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| Vincent van Gogh, Winter Garden drawing, pencil, pen in brown ink (originally black), on wove paper Nuenen: March, 1884 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
LETTER to ANTON RIDDER VAN RAPPARD
I have been working very hard. I had not made many compositions or studies for a long time, so when I once got started, I became so eager that many a morning I got up at four o'clock; It must not surprise you that some of my figures are so entirely different from those I make at times when I use models.
"I seldom work from memory" I do not practice that kind of thing very much. Besides, I am so used to work with the natural form now and can keep my personal feeling out of it much better than I could at first. I waver less and just because I am sitting opposite the model, SOMETIMES i FEEL MORE LIKE MYSELF. When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly till there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling. All the same it was made under circumstances similar to those of the others> yet the latter are just studies with less feeling and life in them. This manner of working is like another one, just as plausible. As to "The Little Winter Gardens", for example, you said yourself they had so much feeling; all right, but that was not accidental - I drew them several times and there was no feeling in them. Then afterwards after I had done the ones that were so stiff came the others. It is the same with the clumsy and awkward things. HOW IT HAPPENS THAT i CAN EXPRESS SOMETHING OF THAT KIND? Because the thing has already taken form in my mind before I start on it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worth while in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real intention and purpose.
I am very much pleased to have you notice that of late I have been trying to express the values of crowds, and that I try to separate things in the dizzy whirl and chaos one can see in each little corner of Nature.
Formerly the light and shade in my studies were mostly arbitrary, at least they were not put down logically, and so they were colder and flatter.
When I once get "the feeling of my subject", and get to know it, I usually draw it in three or more variations be it a figure or landscape only I always refer to Nature for every one of them and then I do my best not to put in "any detail", as the dream quality would then be lost. When Tersteeg or my brother then says to me: "What is that, grass or coal?" I answer: "Glad to hear that you cannot see what it is."
Still it is enough like Nature for the simple peasants of this part of the country. They say: "Yes, that's the hedge of Juffrouw Renese," and: "There are the beanpoles of van der Louw."
"I seldom work from memory" I do not practice that kind of thing very much. Besides, I am so used to work with the natural form now and can keep my personal feeling out of it much better than I could at first. I waver less and just because I am sitting opposite the model, SOMETIMES i FEEL MORE LIKE MYSELF. When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly till there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling. All the same it was made under circumstances similar to those of the others> yet the latter are just studies with less feeling and life in them. This manner of working is like another one, just as plausible. As to "The Little Winter Gardens", for example, you said yourself they had so much feeling; all right, but that was not accidental - I drew them several times and there was no feeling in them. Then afterwards after I had done the ones that were so stiff came the others. It is the same with the clumsy and awkward things. HOW IT HAPPENS THAT i CAN EXPRESS SOMETHING OF THAT KIND? Because the thing has already taken form in my mind before I start on it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worth while in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real intention and purpose.
I am very much pleased to have you notice that of late I have been trying to express the values of crowds, and that I try to separate things in the dizzy whirl and chaos one can see in each little corner of Nature.
Formerly the light and shade in my studies were mostly arbitrary, at least they were not put down logically, and so they were colder and flatter.
When I once get "the feeling of my subject", and get to know it, I usually draw it in three or more variations be it a figure or landscape only I always refer to Nature for every one of them and then I do my best not to put in "any detail", as the dream quality would then be lost. When Tersteeg or my brother then says to me: "What is that, grass or coal?" I answer: "Glad to hear that you cannot see what it is."
Still it is enough like Nature for the simple peasants of this part of the country. They say: "Yes, that's the hedge of Juffrouw Renese," and: "There are the beanpoles of van der Louw."
Translated by Rela van Messel
From Letters to an Artist: Vincent van Gogh to Anton Bidder van Rappard, translated by Rela van Messel. By permission of the publishers: The Viking Press, Inc., copyright 1936, New York City.
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| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sinfonia n. 40 in Sol minore K 550, 1778 |
A LETTER
When I AM, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer say, travelling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory, and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it, that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the various instruments, etc.
All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once (gleich dies zusammen). What a delight this is I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream. Still the actual hearing of the tout ensemble is after all the best. What has been thus produced I do not easily forget, and this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for.
When I proceed to write down my ideas, I take out of the bag of my memory, if I may use that phrase, what has been previously collected into it in the way I have mentioned. For this reason the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I said before, already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination. At this occupation I can therefore suffer myself to be disturbed; for whatever may be going on around me, I write, and even talk, but only of fowls and geese, or of Gretel or Barbel, or some such matters. But why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them Mozartish, and different from the works of other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so large or so aquiline, or, in short, makes it Mozart's, and different from those of other people. For I really do not study or aim at any originality.
All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once (gleich dies zusammen). What a delight this is I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream. Still the actual hearing of the tout ensemble is after all the best. What has been thus produced I do not easily forget, and this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for.
When I proceed to write down my ideas, I take out of the bag of my memory, if I may use that phrase, what has been previously collected into it in the way I have mentioned. For this reason the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I said before, already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination. At this occupation I can therefore suffer myself to be disturbed; for whatever may be going on around me, I write, and even talk, but only of fowls and geese, or of Gretel or Barbel, or some such matters. But why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them Mozartish, and different from the works of other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so large or so aquiline, or, in short, makes it Mozart's, and different from those of other people. For I really do not study or aim at any originality.
From Life of Mozart, by Edward Holmes (Everyman's Library). By permission of the publishers: J. M. Dent&Sons, Ltd., London, and E. P. Dutton&Co., Inc., 1912, New York City.
LETTER TO JACQUES HADAMARD
MY DEAR COLLEAGUE:
In the following, I am trying to answer in brief your questions as well as I am able. I am not satisfied myself with those answers and I am willing to answer more questions if you believe this could be of any advantage for the very interesting and difficult work you have undertaken.
(A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem, to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined.
There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.
(B) The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.
(C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for.
(D) Visual and motor. In a stage when words intervene at all, they are, in my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage as already mentioned.
(E) It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins).
Remark : Professor Max Wertheimer has tried to investigate the distinction between mere associating or combining of reproducible elements and between understanding (organisches Begreifen); I cannot judge how far his psychological analysis catches the essential point.
With kind regards . . .
(A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem, to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined.
There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.
(B) The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.
(C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for.
(D) Visual and motor. In a stage when words intervene at all, they are, in my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage as already mentioned.
(E) It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins).
Remark : Professor Max Wertheimer has tried to investigate the distinction between mere associating or combining of reproducible elements and between understanding (organisches Begreifen); I cannot judge how far his psychological analysis catches the essential point.
With kind regards . . .
From "The Letter of Albert Einstein to M. Hadamard," in The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, by Jacques Hadamard. By permission of the publishers: Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
