Sandstone Press

Malgré tout

Posted by RLD on 19th February 2010

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh left me more or less untouched until that to Theo dated 21st July 1882 from The Hague. Some things arrest you in your career through life and for me this reading was one. It came across as an anguished credo filled with truth and dignity. Neither he nor Theo had any reason to believe that his work would live on and be valued, either spiritually or financially. It was a bleak time.

Beside his increasing commitment to art, the letters up to this one demonstrate most of all his mental instability and how it led to estrangement from his family. He was by now living with Sien Hoornik, a prostitute, and intended to marry her. Sien had just given birth to a son who was asleep by the fire as Vincent was writing this letter. A century and a quarter later his words still leap from the page. As does a sense that he had reached another point of change and, of course, ‘other things lose their hold’ was to prove true in a sense that he could not foresee. The letter closes with a postscript in which he says that he will ‘draw the little cradle another hundred times’ and pleads for more paper.

The poem below is ‘found’ in the sense that it takes elements of the letter and works them in favour of the essence, or ‘an’ essence. Let it sit beside the quote from Saul Bellow’s ‘What Kind Of Day Did You Have’ given in Hitler’s Victory (13th September 2009). I read the letter early this morning. It was enough reading for any one day.

Malgré tout*

Theo, It is already late, but I have to write anyway.
You are not here, but I sometimes feel
We are not far apart.

Today I promised to treat my indisposition
As if it doesn’t exist. Work must go on.
My hands have become too white for my liking
But that’s too bad. I’m going back outdoors.

I would like to make it clear how I look at art.
Based less on resentment than on love, malgré tout
More on a feeling of serenity than passion.
In the depths of misery there is still calmness.

Art demands dogged work, incessant labour
Not abandoning one’s views.
To get to the essence one has to look long and hard.
Other things lose their hold.

I’d rather talk about the bank of a ditch than an idea.
The feeling for reality is more important
Than the feeling for painting.

I have a broad, expansive feeling for life itself
Of which art is the essence.
Sorrow is a small beginning. I wanted to tell you
I am getting back to work.  – Vincent.

*In spite of everything.