Brief aan Philip Zilcken before 1916

This is a letter to Philip Zilcken by Hélène van Goethem. I can imagine Van Goethem carefully pressing the nib of her pen into the page, the ink bleeding slightly into the paper. The letter zigzags across the page. The density and direction seem to indicate the speed of the writing – an outpouring of thoughts, feelings, and memories. Each word seems to be chasing the other, a physical manifestation of the writer's racing mind. This is a letter from a person, not a machine. I love how the personal and the material collide here, the letter functions as a kind of abstract expression of an interior life. It reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly, and the way he made writing into the subject of his art. We are all trying to say something, aren't we, echoing and responding to each other across time.