Een eerlijk zeemansgraf

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Een eerlijk zeemansgraf
Slauerhoff eerlijkzeemans.jpg
Author J. Slauerhoff
Country Netherlands
Language Dutch
Genre Poetry
Publisher Nijgh & Van Ditmar
Publication date
1936
Preceded by Soleares (1933)

Een eerlijk zeemansgraf ("An honest seaman's grave") is the last volume of poetry published by Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff before his death.

J. Slauerhoff Dutch poet, writer and doctor

Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers.

Contents

Background and content

Slauerhoff's health had always been frail, and in October 1935 he was sick again, with malaria He was taken off his ship and brought to a hospital in Genoa. He spent time rehabilitating in Merano, Annecy, and Lausanne and by February 1936 fell ill again. He returned to the Netherlands, tenaciously hanging on to life in a nursing home in Hilversum but too weak to travel to a spa. He worked on Een eerlijk zeemansgraf in Hilversum, and wrote a note to fellow poet P. C. Boutens saying the volume's title was ominous. The collection indeed contains a poem called "Uitvaart" ("Funeral"), whose first draft he jotted down in his journal 12 years before, when he fell ill on his first sea journey. [1]

Hilversum City and municipality in North Holland, Netherlands

Hilversum is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes, and smaller towns. Hilversum is part of the Randstad, one of the largest conurbations in Europe.

Publishing history

The collection was published (by Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Rotterdam) as Slauerhoff was in the nursing home in Hilversum, where he would die of malaria and tuberculosis on 5 October 1936. [2] The book was reprinted in 1937 and 1954 (edited by Kees Lekkerkerker), and then again in 1985 for Nijgh & Van Ditmar's edition of Slauerhoff's poetry in individual volumes.

Nijgh & Van Ditmar is a Dutch publishing company, founded in 1837.

Critical responses

Critic Kees Fens, in 1996, remembered that Een eerlijk zeemansgraf was, for him, the most engrossing of Slauerhoff's poems in part because it sketched a sailor's life so well. Fens loved the exotic names, and remarked that for Slauerhoff every port was his homeport as long as it wasn't a Dutch port. [3]

Kees Fens Dutch writer

Kees Fens was a Dutch writer, essayist and literary critic.

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Serenade is a volume of poetry by Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff. First published in 1930, the poems in the collection are mostly personal and lyric poems. Critics have noted that some of the poems are inspired by 19th-century French poetry and are sexual in nature, and they have responded in various ways, with assessments ranging from "childish" to "pure lyric". The themes of desperation and the desire to escape bourgeois life, common in Slauerhoff's other poetry, are found in Serenade as well, and two of the poems were used in an obituary for the poet, who died eight years after the publication of this volume.

<i>Oost-Azië</i>

Oost-Azië is a volume of poetry by Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff. First published in 1928 under the pseudonym John Ravenswood, the collection contains poems whose theme is the Far East, a part of the globe Slauerhoff knew from his career as a sailor.

<i>Fleurs de Marécage</i>

Fleurs de Marécage is a collection of French poems by Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff, first published in 1929. Some are poems originally written in French, others are French translations by the poet of his originally Dutch poems.

<i>Saturnus</i> (poems)

Saturnus is a volume of poetry by Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff. First published in 1930, the collection gathers the poems earlier published in Clair-Obscur, published by Slauerhoff in 1927 without his editorial oversight, with some additional poems.

<i>Soleares</i> (poems)

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References

  1. Blom, Onno (26 July 2001). "Recht en slecht een onverdraagzaam leven". Trouw (in Dutch). Retrieved 6 May 2018.
  2. van der Vegt, Jan, ed. (2013). Brieven 1919-1952: Hendrik de Vries en Constant van Wessem (in Dutch). Hilversum: Verloren. p. 21. ISBN   9789087043995.
  3. Fens, Kees (5 July 1996). "En daar bleek het jongensboek uit". de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Retrieved 6 May 2018.