Poetry
Een winter aan zee
Not translated into English
Adriaan Roland Holst · 1937
Synopsis
A cycle of short poems tells of winter on the North Sea coast: an empty beach, gulls rising from a sandbank, a deserted dune valley, storm and snow. The speaker has been left by a woman he loved, and he sets this story against the old legend of Helen of Troy, which links the lost woman to the present world, a world that has put beauty out of play and calls down upon itself its own judgement.
Context
The volume appeared in 1937. The language reaches an extreme concentration there, and the poet extends his mythology of an Elysium situated in the west, beyond the waves, whose messengers are the wind and the seabirds. The Flemish poet Saint-Rémy produced a French version of it, at first in manuscript, then in a bilingual volume in 1969, printed in five hundred and fifty numbered copies. A reissue of 1997 traces the history of its many printings.
Who it is for
A sequence of short poems in Dutch, with a very contracted syntax, to be read in one go. A bilingual French edition exists.
Prizes and reception
One of the best-selling collections of Dutch poetry, and the high point of its author's work.