Vincent Van Gogh at Zundert
|
|
Long
before your birth, within your mother,you must have felt her anxiety, her
fear to lose you gliding over yourcradle. The anxiety during all these months....The
nights spent to observe you. You were watched. The moment of your birth, your
possible death must have been feared. Were they going to keep their child?
Their worry worried you... This tension should persist at least until Anna-Cornelia’s
birth, two years later.
Certainly until that of Theo, in 1857, four years later. Your parents must
finally have been reassured on their capacity to procreate, to keep their
children alive... Then Elizabeth and Wilhema were born. And the youngest,
Cor. Your parents were reassured. Their children lived...
Broad-shouldered, red-haired with freckles on your face, very light blue eyes
and bushy eyebrows, you were astubborn, difficult child, getting worked up
over nothing. You were different from the others... You were free to go for
walks alone...You wanted to be outside...Your mother taught you how to draw...
The study of a jar, that of a Corinthian capital have lived on... As well
as the snails...
When you were six, you made an earthen elephant which you deliberately broke...
And a beautiful coloured bunch of flowers for Mom who took great care of you...