to find truth in a pair of shoes

A Pair of Shoes, Vincent van Gogh, 1885, oil on canvas

“There is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant shoes in or to which they might belong – only an undefined space. There are not even clods of soil from the field or the field-path sticking to them which would at least hint at their use.

A pair of peasant shoes and nothing more.

And yet.

From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and the richness of the soil. Under the soles stretches the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls.

In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by uncomplaining worry as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and shivering at the surrounding menace of death.” – Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 1935.