A little old-fashioned, but it's perfect french.
Quote:
Up until 1886 Van Gogh wrote almost all his letters in Dutch, and thereafter almost always in French. The ratio of Dutch to French is roughly 2:1. His French was very good, thanks to his contacts with Francophones and his reading. He regularly came into contact with it from the age of 16, not just from what he read but also in the daily business of the art trade. French was the language of the upper classes in Holland, and in addition The Hague was the political, diplomatic and cultural capital of the Netherlands. It stands to reason that he took French lessons for his work, or was obliged to take them. Moreover, he spent a total of a year in Paris while working for Goupil & Cie, and was almost three years in Francophone surroundings in the Borinage and Brussels. After spending a further two years living and working in Paris (1886-1888), he consequently told his sister Wil, to whom he had previously written in Dutch: ‘If you’ll let me write to you in French, that will really make my letter easier for me’. He and Theo also corresponded in French, and the letters that he later wrote to his mother show that he had lost his facility with Dutch. They are wooden and less fluent.
So the answer to the frequent question as to why, as a Dutchman, he corresponded in French even with members of his own family is simple: with his keen sense of language he had been surrounded by French for so long that he had largely lost his feel for Dutch, and found French easier. That does not mean that his mastery of his second language was complete, far from it. Many people who are not French can envy him his fluency, but an analysis of his use of conjugations and stylistic registers shows that he often made mistakes. Emile Bernard preferred to overlook these imperfections, realizing that the importance of the letters was on a higher plane. ‘The errors in his French, his constant use of ici, mais, cela, en tant que quant à, maintenant, etc. Those heavy, childish, foreign turns of phrase, in which the meaning nevertheless comes through, that language, full of flashes of tenderness, grace and kindness, which sometimes seems to take wings and sometimes wallows in the coarseness of the Paris studios or the slang of its drinking-dens, that language, I say, will have every excuse and every sympathy, because, despite the ruts into which it falls, the floods of alcohol in which it is submerged, the realist prose that sullies it, it suddenly emerges into a meadow full of sunshine and flowers, a silent town on which a starry sky looks down, an unknown world in which Christ’s words ring out, and where art’s symphonies resound. … So what does it matter if his style is not correct, it is alive, and we will do well to make allowances and to pay it careful attention, as when we become aware of superior beings who cannot speak our language.’ |
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I don't delete my original comment (old-fashioned perfect french) because a lot of native frenchs would not be able to write with such a high standard, now. I, myself, am unable to use the "subjonctif imparfait": I've never learned it, I never hear it, it's not taught anymore in the schools. I understand it perfectly when I read but when I write, it simply doesn't come up to my mind.
Edited by Arnaud25 on 27 July 2014 at 8:35am
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