Brief aan Willem Bogtman after 1920

This is a letter, "Brief aan Willem Bogtman," by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst. Look at those looping lines, the way the ink bleeds into the paper. You can imagine the artist hunched over a desk, wrestling with thoughts, feelings, trying to pin them down with words. There's something so intimate about handwriting, isn't there? Each stroke, each curve, a little map of the writer's mind. I wonder what he was thinking as he wrote this? Was he calm, contemplative, or was he agitated, pouring out his thoughts in a rush? You can almost feel the rhythm of his hand moving across the page. Holst is known for his symbolism, and this is just a letter, but it reminds me that the way we choose to communicate—the materials we use, the marks we make—it’s all part of the conversation, part of the ongoing human project of trying to understand ourselves and each other. It's a reminder that even the simplest gestures can be profound, and that every act of expression is a kind of dance, a reaching out.