Gerrit Komrij (1944–2012)

Er is geen vrijheid in de zandwoestijn was compiled as a Festschrift for Komrij's 65th birthday, bringing together a selection of 65 poems from different moments in his career with an essay celebrating his work by Victor Schiferli. I haven't read much Dutch poetry, but if you had asked me to list the attributes of a typical modern Dutch poem, I think I would have come up with something like what Komrij does: metrical, rhymed, and set in a strict form, very ironic, relying a lot on jokes, show more paradoxes and puns especially when dealing with serious subject-matter. So it's a bit of a surprise to be told how radical Komrij's metrical clowning was considered to be when he first started doing it in the free-verse, stream-of-consciousness early sixties. It's obviously had a lot of influence since then!

It is striking, though, to see how far he takes this formalism: all the poems in this selection are either sonnets or 12-liners with one of two or three possible variants of rhyme-schemes. Maybe that's just Schiferli trying to keep the collection harmonious, but it does make you wonder if Komrij did ever write anything that wasn't either 12 or 14 lines long?

It does look in one or two of the poems in this collection as though Komrij sometimes got a bit worried about it: in "Noli me tangere", for instance, he talks about putting "a landmine in the last line" that destroys the poem (or perhaps just the tensions it's built up) when the reader gets that far - "a poem must be complete in order not to exist". show less

Verwoest Arcadië ("Destroyed Arcadia") is an autobiographical novel in which Komrij takes a charming, funny, and perceptive look back at his childhood in the small town of Winterswijk and his student days in Amsterdam. Much as he does in his poems, he uses jokes and paradoxes to lead himself and the reader up to some quite difficult and painful truths about growing up, self-awareness and the consciousness of mortality. But he mostly talks about his lust for books and beautiful boys (like show more most of us, he seems to have found it easier to feed the first than the second of these, they take up space in the ratio of about ten to one in the text). He talks a bit about the problems of hindsight in autobiography, and he warns us not to take his fictional alter ego, Jacob, as historically reliable, which then gives him the excuse to make critical judgements about the books Jacob was reading which are clearly not Jacob's views but those of the mature narrator, but which are very funny and perceptive anyway. The sort of book that makes you wish you could have had a chance to meet the author in real life. show less

Brieven uit Alvites is a posthumous publication of letters or prose fragments about Gerrit Komrij's life in Portugal from 1984 to 1988. According to the title, these are letters, but the texts are published without the formatting of letters, such as dates, place and addressee, etc.

Gerrit Komrij was a very productive writer, and having his residence in Portugal meant that he did not often appear in the media for interviews or other personal engagements. In 1990, he published the novel Over de show more bergen, which describes an unpleasant experience living in Portugal. The title of the book is the name of the mountains, near Komrij's residence.

In 2008, Komrij published Vila Pouca. Kroniek van een dorp. This is not a novel, but a somewhat bland autobiographical description of the village in Portugal where he lived at the time. Komrij lived there from 1988 till his death in 2012.

Brieven uit Alvites should be seen as a companion volume to Vila Pouca. Kroniek van een dorp, and it largely explains the background to the novel Over de bergen. In 1984, Komrij and his partner moved to Portugal taking up residence at a manor in Alvites. They expected to purchase the manor, and the sale was effective, but in the months prior to actually taking possession of the house, the local people turned against them. This is not explained in the book, but the book does mention that the villagers claim that Komrij's behavior had changed after the sale had been concluded. The situation and the whole experience were so upsetting that they decided to leave Alvites and relocate to another place in Portugal, namely Vila Pouca. The novel Over de bergen is the fictional treatment of this disappointment.

As a book, I found Brieven uit Alvites much more readable, and much more pleasant than Vila Pouca. Kroniek van een dorp. It is a very interesting publication because it sheds light on this important part of the life of the author. It would have been nicer to know more precisely whether these texts actually are letters or not. In this sense I find Dutch editors often too invasive or negligent. Otherwise, I would definitely recommend this book. show less

Gerrit Komrij is another Dutch writer who has made a foreign country, viz. Portugal, his new home. Komrij is mostly known as a compiler of Dutch poetry anthologies and criticism. Much of his work consists of columns or collections of aphorisms. Komrij, who often strikes people as a grumbling old man, has noted that Portugal allows him to live away from the Netherlands, but be near enough to get there regularly for work.

Besides compilations and criticism, Komrij has published a small body of show more fiction, three or four novels, some short stories, and one piece of autobiographical fiction, named Vila Pouca. Kroniek van een dorp. The sub title of this book is "chronicle of a village", and it is more about the place than about the man. In fact, the other man in his life does not even make an appearance.

Most of Komrij's fiction, however, seems to be autobiographical, or bearing strong resemblance to the life and experiences of a Dutch author in a tiny Portuguese village. Een zakenlunch in Sintra, en andere Portugese verhalen is such a collection of stories, which each show an aspect of living in Portugal. To Dutch people, and possibly others, life in a Portuguese village, as life in the countryside of Spain might also, conjures up the image of rural simplicity, and backwardness with a rich sprinkling of corruption. Incredible corruption and bureaucracy is what the title story is about. While corruption is found among civil servants and city dwellers, Komrij pictures life in the village as pastoral and uncorrupted, age-old men and women, who seem to be living in another age, and a handsome youth, oblivious to the effect on the writer of flaunting his tanned body. Shame, lust and shyness are a triplet found in several of his works. show less