• Source: Pieter Cornelis Boutens

Pieter Cornelis Boutens (February 20, 1870 – March 14, 1943) was a Dutch poet, classicist, and mystic.




Biography


Boutens was born in Middelburg. He grew up in Zeeland in a strict, Protestant middle-class environment. After finishing the Gymnasium Middelburg, he began to study classical languages in 1890 at the University of Utrecht, and graduated in 1899 on a study of the Greek comedy writer Aristophanes.

His debut as a poet was the Utrecht Student Almanac in 1891. His early work was inspired by the verses of Herman Gorter; later sources of inspiration were Plato, Sappho and the Bible. Boutens' style became based on the idea of achieving a "higher reality". In the course of 45 years, he published some 20 volumes of poetry, but also a large number of translations of Ancient Greek (i.a. Ilias and Odyssey), Persian, French, German and English poets.
In 1894 he accepted the post of teacher of classical languages at the Noorthey boarding school for boys in Voorschoten, at the time a renowned institute for young people from aristocratic families. After a physical collapse in 1904 and a subsequent holiday in Tyrol, he settled in The Hague, where he earned his living by private tuition and the financial support of some aristocratic friends he had met at Noorthey.
Boutens became a member of the Association of Writers (founded in 1905), and became its president in 1918. In the last year of his life, during the German occupation in World War II, he also became a member of the Gleichschaltung professional artists' association, the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer. This taint did not hinder his posthumous fame as a poet and translator: his voluminous collected works were successively published in seven volumes from 1943-1954. In the 1980s his homosexuality was disclosed. A volume of poetry about homosexual love he had published in 1919 as a work of a poet who had prematurely died, the Strofen van Andries de Hoghe turned out to be Boutens's own work.
Boutens died in 1943 in The Hague, 73 years old.




Works



1898 - Verzen
1902 - Praeludiën
1904 - Naenia
1907 - Stemmen
1908 - Beatrijs
1908 - Spel van Platoons leven
1909 - Vergeten liedjes (Forgotten songs)
1910 - Alianora
1912 - Carmina
1916 - Lente-maan
1919 - Strophen uit de nalatenschap van Andries de Hoghe
1920 - Sonnetten
1921 - Liederen van Isoude
1922 - Zomerwolken (Summer Clouds)
1926 - De sonnetten van Louise Labé (The Sonnets of Louise Labé)
1930 - Oud-Perzische kwatrijnen
1931 - Bezonnen verzen
1932 - Honderd Hollandsche kwatrijnen
1932 - Strophen en andere verzen uit de nalatenschap van Andries de Hoghe
1942 - Tusschenspelen
1942 - Gegeven keur
1943-1954 - Verzameld werk (Collected works) seven volumes, published after his death




Awards


1913 - Tollens Prize for Lifetime Achievement
1914 - Nieuwe Gids-prijs for Carmina
1925 - Award for Mastery for Zomerwolken




References






External links


Works by Pieter Cornelis Boutens at Project Gutenberg
Works by Pieter Cornelis Boutens at Open Library
Poems by Boutens in the Laurens Janszoon Coster project (Dutch)
Boutens in het Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland (Dutch)
Koninklijke Library - P.C. Boutens collection (Dutch)
Collection of works by Boutens at the Zeeuwse Bibliotheek (Dutch)
Christiaan Janssens "P.C. Boutens and God's secret" (Dutch)

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Daftar penyair Belanda
• Pieter Cornelis Boutens
• Middelburg, Zeeland
• Willem Arondeus
• Louise Labé
• Willem Pijper
• 1943 Nobel Prize in Literature
• Louis Couperus
• Oud Eik en Duinen
• LGBT literature in the Dutch-language area
• 2014 in public domain