



Produced by Gary Rees, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Print project.)








THE LETTERS OF A POST-IMPRESSIONIST

[Illustration]

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

[Illustration: VINCENT VAN GOGH

BY HIMSELF]




THE LETTERS OF A

POST-IMPRESSIONIST

BEING

THE FAMILIAR CORRESPONDENCE

OF VINCENT VAN GOGH

[Illustration: colophon]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1913

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.




INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON VAN GOGH AND HIS ART.


Though the collection of letters contained in Cassirer's publication,
"Vincent Van Gogh. Briefe," is not a complete one, from my knowledge of
a very large number of the letters which are not included in this
volume, I feel able to say that the present selection is in any case
very representative and contains all that is essential in respect to Van
Gogh's art-credo and general attitude of mind.

For reasons into which it is unnecessary for me to enter here, it was
found convenient to adopt the form of Cassirer's publication arranged by
Margarete Mauthner, and my translation has therefore been made from the
German (Fourth Edition, 1911). Still, with the view of avoiding the
errors which were bound to creep into a double translation of this sort,
I took care, when my version was complete, to compare it with as many of
the original French letters as I was able to find, and I am glad to say
that by this means I succeeded in satisfying myself as to the accuracy
of every line from page 39 to the end.

The letters printed up to page 38, some of which I fancy must have been
written in Dutch--a language which in any case I could not have
read--have not been compared with the originals. But, seeing that the
general quality of the German translation of the letters after page 39
was so good that I was able to discover only the small handful of
inaccuracies referred to in the appendix, I think the reader may rest
assured that the matter covering pages 1 to 38 is sufficiently
trustworthy for all ordinary purposes.

I say that "I fancy" some of the letters which occur between pages 1 and
38 were written in Dutch; for I am not by any means certain of this. In
any case I can vouch for the fact that the originals of all the letters
after page 38 were in French, as I have seen them. But in this respect
Paul Gauguin's remark about his friend Van Gogh is not without interest:
"Il oubliait meme," wrote the famous painter of negresses, "d'ecrire le
hollandais, et comme on a pu voir par la publication de ses lettres a
son frere, il n'ecrivait jamais qu'en francais, et cela admirablement,
avec des 'Tant qu'a, Quant a,' a n'en plus finir."[1]

Rather than disfigure my pages with a quantity of notes, I preferred to
put my remarks relative to the divergencies between the original French
and the German in the form of an appendix (to which the Numbers 1 to 35
in the text refer), and have thus kept only those notes in the text
which were indispensable for the proper understanding of the book. Be
this as it may, the inaccuracies and doubts discussed in the appendix
are, on the whole, of such slight import, that those readers who do not
wish to be interrupted by pedantic quibbles will be well advised if they
simply read straight on, without heeding the figures in the text. To
protect myself against fault-finders, however, such readers will
understand that it was necessary for me to prepare some sort of a list
referring to those passages which, in the German, differed even slightly
from the French original.

In the letters not included in Cassirer's publication, there are, of
course, a few passages which, for obvious reasons, could never have been
brought before the German or English reading public; as will be seen,
however, the present letters in themselves are but more or less lengthy
fragments, carefully edited by the friends of the deceased painter,
while the almost complete omission of dates and other biographical
information usually accompanying a volume of this sort, may also at
first be felt as a rather disturbing blemish.

I would like, however, to seize this opportunity to defend Margarete
Mauthner against the charge of having made a "fantastic arrangement" of
these letters; for, if the person who made this charge had only been
acquainted with the facts of the case, he would have known that she had
done no more (at least from page 39 onwards) than faithfully to follow
Emile Bernard's original arrangement of his friend's correspondence in
the "Mercure de France"; and surely we must assume that Emile Bernard,
Van Gogh's devoted admirer, was the best judge as to what should, or
should not, appear of all that his friend had written.

With regard to dates, however, Emile Bernard does give a little more
information than Margarete Mauthner; but it is very little, and it is as
follows: the letters to E. Bernard from page 39 to page 73 were written
during 1887; those from page 73 to page 86 were written during 1888;
those from page 108 to page 112 were written during 1889, and the
remainder, as Margarete Mauthner also tells us, were written during
1890. Of the letters to Van Gogh's brother, I am afraid I can say
nothing more definite than that all those which occur after page 87 were
written in Arles, and probably San Remy, between 1887 and 1890.

Now, postponing for a moment, the discussion of Van Gogh's actual place
in the history of the art of the nineteenth century, and bearing in mind
the amount of adverse criticism with which his work has met for many
years, it does not seem irrelevant here to lay stress upon the fact that
these letters are all _private, intimate_ communications, never intended
to reach the public eye. And I feel all the more inclined to emphasize
this point, seeing that, to the lay student of art, as also to the
art-student himself, it is often a difficult task to take the sincerity
of the art-innovator for granted. Confronted with a new technique and an
apparently unprecedented conception of the outer-world--faced, in fact,
by a patch of strange blood; for that is what it comes to after all--we
are prone to doubt that our man is _bona fide_. Filled with the
prejudices and prepossessions of centuries, and knowing from sad
experience that the art-world is not without its arch-humbugs, we find
it difficult to believe that such a strange and foreign grasp of reality
could actually have been felt by the innovator in our midst. And, rather
than question our own values and our own grasp of reality, we
instinctively, and, as I think, very healthily, incline to doubt the
sincerity of the representative of this new standpoint which is
offensive to us.

In Van Gogh's case, however, we are particularly fortunate; for we
possess these letters which are proof enough of the sincerity with which
he pursued his calling. And, as I say, he did not write them for the
press, nor did he compose them as a conscious teacher. They simply took
shape quite naturally in his moments of respite, when he felt the need
of unburdening his heart to some sympathetic listener; and in writing
them he was as ingenuous and as unembarrassed as a child. He wrote to
his brother and to a bosom friend, Emile Bernard. As I have mentioned,
a good deal in these letters had to be suppressed--and very naturally
too. For if this correspondence had not contained much that was of too
intimate a character for publication, it is obvious that the very parts
that were considered publishable, would not have had a quarter of the
value which we must now ascribe to them. It is precisely because these
letters are, as it were, soliloquies which Van Gogh held in the presence
of his own soul, that they seem to me to be of such incalculable value
to all who think and work in the domain of art, and even in the domain
of psychology and morality to-day.

For everyone who is acquainted with the literature of Aesthetic, must
know how poor we are in human documents of this nature, and how
comparatively valueless the greater part even of our poor treasure is,
when it is compared with the profound works which men who were not
themselves painters or sculptors, have contributed to our literature on
the subject.

Who has not been disappointed on reading Ghiberti's commentaries,
Leonardo's note books, Vasari's discourses on "Technique," Antoine
Raphael Mengs's treatises, Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, Reynolds'
Discourses, Alfred Stevens' Aphorisms, etc.? But who has not felt that
he was foredoomed to disappointment in each case? For an artist who
could express the "why" and the "how" of his productions in words would
scarcely require to wield the chisel or the brush with any special
power. The way in which one chooses to express oneself is no accident;
it is determined by the very source of one's artistic passion. A true
painter expresses himself best in paint.

With Van Gogh's letters, however, we are not concerned with a painter
who is writing a text-book for posterity, or undertaking to teach
anybody his art, or to reveal the secrets of it to his fellows. The
communications to his brother and his friend, printed in this volume,
partake much more of the nature of a running commentary to his
life-work, a Sabbath's meditation upon and contemplation of his six
days' labour, than a series of technical discourses relating to his
procedure and its merits. True, technical points arise, but they are
merely the fleeting doubts or questionings of an expert chatting
intimately with an intimate, and are quite free from any pedagogic or
didactic spirit. On the other hand, however, that which he gives us, and
which the others above-mentioned scarcely touch upon, is the record of
his misgivings and fears concerning the passion that animated him, the
value of this passion, and the meaning of his function as a painter in
the midst of civilised Europe of the nineteenth century. These letters
are not only a confession of the fact that he participated heart and
soul in the negative revolution of the latter half of that century, they
are also a revelation of the truth that he himself was a bridge leading
out of it, to better and more positive things.

He touches upon these questions lightly, as is only fitting in letters
that bear other tidings of a more prosaic nature, but he never can
conceal the earnestness with which he faced the problems that were
present in his mind, and as a stenographic report of these problems
these letters make the strongest claim upon our attention.

With regard to his ultimate dementia, I have little doubt myself as to
how it was brought about. As in the case of Nietzsche and many another
foreign or English poet or thinker, I cannot help suspecting it was the
outcome of that protracted concentration of thought upon one or two
themes (the chief characteristic of all mania, by-the-bye), which he
and a few other unfortunate and whole-hearted men found it necessary to
practise in the midst of a bustling, changing, and feverishly restless
age, if anything of _lasting_ worth was to be accomplished.

Imagine a man trying to study the laws governing a spinning top in the
midst of the traffic of the city, and you have a fair image of the kind
of task a sincere artist or thinker undertakes at the present day, if he
resolve, in the midst of the rush and flurry of our age, to probe the
deep mystery of that particular part of life to which he may happen to
feel himself drawn by his individual tastes and abilities. Not only is
he foredoomed to dementia by the circumstance of his occupation, but the
very position he assumes--bent over his task amid the racket and thunder
of the crowded thoroughfare of modern life--gives him at least the
aspect of a madman from the start.

And Van Gogh himself was perfectly aware of this. For he realized that
the claims