Martinus Nijhoff

Martinus Nijhoff ( born April 20, 1894 in The Hague, † January 26, 1953 ) was a Dutch poet, translator, essayist and literary critic.

Nijhoff is considered one of the Dutch modern classic. An award annually since 1953 Translator Award bears his name. He first studied law in Amsterdam, later as already famous poet and literature ( Dutch studies ) in Utrecht. As editor of the magazine " De Gids " he significantly shaped the literary life in the Netherlands. He was married twice, first to the division in 1950 with the novelist AH wind, then up to his sudden death of a heart attack with the Diseuse Georgette Hagedoorn. In the vote on the greatest Dutchman of all time, which was conducted in 2004 by the KRO television station, he was ranked 176th after him up to 1996 Built in 1993, Martinus Nijhoff - bridge over the Waal is named.

The focal point of his work, the two interrelated long poems Awater and The Hour X. Both are often regarded as peers on an equal footing with others also extensive poems of the 20th century such as TS Eliot's The Waste Land, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams poems of the city or Allen Ginsberg's Howl Paterson. Other well-known poems are Nijhoffs: The Children's Crusade, the new stars, the song of the foolish bees and the ferry. His unique style is characterized by the fact that explicitly experimental, even if he is not thematically modern and embeds a simple everyday language in traditional forms. Nijhoffs poems have been translated into German by Ard Posthuma. They are first published in a bilingual edition of the collection series Bibliothek Suhrkamp ( 859).

Prices

Works (selection)

• Volumes of poetry 1916 De Wandelaar ( The Wanderer )
• 1924 Vormen ( forms )
• 1934 Nieuwe poems ( New Poems )
• 1942 Het uur U ( The Zero Hour )

Nijhoff was of the view that there has in the modern era ( the century of collectivism as opposed to the previous individuality ) no greater difficulty for a poet than the form of its language. The traditional objective forms have become just as deceptive as the spontaneous, subjective effusion. He saw only two ways out of this dilemma. Either recourse to a tradition that goes back so far in time that it has almost disappeared from the modern consciousness. Or you had to speak today's slang and " bring to vibrate ." In his poem Awater he had the former, in his poem tries the hour X the latter.

Awater was created in 1934 in Utrecht and completes the brother and mother devoted band of New Poems. The work contributes partly autobiographical.

On the origin of the poem Nijhoff gave in his 1935 lecture delivered verses write in times of crisis on the tasks of poetry accountable. As examples, he cited the youth verses Jean Cocteau, TS Eliot and the paintings of surrealism. Although he acknowledged in a certain voice skepticism that the old, no longer emotional verse forms were fit for its purpose, but unlike Eliot did not form any " such as window panes shattered ." He looked rather " according to the origin than for the extreme " and therefore chose the old European form of the Chanson de Roland.

The six nearly equal segments and a prologue and epilogue comprehensive poem begins with the slogan " I am looking for a companion (ik zoek een reisgenoot ) ", which comes from a personal ad. In the first line of the unnamed spokesman calls as several more times during the course of the poem the floating over the water the Spirit of God from Genesis 1:2 to to view the resulting work, which is compared with the wild and empty earth: "It will not carefree as sing formerly / good weather, where rings are debris. / Singing is an ulcer, the rebels ... ".

Then appears a nameless, average man who works as an officer in an office and which the speaker gives the name Awater. He is compared to John the Baptist, a prophet in the wilderness of the city, with a monk or soldiers. Awater to be anyone, a modern Everyman. Although he has a specific name, but is pure " mass and abstraction ," an " outline " or " clear, transparent surface." In the name Awater Nijhoff came to own information ( " a name is a man" ), as he listened to inquire on the phone for a same patient a doctor. He was due to the merely accidental, fleeting mention no memory associated with the name, which came to meet him very much at the desired uncertainty Awaters. But Jokingly, he mentioned that Awater twice could mean water (Aa is an old Dutch word for water ) that it is a word from Sanskrit and also the monogram of the name of his parents. Awater is thus an arbitrarily chosen single person, but also the amount representing Next.

His mother has recently died and he ponders counter closing time. Biblical allusions mingle with symbols of modernity such as typewriter, teacup and phone.

The speaker has the idea to collect Awater from office because of his brother died himself and a friend and companion lacks ( Nijhoffs brother had died shortly before in the Dutch East Indies, creating a jointly planned voyage failed ). He decides to follow Awater who does not know him secretly.

This has no eyes for the stream of passers-by and the evening city. Always followed by the speaker, he walks going on, as he must follow a vision that considers showcase and seems to want to go away. We learn His thoughts only indirectly about the speaker who is trying to put themselves in Awater in because he feels this congenial. Awater seems suddenly to disappear, but immersed in a hairdresser back to where he lets his hair cut. "Never was I Awater so close and tangible / like now, where I is the mirror image shows him ;/ he never was unreachable at the same time ."

The speaker remains on his heels and both end up in the hangout of him and his dead brother. The speaker observed Awater further from his seat and remembers his brother. He asks the waiter for Awater, but only experiences, this is the first time there. Awater opens a small chess set, smokes and drinks. "He sits alone, in a quiet, / He looks like a planet, like a flower ... " Both pay without Awater would have taken note of the speaker, and move on through the streets.

You are entering a restaurant where Awater seems to be very well known, and the speaker learns a lot about him, such as he read the evening Greek or Irish. Then Awater stands up and sings in the central scene in front of the curious crowd a mysterious, sad song, which probably refers to the loss of his mother. This is a free translation of Francesco Petrarch Sonnet CCL (250) Solea lontana in sonno consol poor from the Canzoniere. Awater silent and stands rigidly in front of the cheering crowd, he staggers out.

The presence of his cautious pursuer is still not noticed him. This varies to travel between the spontaneous desire and his domestic duties, as both reach the railway station at midnight. A young Heilsarmistin points to the omnipotence of love. ( Nijhoffs mother, whom he greatly admired all his life, had a tendency to Catholicism and was joined as a " soldier " of the Salvation Army, which had been seen as shocking in the liberal- enlightened family, but the poet had coined in terms of religious bonds). Awater looks around, seems to know the speaker somewhere. But this flees from his questioning gaze.

In the last stanza he considered from a steam locomotive from the track window, dreaming of faraway places and adventures and travels, comforted in a mysterious manner and happy, into the unknown, continues on his stalled life's journey. "The persecution Awaters, the affection that I had made to him, the desert made ​​me habitable again ."

The hour X 1936 was first published in a magazine and appeared in 1942 in a streamlined and revised form in the same volume of poetry. The work consists of twelve different lengths. It is not entirely auszudeutende allegory that appears magically charged despite the superficial realism. The scene is reminiscent of some paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. She comes from a dream of Nijhoffs son, to whom he dedicated the poem. Characteristic is the objective, and extremely short supply in working with numerous repetitions language. It works unadorned, as purifies. The short staccato couplets are clamped to long sentence periods. The narrative voice is distant, sometimes almost ironic. But even the most insignificant object acts as enriched with an excess of it, almost casual symbolism. The first stanza calls a hot, summer day silent up ( "It was summer / In the scorching sun is / was the road. Sang No bird ."). On the deserted street to play a couple of kids, when suddenly a faceless and nameless stranger appears on the corner. It seems as threatening an indefinite danger like the calm before the storm. The moment of extreme tension that gives the poem its name, is described. The term Het Uur U comes from the military vocabulary as Nijhoff tells in one of his rare self - interpretations. It refers to the hours of the attack, which ( here a small cloud ) will be posted by a light signal. The road is a symbol of the well-off society whose inhabitants have ceased for convenience and appropriateness to feel like living beings and are now reminded by the stranger in his almost messianic appearance unintentionally about what they have lost and what they avoided. His quiet passing accompany them with hate, but have to, whether they like it or not, suspend the life. Watching him suspiciously and anxiously out of the windows. In short visions breaks suddenly everything repressed their lives and the past shows. A doctor, a judge and a lady will be an unacknowledged debt and its self-alienation aware. Nevertheless, all these dream-like moment seem to be experiencing even ambivalent moment as supreme happiness or at least the memory of this. The whole, however, takes a breath, which seems stopped time. After a brief moment of insight into one's own failure, the residents of the road wake up again in their familiar, dreary existence. They are happy and relieved to find themselves in their daily grind, and continue to live as before. The stranger but continues until it reaches the children. These begin surprising to follow him in single file like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, until they are brought out of the houses of their panicked parents indignantly to order. The man long considered the aufsehende to him brood and then disappears around the corner. The onset of singing of birds breaks the heavy silence and the kids go after some hesitation for dinner.