Home
PortaL
Gallery
Search
Register
Log in
DelearthLeveL V
- Posts : 541
Join date : 2016-01-06
Age : 47
Location : Antarctica
Random Notes
Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:00 pm
RANDOM NOTEΣ ----------------------------------------------
- DelearthLeveL V
- Posts : 541
Join date : 2016-01-06
Age : 47
Location : Antarctica
vangoghletters.org Vincent Van Gogh
Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:00 pm
However simple everything may look — behind it there’s very extensive general science, as there is behind other simple-looking work, for example that of Daumier.
[]
Science — scientific reasoning — seems to me to be an instrument that will go a very long way in the future. [] - the endlessness of time, the non-existence of death —
These reflections, — take us a very long way — a very long way — raising us above art itself. They enable us to glimpse
the art of making life, the art of being immortal — alive.
Since, however, nothing stands in the way — of the supposition that on the other innumerable planets and suns there may also be lines and shapes and colours — we’re still at liberty —
to retain a relative serenity as to the possibilities of doing painting in better and changed conditions of existence — an existence changed by a phenomenon perhaps no cleverer and
no more surprising than the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly, of the white grub into a cockchafer..
That existence of painter as butterfly would have for its field of action one of the innumerable stars, -
I’ve bought a very fine work on anatomy, Anatomy for artists by John Marshall, which was expensive but which will also be of use to me all my life because it’s very good.
What’s more, I also have what they use at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and what they use in Antwerp.
Things like that make large holes in my pocket, though. I tell you this solely to make you understand, for heaven’s sake, that if I haven’t paid Pa and Ma for being here at home
it isn’t because I don’t want to pay but because I’ve incurred many expenses that for my part I simply don’t consider unnecessary.
The key to many things is a thorough knowledge of the human body, but it definitely costs money to learn it. And I think moreover that colour, that chiaroscuro, that perspective,
that tone, that drawing, everything in short — certainly also have fixed laws that one must and can study like chemistry or algebra.
This is by no means the easiest view of things, and anyone who says — oh, it must all come naturally — is making light of it.
If that were enough — — But it’s not enough, because however much one knows instinctively, it’s precisely then that one must redouble one’s efforts, in my view,
to get from instinct to REASON.
My dear sister,
Your kind letter really touched me, especially since it tells me that you’ve returned to care for Mrs du Quesne.
Certainly cancer is a terrible illness, as for me, I always shiver when I see a case – and it isn’t rare in the south, although often it’s not the real incurable, mortal cancer but cancerous abscesses from which one sometimes recovers.
Not very far from here there’s a very, very, very ancient tomb, more ancient than Christ, on which this is inscribed, ‘Blessed be Thebe, daughter of Telhui, priestess of Osiris, who never complained about anyone.’ I couldn’t help thinking of that when you told me in your previous letter that the sick lady you’re caring for didn’t complain.
As for me, I’m going for at least 3 months into an asylum at St-Rémy, not far from here.
In all I’ve had 4 big crises in which I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I said, wanted, did.
that’s quite serious, although I’m much calmer since then, and physically I’m perfectly well. [] I’m working though, and have just done two paintings of the hospital. One is a ward, a very long ward with the rows of beds with white curtains where a few figures of patients are moving.
The walls, the ceiling with the large beams, everything is white in a lilac white or green white. Here and there a window with a pink or bright green curtain.
The floor tiled with red bricks.[] It’s very, very simple. And then, as a pendant, the inner courtyard.[]
I’ve seen some very interesting nuns here, the majority of the priests seem to me to be in a sad state. Religion has frightened me so much for so many years now. For example, do you happen to know that love perhaps doesn’t exist exactly as one imagines it – the junior doctor here, the worthiest man one could possibly imagine, the most dedicated, the most valiant, a warm, manly heart, sometimes amuses himself mystifying the little women by telling them that love is also a microbe. Although then the little women, and even a few men, let out loud shouts, he doesn’t care at all and is imperturbable on that point.
As for kissing and all the rest that it pleases us to add to it, that’s just a natural kind of act like drinking a glass of water or eating a piece of bread.
[..]
Only I wanted to write to you in any case while you were there. [...]
I’m not exactly embarrassed to say that remorse and fault are possibly microbes too, just like love.
Anyway, it isn’t always pleasant, but I try not to forget completely how to jest, I try to avoid everything that might relate to heroism and martyrdom, in short I try not to take lugubrious things lugubriously.
Now I wish you good-night, and my respects to your patient, although I don’t know her.
Ever yours,
Vincent
[]
Science — scientific reasoning — seems to me to be an instrument that will go a very long way in the future. [] - the endlessness of time, the non-existence of death —
These reflections, — take us a very long way — a very long way — raising us above art itself. They enable us to glimpse
the art of making life, the art of being immortal — alive.
Since, however, nothing stands in the way — of the supposition that on the other innumerable planets and suns there may also be lines and shapes and colours — we’re still at liberty —
to retain a relative serenity as to the possibilities of doing painting in better and changed conditions of existence — an existence changed by a phenomenon perhaps no cleverer and
no more surprising than the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly, of the white grub into a cockchafer..
That existence of painter as butterfly would have for its field of action one of the innumerable stars, -
To Emile Bernard. Arles, Tuesday, 26 June 1888.
I’ve bought a very fine work on anatomy, Anatomy for artists by John Marshall, which was expensive but which will also be of use to me all my life because it’s very good.
What’s more, I also have what they use at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and what they use in Antwerp.
Things like that make large holes in my pocket, though. I tell you this solely to make you understand, for heaven’s sake, that if I haven’t paid Pa and Ma for being here at home
it isn’t because I don’t want to pay but because I’ve incurred many expenses that for my part I simply don’t consider unnecessary.
The key to many things is a thorough knowledge of the human body, but it definitely costs money to learn it. And I think moreover that colour, that chiaroscuro, that perspective,
that tone, that drawing, everything in short — certainly also have fixed laws that one must and can study like chemistry or algebra.
This is by no means the easiest view of things, and anyone who says — oh, it must all come naturally — is making light of it.
If that were enough — — But it’s not enough, because however much one knows instinctively, it’s precisely then that one must redouble one’s efforts, in my view,
to get from instinct to REASON.
To Theo van Gogh Nuenen, Thursday, 9 October 1884.
My dear sister,
Your kind letter really touched me, especially since it tells me that you’ve returned to care for Mrs du Quesne.
Certainly cancer is a terrible illness, as for me, I always shiver when I see a case – and it isn’t rare in the south, although often it’s not the real incurable, mortal cancer but cancerous abscesses from which one sometimes recovers.
Not very far from here there’s a very, very, very ancient tomb, more ancient than Christ, on which this is inscribed, ‘Blessed be Thebe, daughter of Telhui, priestess of Osiris, who never complained about anyone.’ I couldn’t help thinking of that when you told me in your previous letter that the sick lady you’re caring for didn’t complain.
As for me, I’m going for at least 3 months into an asylum at St-Rémy, not far from here.
In all I’ve had 4 big crises in which I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I said, wanted, did.
that’s quite serious, although I’m much calmer since then, and physically I’m perfectly well. [] I’m working though, and have just done two paintings of the hospital. One is a ward, a very long ward with the rows of beds with white curtains where a few figures of patients are moving.
The walls, the ceiling with the large beams, everything is white in a lilac white or green white. Here and there a window with a pink or bright green curtain.
The floor tiled with red bricks.[] It’s very, very simple. And then, as a pendant, the inner courtyard.[]
I’ve seen some very interesting nuns here, the majority of the priests seem to me to be in a sad state. Religion has frightened me so much for so many years now. For example, do you happen to know that love perhaps doesn’t exist exactly as one imagines it – the junior doctor here, the worthiest man one could possibly imagine, the most dedicated, the most valiant, a warm, manly heart, sometimes amuses himself mystifying the little women by telling them that love is also a microbe. Although then the little women, and even a few men, let out loud shouts, he doesn’t care at all and is imperturbable on that point.
As for kissing and all the rest that it pleases us to add to it, that’s just a natural kind of act like drinking a glass of water or eating a piece of bread.
[..]
Only I wanted to write to you in any case while you were there. [...]
I’m not exactly embarrassed to say that remorse and fault are possibly microbes too, just like love.
Anyway, it isn’t always pleasant, but I try not to forget completely how to jest, I try to avoid everything that might relate to heroism and martyrdom, in short I try not to take lugubrious things lugubriously.
Now I wish you good-night, and my respects to your patient, although I don’t know her.
Ever yours,
Vincent
To Willemien van Gogh. Arles, between about Sunday, 28 April and Thursday, 2 May 1889.
- DelearthLeveL V
- Posts : 541
Join date : 2016-01-06
Age : 47
Location : Antarctica
Francis Crick Oct 1961
Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:01 pm
- DelearthLeveL V
- Posts : 541
Join date : 2016-01-06
Age : 47
Location : Antarctica
Mark Twain , 1889
Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:00 pm
To Walt Whitman:
You have lived just the seventy years which are greatest in the world's history. [] What great births you have witnessed! The steam press, the steamship, the steel ship, the railroad, the perfected cotton-gin, the telegraph, the phonograph, the photograph, photo-gravure, the electrotype, the gaslight, the electric light, the sewing machine, & the amazing, infinitely varied & innumerable products of coal tar, those latest & strangest marvels of a marvelous age. And you have seen even greater births than these; for you have seen the application of anesthesia to surgery-practice, whereby the ancient dominion of pain, which began with the first created life, came to an end in this earth forever; [] Yes, you have indeed seen much — but tarry yet a while, for the greatest is yet to come. Wait thirty years, & then look out over the earth! You shall see marvels upon marvels added to these whose nativity you have witnessed; & conspicuous above them you shall see their formidable Result — Man at almost his full stature at last! — & still growing, visibly growing while you look. In that day, who that hath a throne, or a gilded privilege not attainable by his neighbor, let him procure his slippers & get ready to dance, for there is going to be music. Abide, & see these things! Thirty of us who honor & love you, offer the opportunity. We have among us 600 years, good & sound, left in the bank of life. Take 30 of them — the richest birth-day gift ever offered to poet in this world — & sit down & wait. Wait till you see that great figure appear, & catch the far glint of the sun upon his banner; then you may depart satisfied, as knowing that he will proclaim that human wheat is worth more than human tares, & proceed to organize values on that basis.
Mark Twain
Manhattan GandhiLeveL V- Posts : 565
Join date : 2016-01-09
Age : 47
Location : R'Lyeh
Harlan Ellison Deathbird
Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:30 pm
Harlan Ellison The Deathbird
TO COUNT LEO TOLSTOY
14 February 1910
“To me God does not yet exist; but there is a creative force constantly struggling to evolve an executive organ of godlike knowledge and power: that is, to achieve omnipotence and omniscience; and every man and woman born is a fresh attempt to achieve this object....
“The current theory that God already exists in perfection involves the believe that God deliberately created something lower than Himself when He might just as easily have created something equally perfect. That is a horrible believe…
“You said that my manner in [Man and superman] was not serious enough, that I made people laugh in my most earnest moments. But why should I not? Why should humor and laughter be excommunicated? Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?”
George Bernard Shaw
TO COUNT LEO TOLSTOY
14 February 1910
“To me God does not yet exist; but there is a creative force constantly struggling to evolve an executive organ of godlike knowledge and power: that is, to achieve omnipotence and omniscience; and every man and woman born is a fresh attempt to achieve this object....
“The current theory that God already exists in perfection involves the believe that God deliberately created something lower than Himself when He might just as easily have created something equally perfect. That is a horrible believe…
“You said that my manner in [Man and superman] was not serious enough, that I made people laugh in my most earnest moments. But why should I not? Why should humor and laughter be excommunicated? Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?”
George Bernard Shaw
- DelearthLeveL V
- Posts : 541
Join date : 2016-01-06
Age : 47
Location : Antarctica
Ernest Hemingway
Thu Mar 21, 2019 11:00 pm
[..] and then (he) walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river.
The river was there.
It swirled against the log spires of the bridge [..]
from the Big Tw0-Hearted River
by Ernest Hemingway
The river was there.
It swirled against the log spires of the bridge [..]
from the Big Tw0-Hearted River
by Ernest Hemingway
- DelearthLeveL V
- Posts : 541
Join date : 2016-01-06
Age : 47
Location : Antarctica
Jan 1868 Letter C. L. Dodgson Lewis Carroll
Sat Jun 20, 2020 4:00 pm
Letter to my child-friend, Margaret Cunnynghame, Oxford; January 30th 1868.
| Dear Maggie, No carte has yet been done of me that does real justice to my smile; and so I hardly like, you see, send you one. Meanwhile, I send you a little thing to give you an idea of what I look like when I'm lecturing. The merest sketch, you will allow - yet I still think there's something grand in the expression of the brow and in the action of the hand. Your affectionate friend, C. L. Dodgson P. S. My best love to yourself -- to your Mother my kindest regards -- to your small, fat, impertinent, ignorant brother my hatred. I think that is all. . |  What I look Like When I'm Lecturing (by Lewis Carroll) |
AdmaXAdMin
- Posts : 555
Join date : 2016-01-05
Age : 47 
Gardner , Martin []
Sat Apr 24, 2021 12:00 pm
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools,
is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens,
paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals —
the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically
altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians,
are seldom mentioned, if at all. ~ From Martin Gardner In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, 1992.
.
[] Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality. That is that entire universe is made of matter, obviously. And
matter is made of particles. It's made of electrons and neutrons and protons. So the entire universe is made out of particles.
Now what are the particles made out of? They're not made out of anything. The only thing you can say about the reality of
an electron is to cite its mathematical properties. So there's a sense in which matter has completely dissolved and what is
left is just a mathematical structure. []
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
The Mathematical Magic Show (1978)
is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens,
paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals —
the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically
altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians,
are seldom mentioned, if at all. ~ From Martin Gardner In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, 1992.
.
[] Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality. That is that entire universe is made of matter, obviously. And matter is made of particles. It's made of electrons and neutrons and protons. So the entire universe is made out of particles.
Now what are the particles made out of? They're not made out of anything. The only thing you can say about the reality of
an electron is to cite its mathematical properties. So there's a sense in which matter has completely dissolved and what is
left is just a mathematical structure. []
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
The Mathematical Magic Show (1978)
Permissions in this forum:
You can reply to topics in this forum|
|
|