Gedicht uit archief Philip Zilcken Possibly 1913 - 1930

Albert Verwey created this poem from Philip Zilcken's archive, and presented it on paper. Its most striking feature is its apparent simplicity, a blank page subtly animated by faint textual traces. This immediately draws our attention to the material presence of the paper itself. The poem, receding into the background, operates almost as a ghostly inscription. It asks us to consider how language inhabits space. The poem is presented in a linear format, yet its receding quality challenges our expectations of direct engagement with text. It’s as if Verwey is presenting us with a conceptual piece, playing with notions of absence and presence. Consider how this work destabilizes the traditional role of poetry as a vehicle for explicit meaning. Instead, it invites us to meditate on the act of reading itself and the silent dialogue between the viewer and the work, a meditation framed within a larger discourse on the nature of artistic communication.