Ever Yours by Vincent van Gogh

Ever Yours by Vincent van Gogh

Author:Vincent van Gogh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00


439 | Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 18 March 1884 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)

My dear friend Rappard,

Thank you for your letter — which made me happy. I was pleased that you saw something in my drawings.

I won’t go into generalities about technique, but I do foresee that, precisely when I become stronger in what I’ll call power of expression than I am at this moment, people will say, not less but in fact even more than now, that I have no technique. Consequently — I’m in complete agreement with you that I must say even more forcibly what I’m saying in my present work — and I’m toiling away to strengthen myself in this respect — but — that the general public will understand it better then — no.

All the same, in my view that doesn’t alter the fact that the reasoning of the good man who asked about your work, ‘does he paint for money?’, is the reasoning of a moaner — since this intelligent creature counts it among the axioms that originality prevents one from earning money with one’s work.

Passing this off as an AXIOM, because it can decidedly not be proved as a proposition is, as I said — the usual trick of moaners — and lazy little Jesuits.

Do you think that I don’t care about technique or am not searching for it? I do — but only to the extent that — I want to say what I have to say — and where I can’t do it yet, or not well enough, I work on it to improve myself. But I don’t give a damn whether my language squares with that of these orators — (you know you made the comparison — if someone had something useful, true — necessary to say, and said it in terms that were difficult to understand, what good would it be to either speaker or audience?).

I want to stay with this point for a moment — precisely because I’ve often come across a rather curious historical phenomenon.

Let it be clearly understood: that one must speak in the audience’s mother tongue if that audience only speaks one language — that goes without saying, and it would be absurd not to take it as read.

But now the second part of the question. Given a man who has something to say and speaks in the language that his audience is also naturally familiar with.

Then — the phenomenon that the speaker of truth has little oratorical chic will manifest itself time and time again — and does not appeal to the majority of his audience — indeed is branded a man ‘slow of speech’ and despised as such.

He may consider himself lucky if there is one, or a very few at most, who are edified by him, because these listeners weren’t concerned with oratorical tirades but precisely, effectively with — the truth, usefulness, necessity of the words, which enlightened, broadened them, made them freer or more intelligent.

And now the painters —



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