Van Gogh on Heartbreak and Unrequited Love as a Vitalizing Force for Creative Work

“Nothing awakens us to the reality of life so much as a true love.”

By Maria Popova

It is when life bends us to its will and we don’t break that we learn what we are made of — nowhere more so than in heartbreak, that outermost extremity of the discomfiting principle that frustration is essential to satisfaction in love.

In the summer of 1881, while visiting his parents, Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853–July 29, 1890) fell in love with a woman named Cornelia Adriana Vos-Stricker — a beautiful, recently widowed young mother. Cornelia was touched by Vincent’s kindness to her little boy — Van Gogh had a great affection for children — and a friendship developed between them. But it was quickly warped by romantic lopsidedness — Vincent fell passionately in love with Cornelia, who was too raw with grief to open up to the possibility of a new life. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she rebuffed him gently yet firmly. But like any hopeful lover confronting hopelessness, Van Gogh warded off dejection with denial and, mistaking her gentleness for ambivalence, led himself to believe that he still had a chance if only he tried harder. (Most human heartbreak stems from this half-arrogant, half-naïve tendency of ours to believe that we can change the course of events and the feelings of others by bending, twisting, and exerting ourselves a little bit more, as if the entirety of their free will was a function of our own actions.)

Although Van Gogh’s infatuation ultimately ended in heartbreak, in the process of working through it he found himself and his art came alive in a new way — a beautiful and poignant reminder that our sorrow and our creative vitality spring from the same source.

‘Self-Portrait with Straw Hat’ by Vincent van Gogh

In a touching letter to his brother Theo from September of 1881, found in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters (public library) — the same treasure trove that gave us the beloved artist on principles and how inspired mistakes move us forward — 28-year-old Van Gogh writes:

This summer a deep love has grown in my heart for [Cornelia], but when I told her this, she answered me that, to her, past and future remained one, so she never could return my feelings.

Then there was a terrible indecision within me what to do. Should I accept her “no, never never,” or considering the question as not finished or decided, should I keep some hope and not give up? I chose the latter.

And up to now I do not repent of that decision, though I am still confronted by that “no, never never”… For myself [I have] kept some courage… I hope to continue to do so, and to keep melancholy and depression far from me, meanwhile working hard, and since I have met her I get on much better with my work.

[…]

It is no unreasonable or unjust desire to wish that [she] and I might see each other, speak to each other, and write to each other, in order to become better acquainted, and in this way to get a better insight into whether we are suited for each other or not… I hope not to leave a single thing undone, that may bring me nearer to her, and it is my intention:

To love her so long
Till she’ll love me in the end.

Four days later, Van Gogh writes to his brother again, even more resolute in his decision to keep hope alive:

There is a love serious and passionate enough, not to be chilled by many “no, never nevers”… For love is something positive, so strong, so real that it is as impossible for one who loves to take back that feeling, as it is to take his own life… Life has become very dear to me, and I am very glad that I love. My life and my love are one.

Torn between compassion for Cornelia’s grief and agony over her refusal to open her heart to him, he adds:

In that inexpressible anguish of soul, rose a thought in me like a clear light in the night, namely this: whosoever can resign himself, let him do so, but he who has faith let him believe! Then I arose, not resigning but believing, and had no other thought than “she, and no other”…

So I remain calm and confident through all this, and that influences my work, which attracts me more than ever, just because I feel I shall succeed. Not that I shall become anything extraordinary, but “ordinary,” and then I mean by ordinary, that my work will be sound and reasonable, and will have a right to exist, and will serve to some end. I think that nothing awakens us to the reality of life so much as a true love…

As the summer sets into fall, Van Gogh — who was always animated by the intimate dialogue between love and art — continues learning to find solace in the love he is feeling as an invaluable reward in its own right, independent of what he may or may not receive in return. He reflects:

Since the beginning of this love I felt, that unless I gave myself up to it entirely, without afterthought, without any restriction, with all my heart, entirely and for ever, there was no chance for me whatever, and even so my chance is slight. But what is it to me whether my chance is slight or great? I mean must I consider this when I love? No — no reckoning, one loves because one loves.

By mid-November, he becomes even more attuned to the love in his own heart as a gateway to self-discovery and a new mode of being. He writes to Theo:

If you were in love with the same sort of love as I, and, boy, why should you ever have another kind of love, then you would discover something quite new in yourself… We are used to do most of our work with our brains — with a certain diplomacy, with a certain sharp calculation. But now fall in love, and look here, you will perceive to your astonishment that there is still another force that urges us on to action, that is the heart.

In a sentiment that Henry Miller would come to echo in contemplating the vital balance of giving and receiving, and one which calls to mind poet and philosopher David Whyte’s assertion that “heartbreak is how we mature,” Van Gogh considers what the anguish of this unrequited love taught him about himself and about life’s most perennial truths:

What kind of love was it I felt when I was twenty? … I only wanted to give, but not to receive. Foolish, wrong, exaggerated, proud, rash, for in love one must not only give, but also take, and reversing it, one must not only take but also give. Whoever deviates either to the right or to the left, he falls, there is no help for it.

Complement this particular portion of the sorrowfully stunning Ever Yours with Kafka’s beautiful and heartbreaking love letters and Charlotte Brontë on unrequited love, then revisit Nicole Krauss’s sublime letter to Van Gogh across space and time and the story of how he found his purpose.

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Don’t Heed the Haters: Albert Einstein’s Wonderful Letter of Support to Marie Curie in the Midst of Scandal

“If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.”

By Maria Popova

Few things are more disheartening to witness than the bile which small-spirited people of inferior talent often direct at those endowed with genius. And few things are more heartening to witness than the solidarity and support which kindred spirits of goodwill extend to those targeted by such loathsome attacks.

In 1903, Marie Curie (November 7, 1867–July 4, 1934) became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. It was awarded jointly to her and her husband, Pierre, for their pioneering research on radioactivity. On April 19, 1906, she was widowed by an accident all the more tragic for its improbability. While crossing a busy Parisian street on a rainy night, Pierre slipped, fell under a horse-drawn cart, and was killed instantly. Curie grieved for years. In 1910, she found solace in Pierre’s protégé — a young physics professor named Paul Langevin, married to but separated from a woman who physically abused him. They became lovers. Enraged, Langevin’s wife hired someone to break into the apartment where the two met and steal their love letters, which she promptly leaked to the so-called press. The press eviscerated Curie and portrayed her as “a foreign Jewish homewrecker.”

Upon returning from a historic invitation-only science conference in Brussels, where she had met Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879–April 18 1955), Curie found an angry mob in front of her home in Paris. She and her daughters were forced to stay with a family friend.

At the 1911 Solvay Conference. Curie leaning on table. Einstein second from right. Also in attendance: Max Planck, Henri Poincaré, and Ernest Rutherford.

Einstein considered Curie “an unpretentious honest person” with a “sparkling intelligence.” When he got news of the scandal, he was outraged by the tastelessness and cruelty of the press — the tabloids had stripped a private situation of all humanity and nuance, and brought it into the public realm with the deliberate intention of destroying Curie’s scientific reputation.

A master of beautiful consolatory letters and a champion of kindness as a central animating motive of life, Einstein wrote to Curie with wholehearted solidarity and support, encouraging her not to give any credence to the hateful commentaries in the press. The letter, found in Walter Isaacson’s terrific biography Einstein: His Life and Universe (public library), is a testament to the generosity of spirit that accompanied Einstein’s unparalleled intellect — a masterwork of what he himself termed “spiritual genius.”

Einstein, who would later remark that “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted,” writes:

Highly esteemed Mrs. Curie,

Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. However, I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble, whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism! I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.

With most amicable regards to you, Langevin, and Perrin, yours very truly,

A. Einstein

Shortly after the scandal, Curie received her second Nobel Prize — this time in chemistry, for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. To this day the only person awarded a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, she endures as one of humanity’s most visionary and beloved minds. The journalists who showered her with bile are known to none and deplored by all.

Complement with Kierkegaard on why haters hate and Anne Lamott’s definitive manifesto for how to handle them, then revisit Mark Twain’s witty and wise letter of support to Helen Keller when she was wrongly accused of plagiarism and Frida Kahlo’s compassionate letter to Georgia O’Keeffe after the American painter was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown.

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Healthcare and the Human Spirit: Walt Whitman on the Most Important Priority in Healing the Body and the Soul

“There is something in personal love, caresses, and the magnetic flood of sympathy and friendship, that does, in its way, more good than all the medicine in the world.”

By Maria Popova

In the early 1860s, six years after he self-published Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892) began volunteering as a nurse in the Civil War. Bravery and tragedy were odd bedfellows among the wounded and dying soldiers whom he visited, and bearing witness to their courageous suffering moved him deeply. These impressions permeated his later poetry and informed his prescient ideas about democracy.

Whitman recounted his wartime experience in a diaristic piece titled “Hospital Visits,” published in The New York Times in December of 1864 and later included in the indispensable Library of America volume Whitman: Poetry and Prose (public library).

“This tremendous war goes on,” Whitman writes. “Every family has directly or indirectly some representative among this vast army of the wounded and sick.” Overcome with irrepressible compassion for these men (and, lest we forget, the lot of unheralded women), he set out to alleviate their suffering by lifting their spirits — an intuitive application of what modern scientists know about how our minds affect our bodies.

Whitman recounts his daily rituals of care:

Devoted the main part of the day, from 11 to 3.30 o’clock, to Armory-square hospital; went pretty thoroughly through wards F, G, H, and I — some fifty cases in each ward. In Ward H supplied the men throughout with writing paper and a stamped envelope each, also some cheerful reading matter.

Whitman brought the soldiers all kinds of gifts to lift their spirits — from apples, oranges, figs, gingersnaps, and “first-rate preserved berries” to pocket change and small bills. “The poor wounded men often came up ‘dead broke,'” he explains, “and it helps their spirits to have even the small sum I give them.” His generosity extended beyond the material and into the metaphysical — he lent them his poetic talent and helped them write letters home, even love letters. (How electrifying to imagine a love letter to a young wife ghost-written by none other than Walt Whitman and to wonder how many such miraculous treasures might exist.)

But the greatest gift with which Whitman graced the soldiers was his generous, loving spirit. He describes his daily hospital routine and the larger ethos behind it:

My custom is to go through a ward, or a collection of wards, endeavoring to give some trifle to each, without missing any. Even a sweet biscuit, a sheet of paper, or a passing word of friendliness, or but a look or nod, if no more. In this way I go through large numbers without delaying, yet do not hurry. I find out the general mood of the ward at the time; sometimes see that there is a heavy weight of listlessness prevailing, and the whole ward wants cheering up. I perhaps read to the men, to break the spell…

He cautions against letting such charity bleed into condescension. (Then again, as Seamus Heaney reminded us, “the Latin root of condescension means we all sink” — and what more worthy an object of compassion than these wounded soldiers, literally sunk to the ground on the battlefields?) Whitman urges for the preservation of human dignity even amid these most dispiriting of circumstances:

He who goes among the soldiers with gifts, etc., must beware how he proceeds. It is much more of an art than one would imagine. They are not charity-patients, but American young men, of pride and independence. The spirit in which you treat them, and bestow your donations, is just as important as the gifts themselves; sometimes more so.

In a sentiment that jars with its devastating timeliness today, when the mainstream healthcare system has reduced patients to data points each allotted a set number of minutes to be logged on an iPad by their productivity-strained physician, Whitman adds:

Few realize that it is not the mere giving of gifts that does good; it is the proper adaption. Nothing is of any avail among the soldiers except conscientious personal investigation of cases, each for itself; with sharp, critical faculties, but in the fullest spirit of human sympathy and boundless love. The men feel such love more than anything else. I have met very few persons who realize the importance of humoring the yearnings for love and friendship of these American young men, prostrated by sickness and wounds.

[…]

To many of the wounded and sick, especially the youngsters, there is something in personal love, caresses, and the magnetic flood of sympathy and friendship, that does, in its way, more good than all the medicine in the world… Many will think this merely sentimentalism, but I know it is the most solid of facts. I believe that even the moving around among the men, or through the ward, of a hearty, healthy, clean, strong, generous-souled person, man or woman, full of humanity and love, sending out invisible, constant currents thereof, does immense good to the sick and wounded.

Complement Whitman: Poetry and Prose with the beloved poet on why a robust society is a reading society and this wonderful illustrated homage to his most beloved work, then revisit the science of how our psychological and physiological states affect one another.

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“Nothing awakens us to the reality of life so much as a true love.”

By Maria Popova

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“If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.”

By Maria Popova

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“There is something in personal love, caresses, and the magnetic flood of sympathy and friendship, that does, in its way, more good than all the medicine in the world.”

By Maria Popova

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