- I can't put them all in my article, but really want to share these words with others -
There are circumstances when one has to choose between working and eating, between paint and bread, I prefer the former, and I do not think I am wrong, for our work remains, but we do not, and the principal thing is to create.
The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feelings.
But I like so much better to paint the eyes of people than to paint cathedrals; for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing it may be; a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or a woman of the street, is more interesting.
The figure of a labourer - some furrows in a ploughed field - a bit of sand, sea and sky - are serious subjects, so difficult, but at the same time so beautiful, that it is indeed worthwhile to devote one's life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them.
We do not feel we are dying, but we feel the truth that we are of small account, and that in order to be a link in the chain of artists, we are paying a high price, in health, in youth, in liberty, none of which we have any joy of, any more than the cab horse that hauls along a coachful of people out to enjoy the spring.
All your kindnesses to me, they seemed to me greater than ever today. I assure you that that kindness has been good metal, and if you do not see any results from it, my dear, don't fret about that; your own goodness abides.
Do you know what I think of pretty often? That if I do not succeed, all the same what I have worked at will be carried on; not directly, but one isn't alone in believing in things that are true. And what does it matter personally then? I feel so strongly that it is with people as it is with corn; if you are not sown in the earth to spring there, what does it matter? You are ground between the millstones to become bread. The difference between happiness and unhappiness! Both are necessary and useful; and death or disappearance, they are so relative - and life the same. Even face to face with an illness that breaks me up and frightens me, that belief is unshaken.
adagio