Abstract
This is a critical bibliographical survey of academic studies published in 2023 in the area of Dutch Studies.
1 Middle Dutch Literature to 1500
General
Bureaucratie in wording: Studies rond de kanselarijregisters van de Hollandse grafelijkheid in de Henegouwse periode, 1299–1345, ed by J. W. J. Burgers, E. C. Dijkhof, and G. van Herwijnen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2023), is a study of the first systematic registration of charters by the clerks of the Dutch chancery of Count Willem III in 1316. This was the first step in the development of the central bureaucracy of the Holland-Zeeuwse countship. This book analyses the origin, contents, and function of these registers and their relevance as sources for events in the first half of the fourteenth century.
Andrea van Leerdam, Woodcuts as Reading Guides: How Images Shaped Knowledge Transmission in Medical-Astrological Books in Dutch (1500–1550) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), based on a PhD thesis, examines knowledge communication through the example of the rhetorical function of woodcuts in medical-astrological books that were aimed at the general public. Van Leerdam assesses how the woodcuts affected different aspects of knowledge communication and how this communication was perceived regarding reliability, organization, and visualization of knowledge. This study also contains an analysis of book producers’ intentions and assumptions and an investigation of the material aspects of such books, traces of use, and layout. It is established that at the time there was a strong connection between astrology and medicine, and woodcuts became an example of the potential of images and their uses.
De Rijmbijbel van Jacob van Maerlant: Het oudste geïllustreerde handschrift in het Nederlands, ed. by Jan Pauwels and Bram Caers (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), is dedicated to Maerlant’s Rijmbijbel which is one of the oldest illustrated manuscripts of the Netherlands. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Rijmbijbel and introductions to each of the illustrations, the original text of the bijbel, and a translation into contemporary Dutch.
Individual Authors
Jan van Boendale
Dirk Schoenaers, ‘Een verloren hoofdstukje van de Brabantsche yeesten? Vanden parlementen die te Mechelen lagen ende ander dingen’, Queeste, 30:1 (2023), 6–42, is a discussion of Jan van Boendale’s Brabantsche yeesten and a missing chapter describing the 1342 Mechelen fire. This Mechelen chapter is found in two manuscripts: Jan van Errdingen’s Livres des croniques de Brabant and a copy of Boendale’s chronicle made by Gillis die Voecht in the early seventeenth century. The existence of this chapter is mentioned in a copy of Bondaele’s Yeesten completed by Henricus van den Damme in 1444. The Mechelen chapter is included in this essay.
Penninc and Pieter Vostaert
Jelmar Hugen, ‘Schouder aan schouder: Over de droom van Ysabele in de Roman van Walewein’, Madoc, 28:1 (2023), 1–24, analyses Ysabele’s dream in the Roman van Walewein and suggests that images occurring in this dream could have been influenced by Historica Brittonum’s description of King Arthur.
Suster Bertken
Dieuwke van der Poel, ‘Van devotie naar esthetiek: Zuster Bertken in de Zilverdistelreeks’, Madoc, 37:2 (2023), 89–98, explores the question of why Suster Bertken’s songs appear in the prestigious Zilverdistelreeks, published in the early twentieth century, examining the transition from devotional songs to canonized poetry with an aesthetic value.
2 Early Modern Literature, 1500–1800
Martinus Schockius: De Miseria Eruditorum—Über das Elend der Gelehrten (1650), ed. by Eckard Lefèvre (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023), is the third-to-last text of a collection of twenty that were edited by Marten Schoock and called Orationum et Dissertationum Variarum, Diversis locis ac temporibus scriptarum atque habitarum Decades Duae, published in 1650. De Miseria Eruditorum is the longest text of this collection, 120 pages, and details the conflict of intellectual life with a number of different miseriae such as bodily or psychological suffering, being disdained in one’s country, polemics, and the difficult relationship between scholarship, power, and death. Lefèvre has translated this book expertly from Latin into German—both are included—and provides illuminating and detailed commentary, outlining the various miseriae and discussing Schoockius’ sources and influences.
Tot publijcque dienst der studie: Boeken uit de Bibliotheca Thysiana, ed. by Wim van Anrooij and Paul Hoftijzer (Hilversum: Verloren, 2023), is part of a series of recent studies about Johannes Thysius and has as its subject the representation of a selection of about 100 books from Thysius’s library. The books represented are rarely known nowadays but played a huge role in scientific debates of their time.
The Deshima Diaries 1641–1660: The Dagregisters Kept by the Chiefs of the Dutch East India Company Factory in Nagasaki, Japan, ed. by Cynthia Valle, Isabel Tanaka-van Daalen, and Leonard Blussé (Leiden: Brill, 2023), are the journals kept by the chiefs of the Dutch trading post, employed by the Dutch East India Company, describing their life under restrictions while living on the island of Deshima during Japan’s early seclusion period. The journals mention effects of the imposed restrictions by the Japanese, trading activities, and annual travel to Edo, and they illuminate the economic and social background of Nagasaki at this time.
Cornelis J. Schilt, ‘ “Spectatissimo, Eruditione & Pietate, Insigno Viro”: Abraham Rogerius, the Open-Deure, and the Identity of A. W. JCtus’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 2:10 (2023), 259–277, is a discussion of the edition history, editors, and author of Abraham Rogerius’s De Open-Deure tot het Verborgen Heydendom, published in Leiden in 1651; Schilt concludes that there are two different editions of the Open-Deure. Schilt’s study of the editors of the Open-Deure demonstrates that the editor of the detailed commentary, A. W. JCtus, is not the Polish Socinian theologian Andreas Wissowatius, but Arnoldus Wittens, a lawyer and politician from Leiden.
De Comentarius van Emanuel van Meteren, Een geannoteerde editie van een verloren gewaand zestiende-eeuws familieboek, ed. by Helmer J. Helmers (Hilversum: Verloren, 2023), contains an introduction and a transcription of the Comentarius, the autobiographical notes of Emanuel van Metern which had been lost since 1680 and were found only in 2019. This edition is relevant for those interested in the genre of the familieboek and the Nederlandse Opstand.
René Stuip, Etienne Néaulme: Een Utrechtse uitgever van Franse boeken, 1730–1744 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), researches the little-known publishing world of Utrecht through the example of Néaulme, who was known for specializing in publishing predominantly French books but also published works in Latin and Dutch.
Anna de Haas, Jan van Gijsen (1668–1722), een journalistieke broodpoëet in de Jordaan (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), is a biography of the poet-journalist Jan van Gijsen, who devised the first rhymed weekly newspaper, Amsterdamsche Merkurius (1710–1722). This book not only sheds light on van Gijsen’s life but also contextualizes it within the writer’s contemporary world.
David de Boer, The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution: The Making of Humanitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), is an intriguing study that sees the foundation of European humanitarian culture in the use of the Dutch press by diverse religious groups (such as the Waldensians and the Huguenots) within the context of religious persecution in order to alert the public to the sufferings of these groups. The underlying question of this study is how to convey human suffering to people who have not experienced it, especially in a difficult political and religious climate such as the seventeenth century, and what accompanying problems have to be navigated by religious groups when expressing their concerns. De Boer sees these groups’ use of the press in the context of the wider aim of generating a more tolerant and humane society based on the rule of reason and law.
Hadriaan Beverland’s De Peccato Originali (On Original Sin 1679), ed. by Karen Eline Hollewand and Floris Verhaart (Leiden: Brill, 2023), depicts sex as original sin and critiques the licentious behaviour of the elite of the time. This edition contains a transcription, a translation, and a thorough introduction situating this work within the context of the period.
Frank Ejby Poulsen, The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots: A Proponent of Cosmopolitan Republicanism in the French Revolution (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), based on a PhD thesis, reappraises the life and thought of Anacharsis Cloots and is the first comprehensive study to take account of all of his works. It aims to rehabilitate his political thought, which it understands as a form of cosmopolitan republicanism. Poulsen examines this brand of republicanism in terms of reason and science, natural law, and humanity, and in particular discusses its cosmopolitan features.
3 Modern Literature, 1800 to the Present Day
General
Nederlandse Letterkunde 28:2 (2023) is dedicated to the relationship of Dutch literature to the internet and digital media. Ruben Vanden Berghe and Siebe Bluijs, ‘De verbeelding van het internet in de Nederlandse literatuur van de jaren negentig’ (125–154), is a take on the dangers and possibilities of the internet through the example of the digitale stad, an Amsterdam 1994 freenet initiative, and how the digitale stad was reflected in Dirk van Weelden’s novel Oase and the collaboratively written radio play Station het oor. Inge van Veen, ‘Aandacht voor irrelevantie: Voskuil’s Het Bureau als protodatabankroman’ (155–182), draws on Catherine Malabou’s concepts of flexibility and plasticity in her interpretation of Voskuil’s book, which she sees as an early ‘database’ novel, and discusses the challenges for attention and irrelevance in the early internet age. She believes Voskuil’s book can be seen as resistant to the attention economy. Stephan Besser, ‘Een goddelijke braakbal: Maxim Februari’s Klont en de esthetiek van dataficering’ (183–212), is an approach to understanding the aesthetics of data in Februari’s Klont, which deals with digitization and datafiction. According to Besser, Klont deviates from the view of data as discrete patterns and instead situates Februari’s work in the context of Miriam Rasch and Luciana Parisi’s view of data as ‘patternless’. This approach to data also has repercussions for a gendered view where data in its patternlessness is seen as corresponding to concepts of femininity. Hannah Ackermanns, ‘Wat maakt elektronische literatuur (niet) toegankelijk’ (213–238), looks at the specifics of accessibility of electronic literature for disabled people by analysing different concepts of accessibility and uses the Russian-Formalist concept of defamiliarization to analyse relationships between the approachability of electronic literature and the experience of reading it.
Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023) is an anniversary edition celebrating thirty years of this yearbook and is dedicated to important technological developments in Dutch book history.
Anita Srebnik, ‘Het taaltechnologische landschap van het Nederlands in een meertalig Europa’, was published in Internationale Neerlandistiek, 65:3, 2023 (217–241).
Zacht Laweid 22:2 (2023) presents papers on the theme of biography: (i) Maria Vlaar, ‘Het geheime zelf of de zinkgaten van de biograaf’ (3–10), explores the question of whether a biographer can find the true self of the person that is the subject of a biography; (ii) Ernestiene Hoegen, ‘Waarneming en verbeeldingskracht als biografisch instrument’ (11–13), discusses whether it is advisable to use one’s imagination to fill gaps when writing a biography; (iii) Hans Renders, ‘Een ziek lichaam, een zieke geest: Het laatste taboe’ (55–69), explores how diseases are described in biographies and suggests that biographers are more interested in mental illness than the physical diseases of their subjects; (iv) Kristien Hemmerechts, ‘De mens Flam: Over de brieven en dagboeken van Leopold Flam’ (38–45), can be seen as an introduction to Flam’s diary; and (v) GuidoVan Wambeke, ‘Het oorlogsdagboek van Leopold Flam: Feiten, fictie en een hypothese’ (46–54), ponders why these diaries have not been published earlier.
Leopold Flam, Ik zal alles verdragen, ook mezelf: Dagboeken en brieven, ed. by Kristien Hemmerechts and Guido Van Wambeke (Amsterdam: De Geus, 2023), is a small selection of the more than two million words of Flam’s diary.
Dutch Crossing, 47:1 (2023), produced a special issue, ‘Worlding Modern Literature in the Low Countries’. Contributions include the following: (i) Hans Demeyer, ‘Worlding Dutch Literary Studies’ (4–18), sees worlding as a method and critique, and argues for a better understanding of national literatures and of how the primacy of a national (and geographically limited) literature has been detrimental to the inclusion of the literature of former colonies and has led to a lack of analysis of power structures and the colonial past; (ii) Lieselot De Taeye, ‘Conversion and Missionary Narratives in Post-Independence Congo: A Comparative Analysis of Jacques Bergeyck’s Het stigma/The Stigma (1970) and V. Y. Mudimbe’s Entre Les eaux/Between Tides (1973)’ (19–34), addresses the complexity with which missionary presence was perceived in the Congo in the decades after independence; (iii) Thalia Ostendorf, ‘Of Backyards and Hinterlands: “Cairojan” and Dutch Caribbean Literature’ (35–48), is an excellent comparison of works by two Black Surinamese authors, Anton de Kom and Edgar Cairo, and demonstrates that their books can be seen as successful alternative expressions of Black and Caribbean history; (iv) Lucelle Pardoe and Arnoud Arps, ‘Translation, Memory, and Ongoing Coloniality: Reading Gentayangan for a More Worldly Dutch Studies’ (49–62), focuses on the novel Gentayangan by Intan Paramaditha as an example of Indonesian literature in translation, and uses memory studies to approach the issues of the role of Gentayangan within a more worldly approach of Dutch Studies, asking how Dutch Studies can be decolonialized; and (v) Małgorzata Drwal, ‘Between Transnational Socialism and White Privilege: Afrikaner Woman Worker’s “Library” in the 1930s and 1940s’ (63–76), is an introduction to the prose published in the organ of the Garment Workers Union, Die Klereweker / The Garment Worker. Drwal sees this prose as excluded from Afrikaans literature and shows how this writing helped its (white working-class) authors to create a new identity. The fact that these texts were circulated in English as opposed to the more elitist Dutch boosted their circulation and thus helped shape South African white working-class identity.
Remco Raben and Peter Romijn, Talen van geweld: Stilte, informatie en misleiding in de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, 1945–1949 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), is a detailed analysis of the Dutch perspective on the manipulative use of language by officials, politicians, and journalists in order to cover up war crimes committed during the Indonesian War of Independence (1945–1949); compare also Rémy Limpach, Tasten in het duister: Inlichtingenstrijd tijdens de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, 1945–1949 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023).
Petra Boudewijn, ‘ “De winnaar is een boek dat qua vorm, inhoud en denkkracht zjjn gelijke niet heeft”: Het bekroningsgedrag van Nederlandse literatuurprijzen’, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 139:1 (2023) (63–97), examines the concept of quality used by award juries when judging literature. Boudewijn investigates how their views on quality are informed by aspects such as the author’s background, publisher, and previous publication. The more prestigious an award is, the more conservative judges will be. Furthermore, new awards will, in order to become more established, adopt a more conservative approach, thus evincing the difficulty for non-conservative authors to win awards.
Spaces of Care—Confronting Colonial Afterlives in European Ethnographic Museums, ed. by Wayne Modest and Claudia Augustat (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2023), includes a chapter by Esmee Schoutens, ‘A World in a Box: Education and/or Extraction in a Dutch Colonial School Collection’ (177–180), a brief discussion of boxes and their contents (natural products from the colonies) that were part of a collection distributed to Dutch schools and asks what children may have learned from these boxes.
Anneloek Scholten, ‘Rinderpest in Dutch Regional Fiction: Community, Precariousness, and Blame’, in Dealing with Disasters from Early Modern to Modern Times: Cultural Responses to Catastrophes, ed. by Hanneke van Asperen and Lotte Jensen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023), 205–226, discusses the representation of catastrophes using the example of the cattle disease rinderpest in rurally-set novels (Cornelis van Koetsveld, Schetsen uit de pastorij te Mastland; Cornelis van Schaick, Tafereelen uit het Drentsch dorpsleven; J. J. Cremer, Betwusche novellen; W. van Palmar, De golden kette; H. H. J. Maas, Verstooteling, Het Goud van de Peel, Landelijke Eenvoud; Stijn Streuvels, De vlaschaard; Pieter Heering, Overijsselsche vertellingen). The chapter focuses on the latter part of the long nineteenth century and discusses specifically Josef Cohen’s Ver van de mensen (1910), which is based on the 1865 outbreak of the rinderpest. Scholten contextualizes this writing alongside questions of the relationship between regional and national aspects, examines issues around belonging, community, tradition and blame, and concludes that these novels understand the grief resulting from these catastrophes as something to be shared across borders and generations without the attribution of blame.
Iconische schrijvers: Geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Auteursportret, ed. by Sander Bax, Lieke van Deinsen, Rick Honings, and Bertram Mourits (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2023), is devoted to the question of the image of a ‘real writer’ and examines the representation of writers in images, photography, and paintings, discussing self-representation, marketing, and how the image of a writer is created. Using examples from the Middle Ages to the present day, this volume is an intriguing addition to ways of viewing literary history.
Animals in Dutch Travel Writing, 1800–Present, ed. by Rick Honings and Esther Op de Beek (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2023), is an investigation into the representation of animals in travel writing, which has become necessary due to a change in our ethics with regards to animals and the environment. The editors aim to do justice to the reality of animals, approaching their subject from a postcolonial point of view and reflecting on anthropomorphism. They examine the role and function of (wild and domestic) animals in non-fictional travel writing in order to focus on actual encounters so that a more ethical view of animals and their role in this writing can be achieved.
Individual Authors
H. C. ten Berge
Ten Berge Handboek, ed. by Piet Gerbandy, Mathijs Sanders, and Carl de Strycker (Ghent: Poëziecentrum, 2023), is another valuable addition to the Poëziecentrum Handboek series and illuminates for the first time the wide range of ten Berge’s work in its totality. It examines his role in Dutch literature from the 1960s on, including his founding of the literary journal Raster. This book discusses ten of Berge’s prose essays and translation and situates his poetry in the traditions of modernism, anthropology, and mysticism.
Eva Coolen
Linda Ackermans, ‘ “Hoe het voelt om een meisje te zijn”: Representaties van adolescentie in de roman Regeneratie van Eva Coolen’, Nederlandse Letterkunde, 28:3 (2023), 247–272, examines representation of adolescence, using Petrone, Sarigianides, and Lewis’s (2014) concept of the Youth Lens to help shed light on how texts direct our negative or positive views on adolescence. This is an under-researched subject and, given the increase of young adult literature, this essay presents itself as opening up this area of research for further investigation.
Louis Couperus
Volume 38 of Indische Letteren (2023) is dedicated to Couperus’s novel De stille kracht. Articles include: (i) H. T. M. van Vliet, ‘Feit en mystiek: De zichtbare en onzichtbare wereld in De stille kracht’, 37–53; (ii) Looi van Kessel, ‘Een gezamelijk vijand: Queer en antikoloniale lezingen van De stille kracht’, 54–67; (iii) Michiel Leezenberg, ‘ “In geen land wordt zo veel lief gehad als in Indië”: Islam, ethiek en seksualiteit in Couperus’ De stille kracht’, 68–88; (iv) Liesje Schreuders, ‘Het failliet van het patriarchaat in de vorm van de tragedie? De stille kracht en de receptie van het klassieke erfgoed’, 89–105; and (v) Marijke Denger, ‘ “The Whole Thing is Just a Gigantic Mistake”: Kolonialisme en “vooruitgang” in Sally van Hugh Clifford en De stille kracht van Louis Couperus’, 106–125.
Also published was N. R. Tomberge, ‘ “An Evocation of Our Colonies for the Western Eye”: Louis Couperus’ Aestheticising Gaze from the Car’ (201–207), in Travelling the Dutch Indies, ed. by D. Jedamski and Rick Honings (Hilversum: Verloren, 2023).
Luuk Gruwez
Gruwez Handboek, ed. by Carl de Strycker (Ghent: Poëziecentrum, 2023), is another volume in the Poëziecentrum handbook series, which provides an introduction to the work of Luuk Gruwez, predominantly as a neo-Romantic poet. In common with all the handbooks of this series, it sheds light on the complete oeuvre of the poet.
Johann Huizinga
Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens: Versuch einer Bestimmung des Spielelements der Kultur: Mit der Rektoratsrede von 1933 ‘Über die Grenzen von Spiel und Ernst in der Kultur’ (Leiden: Brill/Fink, 2023), is the conclusion of the Huizinga Schriften (7 volumes) in a new German translation by Annette Wunschel. This is the first translation of Huizinga’s Lektoratsrede since Huizinga’s own translations and revisions of the speech in 1934 and 1937. Huizinga gave it the German title Das Spielelement der Kultur, but Wunschel’s title is closer to the original, Over de grensen van spel en ernst in de cultuur. The translation is published without a commentary.
C. O. Jellema
J. J. C. Dee, Verdwijnen in een woord: Dichter en gedicht in de poëzie van C. O. Jellema (Nijmegen: Flanor, 2022), is a beautiful dissertation examining predominantly Jellema’s poetry from the 1980 to the 1990s with a view to understanding the poetical self-portrait created by Jellema in his poems. Dee analyses the close relationship between the poet and the images he uses to describe himself. Jellema’s own statements on his poetic practice are interpreted, and Dee situates his poetry as belonging to both neo-Romanticism and neo-Symbolism.
Jan Kuijpers
Jan Kuijpers, Antimetrieën (Nijmegen: Flanor, 2023), contains around thirty essays by Kuijpers from 1974 to 2023 discussing Gerrit Achterberg, Adwaita (Dèr Mouw), Rein Bloem, Herman Gortern, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Obe Postma, Kees Fens, and Reinold Kuipers.
Roel Richelieu Van Londersele
Van Londersele Handboek, ed. by Carl de Strycker and Koen Vergeer (Ghent: Poëziecentrum, 2023), offers a handbook on the oeuvre of Roel Richelieu Van Londersele, first city poet of Ghent and editor (1971–1982) of the journal Koebel. This book sheds light on Van Londersele’s poetry, prose, and other literary activities and presents itself as an introduction to his work.
Ischa Meijer
Annet Mooij, Alles gaat op vroeger terug: Ischa Meijer (1843–1995) (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2023), is a biography of journalist and interviewer Ischa Meijer that gives a good representation of the complexity of Meijer’s life.
Cornélie Noordwal
Wim Tigges, Cornélie Noordwal: De vergeten romans van een Haagse schrijfster (Hilversum: Verloren, 2023), is an appraisal of forgotten The Hague writer Cornélie Noordwal. Tigges describes the development of the author chronologically, specifically focusing on female aspects of her writing, how it was judged by predominantly male critics, and also how Noordwal herself described female lives, her social concerns regarding servants and working women, and her resentment towards class. Tigges compares Noordwal’s style with Couperus and Dickens but also with her contemporaries such as Marcellus Emants, Jeanne Reyneke van Stuwe, and Anna de Savornin Lohman.
Wilhelm Leonard Ritter
Hans Straver, Wilhelm Leonard Ritter, 1799–1862 schrijver in Indië (Hilversum: Verloren, 2023), is a biography of the relatively unknown writer Wilhelm Leonard Ritter who wrote in a wide range of genres, including poetry, memoirs (Herinneringen uit de vroegere jaren mijns levens), reflections on slavery, journalistic pieces for the newspaper Java-Bode and the magazine Biäng-lala, Indisch leeskabinet tot aangenaam en gezellig onderhoud, and a translation of Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The strength of this biography is how Straver places Ritter’s writing in the political and colonial context of this time; while Ritter describes problematic aspects of Dutch rule, he also assumes superiority of the Dutch in Indonesia.
Andries Sternheim
Balling in eigen land: Het oorlogsdagboek van Andries Sternheim, ed. by Theo Beckers and Bertus Mulder (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2023), is a book whose larger part (about 120 pages) contains an introduction detailing Sternheim’s life and intellectual development and his concerns regarding Dutch labour movement and trade unions, and outlines Sternheim’s contributions to the work of the Frankfurt School (Sternheim was the only Dutch person connected to it). Sternheim’s diary from 26 May 1943 to 24 November 1943 describes the persecution of Jews and the political developments of his time.
Victor E. van Vriesland
Victor E. van Vriesland, Herinneringen aan mijn kindertijd (Nijmegen: Flanor Uitgeverij, 2023), contains two autobiographical texts about the author’s childhood and schoolyears in The Hague. Rob Groenewegen, Weerloos tegenover alles: Het leven van Victor E. van Vriesland (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Atlas Contact, 2023), is an excellent biography of the poet, critic, translator and president of PEN international. Groenewegen’s difficult choice regarding his biographical approach is to opt for a concise rather than a detailed biography, which leads to certain omissions. The result is nonetheless a biography that brilliantly contextualizes van Vriesland’s activities and his relationships with his contemporaries. Groenewegen sees with clarity what was a very complex life and time.
