Were vincent van gogh's last words, 'the sadness will last forever'?

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This reddit post claims that Vincent Van Gogh"s final words were "la tristesse durera toujours", và that that translates to lớn "the sadness will last forever". A google image search of "vincent van gogh last words" yields numerous quote websites repeating this clayên. However, his wikipedia page makes no such statement, và I cannot find any good source of that clalặng. Does this clayên ổn have sầu merit?


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Attributed to hyên in a letter from his brother:

Letter from Theo van Gogh to Elisabeth van GoghParis, 5 August 1890

“Il voulait mourir ; lorsque je me trouvais à son chevet, je lui ai dit que nous essayerions de la soigner et que nous espérions que cette sorte de désespoir le quitterait, il m’a alors dit : La tristesse durera toujours. Je comprends ce qu’il voulait dire par ces mots. Quelques moments plus tard, il a suffoqué et en moins d’une minute il avait fermé les yeux. Un gr& repos s’est abattu sur lui dont il n’est jamais revenu”.

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He himself wanted lớn die, when I sat at his bedside và said that we would try khổng lồ get hyên ổn better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, “La tristesse durera toujours” . I understood what he wanted to say with those words.A few moments later he felt suffocated & within one minute he closed his eyes. A great rest came over hlặng from which he did not come lớn life again.

Other sources corroborate this e.g. here (with the letter in French) & here (describing his death).

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Edit to lớn add: I found the letter in French because I looked for it in French (because the OP said, "la tristesse durera toujours"). I wondered whether the original was more likely lớn have sầu been in Dutch but apparently Vincent started to write his letters khổng lồ Theo using French rather than Dutch in 1886, when Theo moved from Hollvà khổng lồ France.

As for whether it"s a good translation, it"s pretty good & is the most obvious way lớn translate it.

Three possible ambiguities (or alternate ways to translate it):

"Sadness (in general)..." rather than "The (specific) sadness...".It might be conditional. Durera isn"t subjunctive sầu (so my theory that it"s conditional might be wrong), but maybe (based on the context i.e. the dialog in the story) there"s an implied conditional (which, being only implied, might not need to lớn be expressed using a subjunctive) ... i.e. the translation could be, "The sadness would last forever (if his brother healed his gun-shot wound)"

Also the last line of the quotes above is a bit nicer in French. My more literal translation doesn"t say "come lớn life again", it says, "A great rest (or ease) befell on hlặng from which he has never returned."