Ferdinand Bordewijk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bordewijk (1954, PC Hooft Prize )

Ferdinand Bordewijk (born October 10, 1884 in Amsterdam , † April 28, 1965 in The Hague ) was a Dutch writer . His work is often assigned to the Magical Realism and the New Objectivity and is considered to be one of the most important of Dutch modernism .

Life

Bordewijk lived in Amsterdam for the first ten years of his life, then in The Hague. His full name was Ferdinand Johan Wilhelm Christiaan Karel Emil Bordewijk; however, he officially dropped four of his names in 1919. He studied law in Leiden and received his doctorate in 1912. A year later he was sworn in as a lawyer. During this time Bordewijk worked for a life insurance company and a large law firm, at times also as a lecturer in commercial law. In 1916 he published under the pseudonym Ton Ven (which he later used several times) for the first time a volume of poetry, Paddestoelen ( Eng . "Mushrooms"), which, however, did not attract much attention. As a result, he turned more to prose . He made his breakthrough from 1919 with three volumes of fantastic stories. From that year until his death he worked as a freelance lawyer in various places, but lived most of his life in The Hague - only towards the end of the Second World War he fled to Leiden for some time from acts of war. From 1914 he was married to the composer Johanna Roepman , with whom he had a son and a daughter. Otherwise, not much is known about his personal life; He always answered questions dismissively. Bordewijk saw himself primarily as a lawyer who only pursued writing in his spare time. He had relatively little contact with fellow writers and was sometimes described by them as rejecting, formal and even arrogant. He is considered to be the first representative of modernism in Dutch literature.

His grave is in the Dutch cemetery Oud Eik en Duinen in The Hague .

plant

Blokken (1931)
Bint (1934)

Bordewijk's early stories have been compared with those of Edgar Allan Poe and ETA Hoffmann ; however, he denied an influence. According to many critics, he developed his own characteristic style in the first half of the 1930s when he published numerous short stories and novels . His best-known novel from this era, Bint (1934), is about a school principal who rules his school with an iron hand until the suicide of a student finally triggers a kind of riot. From 1936 Bordewijk published more extensive novels. In addition, there were some less well-known plays and the libretto for his wife Johanna Roepman's opera Rotonde (1941). The novel Karakter was filmed in 1997 by Mike van Diem under the same title and takes up the motif of iron discipline, which was also formative in Bint - but reverses it to self-discipline: the main character Jacob Katadreuffe tries against the resistance of his father, a lawyer to become to surpass this. However, when his father realizes that his resistance only strengthens Jacob, he finally discovers his affection for his son. When Jacob finally achieved his goal, he learns that his father has secretly supported him.

Bordewijk is considered to be one of the most important exponents of the New Objectivity in Dutch literature, although this classification is also rejected by some critics. Discipline and the acquisition of personality are recurring motifs in his work. His style is often compressed and concise, and most of his texts are located in the upper classes in urban milieus. Typical of him, despite the compressed language, are long and detailed descriptions that sometimes put his characters in a surrealistic light, which is why he was often perceived by critics as a representative of magical realism. In the settings of Bordewijk's novels, real places can sometimes be recognized that are connected to his life. Otherwise his prose is not considered to be autobiographical, references to real people or cases from his life as a lawyer can hardly be drawn. Nevertheless, there were repeated attempts to identify the main characters in his novels with Bordewijk. He himself hardly commented on his work, as he saw the interpretation as the task of the reader.

Bordewijk was awarded three important prizes for his novels, the Prijs voor kunsten en wetenschappen (1949), the PC Hooft-prijs (1953) and the Constantijn Huygensprijs (1957). So far only a few of his works have been translated into German.

bibliography

  • Paddestoelen (1916, as Ton Ven)
  • Fantastic vertellingen (1919, 1923, 1924)
  • Blokken. De mislukking van een heilstaat (1931; German blocks , translated by Thomas Baumeister; Göttingen: Steidl, 1991)
  • Gnarled berries. De roman van een parkeerseizoen (1931)
  • Bint (1934; German Bint , translated by Marlene Müller-Haas; Munich: CH Beck, 2012 (Textura series))
  • Rood paleis (1936)
  • De wingerdrank (1937)
  • Karakter (1938; German office lawyer Stroomkoning , translated by Emil Charlet; Bremen: Carl Schünemann, 1939, and character: novel by son and father , translated by Marlene Müller-Haas; Munich: CH Beck, 2007, and Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Publisher, 2010)
  • De korenharp (1940)
  • Three clay stucco (1940)
  • Apollyon (1941)
  • Burns. A plaatsbeschrijving (1944)
  • Eiken van Dodona (1946)
  • Bij gas light (1947)
  • Noorderlicht (1948)
  • Plato's dood (1948)
  • Rotonde (1948)
  • Het eiberschild (1949)
  • Zwanenpolder (1949)
  • Vertellingen van generzijds (1950)
  • De korenharp. Nieuwe Reeks (1951)
  • Studiën in volksstructuur (1951)
  • De doopvont (1952)
  • Mevrouw en meneer Richebois (1954)
  • Bloesemtak (1955)
  • Onderweg naar de Beacons (1955)
  • Respected confrère (1956)
  • De aktentas (1958)
  • De gypsies (1960)
  • Tijding van ver (1961)
  • Paddestoelen (raad in) rijm (1961, as Ton Ven)
  • Lente (1964)
  • Jade, jaspis en de jitterbug (1964, as Ton Ven)
  • De Golbertons (1965)

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b A. GH Bachrach et al .: Moderne Encyclopedie van de Wereldliteratuur , Haarlem / Antwerpen (1980), vol. 2, p. 28 f.
  2. ↑ a b Biographical Woordenboek van Nederland , viewed on November 13, 2009

literature

  • Reinold Vugs: F. Bordewijk , de Prom: Baarn (1995) ISBN 90-6801-416-1
  • Nol Gregoor: Gesprekken met F. Bordewijk , BZZToH: Den Haag (1983) ISBN 90-6291-145-5
  • Frans Kellendonk: Het Werk van de Eighth Day. Over de Verhalen van F. Bordewijk , Nijgh & Van Ditmar: Den Haag (1985) ISBN 90-236-7775-7

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bordewijk, Ferdinand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ton Ven (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1965
Place of death The hague