Brief aan Marisa Quanjer Possibly 1937

This note to Marisa Quanjer was written in 1937 by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst. It’s the kind of thing that sits between image and language, a little world made of ink on paper. The script is so personal, so full of tiny variations in pressure and speed, that it feels almost sculptural. You can see the hand moving across the page. I love the way the words bunch together and then stretch out, like thoughts forming and reforming. It’s so casual, yet it carries a real weight of emotion. I don't know what it says. It feels like an invitation, a thought, a secret. I'm reminded of Cy Twombly’s blackboard paintings, where language dissolves into pure mark-making. It’s that sense of something deeply human trying to express itself through imperfect means. Ultimately, it’s the openness, the ambiguity, that makes this little note so compelling.