Willem Elsschot

Willem Elsschot, pseudonym of Alphonsus Josephus de Ridder, ( born May 7, 1882 in Antwerp, † May 31, 1960 ) was a Dutch-speaking writer.

Life

Elsschot studied in his Belgian hometown on the advice of his older brother economics. He then worked in Paris, Rotterdam and Brussels, where he founded the Revue Continentale Illustrée with two colleagues. From 1914 he returned to Antwerp, where he ran his own advertising agency.

Elsschots experience in advertising specialists also inspired him to write his novel Lijmen (1924, ' lure on the glue ' to German ) in which the dubious practices of an advertising businessman are being targeted. The unscrupulous Boorman moved with promising stories unsuspecting small traders to advertise in the Algemeen Wereldtijdschrift ( General World Magazine ), and then imposes its clients large quantities of the magazine, which is printed in huge editions, but only for the advertisers. The novel is his tight, hard-hitting and bordering on cynicism style as a highlight of the Flemish urban fiction. It belongs to the style of New Objectivity. The book was, together with the result of novel Het been ( German: the leg ) filmed in 2000 by Robbe de Hert.

In addition to partially autobiographical novels such as Villa des Roses (1913) and Tsjip (1934 ) wrote Elsschot also two well-known novels: Kaas (1933 ) tells the disillusioning story of a little clerk, Laarmans who wants to ascend socially with the establishment of a cheese trade. The book for the first time in 1952 in German translation under the title Kaas ( Diederichs, Dusseldorf - Cologne ), 2004 again as cheese ( Union Verlag, Zurich ) was published. Dwaallicht In Het (1946 to German: the Irrlicht ) goes to the narrator with three sailors in the night Antwerp in search of a girl named Maria. The book was in 1948 awarded the Belgian State Prize and was published in 2009 under the title of Mary in the harbor pub in German.

Besides his prose works Elsschot wrote a book of poems Verzen van Vroeger (1934, German: verses from earlier), which deals with a rebellious and bitter tone, among other motifs, such as mother and marriage.

Elsschot is one of the few classics of Dutch-language literature, which enjoys both literary connoisseurs and the general public great and lasting popularity. His laconic style, his sovereign irony and his unsentimental choice of topics, but does not exclude compassion, wear probably the most help.

Works

  • Villa des Roses. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1993. ISBN 3-518-22121-3
  • Cheese ( Kaas ). Amendment. Union Verlag, Zurich, 2005. ISBN 3-293-20337- X
  • Glues ( Lijmen ). Novel. Union Verlag, Zurich, 2006. ISBN 3-293-20367-1
  • Mary in the port tavern ( Het dwaallicht ). Amendment. Union Verlag, Zurich, 2009. ISBN 978-3-293-00410-8
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