Jan Siebelink
Author of Knielen op een bed violen
About the Author
Works by Jan Siebelink
'Drie verhalen' 2 copies
Een evenwichtig bestaan 2 copies
Eigen teelt 2 copies
Pistool en andere verhalen 2 copies
Pijn is genot - Jan Janssen 1 copy
Literatuur en cultuur — Author — 1 copy
De achtste deur — Author — 1 copy
Troost een vertelling 1 copy
Familie 1 copy
Zaailingen 1 copy
Associated Works
De Nederlandse en Vlaamse literatuur vanaf 1880 in 250 verhalen (2005) — Contributor — 79 copies, 2 reviews
The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy (European Literary Fantasy Anthologies) (1990) — Contributor — 50 copies
Leve de boekhandel! nieuwe verhalen over het theater van de literatuur (2021) — Contributor — 14 copies
Büch's boeket. 4: Boudewijn Büch koos verhalen van auteurs bij Uitgeverij Meulenhoff Nederland — Contributor — 8 copies
Sport : de 141 beste Nederlandse en Vlaamse sportverhalen van 1945 tot nu (2007) — Contributor — 6 copies
Over X-jes, de zandloper en de herenbobbel. Een handleiding tot de kunsten voor Maarten Asscher (1998) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Siebelink, Jan
- Legal name
- Siebelink, Jan Geurt
- Birthdate
- 1938-02-13
- Gender
- male
- Education
- ulo
kweekschool
Franse taal- en letterkunde - Occupations
- writer
essayist
Teacher Dutch and French language - Awards and honors
- Littéraire Witte Prijs (1997)
Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw (2009) - Relationships
- Siebelink, Gerda (echtg.)
Siebelink, Jeroen (zoon) - Short biography
- Jan Geurt Siebelink (Velp, 13 februari 1938) is een Nederlandse schrijver en essayist.
Siebelink groeide op in een streng-godsdienstig christelijk gezin. Hij werd leraar Nederlands en Frans en studeerde in zijn vrije tijd Franse taal- en letterkunde. Naast zijn leraarsbaan begon hij te schrijven en bracht hij een aantal romans en verhalen voort.
Zijn belangrijkste romans zijn: De herfst zal schitterend zijn; En joeg de vossen door het staande koren; De overkant van de rivier; Vera; Margaretha en de bestseller Knielen op een bed violen.
In het laatstgenoemde boek vertelt Siebelink over de godsdienstige kring waar zijn vader toe behoorde en hoe hij daar zelf bij betrokken werd.
Van Knielen op een bed violen waren in 2008 meer dan 500.000 exemplaren verkocht. In september 2009 kwam de vijftigste druk uit.
Naast zijn literaire werk schreef Siebelink ook essays over decadente Franse literatuur. Hij is woonachtig in Ede.
- Nationality
- Netherlands
- Birthplace
- Velp, The Netherlands
- Places of residence
- Velp, The Netherlands
Ede, The Netherlands - Map Location
- Netherlands
Members
Reviews
When Jan Siebelink broke through to a larger audience in 2005 with Knielen op een bed violen, it was with a book he had feared to write. This autobiographical novel describes the ultimate horror of his father's religious obsession in a fundamentalist Christian branch of the reformed church. However, this turned out not to pose the obstacle he feared, and the novel brought him broad popularity.
In Vera, published in 1997, the father-in-law of the main character, Vera Melchers belongs to this show more same Christian church, but as a minor character in the book, the religious theme remains obscure. As in other novels by Siebelink, the relations between people as seen and developing over a life-long period are the main focus.
The novel Vera begins with a chapter that casts a peculiar light on Vera. In it she is seen flirting, but ultimately rejecting a sales manager.
Marital happiness cannot be captured and kept at any particular moment of marriage. Staying together for a life-time, people bring their peculiarities into matrimony, and these characteristics must be endured. Happiness also depends on one's own desires and expectations, which over time tend to change. The compex web of balance in interhuman relations in experienced in this novel. As the entire novel is written from the perspective of Vera Melchers, it is her quest for happiness.
The first part of the novel describes the tension in the marriage of her parents; her mother is perceived as suffering under the neglect by her father, but later in the novel, as Vera becomes more attached to he father, the mother having passed away early, this perspective is challenged. The behavior of the father may well have been the result rather than the cause of the mother's behavior. Throughout the novel, their is envy and spite towards Vera's sister, Suze. But here again, the relation is only seen through Vera's eyes. She cannot accept the life choices of her sister, which are certainly less conventional, if not more adventurous than her own.
Vera enjoys an almost perfect marriage, with a husband who remains devoted to her throughout their lives. Vera's flirtation and affairs with other men are escapades for which she bears full responsibility. Fortunately, although obsessively jealous, her husband remains faithful. When Vera's daughter develops an eating disorder, other than the eating disorder of Vera's mother, she cannot but wonder whether it is her fault. Tension in her professional work relations stems from the same tug and push between desires and expectations
Vera is a longish novel, with very little action. However, the novel requires this lenghth to offer sufficient space for the natural development of the dynamic in human relations. The novel is carefully composed with sufficient drama to be recognizable, without becoming melodramatic. The psychological problems and the tensions between the characters are real, but not excessive, preventing a breakdown of the story. Vera is neither a particularly likeable nor unsympathetic character. A nicely balanced story. show less
In Vera, published in 1997, the father-in-law of the main character, Vera Melchers belongs to this show more same Christian church, but as a minor character in the book, the religious theme remains obscure. As in other novels by Siebelink, the relations between people as seen and developing over a life-long period are the main focus.
The novel Vera begins with a chapter that casts a peculiar light on Vera. In it she is seen flirting, but ultimately rejecting a sales manager.
Marital happiness cannot be captured and kept at any particular moment of marriage. Staying together for a life-time, people bring their peculiarities into matrimony, and these characteristics must be endured. Happiness also depends on one's own desires and expectations, which over time tend to change. The compex web of balance in interhuman relations in experienced in this novel. As the entire novel is written from the perspective of Vera Melchers, it is her quest for happiness.
The first part of the novel describes the tension in the marriage of her parents; her mother is perceived as suffering under the neglect by her father, but later in the novel, as Vera becomes more attached to he father, the mother having passed away early, this perspective is challenged. The behavior of the father may well have been the result rather than the cause of the mother's behavior. Throughout the novel, their is envy and spite towards Vera's sister, Suze. But here again, the relation is only seen through Vera's eyes. She cannot accept the life choices of her sister, which are certainly less conventional, if not more adventurous than her own.
Vera enjoys an almost perfect marriage, with a husband who remains devoted to her throughout their lives. Vera's flirtation and affairs with other men are escapades for which she bears full responsibility. Fortunately, although obsessively jealous, her husband remains faithful. When Vera's daughter develops an eating disorder, other than the eating disorder of Vera's mother, she cannot but wonder whether it is her fault. Tension in her professional work relations stems from the same tug and push between desires and expectations
Vera is a longish novel, with very little action. However, the novel requires this lenghth to offer sufficient space for the natural development of the dynamic in human relations. The novel is carefully composed with sufficient drama to be recognizable, without becoming melodramatic. The psychological problems and the tensions between the characters are real, but not excessive, preventing a breakdown of the story. Vera is neither a particularly likeable nor unsympathetic character. A nicely balanced story. show less
In this 2019 Boekenweek gift, Siebelink has his central character, the writer and retired Arnhem French-teacher Arthur Siebrandi, looking back on his literary career as an ambulance rushes him to hospital after a stroke. He reflects on his relationship with Edwin, the critic who took him up after coming across one of his stories in an old magazine in a doctor's waiting-room, and tried to mentor him through the process of getting his big, unwritten novel down onto paper (a saga of poverty, show more market-gardening and his father's religious obsessions); with his drinking-companion Loet, another critically-acclaimed writer whose books no-one bought; with his wife Lisette, and with his former pupil Caroline. Despite the rigid 96-page format of the Boekenweek novella, Siebelink manages to pack considerable amount of plot (and several decades of Arthur's life) into all this, and wrong-foots the reader several times as we rush ahead into the story we think he's going to tell us but doesn't.
An interesting, subtle little book that seems to be about the rewards of being a writer and being a teacher, and about the importance of having some unfinished projects to keep in sight. show less
An interesting, subtle little book that seems to be about the rewards of being a writer and being a teacher, and about the importance of having some unfinished projects to keep in sight. show less
Up until the publication of Knielen op een bed violen(2005) the Dutch author Jan Siebelink was relatively unknown, even in the Netherlands. Knielen op een bed violen has proved to be his opus magnum, which became a bestseller, and kindled interest in all his other work. The novel is very well-written and presents a very compelling story. This story is the biography of the author's father. Chronologically, the events in Knielen op een bed violen precede the story in the novel Engelen van het show more duister, which was published in 2001, and in which the two sons have different names. Another novel by Siebelink based on the same material, De kwekerij was published in 2007.
The novel is structured in two books, together seven parts, each part describing an episode in the life of the main character, Hans Sievez. The episodes are separated by intervals of about seven years, youth, apprenticeship, early marriage, etc. The story is set in the early to mid-twentieth century, somewhere between the 1920s and the 1960s; the Second World War, is only marginally referred to.
The beginning of the story shows how the young Hans runs away from home, to get away from under the suffocating religious sphere and his tyrannical father. During his apprenticeship in the Hague, he first meets Joseph Mieras, who is trying to convert him to Christianity, particularly of the same ultra-conservative denomination as that to which his father belonged. He is barely able to get rid of this person, but ultimately succeeds. The next episode described his marriage with Margje, the birth of two sons, and the difficulties of running the family business of a truck farm. After the war, Mieras gets back in touch, and converts Hans to the faith, drawing him further and further into it, and the story relates the growing tensions this causes in the family. Following a crisis, Hans severs all contacts with the group, which are however restored on his deathbed, causing more grievance and misery to his family.
The ultra-conservative religious sect, which pesters Hans Sievez consists of conservative Protestants, or Calvinists, inhabiting the so-called Dutch Bible Belt. Throughout the story, they stick to him like leeches.
The author uses some very compelling imagery to convey central motives to the story. In the first episode, Hans' pet rabbit is killed by his father. His "impotence" to protect his mother, and his sentimentality for the rabbit foreshadow his life-long inability to stand up for himself. In various episodes, throughout his life Hans is exploited and humiliated.
The pervading images describing the Calvinist preachers are dirt, ugliness and disgust. Their clothes, shoes, suitcase etc, are always dirty, mud bespattered, torn, and the books they sell Hans are all torn, missing pages, smelly and stained; They are all ugly, ugly faces, spittle in corners of the mouth, odd swellings in the neck, thin, unhygienic or otherwise disgusting, and their behaviour is always described as strange, yelling, waving arms, whispering. They always congregate in secret, ill-lit places, shadowy corners of the garden, sneaking in and out by creeping through the hedge. They are all dressed in black, none of them works or has a regular income, and they are all described as lazy parasites.
It is quite remarkable that a novel set in this fanatic, fundamentalist religious environment can attract such wide readership. I suppose it is the author's consistent unsympathetic description of the preachers, which makes the book palatable to the general reader.
While generally I am not a fan of stories and authors with this type of Calvinist background, the story is very compelling, and the novel is very well-written. A great work of literature. show less
The novel is structured in two books, together seven parts, each part describing an episode in the life of the main character, Hans Sievez. The episodes are separated by intervals of about seven years, youth, apprenticeship, early marriage, etc. The story is set in the early to mid-twentieth century, somewhere between the 1920s and the 1960s; the Second World War, is only marginally referred to.
The beginning of the story shows how the young Hans runs away from home, to get away from under the suffocating religious sphere and his tyrannical father. During his apprenticeship in the Hague, he first meets Joseph Mieras, who is trying to convert him to Christianity, particularly of the same ultra-conservative denomination as that to which his father belonged. He is barely able to get rid of this person, but ultimately succeeds. The next episode described his marriage with Margje, the birth of two sons, and the difficulties of running the family business of a truck farm. After the war, Mieras gets back in touch, and converts Hans to the faith, drawing him further and further into it, and the story relates the growing tensions this causes in the family. Following a crisis, Hans severs all contacts with the group, which are however restored on his deathbed, causing more grievance and misery to his family.
The ultra-conservative religious sect, which pesters Hans Sievez consists of conservative Protestants, or Calvinists, inhabiting the so-called Dutch Bible Belt. Throughout the story, they stick to him like leeches.
The author uses some very compelling imagery to convey central motives to the story. In the first episode, Hans' pet rabbit is killed by his father. His "impotence" to protect his mother, and his sentimentality for the rabbit foreshadow his life-long inability to stand up for himself. In various episodes, throughout his life Hans is exploited and humiliated.
The pervading images describing the Calvinist preachers are dirt, ugliness and disgust. Their clothes, shoes, suitcase etc, are always dirty, mud bespattered, torn, and the books they sell Hans are all torn, missing pages, smelly and stained; They are all ugly, ugly faces, spittle in corners of the mouth, odd swellings in the neck, thin, unhygienic or otherwise disgusting, and their behaviour is always described as strange, yelling, waving arms, whispering. They always congregate in secret, ill-lit places, shadowy corners of the garden, sneaking in and out by creeping through the hedge. They are all dressed in black, none of them works or has a regular income, and they are all described as lazy parasites.
It is quite remarkable that a novel set in this fanatic, fundamentalist religious environment can attract such wide readership. I suppose it is the author's consistent unsympathetic description of the preachers, which makes the book palatable to the general reader.
While generally I am not a fan of stories and authors with this type of Calvinist background, the story is very compelling, and the novel is very well-written. A great work of literature. show less
The story of Suezkade is remarkably straightforward and simple for a book of nearly 400 pages. Most chapters are very short and the book is very readable.
Marc Cordesius is a young teacher who starts teaching French at a school after an introduction by a friend. Although inexperienced and not trained as a teacher, he seems to have a natural talent for teaching. Himself independently wealthy, he does not need the job for a living, so he can avoid school politics and speak his mind relatively show more freely. Intellectually superior to the other teachers, the head master has a high esteem of Cordesius and shields him from affairs in the school. The microcosmos of the school is a bit of a moral cesspool that the idealistic Cordesius has strayed into.
It is up to the reader to decide to what extent Cordesius is corrupted by the school. His actions have clear precedent at the school, and it is only from the perspective of the reader to decide whether Cordesius isn't just as perfidious as his predecessors and colleagues.
Likewise, the role of the student he adores is highly ambiguous. Love seems to be tainted and desctructive, and Cordesius cannot escape its tentacles. show less
Marc Cordesius is a young teacher who starts teaching French at a school after an introduction by a friend. Although inexperienced and not trained as a teacher, he seems to have a natural talent for teaching. Himself independently wealthy, he does not need the job for a living, so he can avoid school politics and speak his mind relatively show more freely. Intellectually superior to the other teachers, the head master has a high esteem of Cordesius and shields him from affairs in the school. The microcosmos of the school is a bit of a moral cesspool that the idealistic Cordesius has strayed into.
It is up to the reader to decide to what extent Cordesius is corrupted by the school. His actions have clear precedent at the school, and it is only from the perspective of the reader to decide whether Cordesius isn't just as perfidious as his predecessors and colleagues.
Likewise, the role of the student he adores is highly ambiguous. Love seems to be tainted and desctructive, and Cordesius cannot escape its tentacles. show less
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