1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Fuente: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Contexto: So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”
Vincent Van Gogh: Frases en inglés (página 6)
Vincent Van Gogh era pintor neerlandés. Frases en inglés.“We are surrounded by poetry on all sides…”
Fuente: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Fuente: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Contexto: I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.