JF Ptak Science Books Post 2190
See also an earlier post "In Closing: "a Kiss from Your Beethoven". Artistic and Literary Valedictions from the Master"
As all of you no doubt know Vincent van Gogh carried on a voluminous correspondence, mostly with his brother Theo. I sat down with the third (and final) volume of The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Bullfinch Press, 2001) and read through his letters from St. Remy (June 1889 to May 1890, two months before his death 29 July 1890), as well as those from Auvers-sur-Oise (the last of which is dated one week before his death). The letters are remarkable, and were written mostly to his brother, but also to his sister, and mother, and some few others.
The letters are filled with fantastic observations and captured vision, comments on his artwork, technical aspects of painting, philosophy, and daily life. And thinking. It has always been interesting to me how people slow down a letter so it can come to a halt, and Vincent--in addition to being an excellent observer and word curator--knew how to write a letter, and it is enjoyable to step back from them a bit to look at their mechanics, especially when it comes to this slowing-down section. So I've selected a few bits from what is usually the last part of the last sentence before the sign-off (hardly a rigorous process), just to see if there were the makings of a found-poem in them....and I believe there is.
"And believe me"
"Good health."
"I shake your hand, and your wife's too"
"Next drawings next week"
"And then it does one good to work for people who do not know what a picture is"
"His usual mode of life"
"It is the road that everyone must take in our world"
"Let me have the canvas as soon as possible"
"Embracing you in thought"
"Patience, however, you will tell me, and it is really necessary"
"I have no more canvas at all, nor zinc white"
"How beautiful that Millet is, "A Child's First Steps"
"Goodbye, for only a little while"
"That gives atmosphere, and you use less paint"
"A Picture, a book, must not be despised, and if it is my duty to do this, I must not hanker after something different"
"...so we can still hope that little by little it will pass in the course of time"
"If I were to come to Paris, I should have to touch up several canvases done at the beginning here..."
"Better perhaps to see a little friendship and to live from day to day"
"...and one remembers as in a looking glass, darkly, one's absent friends"
"Paris is madness"
"...so to form a whole of green tones, which by its vibration will make you think of the gentle rustle of the ears swaying in the breeze: it is not at all easy as a color scheme..."
[Again, this is just a selection, and I haven't used all of the last line fragments from all of the letters from these two subsets--just a few that I found attractive late last night.]
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