4,7
Mobi The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics) with Free PDF EDITION Download Now!
A new selection of Vincent Van Gough's letters, based on an entirely new translation, revealing his religious struggles, his fascination with the French Revolution, his search for love and his involvement in humanitarian causes.
At this time of writing, The Audiobook The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics) has garnered 9 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Audiobook is Good TO READ!
Mobi The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics) with Free PDF EDITION!
Van Gogh's letters are really a treasure that anybody who loves Art, Van Gogh's Art or just great historical figures should read. The Dutch painter is known by his characteristic colourful images and brush strokes, for his insanity and tragic ending. Reading some of the letters to his brother and confidant Theo allows us to leave behind the almost mythical movie-like character and meet the real Vincent, the human being, the man, the soul and the artist he was. His letters are full of realism, understanding and compassion towards human dejection and people living under harsh conditions; they are also full of spirituality and religiosity, of love and admiration for Nature, and of colour. His correspondence is a portal to his feelings of love, dejection, failure, fragility, indecision, anger, resentment, obsession and disappointments; are an example of how Art freed his spirit, a witness of his enthusiasm for literature and painting, as well as depiction of the poverty and misery that surrounded most of his adult life. In short, when reading Van Gogh's correspondence one feels transported to the late 19th century and living in Vincent's shoes. In that regard, the selection of letters presented in this edition helps to get a decent general view of who Van Gogh was.THIS EDITIONThis book contains a selection of letters from van Gogh to his brother Theo, to his mother, and to artist friends Anton van Rappard and Paul Gauguin. These letters were collected, assembled and numbered by Theo’s wife Johanna, whose Memoir formed the introduction to their original publication and is included here in full, as well.My main problem with this book, is not with what is in it, but what is not, why is not. Said differently, we are offered an edited version of the person he was, an intentional mutilated view of his whole self, clearly appreciable if you compare any of the letters as presented here and the full reproduction of the letter elsewhere. I find extremely irritating editors with little understanding of what a historical document is trying to 'rewrite' history for the sake of brevity, to please, who?The complete correspondence of Van Gogh might be a fatty plate for some people to swallow, and that is understandable. If a selection needs to be done for a book to be saleable, profitable and palatable, at least make a selection that is historically sound, well introduced and commented. However, the main sin of this book is not even the selection, but the fact that the letters chosen aren't reproduced in full. It is not that just that the dates, salutations and valedictions have been removed, it is that many times we get 1% of the original letter, a paragraph of a letter that had many pages.One cannot separate the state of mind, heart and life circumstances of the artist from his art, because they are intrinsically linked. In fact, the editorial house's blah-blah-blah promo says just so. But after doing the mutilation, they say that this edition is "The result is an atypical take on Vincent van Gogh that avoids putting too much stress on his troubled mental state and too much straining by the editor to shape a narrative out of van Gogh's epistolary clues. Instead, we see the thoughtful and contemplative side of this creative genius, as well as his concern for the impact his art and life had on those people closest to him."One gets more the multifaceted personality of Van Gogh by having his letters not mutilated. In addition, I don't want anybody who is not a super-duper editor with an understanding of what an historical text is, to do anything for me, to produce a mediocre text when a good one can be produced. If you cannot do something well, better do nothing. You might say, the book costs less than 4 bucks, right? but there are editions that offer the complete full unabridged non-mutilated translation of the correspondence for less than that.THE TRANSLATIONAlthough the letters read well overall and some passages flow and are really enjoyable to read, many times the language is unnecessarily messy, wordy and imprecise. Besides, the many French bits are not translated or annotated, and so if you don't have a medium knowledge of that language, you will find yourself uttering a what?! quite often.KINDLE EDITION.This ebook works well in my device and have had no issues whatsoever. However, I'd like to mention, some little things:> The book has some of Van Gogh's sketches and paintings mentioned in the letters reproduced in the book. They should have been attached to the letters they relate to, or at least linked from the letter to the sketch and back to the letter. This has not been done, and we can only access the drawings and paintings by going to the index of illustrations at the beginning.> The analytic index has been linked in Kindle, although the number of page is not reflected, and a reference number appears instead.> I have noticed some typos, mistakes, and results of the digital conversion that need to be addressed.-- Proper typos: exhibitiosn (loc. 1023).-- Unnecessary use of capitals: went into an Inn and I thought that he would stay (Locs 1255-1256). , Poor lad (Loc. 1299)-- Unnecessary hyphenation of letters, probably the result of the digital conversion, as they might have been in different line breaks when converted to Kindle: bread con- venient for me’ (Loc. 1503).-- Dubious verb concordance: Those vegetable gardens there have A KIND of old Dutch character which always greatly APPEAL to me. (Locs 2624-2625).And so on.MY RECOMMENDATIONIt is because of my disappointment with this edition, that I searched for alternatives and came across very cheap and medium-priced books that supersede this edition in everything. A very cheap edition of the full correspondence and paintings (excluding the sketches) of Van Gogh plus the introductory biography by Joanna, can be found on Kindle: Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated) (Masters of Art Book 3) . If you just want a medium-priced selection of the correspondence, not the whole bunch, but seriously edited and translated, based on sound academic criteria, with high quality reproductions of the sketches and drawings included in the letters you can read the edition by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker of the Van Gogh Museu, titled Ever Yours: The Essential Letters .
Post a Comment