The last words of Vincent van Gogh: “La tristesse durera toujours.” (The sadness will last forever.)
The last words of Vincent van Gogh: “La tristesse durera toujours.” (The sadness will last forever.) Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the stomach on July 27th, 1890, in a wheat field in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and returned to his room at the Auberge Ravoux, where he would die in bed two days later from the self-inflicted wound. Vincent’s brother Theo was alerted of the situation and arrived at the inn in the afternoon of the 28th. Theo sat with him until Vincent’s death at around 1:30 am on the 29th. In a letter to their sister Elisabeth van Gogh, Theo wrote what he believed were Vincent van Gogh’s last words: ‘He himself wanted to die, when I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, “La tristesse durera toujours” [The sadness will last forever]. I understood what he wanted to say with those words. A few moments later he felt suffocated and within one minute he closed