Poetry
Awater
Martinus Nijhoff · 1934
Opening lines
Wees hier aanwezig, allereerste geest,
die over wateren van aanvang zweeft.
Uw goede oog moet zich dit werk toe keren,
het is gelijk de wereld woest en leeg.
Be present here, first spirit of all,
who moves upon the waters of beginning.
Your kindly eye must turn towards this work,
it is, like the world, without form and void.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from dbnl.org
Synopsis
A man who has just lost his brother sets out to find a travelling companion. He chooses an office worker he does not know and gives him the name Awater. He waits for him at the office exit and follows him without speaking to him: in front of the window of a fashion shop, at the barber's, at the café where the other plays chess, at the restaurant where he is known and where he sings, as far as the station square, where a woman of the Salvation Army preaches before the crowd.
Context
The poem appeared in 1934 as the final piece of the collection Nieuwe gedichten, published by Querido in Amsterdam, alongside fourteen other poems, several of which have become classics; the collection is dedicated to the memory of its author's mother and brother, two bereavements that the poem shares out among its characters. Two hundred and seventy-three lines long, in iambic pentameters, it has been translated three times into English, in 1949, in 1961 and in 2010, and since 2011 it has been translated every year into two new languages.
Who it is for
A narrative poem in Dutch, in a clear language that does not give up its meaning. It is worth knowing that the questions it asks remain unanswered.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the most important Dutch poem of the twentieth century; a literary review and a student association bear its name.