Does it give people comfort to brand a person they are not evolved enough to understand crazy? Or is this a cruel post mortem marketing ploy to sell the art? As I wrote Van Gogh didn’t cut his ear. And now the complete publication of his letters shows that he most certainly wasn’t mad. Hypersensitive, isolated artist who had great trouble selling his art walked into the field in France and shot himself in the chest when he was 37, but not from madness, perhaps from the surplus of clear thinking. Van Gogh museum just published Van Gogh letter collection together with the exhibitions in London and Amsterdam and most remarkable online 902 manuscript display. Here is excerpt from the letter to To Anthon van Rappard. Nuenen, on or about Sunday, 2 March 1884:
Van Gogh writes on the bottom of the 1st page and over on the 2dn page:
“I’m adding an Arabian fable that I found this week in a piece by Lesseps, Voyage dans le Soudan.
A moth was in love with a candle. Ever drawn towards it, it would come close to it. But as soon as the tip of its wing received a slight blow it would retreat, throwing itself at the cruel one’s feet and filling the air with its cries and groans. In the meantime the candle burned down — before giving out its last burst of light, it said to its suitor:
Moth — you have made a great deal of noise over a few blows to the tips of your wings, you have unjustly reproached me; I have loved you in silence; my flame is about to go out. I am dying — farewell — fly off to other loves.
I liked the idea, and I believe it can be thus. Viewed thus, men don’t play a very noble role — well, but that is in fact the case. It doesn’t apply in general, though, because…….. does the candle burn for the sake of the moth? If one knew that — well then — it might well be worthwhile committing suicide that way.
If, though, the candle itself were to snigger at the burned wings — — — —.
But however that may be, it struck me. And — I always believe that in the depths there are these things — that would rend our hearts if we knew them. There are moments when one is wholly disenchanted with people — one’s own self included, of course — yet — chiefly because one will perish soon enough, after all, it really isn’t worthwhile persisting in one’s displeasure, even if it were well-founded.
And should our ideas about the worthlessness of humanity be unfounded, our mistake is all the worse for ourselves. In my view, the worst evil of all evils is self-righteousness, and eradicating it in oneself a never-ending weeding job.
All the more difficult for us Dutchmen, because so often our upbringing itself must inevitably make us become self-righteous to a very high degree. But not to harp on about it.
I say to you once more that my idea about the drawings and that I ask you, show them if you get the opportunity, is based on things that aren’t really my fault — I’m quite often reproached ‘that I don’t sell’. Quite often asked: why others do sell and I don’t. I reply that I do hope to sell in time, but believe that I can most directly influence this by working on steadily, and that at the moment any ‘working at it’ to sell my current work would yield little. Consequently that it’s a question that doesn’t really interest me one way or the other, my attention being on making progress. All the same, both because people sometimes reproach me about it, and because I’m sometimes hard-pressed by difficulties in getting by, I may not neglect anything that is even the slightest chance to sell something. But again, it goes without saying that I’m prepared for its not yielding anything immediately. For my part, though, it’s something that stimulates me to show my work to a few people, now that I’ve finally made a start on it (perhaps that’s very odd of me). Regards, with a handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent”
