''Een eerlijk zeemansgraf'' ("An honest seaman's grave") is the last volume of poetry published by Dutch poet
J. Slauerhoff
Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (15 September 1898 – 5 October 1936), who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers.
Youth
Slauerhoff attended HBS (secondary school) in Le ...
before his death.
Background and content
Slauerhoff's health had always been frail, and in October 1935 he was sick again, with malaria He was taken off his ship and brought to a hospital in Genoa. He spent time rehabilitating in Merano, Annecy, and Lausanne and by February 1936 fell ill again. He returned to the Netherlands, tenaciously hanging on to life in a nursing home in
Hilversum
Hilversum () is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes, and smaller towns. Hil ...
but too weak to travel to a spa. He worked on ''Een eerlijk zeemansgraf'' in Hilversum, and wrote a note to fellow poet P. C. Boutens saying the volume's title was ominous. The collection indeed contains a poem called "Uitvaart" ("Funeral"), whose first draft he jotted down in his journal 12 years before, when he fell ill on his first sea journey.
Publishing history
The collection was published (by Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Rotterdam) as Slauerhoff was in the nursing home in Hilversum, where he would die of malaria and tuberculosis on 5 October 1936. The book was reprinted in 1937 and 1954 (edited by
Kees Lekkerkerker Kees or KEES may refer to:
* Kees (given name)
* Kees (surname)
* KEES, an American AM radio station licensed to Gladewater, Texas
See also
* Cees (disambiguation)
Cees () is a Dutch masculine given name, a short form of Cornelis. Since, as ...
), and then again in 1985 for Nijgh & Van Ditmar's edition of Slauerhoff's poetry in individual volumes.