J. Slauerhoff

J. Slauerhoff (1898—1936) was a Dutch poet and novelist.

Biography

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; in 1916, he moved to Amsterdam to study 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 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.

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, 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. During his last voyage, to South Africa, he fell severly 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, one month after the publication of his last collection of verse, Een eerlijk zeemansgraf (An Honourable Seaman's Grave).

Bibliography

Poetry

1. Archipel ('Archipelago', 1923)
2. Clair-obscur (1927)
3. Oost-Azië ('East Asia', 1928, under ps. John Ravenswood)
4. Eldorado (1928)
5. Fleurs de marécage ('Marsh Flowers', 1929, in French)
6. Saturnus ('Saturn', 1930, revised and enlarged re-issue of Clair-obscur)
7. Yoeng Poe Tsjoeng ('Of Little Use', 1930)
8. Serenade (1930)
9. Soleares (1933)
10. Een eerlijk zeemansgraf ('An Honourable Seaman's Grave', 1936)

Prose

1. Het Lente-eiland en andere verhalen ('The Isle of Spring and Other Stories', 1930, short stories)
2. Schuim en asch ('Foam and Ashes', 1930, short stories)
3. Het verboden rijk ('The Forbidden Empire', 1932, novel)
4. Het leven op aarde ('Life on Earth', 1934, novel)
5. De opstand van Guadalajara ('The Rising of Guadalajara', 1937, novel [1936])
6. Verwonderd saam te zijn ('Étonnés de Se Trouver Ensemble', 1987, short stories [1928-1935])
7. Alleen de havens zijn ons trouw ('Only the Ports Are Loyal to Us', 1992, travel accounts [1927-1932])

Theatre

1. Jan Pietersz. Coen (1931)

Miscellaneous

1. Verzamelde werken ('Complete works', 8 vols., 1941-1958)
2. Brieven van Slauerhoff ('Letters from Slauerhoff', ed. by Arthur Lehning, 1955)
3. Dagboek ('Diary', ed. by K. Lekkerkerker, 1957)
4. Slauerhoff student auteur ('Slauerhoff student writer', prose and poetry from Slauerhoff's student days ed. by Eep Francken et al., 1983)
5. Brieven aan Hans Feriz ('Letters to Hans Feriz', ed. Herman Vernout, 1984)
6. Hij droeg de zee en de verte aan zich mee ('He Carried the Sea and the Distance Along with Him', letters ed. by J.J. van Herpen, 1985)
7. Van een liefde die vriendschap moest blijven ('Of a Love that Had to Remain Friendship', letters ed. by H.C. ten Berge, 1992)

(Plus half a dozen prose translations of varying merit, mostly in collaboration with fado singer who has released an album based on Slauerhoff's poetry

• — Dutch page featuring fragments of Slauerhoff's unfinished third Chinese novel