Friday, August 6, 2010

On nervous exhaustion

From a letter by Van Gogh dated c. 11 July, 1883:

"I learned a lesson today thanks to that visit, namely that one is fortunate indeed if in present-day society one can live in fairly normal surroundings and has no need to resort to a coffee-house existence - from which one starts to see things through a growing fog of confusion. For I have no doubt that this is what happened to him. Imperceptibly he has strayed far from a composed and rational view of things, and so long as this nervous exhaustion persists he will be unable to produce a single composed, sensible line or brushstroke."

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2 comments:

  1. Did you see the Van Gogh special on PBS yesterday?

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  2. I didn't, as I was still in Maine. But I will look it up. I'v been thinking recently about a film from the 1990s, maybe, about Van Gogh, starring Tim Roth. I remember it being very long, but seemingly quite accurate. This, I guess, is why Netflix was invented.

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