The Letters of a Post-Impressionist Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,Classics
The Letters of a Post-Impressionist Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh Details
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
Reviews
This review is for the free Project Gutenberg version of "The Letters of a Post-Impressionist Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh" translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Since these Project Gutenberg books do not carry a unique ISBN number, Amazon frequently mixes reviews with others versions.I've never been a fan of biographies- they seem to say as much about the biographer as the subject. But I have become a bit of an addict when it comes to collected letters of interesting people. I've always been fascinated by Van Gogh so when I went looking for collected letters I started with this free version."Letters" is actually conservative British philosopher Ludovici's 1912 translation of Margaret Mauthner's German translation of Bruno Cassirer's original Dutch work (Clear as mud, right?), Roughly a third of the book consists of Ludovici's very long introductory essay and appended notes regarding the translation.The core of the book is actually fragments of letters from Van Gogh to his brother, Theo or friend, Emile Bernard, with no context at all- no date, no identification of the paintings mentioned, Nothing other than section headers indicating the recipient of the following fragments. Although Van Gogh's comments were fascinating, the fragmentary nature and lack of context was extremely frustrating. It really doesn't provide a very full look at Van Gogh. In addition, many of the original letters included sketches but- at least on a kindle keyboard- they aren't visible here. You can , however, read this book on the Project Gutenberg website and the sketches show there.The best parts of this book are 1) it's free :), 2) if you are interested in the process of translation, there is tremendous detail and 3) best of all, in the process of trying to identify some of the paintings mentioned I found the vangoghletters.org website. Wonderful site with a comprehensive collection of letters with context given. For example, the first letter in this book is letter number 257 on the website. It was written August 14, 1882 and the paintings mentioned are identified. And, get this, you can actually click a link to see an image of the original letter. I may still buy another Van Gogh letters collection, but it really isn't necessary now that I've found this site.