Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (15 September 1898 – 5 October 1936), who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers.

Youth

Slauerhoff attended HBS (secondary school) in Leeuwarden, where he first met fellow future writer Simon Vestdijk, who was from Harlingen. In 1916, Slauerhoff and Vestdijk both moved to Amsterdam to read medicine. While at the university, Slauerhoff wrote his first poems; his debut as a poet was in the Communist magazine De Nieuwe Tijd. He edited the Amsterdam student magazine Propria Cures from 1919 to 1920.

Later in 1932, Slauerhoff went to sea again, signing up with the Holland-West-Afrikalijn. His general bad health continued to trouble him and he considered moving to Northern Africa, as this would benefit his health. In March 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 as the symptoms grew more serious, and his relationship with Darja deteriorated. it attracted attention from scholars publishing in English. Jane Fenoulhet, for instance, referred to it as an important modernist novel in 2001. Both Het verboden rijk and the follow-up novel Het leven op aarde ("Life on Earth," 1934) were widely praised, and his 1933 verse collection Soleares was awarded the .

The year 1935 saw more sea voyages as a ship's doctor, but also his divorce from Darja Collin. In this period of his life, Slauerhoff fell out with many of his literary friends, among them Du Perron and Vestdijk. During his last voyage, to South Africa, he fell severely ill with malaria on top of his neglected tuberculosis and returned to Merano for yet more recuperation.

Much of Slauerhoff's work is concerned with the poor and downtrodden; especially the poetry collections Archipel (1923), Eldorado (1928), Soleares (1933), and Een eerlijk zeemansgraf (1936). A performance of his play Jan Pietersz. Coen (1930), highly critical of Jan Pieterszoon Coen (seventeenth-century officer of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia and two-term Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies), was prohibited by the mayor of Amsterdam in 1948. Wim Hazeu, one of the main biographers of the Netherlands, published a revised edition of his Slauerhoff biography that same year.

Miscellaneous

  • Verzamelde werken ("Complete Works", 8 vols., 1941–1958)
  • Brieven van Slauerhoff ("Letters from Slauerhoff", ed. by Arthur Lehning, 1955)
  • Dagboek ("Diary", ed. by Kees Lekkerkerker, 1957)
  • Verzameld Proza ("Collected Prose"), 2 vols. (The Hague: Nijgh & Van Ditmar 1975. (vol. 1) and (vol. 2))
  • 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 with Him", letters ed. by J.J. van Herpen, 1985)
  • Cristina Branco Canta Slauerhoff (Cristina Branco Sings Slauerhoff, 9 poems translated into Portuguese and put to Fado music, 2000)
  • Van een liefde die vriendschap bleef ("Of a Love that Remained Friendship", letters ed. by Wim Hazeu, 2007)
  • Het heele leven is toch verloren ("Life Is a Lost Cause Anyway", poems, letters, diaries, ed. by Arie Pos et al.)
  • Slauerhoff Biografie Wim Hazeu, 2018
  • J. Slauerhoff Verzamelde gedichten 2018, bezorgd door Hein Aalders en Menno Voskuil

There are a number of German, French, Italian, Ukrainian, and Portuguese translations of his prose works and Russian translations of his poetry.

References

  • Texts and secondary literature at DBNL