find it inexplicable if someone in this state met someone else who was deeply unhappy, and perhaps also irreparably unhappy, and felt a special sympathy, quite unwittingly and without himself seeking it? And if this sympathy or love or tie, arising from chance as it were, were nonetheless strong and remained so? If “love” is dead, couldn’t “charity” then be alive and well? [309]

The Hague, on or about Thursday, 8 February 1883. To Anthon van Rappard

(13) The more one loves, the more one will act, I believe, for love that is only a feeling I wouldn’t even consider to be love. [345]

The Hague, on or about Monday, 21 May 1883. To Anthon van Rappard

(14) By that I mean that you feel what love is best when you sit beside a sickbed, sometimes without a penny in your pocket. This isn’t picking strawberries in the spring—that only lasts a few days and most months are drab and more sombre, but in that sombreness one learns something new. [228]

The Hague, on or about Tuesday, 16 May 1882. To Theo van Gogh

(15) I would like something more succinct, something simpler, something sounder; I would like more soul and more love and more heart. [293]

The Hague, on or about Monday, 11 December 1882. To Theo van Gogh

(16) There is love between her and me, and promises of mutual loyalty between her and me.

There may be no tampering with this, Theo, for it’s the holiest thing there is in life. [247]

The Hague, Tuesday, 18 July 1882. To Theo van Gogh

(17) What a riddle life is, and love is a riddle within a riddle. Staying the same is the only thing that it certainly doesn’t do in a literal sense, but on the other hand the changes are a kind of ebb and flow and make no difference to the sea itself. [310]

The Hague, Thursday, 8 February 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(18) [. . .] no, no, there’s a wilting and a budding again in love as in the whole of nature, but not a dying for ever. There’s ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea. And in love, whether for a woman or for art, for instance, there are times of exhaustion and powerlessness, but not a lasting disenchantment.

I regard love—as I do friendship—not only as a feeling but chiefly as an action—and particularly when it involves working and is an effort, it has another side of fatigue and powerlessness.

Where people love sincerely and in good faith, they are blessed I believe, although that doesn’t dispel difficult times. [312]

The Hague, Sunday, 11 February 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(19) It seemed to you perhaps as if the sun shone brighter and everything had acquired a new charm. At any rate, I believe this is always the effect of a serious love, and that’s a delightful thing. And I believe those who say that one doesn’t think clearly then are mistaken, for it’s then that one thinks very clearly and does more than otherwise. And love is something eternal, it changes its aspect but not its foundation. And there’s the same difference between someone who loves and the same man before as between a lamp that is lit and one that isn’t. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it gives light as well and has its proper function. And one becomes calmer regarding many things, and precisely because of that one is more fit for one’s work. [330]

The Hague, Sunday, 18 March 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(20) However, without being aware of it yourself, without knowing it, that academy is a mistress who prevents a more serious, a warmer, a more fertile love from awakening in you. Let the mistress go and fall madly in love with your true love, Dame Nature or Reality.

I’ve also fallen in love like that, madly in love with a Dame Nature or Reality, and have felt so happy ever since, even though she’s still resisting me strenuously and doesn’t want me yet, and often raps my knuckles if I dare over-hastily to think of her as mine. So I’m far from saying that I’ve already got her, but I’m courting her and seeking the key to her heart despite the painful knuckle-rapping. [184]

Etten, Saturday, 12 November 1881. To Anthon van Rappard

(21) And as regards that doctrine I’m preaching. That tenet of mine, “people, let us love what we love,” is based on an axiom. I thought it unnecessary to mention that axiom, but now for the sake of clarity I’ll spell it out. That axiom is “People, we love.” [190]

Etten, Wednesday, 23 November 1881. To Anthon van Rappard

(22) First, a man who flatly refuses to love what he loves drives himself into the ground. [190]

Etten, Wednesday, 23 November 1881. To Anthon van Rappard

(23) Moreover, I have faith that where love is true it doesn’t die, at least not when one acts with reason at the same time. Yet I would like to cross that out as well, because it’s not right. For love can indeed die, in a way—but there’s something like a power of renaissance in love. [337]

The Hague, on or about Saturday, 21 April 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(24) Love always causes trouble, that’s true, but in its favour, it energizes. [434]

Nuenen, between about Wednesday, 5 March, and about Sunday, 9 March 1884. To Theo van Gogh

(25) He [Tolstoi] believes—I’ve perhaps written you it already, in non-violent revolution, through the need for love and religious feeling which must manifest itself in people as a reaction against scepticism and desperate and appalling suffering. [687]

Arles, Tuesday, 25 September 1888. To Theo van Gogh

(26) Now comparing people with grains of wheat—in every person who’s healthy and natural there’s the power to germinate as in a grain of wheat. And so natural life is germinating.

What the power to germinate is in wheat, so love is in us. [574]

Paris, late October 1887. To Willemien van Gogh

(27) It was Richepin who said somewhere the love of art makes us lose real love.

I find that terribly true, but on the other hand real love puts you right off art.

And sometimes I already feel old and broken, but still sufficiently in love to stop me being enthusiastic about painting.

To succeed you have to have ambition, and ambition seems absurd to me. [572]

Paris, between about Saturday, 23 July, and Monday, 25 July 1887. To Theo van Gogh

(28) Nevertheless—our own real life—is humble indeed—our life as painters.

Stagnating under the stupefying yoke of the difficulties of a craft almost impossible to practise on this so hostile planet, on the surface of which “love of art makes one lose real love.”

Since, however, nothing stands in the way—of the supposition that on the other innumerable planets and suns there may also be lines and shapes and colours—we’re still at liberty—to retain a relative serenity as to the possibilities of doing painting in better and changed conditions of existence—an existence changed by a phenomenon perhaps no cleverer and no more surprising than the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly, of the white grub into a cockchafer. [632]

Arles, Tuesday, 26 June 1888. To Émile Bernard

Imagination

For Van Gogh as a painter, imagination is especially the means by which a preliminary study is transformed into a work of art. This process does not occur only as a result of deliberate effort, intention, or desire; nonetheless, without a foundation in technique laid down by conscientious practice, there will be no adequate means to express the spontaneous, visionary insight that imagination provides. In itself, imagination is irreducible, placing us “in the midst of magic” (726/4:376), and Rembrandt, whom Van Gogh placed among the greatest of painters, is also the “magician of magicians” (550/3:334).

Van Gogh is keen also to insist that the creative imagination is not escapist, and he was constantly on guard against what he calls “just talking hot air” (396/3:36), by which he means mere flights of fancy insufficiently anchored by direct reference to the actual world. He worried that this escapist kind of imagination would lead eventually to delusion (or, in his own case, to hallucinations). Even so, he realized that the creative imagination takes liberties and that the best paintings do not merely reproduce the natural appearances of things. Strictly accurate descriptions are not art, and Van Gogh deplored the kind of academicism that puts too high a value on correctness and verisimilitude.

Memory is also a significant concept in Van Gogh’s thinking about imagination, and he refers to memory in two main ways. The first corresponds to the escapist aspect of fancy, or “talking hot air.” In this sense, random mental images are gathered and combined in the mind’s eye, and Van Gogh objected to paintings being made from memory in this fashion. In the second sense, memory is connected to the value of careful, repeated study. As a result of what Van Gogh calls learning “by heart,” techniques for depicting people and objects become so imprinted in memory that they do not have to be deliberately attended to in the heat of the creative moment. The way is then left open for imagination to effect its “magical” transfiguration of mere technical accuracy into real painting.

For Van Gogh, creativity is frequently accompanied also by a sense of being taken out of oneself. As we might expect, he was careful to distinguish between the terrifying loss of self that could be an effect of mental illness, on the one hand, and a self-transcending, creative freedom, on the other. One criterion that he used to help distinguish between these opposites is that creative self-forgetfulness is accompanied by serenity, which, in turn (as we have seen), is a marker both of love and freedom.

Throughout his painting career, Van Gogh insisted on working directly from the model—whether a person or an object. This preference reflects his concern to anchor imagination in some recognizable aspect of the common world, as he thought all good painting should do. But he was careful to maintain a balance between the contribution made by his models and by his imagination (1, 2). Too much attention to “the figures” can dampen imagination (3), which must be allowed free expression (4), and Van Gogh points to Rembrandt as an example of how imagination’s transcendence of nature is “a revelation,” even though Rembrandt’s departure from strict verisimilitude may seem exaggerated (5). Just so, simplification, when it is inspired by imagination, can catch “the expression in a figure” (6) beyond what a stricter verisimilitude could provide, and “instinct—inspiration—impulse” often are better guides than some “calculating” people might think (7).

Yet Van Gogh insists also that technique, practice, and the patient production of studies in which “no creative process may take place” (8–10) help to keep imagination grounded in the world of common experience. At one point he even worries that Theo will think his letters are merely “a trick of my imagination” and his words “without foundation” (11). What applies to painting applies here also to writing, and Van Gogh shows that as a writer, he was self-conscious in assessing what we might justifiably describe as the literary impact of his words.

Van Gogh returns frequently to the idea that the creative imagination takes one out of oneself and into an enhanced, dreamlike state and that to lose oneself in a task is the “surest way” to be creative (12). The great painters “forget themselves in—being true” (13), and for Van Gogh, such an experience is exalting (14). He describes the loss of self in the creative moment as dreamlike (15), the result being that painting is less difficult than the tedious work of making studies (16). Nonetheless, studies enable a painter to learn “by heart,” which in turn enables the creative imagination to soar while remaining grounded in nature (17).

Under Gauguin’s influence, Van Gogh was for a brief time persuaded to let imagination have free play (18–20), but the experiment failed to convince him, and he ended up accusing Gauguin of being irresponsibly “led by his imagination” (21). One reason why Van Gogh was concerned to keep imagination anchored in the world of recognizable objects was his own fear of falling prey to illusion, and during his mental illness, he did in fact confuse the real and the imaginary (22). Still, he found that a truly creative imagination is an effective antidote to delusion, and with this reassurance in mind, he planned to paint, for instance, a bookshop that would be “a figurative source of light” (23). Until the end of his life, he continued to believe in the blessedness of the mysterious “ray from on high” to provide inspiration for the production of beautiful things, such as his sunflowers and cypresses (24). As he explains to Bernard, only by developing our imaginations can we discover the creative freedom that will enable the making of art that offers consolation to a suffering humanity (25).

(1) I see no other way than to work with models. One very definitely shouldn’t snuff out one’s power of imagination, but it’s precisely the constant looking at nature and the struggle with it that sharpens the power of imagination and makes it more accurate. [272]

The Hague, Sunday, 15 October 1882. To Theo van Gogh

(2) Two things that remain eternally true and complement each other, in my view are: don’t snuff out your inspiration and power of imagination, don’t become a slave to the model; and, the other, take a model and study it, for otherwise your inspiration won’t take on material form. [280]

The Hague, Sunday, 5 November 1882. To Theo van Gogh

(3) Do you remember that in the very beginning I once sent you sketches of a sort, “Winter Tale,” Shadows passing, etc.?

You said at the time that you thought the action of the figures was insufficiently expressed—do you remember? Now that was entirely true, but for a few years now I’ve been toiling solely on the figure in order to get some action and also some structure into it. And precisely because of that toil, I had rather lost my enthusiasm for composing and for making my imagination work once more. [347]

The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 30 May 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(4) The creative power can’t be held back, what one feels must come out. [348]

The Hague, Sunday, 3 June 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(5) [. . .] one finds the same thing in Rembrandt’s portraits, for example—it’s more than nature, more like a revelation. And it seems good to me to respect that, and to keep quiet when it’s often said that it’s overdone or a manner. [361]

The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 11 July 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(6) Simplifying the figures is something that very much preoccupies me. Anyway, you’ll see some for yourself among the figures I’ll show you. If I went to Brabant, it should certainly not be an excursion or pleasure trip, it seems to me, but a short period of very hard work at lightning speed. Speaking of expression in a figure, I’m becoming more and more persuaded that it lies not so much in the features as in the whole manner. [361]

The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 11 July 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(7) What shall I say to you?—some day the future and experience will say—what I can’t find the right words for. I mean—that enthusiasm sometimes counts for more than even the calculating types who consider themselves “above it all.” And instinct—inspiration—impulse—conscience—guide more truly than many people think. And be that as it may, for my part I agree with it, better to die of passion than to die of boredom. [506]

Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 2 June 1885. To Theo van Gogh

(8) What I can do, I can do, some aspects of drawing, yes and even some aspects of painting are firmly ingrained in me, and not in the least coincidentally but acquired through honest work. I say, yet another guarantee that we aren’t just talking hot air. [396]

Nieuw-Amsterdam, on or about Monday, 15 October 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(9) [. . .] I believe that people should—I don’t say ignore—but thoroughly scrutinize, verify and— —very substantially alter the old-fashioned ideas of innate genius, inspiration &c. in art.

I don’t deny the existence of genius, though, nor even its innate nature. But I do deny the inferences of it, that theory and training are always useless by the very nature of the thing. [450]

Nuenen, mid-June 1884. To Theo van Gogh

(10) But in the painting I let my own head, in the sense of idea or imagination, work, which isn’t so much the case with studies, where no creative process may take place, but where one obtains food for one’s imagination from reality so that it becomes right. [496]

Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 28 April 1885. To Theo van Gogh

(11) But I’m afraid you regard what I say as a trick of my imagination, my words as up in the air and without foundation. [406]

Nieuw-Amsterdam, Monday, 12 November, or Tuesday, 13 November 1883. To Theo van Gogh

(12) That absorption in the moment—that being so wholly and utterly carried away and inspired by the surroundings in which one happens to be—what can one do about it? And even if one could resist it if one wanted to, what would be the point, why shouldn’t one give oneself over to that which is in front of one, as this, after all, is the surest way to create something? [430]

Nuenen, between Monday, 18 February, and Saturday, 23 February 1884. To Theo van Gogh

(13) And an Ingres, a David, painters who really don’t always paint beautifully, how tremendously interesting even they become when, putting their pedantry aside, they forget themselves in—being true—in capturing a character—like in the two heads in the Musée Moderne. [551]

Antwerp, on or about Saturday, 2 January 1886. To Theo van Gogh

(14) But in isolation I can count only on my excitement at certain moments, and then I let myself run to extravagances. [631]

Arles, on or about Monday, 25 June 1888. To Theo van Gogh

(15) I have a terrible clarity of mind at times, when nature is so lovely these days, and then I’m no longer aware of myself and the painting comes to me as if in a dream. I am indeed somewhat fearful that that will have its reaction in melancholy when the bad season comes, but I’ll try to get away from it by studying this question of drawing figures from memory. [687]

Arles, Tuesday, 25 September 1888. To Theo van Gogh

(16) We shouldn’t make a big thing of the studies, which take more trouble but which are less attractive than the paintings that are their outcome and fruit, and which one paints as if in a dream, and without suffering so much for it. [699]

Arles, Monday, 8 October 1888. To Theo van Gogh

(17) Although I believe that the finest paintings are made relatively freely from the imagination, I can’t break with the idea that one can’t study nature, swot even, too much.

The greatest, most powerful imaginations have also made things directly from reality that leave one dumbfounded. [537]

Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 28 October 1885. To Theo van Gogh

(18) But I remember that I haven’t yet told you that my friend Paul Gauguin, an Impressionist painter, now lives with me and that we’re very happy together, he encourages me a lot often to work purely from the imagination. [720]

Arles, on or about Monday, 12 November 1888. To Willemien van Gogh

(19) I’m going to set myself to work often from memory, and the canvases done from memory are always less awkward and have a more artistic look than the studies from nature, especially when I’m working in mistral conditions. [718]

Arles, Saturday, 10 November 1888. To Theo van Gogh

(20) Gauguin gives me courage to imagine, and the things of the imagination do indeed take on a more mysterious character. [719]

Arles, Sunday, 11 November, or Monday, 12 November 1888. To Theo van Gogh

(21) Several times over I’ve seen him do things that you or I wouldn’t permit ourselves to do, having consciences that feel things differently—I’ve heard two or three things said of him in the same vein—but I, who saw him at very, very close quarters, I believed him led by his imagination, by pride perhaps but— —quite irresponsible. [736]

Arles, Thursday, 17 January 1889. To Theo van Gogh

(22) What consoles me a little is that I’m beginning to consider madness as an illness like any other and accept the thing as it is, while during the actual crises it seemed to me that everything I was imagining was reality. [760]

Arles, Sunday, 21 April 1889. To Theo van Gogh

(23) [. . .] I keep telling myself that I still have it in my heart to paint a bookshop one day with the shop window yellow-pink, in the evening, and the passers-by black—it’s such an essentially modern subject. Because it also appears such a figurative source of light. I say, that would be a subject that would look good between an olive grove and a wheatfield, the sowing of books, of prints. I have that very much in my heart to do, like a light in the darkness. [823]

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 26 November 1889. To Theo van Gogh

(24) It requires a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high which doesn’t belong to us, to do beautiful things. When I’d done those sunflowers I was seeking the contrary and yet the equivalent, and I said, it’s the cypress. [850]

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Saturday, 1 February 1890. To Theo van Gogh

(25) Certainly—imagination is a capacity that must be developed, and only that enables us to create a more exalting and consoling nature than what just a glance at reality (which we perceive changing, passing quickly like lightning) allows us to perceive. [596]

Arles, on or about Thursday, 12 April 1888. To Émile Bernard