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This is the most extensive selection in English of poems by one of the all-time great Dutch poets, Herman Gorter (1864-1927). A companion volume to M. Kruijff’s translation of the epic May, this book welcomes the reader to the rich spectrum of Gorter’s lyric verse.
The selection traces the stages of Gorter’s career as a poet. It opens with 22 poems from his introvertive ‘sensitivist’ Verses (Verzen, 1890) which have been called the beginning of modern Dutch poetry. These are followed by poems from later collections in which Gorter was transitioning to a less self- and more world-focused perspective. In the subsequent passages from the long epic Pan (1912/1916), he has clearly become a ‘socialist’ poet, albeit in a unique visionary sense. He is now pursuing a theme which will obsess him for the rest of his life: how to address the object of his love as both an individual woman and an incarnate summation of all humanity.
The rest of the book comprises the first publication in English of Gorter’s little-known last work Lyrics (Liedjes,1930). Haft’s judicious abridgment reserves the structure, erotic themes, and lyric high points of this outstanding sequence which originally occupied three volumes.
In Haft’s version, Gorter sounds the way he should sound: musical and sensitive, at times groping, at other times jubilant, always sure of himself and amazing. For readers of English it will be a feast to be able to make his acquaintance via this translation. - Piet Gerbrandy, winner of the Herman Gorter Prize
Translator Lloyd Haft (1946) grew up in the USA and graduated from Harvard. Graduate studies in Chinese took him to Leiden, and he has lived in The Netherlands since 1968. He soon discovered a fascination with modern Dutch poetry, starting with Herman Gorter’s famous (or notorious) Verses. He became a regular translator for Poetry International and published ten volumes of his own poetry in Dutch, including a free-verse adaptation of the Psalms which won the 2004 Ida Gerhardt Prize. Professionally, for many years Lloyd Haft taught Chinese language and literature at Leiden University. Since retirement he has spent much of his time in Taiwan with his wife Katie Su, a writer on theater arts in Taiwan. His collected translations from the metaphysical poet Zhou Mengdie are scheduled for publication in 2021.
