Rede bij de begrafenis van Isaac Gosschalk Possibly 1907 - 1914

This is August Allebé’s eulogy for Isaac Gosschalk, written in Amsterdam in October 1901, just an inky trace of a moment gone by. I imagine Allebé, pen in hand, hunched over a desk, the nib scratching across the page, a dance of thought and memory. The loops and swirls of his handwriting, those dark, emphatic strokes—they feel like the man himself, pouring his heart out in ink. You can feel his presence in those lines, the way he presses down on certain words, as if trying to capture the weight of his emotions. It is a private, intimate reflection, a moment of grief and remembrance made visible, and I wonder what it was like for him to write those words, to try and capture the essence of his friend in ink. Allebé probably wasn't thinking about posterity. He was just trying to honor a friend, and now, more than a century later, we’re bearing witness. It's like overhearing a whispered conversation across time.