Question: Which literary source may have inspired Van Gogh?
About the article "The Starry Night", section "Interpretations".

Candidate passages:
Van Gogh may have envisioned several triptychs of his paintings of orchards and flowering trees.
There is, though, only one documented and sketched triptych grouping, one which Van Gogh thought of for Theo's apartment.
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger displayed them in the apartment according to Van Gogh's sketch, the vertical "Pink Peach Tree" between the "Pink Orchard" and the "White Orchard". 
Émile Bernard, an artist and Catholic mystic, was a close personal friend to Van Gogh.
Bernard influenced Van Gogh artistically several ways.
Bernard outlined figures in black, replicating the look of religious woodcut images of the Middle Ages.
This resulted in a flattened, more primitive work.
Van Gogh's "Crows over the Wheatfield" is one example of how Bernard's simplified form influenced his work.
Bernard also taught Van Gogh about how to manipulate perspective in his work.
Just as Van Gogh used color to express emotion, he used distortion of perspective as a means of artistic expression and a vehicle to "modernize" his work.
As a demonstration of the sharing of artistic viewpoints, Van Gogh painted a copy in watercolor of a sketch made by Bernard of Breton woman.
Van Gogh wrote to Bernard of a utopian ideal where artists worked cooperatively, focused on a common idea, to reach heights artistically "beyond the power of the isolated individual."
As a means of clarification, he stated that did not mean that several painters would work on the same picture, but they will each create a work that "nonetheless belong together and complement each other."
The "Breton Women" is one of many examples of how Van Gogh and one of his friend's brought their unique temperaments and skills to a single idea.
Van Gogh wrote to Bernard his trade of the "Breton Women" to Paul Gauguin: "Let me make it perfectly clear that I was looking forward to seeing the sort of things that are in that painting of yours which Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow so beautifully composed, the colour with such naive distinction."
Gauguin made a work, Breton Women at a Pardon which was may have been inspired by Bernard's work of Breton women. 
Van Gogh made "Pair of Shoes" (F255) from a pair of boots he purchased at a flea market.
He wore the boots on an extended rainy walk to create the effect he wished for this painting, which may have been a tribute to the working man.
The Van Gogh Museum speculates that they may also be symbolic for Van Gogh of his "difficult passage through life."
Of his walking through mud to make the shoes look more worn and dirty, Van Gogh was known to say "Dirty shoes and roses can both be good in the same way.
"Van Gogh's friend and fellow artist, John Peter Russell, received Van Gogh's "Three Pairs of Shoes" (F332) in 1886.
Russell had painted a portrait of Van Gogh that he dearly loved.
In exchange for the portrait he had given Van Gogh, Russell selected "Three Pairs of Shoes" and a lithograph copy of "Worn Out (Eternity's Gate)" (F997) that Van Gogh made in 1882.
Russell selected these works at a time when Van Gogh had begun to make more colorful work.
Russell's selections indicate that he understood who Van Gogh was and the messages about the peasant or working man that he wished to convey through his work. 
During the winter months at Saint-Remy Van Gogh had a shortage of subjects for his work.
Residing at Saint-Paul asylum, he did not have the freedom he enjoyed in the past, the weather was too cold to work outdoors and he did not have access to models for paintings.
Van Gogh took up copying some of his favorite works of others, which became the primary source of his work during the winter months.
"The Pietà (after Delacroix)" marks the start of a series of paintings that Van Gogh made after artists such as Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier and Rembrandt.
Millet's work, who greatly influenced Van Gogh, figures prominently in this series.
He wrote to Theo about these copies: "I started making them inadvertently and now find that I can learn from them and that they give me a kind of comfort.
My brush then moves through my fingers like a bow over the strings of a violin – completely for my pleasure.
"Several religious works, such as "The Pietà," were included in the series, notable exceptions in his oeuvre.
Saint-Paul asylum, housed in an old monastery, may have provided some of the inspiration for the specific subject.
The nuns devoutness sometimes annoyed him, but he did find solace in religion.
He wrote: "I am not indifferent, and pious thoughts often console me in my suffering.
"Van Gogh Museum asserts that Van Gogh may have identified with Christ "who had also suffered and been misunderstood."
They also offer the conjecture of some scholars of a resemblance between the Van Gogh and the red-bearded Christ in "The Pietà" and Lazarus in the copy after Rembrandt.
However it is unknown whether or not this was Van Gogh's intention. 
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was a Post-Impressionist Dutch painterVan Gogh or van Gogh, a family name meaning "from Gogh", may also refer to: