Remco Campert

Remco Wouter Campert ( born July 28, 1929 in The Hague) is a Dutch writer. His extensive body of work includes poetry, short stories and novels. He was editor of various magazines, worked as a translator and columnist.

Life

Remco Campert is the only child of the writer and actress January Campert Wilhelmina ( Joekie ) Brodelet who divorced two years after his birth. Remco officially lived in the mother, however, since this was often on tour, he grew up with his grandparents, starting in 1942 with friends in the country. Remco's father, who worked during the German occupation as smugglers of Dutch Jews, until he was arrested in 1942, died on 12 January 1943 at the Neuengamme concentration camp. About the moment when he learned of his father's death, Campert wrote the poem in 1983 Januari 1943.

The school ended Campert 1948 without a degree. He wrote for several magazines, published poems and short stories and founded in 1950 with Rudy Kousbroek the literary magazine Braak, which was also the revered of Campert as a model Lucebert participated. Campert was part of the so-called Vijftigers ( fifties ), according to Michael Kruger " the influential avant-garde artists of the Dutch post-war period. " In 1951 Camperts first volume of poetry bird vliegen toch, which is introduced with his poetic credo:

"I believe in a river flowing from the sea to the mountains I no longer ask of poetry to describe as this river [ ... ] "

As a result, almost appeared each year, a publication of Campert in prose or poetry. His oeuvre includes about 100 titles. Camperts first novel, published in 1961 under the title Het leven is vurrukkulluk, was a bestseller in the Netherlands. At the 50th Dutch book week, he wrote in 1985, the amendment Somberman 's actie as a free Boekenweekgeschenk. He also wrote screenplays and radio plays and translated works, among others, by Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Duras, Françoise Sagan and George Bernard Shaw into Dutch. Campert worked from 1969 to 1979 as editor of the publishing house De Bezige Bij, he was editor of several journals and is a columnist. Since 1996, he writes with the former footballer Jan Mulder under the joint pseudonym CaMu alternating daily a column in De Volkskrant.

Between 1950 and 1966 Campert lived alternately in Paris, Blaricum, Amsterdam and Antwerp, after which he settled in Amsterdam. Campert married four times. From the third marriage with Lucia van den Berg Two daughters were born. Since 1996 Campert is married to the gallery owner Deborah Wolf Spelman, with whom he had been 30 years previously lived together.

Work

Under the experimental literature that was written by the Dutch artist group of Vijftigers belong Remco Camperts poems to the most easily accessible works. His poetry as prose are equally influenced by the play with language and ironic humor. Michael Krüger ruled: " Campert has created an extensive, beautiful, often paktierendes with the silence and the melancholy work". Koos Hageraats stressed the " ease [ ... ], which he manages to evoke a melancholy mood. Such as understatement, self-criticism and irony he uses mainly to protect themselves against a too direct formulation of this melancholy., The theme of love "where games in Camperts work" a predominant role. "

In his Dutch homeland Campert is highly valued especially as a poet. So also published in 1995 anthology bears the simple title Remco Campert - poet. His poems - mainly in free metric - are characterized by a Parlandostil and have only slightly developed in its own way, a moderate Experimentailität for closer ties with prose. Camperts best-known and most frequently abgedrucktes poem is titled Poetry is een daad:

"Poetry is an act the confirmation. I confirm that I might live, that I do not live alone. [ ... ] "

The publisher Elizabeth Raabe saw the cultural landscape of the Netherlands to the present day marked by Camperts works. For Kristina Maidt - prong Campert is " in his country an intellectual instance ," Michael Augustine called him in the Netherlands, where his works are part of the school canon, " known as a sore thumb ." It follows Camperts work also a social claim, and he turns equally to people who do not have access to literature, such as the youth. Despite Camperts importance in his Dutch homeland, he remained in German-speaking long hardly known, only a few poems have been published in German translation. Only since 2005 part of the recent prose work published in German by the Arche Verlag, translated by Marianne Holberg regularly.

Remco Campert described himself in an interview in 1996 his life as a writer: "I write solely for the love of writing. Love affairs has sometimes more, while writing for me is a lasting love in his life. [...] A vital need. I can not imagine that this need ever fades me. [ ... ] If I want to live, and I 'll be glad to, then I have to write. "

Awards

Translated into German works

• 2005: A Love in Paris ( Een liefde in Parijs, 2004)
• 2006: As in a dream ( as in een droom, 2000)
• 2007: The Heart of silk ( Het satijnen har, 2006)
• 2008: Diary of a Cat ( Dagboek van een poes, 2007)
• 2009: Soft Landing. stories
• 2011: Hunting, life, remembering. Poems 1951-2011, Arche Literatur Verlag in Zurich, ISBN 978-3-7160-2665-6.