Vincent van Gogh wrote numerous letters to his younger brother Theo, who was Vincent’s best friend and loyal supporter. Over the course of his life, Vincent wrote the most letters to his brother, who kept them with great care. Below are selected excerpts from letter 400 written to Theo.
My dear brother,
It’s Sunday today and you’re never out of my thoughts. As to these things, I’d find ‘the longer you stay there, the more bored you’ll be’ very applicable to business; ‘the more you’ll enjoy yourself’ to painting — enjoy here in a serious sense of a zest for life, good spirits, energy…..
What shall I do now? — the customary term is ‘What is your aim, what is your aspiration?’ — oh, I shall do what I shall do — how? I don’t know beforehand — do you, who ask me this priggish question: what is your aim, what is your aspiration? Now people say ‘you lack character if you have no aim, no aspiration’. My answer: I didn’t tell you that I had no aim, no aspiration; I said that I found it unspeakably priggish to want to force someone to define what is indefinable.
So these are my thoughts on certain questions about life. The whole discussion about them is one of the things that I describe as ‘boring’. Live — do something — and that’s more enjoyable, that’s more positive….
One must take it up with assurance, with a conviction that one is doing something reasonable, like the peasant guiding his plough or like our friend in the scratch, who is doing his own harrowing. If one has no horse, one is one’s own horse — a lot of people do that here. You must regard it not as a change — as a deeper penetration.
You’ve learned to see art over the years — now you go on, already knowing what you want to make. Don’t think that this is a little thing.
You can be decisive, you know what you want…
Translation source: http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let400/letter.html
Image description: Picture containing handwritten text and sketch of a farmer working in the field
Letter 400 from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Nieuw-Amsterdam, Sunday 28 October 1883, with letter sketch: Man pulling a harrow Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890, Dutch [artist] Ink on paper 20.9 x 26.6 cm. Dutch 1883, October 28 Repository: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands HOLLIS number: 8001002099
