J. Slauerhoff
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J. Slauerhoff (1898–1936) was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the major Dutch language writers.
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Biography and career
Jan Jacob Slauerhoff was born on September 15, 1898, fifth in a family of six children, and raised in a moderately orthodox-protestant middle class environment in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. He suffered from bouts of asthma, especially in his childhood years; to alleviate his condition, Jan stayed on the island of Vlieland a couple of times during the summer months with relatives of his mother's.
Slauerhoff attended HBS (secondary school) in Harlingen, where he first met future fellow writer Simon Vestdijk. In 1916, Slauerhoff moved to Amsterdam to read medicine. While at university, he wrote his first poems, some of which were published in the Amsterdam student magazine Propria Cures ("Mind Your Own Business"). In 1919, Slauerhoff became engaged with a Dutch language student, Truus de Ruyter. He took no active part in conventional student life, preferring to take a more aloof and bohémien stance modelled on his French symbolist poet heroes Baudelaire, Verlaine, Corbière and Rimbaud.
Starting in 1921, Slauerhoff published his first 'serious' poems in the literary magazine Het Getij ("The Tide"). His first collection of verse, Archipel ("Archipelago") was published in 1923, by which time he had broken off his engagement to De Ruyter because he felt he was not ready for long-time commitment.
That same year 1923, Slauerhoff graduated from university. Having made few friends and quite a number of enemies while at university, he found it hard to get a proper medical position in the Netherlands and so decided to sign up as a ship's surgeon for a Dutch East Indies shipping company. His weak constitution immediately started to trouble him. On his first voyage, he suffered from a stomach bleeding and asthmatic fits. Slauerhoff returned to the Netherlands and deputised for a while in a number of doctor's practices.
After co-running a practice for a few months with a dentist in Haarlem, he signed up with another shipping company, the Java-China-Japan Lijn, and sailed for the Far East again. Until the end of his contract, in 1927, he made many voyages to China, Hong Kong, and Japan.
In 1928, Slauerhoff switched to the Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd and made a number of voyages to Latin America. His health improved somewhat and his literary production increased to match: up to 1930, six collections of verse and two short story collections were published. Literary critic and friend of Slauerhoff, Eddy du Perron, is to be thanked for this steady production of publications. During 1929, when Slauerhoff stayed at the Du Perron Belgian family mansion for some months, Du Perron helped him to sort, correct, and edit many of his poems and stories.
From 1929 on, Slauerhoff stayed in the Netherlands more frequently. He was an assistant in the Utrecht University clinic for Dermatology and Venereal Diseases from 1929–1930. In September 1930, he married dancer and ballet teacher Darja Collin, the start of a short happy period in his life. By 1931, however, Slauerhoff had fallen ill again (influenza and pneumonia) and left for the Italian health resort Merano to recuperate. His wife followed him in 1932, in order to experience the birth of their first child together. The child, however, was stillborn, prompting a serious depression in Slauerhoff, yet another disillusion on top of his physical ailments.
Later in 1932, Slauerhoff went to sea again, signing up with the Holland-West-Afrikalijn. His general bad health continued to worry him, however, and he considered moving to Northern Africa, as this would benefit his health. In March of 1934, he set up a doctor's practice in Tangier (then an international protectorate), but by October he had left again. His periods of illness grew longer, the symptoms grew more serious, and his relationship with Darja deteriorated.
His fame as a writer, meanwhile, spread. His novels Het verboden rijk ("The Forbidden Empire", 1932) and Het leven op aarde ("Life on Earth", 1934) were widely praised and his 1933 verse collection Soleares was awarded the Van der Hoogt Prize.
The year 1935 saw yet more sea voyages, but also his divorce from Darja Collin. In this period of his life, Slauerhoff fell out with many of his literary friends, among which Du Perron and Vestdijk. During his last voyage, to South Africa, he fell severely ill with malaria on top of neglected tuberculosis and returned to Merano for yet more recuperation.
But by this time, it was too late. Still ill, he returned to the Netherlands in 1936 to take up residence in a nursing home in Hilversum, where he died on October 5, just after his 38th birthday and one month after the publication of his last collection of verse, Een eerlijk zeemansgraf ("An Honourable Seaman's Grave").
Posthumous editions
Two works in progress that were nearly finished at the time of Slauerhoffs death, the original novel De opstand van Guadalajara ("The Rising of Guadalajara") and the translation of Martín Luis Guzmán's In de schaduw van den leider ("In the Shadow of the Leader"), were posthumously published in 1937.
A Committee for the Preparation of Slauerhoff's Complete Works was put together and convened to compile his Complete Works. This Committee, which consisted of leading literary figures, among which a number of friends of Slauerhoff, included D.A.M. Binnendijk, Menno ter Braak, N.A. Donkersloot, J. Greshoff, K. Lekkerkerker, Hendrik Marsman, Adriaan Roland Holst and Constant van Wessem. Du Perron contributed a general outline for the ordering and grouping of the contents, but declined to participate further.
Work progressed slowly and was further slowed down by the events of World War Two. The first volume appeared in 1941, one year behind schedule, and the series of eight volumes was not completed until 1958. Two of the Committee's members, Ter Braak and Marsman, died at the start of the war and the publisher, Nijgh en Van Ditmar, lost faith halfway through the project, which resulted in the intended separate volume of critical apparatus being scrapped and the last volume, containing Slauerhoff's essays, being published independently by Lekkerkerker.
Lekkerkerker, ever the dedicated text researcher and caretaker of Slauerhoff's literary heritage, continued over the years to unearth and study Slauerhoff's manuscripts and uncollected publications, resulting in ever better and more complete versions of the Complete Poems and Complete Prose volumes, culminating in the Eighties in the publication of the definitive editions of Slauerhoff's prose.
Bibliography
Poetry
- Archipel ("Archipelago", 1923)
- Clair-obscur (1927)
- Oost-Azië ("East Asia", 1928, under ps. John Ravenswood)
- Eldorado (1928)
- Fleurs de marécage ("Marsh Flowers", 1929, in French)
- Saturnus ("Saturn", 1930, revised and enlarged re-issue of Clair-obscur)
- Yoeng Poe Tsjoeng ("Of Little Use", translations from the Chinese and original poems, 1930)
- Serenade (1930)
- Soleares (1933)
- Een eerlijk zeemansgraf ("An Honourable Seaman's Grave", 1936)
- Verzamelde gedichten ("Collected Verse", 1947)
- Al dwalend ("Wandering About", previously uncollected poems, 1947)
- Alleen in mijn gedichten kan ik wonen ("Only in My Poems Can I Dwell", anthology, 1978)
Prose
Original prose
- Het Lente-eiland en andere verhalen ("The Isle of Spring and Other Stories", 1930, short stories)
- Schuim en asch ("Foam and Ashes", 1930, short stories)
- Het verboden rijk ("The Forbidden Empire", 1932, novel)
- Het leven op aarde ("Life on Earth", 1934, novel)
- De opstand van Guadalajara ("The Rising of Guadalajara", 1937, posthumously published novel)
- Verzameld proza ("Collected Prose", 1961)
- Verwonderd saam te zijn ("Étonnés de Se Trouver Ensemble", 1987, short stories and a one act play [1928-1935])
- Alleen de havens zijn ons trouw ("Only the Ports Are Loyal to Us", 1992, travelogue short stories [1927-1932])
Translated prose
- Ricardo Güiraldes — Don Segundo Sombra (1930, from the Spanish with R. Schreuder)
- José Maria Eça de Queiróz — De misdaad van Pater Amaro ("Father Amaro's Crime", 1932, from the Portuguese with R. Schreuder)
- G.H. Mir — De hof der oranjeboomen ("The Court with the Orange Trees", 1932, from the Spanish with R. Schreuder)
- Paulo Setúbal — Johan Maurits van Nassau ("John Maurice of Nassau", 1933, from the Portuguese by R. Schreuder with J. Slauerhoff)
- Ramón Gómez de la Serna — Dokter hoe is het mogelijk ("Doctor, How Can It Be?", 1935, from the Spanish)
- Martín Luis Guzmán — In de schaduw van den leider ("In the Shadow of the Leader", 1937, from the Spanish with G.J. Geers, published posthumously)
- Jules Laforgue — Hamlet, of De gevolgen der kinderliefde ("Hamlet, or The Consequences of Loving Your Children", 1962, from the French [1928])
- Thomas Raucat — Twee verhalen ("Two Short Stories", 1974, from the French [1929])
Theatre
Miscellaneous
- Verzamelde werken ("Complete works", 8 vols., 1941–1958)
- Brieven van Slauerhoff ("Letters from Slauerhoff", ed. by Arthur Lehning, 1955)
- Dagboek ("Diary", ed. by K. Lekkerkerker, 1957)
- Slauerhoff student auteur ("Slauerhoff Student Writer", prose and poetry from Slauerhoff's student days ed. by Eep Francken et al., 1983)
- Brieven aan Hans Feriz ("Letters to Hans Feriz", ed. Herman Vernout, 1984)
- Het China van Slauerhoff: aantekeningen en ontwerpen voor de Cameron-romans ("Slauerhoff's China – Notes and Outlines for the Cameron Novels", ed. W. Blok et al., 1985)
- Hij droeg de zee en de verte aan zich mee ("He Carried the Sea and the Distance on Him", letters ed. by J.J. van Herpen, 1985)
- Van een liefde die vriendschap moest blijven ("Of a Love that Had to Remain Friendship", letters ed. by H.C. ten Berge, 1992)
None of Slauerhoff's works have been translated into English, but there are a number of German, French, Italian and Portuguese translations of his prose works.
External links
- Cristina Branco (http://www.melomusic.nl/cb_alg.htm), Portuguese fado singer who has released an album based on Slauerhoff's poetry
- Starend over het niet (http://home.hetnet.nl/~macplurkis/litera/cameroniii.html), Dutch-language page featuring fragments of Slauerhoff's unfinished third Chinese novelnl:J. Slauerhoff