Als een meeuw op de golven Albert Verwey en zijn tijd

Amsterdam high-school student Albert Verwey was not yet seventeen years old when his first poem, ‘De Roze (‘The Pink’)’ was published in a respected literary magazine. Shortly afterwards, he and Willem Kloos became two of the most admired representatives of the Dutch Eighties Movement. His star rose quickly. After his rift with Kloos in 1888, Verwey became a militant poet and literary critic, who finally gained recognition in the 1930s as a 'true national individual' and a creator of values: a national poet!

Cultural historian Madelon de Keizer delved into Verwey's unique and extensive archive and read the thousands of letters he exchanged with famous contemporaries at home and abroad. Like a Seagull on the Waves describes his full life and work on the basis of his love for his wife Kitty van Vloten, and the friendships with the painter Jan Veth and his closest friend and later enemy Willem Kloos, his strained relationship with Lodewijk van Deyssel, his famous German poet friend Stefan George, his 'pupil' P.N. van Eyck, and his admirer Maurits Uyldert.

This first modern biography of Verwey presents him as a poet and a critic whose work reflects the great changes of his time. Like Huizinga, Verwey proved himself a politically engaged intellectual in the 1930s. His poetry is still relevant today.

Madelon de Keijzer

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