Martinus Nijhoff

Dutch poet, translator, critic and essayist.

Martinus was the eldest child of the publisher and book seller Wouter Nijhoff (19 November 1866, Den Haag, Den Haag - 11 January 1947, Den Haag) and Johanna Alida Seijn (21 March 1870, Roermond - 9 September 1927, Renkum), who became a Salvationist. They married 21 September 1892 in Den Haag and got four children. His grandfather Martinus Nijhoff (26 December 1826, Arnhem - 24 September 1894, Den Haag) established the still existing "Martinus Nijhoff Publishers“ and the liberal paper "Het Vaderland" in Den Haag.

Nijhoff followed the the Gymnasium Hagarum where he met Victor van Vriesland. He studied Law in Amsterdam and as an established poet Letters in Utrecht. From 1914 to 1915 he was editor of Propria Cures and in 1916 he published his first poetry bundle "De wandelaar" (the wanderer). In 1924 he published "Vormen" (Forms), for which he got the Prize of Amsterdam in 1925.

He became a leading Dutch poet: His poem "Awater" in the bundle "Nieuwe gedichten" (1934) was considered by Joseph Brodsky as one of the greatest poems of the 20th century: "Ik zoek een reisgenoot. Wees hier aanwezig, allereerste geest, die over wateren van aanvang zweeft." Later interpretations laid a connection with the Higher Self of the poet Dèr Mouw (Advaita) whose work he knew via his friend Victor van Vriesland.

Other classical poems from Nijhoff were "Het Uur U" (H Hour, 1936), "De Moeder de Vrouw" (The Mother the Woman/Wife). He wrote the libretto of the opera Halewijn by composer Willem Pijper (1932-34). His work stands between the l'art pour l'art poetry of the Tachtigers and existentialism.

Nijhoff was also a distinguished translator of Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, C.F. Ramuz, Euripides and others. His own work has been translated in 9 European languages. The Martinus Nijhoff award for translations (1953) into and from Dutch is named is named after him. The yearly awarded translator gets 35000 euro from the Prince Bernhard Cultuurfonds.