How transformation happens
So, today’s topic is transformation.
It is before the internet and social media. Before the widespread use of telephones. So letter writing is how people
communicate. But it’s not quite the snail mail we think of today. Depending on their schedule, trains into major cities deliver mail twice a day.
These frequent letters were a conversation. Pose a question in the morning; receive an answer in the afternoon.
In researching my novel, I read the letters Jo Bonger (the hero of my biographical novel) and her financé, Theo van Gogh, wrote each other. It’s a sweet, growing confession of love and hopes and dreams and trust.
I also read the 902 letters Vincent van Gogh mostly wrote to Theo. His is an outpouring of frustration, inspiration, triumphs and fears.
I knew that Jo had read the correspondence between the brothers too. Since she only met Vincent a few times in person, the letters are how she discovered that beneath her brother-in-law’s volatile, rude exterior was a vulnerable, passion-inspired man.
Letters are perhaps the closest one can get to another’s thoughts. Private, intimate, genuine, exposed.
And as it turns out. . .transformative.
Here’s how.
Two Years Since Her Husband’s Death
Jo is depressed. It’s two years since Theo died in January, 1891. Vincent had died six months earlier by a self-inflicted gun shot.
The inheritance Theo left Jo and their infant son is mostly the collection of hundreds of his brother’s paintings. Vincent had been crazily productive, and since Theo was an art dealer, you’d think he was uniquely positioned to sell Vincent’s paintings. But art buyers are repelled. To them, the work is ugly and radical.
Theo manages to only sell a handful of paintings.
(Including one to a prescient woman, Anna Boch.)
So, it’s two years since Theo died, and Jo is grieving. She is lonely. She’s raising a rambunctious two-year old while running herd over the constant turnover of a busy boarding house plus burning the midnight oil sending out loads of inquires to get Vincent’s artwork into Dutch exhibits.
It’s worked to a degree. She’s sold some paintings; in fact, more than Theo ever did. Vincent is now known throughout the Netherlands, generally as an oddball national artist. But it’s not enough.
This is not a pastime; the artwork is her son’s inheritance.
She is exhausted. Physically and emotionally weighted down with an unending sorrow. In her diary she writes, “. . . everything is empty, everything is gone around me. . .”
She is just 31-years-old.
So what does she do?
What she’s always done.
She takes the next step.
Jo Seizes Opportunity
Not long after, Jo and artist Émile Bernard, correspond about letters Vincent wrote to Theo. Bernard had been a friend to the Van Gogh brothers and wanted to publish the letters he’d received from Vincent. The editor of art journal Mercure de France, Alfred Vallette, expresses interest.
The Mercure is a shocking opportunity. Publishing in the popular art journal will put Vincent in front of a vast, art-crazy Parisian public.
Jo is all in.
By this time, she’s read the entire haphazard archive of letters Theo had saved like a packrat, only now she’s organized them in chronological order. There are hundreds more than the handful Bernard received. Since many of Vincent’s letters are written in Dutch, she sets about translating them into French. She chooses the anguished appeals Vincent wrote from Arles, in the south of France, when he was hellbent on establishing an artist community, lonesome, and in despair on whether artist Paul Gauguin will join him. (It’s also the dramatic place where Vincent cut off his ear, and was subsequently admitted to the asylum in Saint Rémy de Provence.)
Vallette requests Jo send two drawings to accompany the letters. She sends ten. Ultimately, extracts from the letters with drawings run in Mercure from April 1893 to August 1897. At first, they capture the curiosity of the Parisian public. With each series, this curiosity turns into a growing fascination and connection.
By sharing the letters in which Vincent confessed his innermost fears, Jo reveals how he reflected a universal longing to be seen and acknowledged.
Vincent’s nobody image is transformed.
For the series of Mercure articles opened up the inner life of an artist in a way none had done before. In hindsight, it was a step leading to Vincent’s ultimate public recognition.
But on that lonely night in 1893, when the future felt dark and uncertain, Jo didn’t have a crystal ball to see into the future.
She didn’t even know if the work she’d done so far had really made a difference. She couldn’t see any path.
She didn’t know that—looking back— had she not followed the earlier urge to read the brothers’ voluminous correspondence, not penciled in dates and organized the letters in chronological order, not stayed in touch with Émile Bernard, not. . .
You get it.
Sometimes all you have is an intention and one next step. One idea without knowing whether it will amount to anything. But following up on it, taking the next step, means you’re creating a new reality. Jo had the intention and love to want to leave her son a legacy. This heartfelt parental longing set a direction.
But it was always what she did next that brought the idea to life.
How the Path Is Revealed
Recently, I heard author and motivational speaker Travis Thomas share this fresh idea about taking action. As he explained it, every action creates a new reality. Every reality creates a new opportunity.
Or, in my words, stand still and you’re stuck in the old reality. Take a step—no matter how small—and a new reality is taking shape.
That despondent night in 1893, Jo couldn’t change the fact that Theo was gone. Yet, even in the messiness of the present moment, engulfed in grief, she could follow the next gentle idea, which led to a new reality, which led to the next opportunity.
Hey, maybe this is a transformational idea? What do you think?
Warmly,
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