Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1908

This is a letter to Philip Zilcken by Charles van Wijk, its spidery handwriting floats on the page like a drawing, like an abstract expressionist painting by Cy Twombly or something. You can almost feel Van Wijk’s hand moving across the paper. The ink bleeding slightly into the fibres. It’s funny to imagine him pausing, pen in hand, trying to find the right word or turn of phrase. I wonder if he felt the pressure to perform, to impress Zilcken with his wit and intellect, or was it just a casual exchange between friends and colleagues? It's kind of charming to see how much care and attention he put into it. You can tell he was a person who enjoyed the act of writing, of putting his thoughts down on paper. Each stroke of the pen seems deliberate, considered. And the physicality of the medium, the texture of the paper, and the way the ink sits on its surface—all these things contribute to the emotional and intellectual resonances of the work. We are, after all, just making marks.