Jacobus Marinus Hamelink (born 12 January 1939, Driewegen), better known as Jacques Hamelink, is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, novelist, and literary critic

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

, who is best known for his early short story collections such as Het plantaardig bewind ("De Vegetative Dominion", 1964) en De rudimentaire mens ("Rudimentary Man", 1968). Later on in his career he gradually abandoned his pessimistic prose and chose to write more and more poetry full of historical and literary references, while at the same time not neglecting the sound value of his verse. These two factors have gradually alienated him from an initially enthusiastic audience.

Writing and reception

Hamelink's early stories (as collected in Het plantaardig bewind, Horror vacui and De rudimentaire mens) revolve around the interplay between man and nature, where the former is always inferior to the latter. Main characters in these stories often disappear or die faced with the amoral and omnipresent force of life. The poetry, collected in such books as De eeuwige dag ("The Eternal Day") and Een koude onrust ("A Cold Anxiety"), is in a very similar vein, and both poetry and prose were enthusiastically received by audience and critics alike.

This initial success would be short-lived: starting with Oudere gronden ("Older soils") Hamelink's poetry became more and more abstract

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

, bare of all personal involvement but still maintaining the same themes. His work was quickly branded hermetic

Hermetics

Hermetics is the deliberate use of exceedingly obscure, convoluted, or esoteric literary or graphical symbolism and imagery....

 and shoved to the side. Despite his growing impopularity, Hamelink continued on his set course, which would become more and more mystical as the years progressed. His growing belief, borrowed from poets such as Paul Celan

Paul Celan

Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

 and Hölderlin, was that poetry should try to speak the impossible, and that its failure to do this constitutes its greatness. This was perhaps most effectively enunciated in the speech "Op weg naar de poëzie" ("On the Way to Poetry"), published in the significantly titled Niemandsgedichten ("Nobodypoems").

Paradoxically, after the publication of Niemandsgedichten Hamelink's poetry became more instead of less personal. This is most obvious in books such as Ceremoniële en particuliere madrigalen ("Ceremonial and Specific Madrigals") and Herinnering aan het verdwenen light ("Remembrance of the Disappeared Light"), where he dealt with the history of his own family and the particular surroundings (the Dutch province of Zeelandic Flanders) of his youth.

These years (the 1980s) also feature the publication of two important critical texts: De droom van de poëzie ("The Dream of Poetry") and In een lege kamer een garendraadje ("In an Empty Room a Piece of String"). The former is a wider treatment of the trend set by Op weg naar de poëzie: for Hamelink, the writer who tries to capture the "mystery" has to be thoroughly familiar with both human history and the literary tradition. In doing this Hamelink consciously placed himself in a tradition that stretches from Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

 to T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

.

Similarly to the poet, high demands are made on the reader and critic. In een lege kamer een garendraadje is a violent attack on a contemporary Dutch literary criticism that was less and less appreciative of Hamelink's work. Hamelink especially reproached his contemporaries for their lack of knowledge of the classics and their complacent admiration for "experimental" poetry.

This conscious turn away from his colleagues and the bulk of his audience has perhaps reached its climax with the current phase of Hamelink's work. Since Sacrale komedie ("Sacral Comedy") his work has become highly allusive. Personal and "general" history fuse in ever more rigidly constructed poems. The language of these poems heightens their difficulty: the author riffs on existing words, creating neologisms while at the same time reintroducing archaic words

Archaism

In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...

.

Despite the current hermetic nature of his poetry, Hamelink has recently enjoyed a modest surge of popularity. Prominent Dutch critics and poets such as Ilya Leonard Pfeiffer write positive reviews on his works and two of Hamelinks recent publications have been nominated for the prestigious VSB poetry prize.

Work

• 1964 - De eeuwige dag (poetry)
• 1964 - Het plantaardig bewind (short stories)
• 1966 - Horror vacui (prose)
• 1967 - Een koude onrust (poetry)
• 1968 - De rudimentaire mens (short stories)
• 1969 - Oudere gronden (poetry)
• 1969 - Ranonkel of de geschiedenis van een verzelving (novel)
• 1970 - De betoverde bruidsnacht (drama)
• 1971 - Geest van spraak en tegenspraak (poetry)
• 1973 - De boom Goliath (prose)
• 1973 - Windwaarts, wortelher (poetry)
• 1974 - Afdalingen in de ingewanden (prose)
• 1974 - Witvelden, inskripties (poetry)
• 1975 - Hersenopgang (poetry)
• 1976 - Een reis door het demiurgenrijk (prose)
• 1976 - Niemandsgedichten (selected poetry)
• 1977 - Stenen voor mijzelf (poetry)
• 1978 - De droom van de poëzie (essay)
• 1979 - Gehandhaafde verhalen (selected prose)
• 1979 - Het rif (poetry)
• 1980 - In een lege kamer een garen draadje (criticism)
• 1980 - Responsoria (poetry)
• 1982 - Ceremoniële en particuliere madrigalen (poetry)
• 1983 - Uit een nieuwe Akasha-kroniek (short stories)
• 1984 - Gemengde tijd (poetry)
• 1985 - Vuurproeven (criticism)
• 1986 - Eerste gedichten (selected poetry)
• 1986 - Herinnering aan het verdwenen licht (poetry)
• 1987 - Sacrale komedie (poetry)
• 1988 - Asael's rust (poetry)
• 1990 - Runen van de ruin (poetry) (published under pseudonym A.D.)
• 1992 - Groot eiland (poetry) (published under pseudonym A.D.)
• 1994 - Folklore imaginaire de Flandre (poetry) (published under pseudonym A.D.)
• 1995 - Boheems glas (poetry)
• 1997 - Zeegezang inclusief gesternten van Frederik de Zeeman (poetry)
• 1999 - Liedboek der oorlogen en feesten van al-Haqq (poetry)
• 2001 - Zilverzonnige en onneembare maan (poetry)
• 2003 - Kinksteen van Ch'in (poetry)
• 2007 - De Dame van de Tapisserie (poetry)