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Simon Vestdijk
Life Time
10 October 1898 - 23 March 1971
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Simon Vestdijk (Simon Vestdijk)
(1898-1971) He was considered a “living classic” during his lifetime. His pen belongs to novels, novels, lyrical and philosophical poetry. Numerous talents of the writer appeared in childhood - he played musical instruments and drew, but after graduating from the gymnasium he entered the medical faculty, where he was most interested in psychiatry. After serving briefly as a ship’s doctor, Westdake began writing poetry and in a short time released 6 poetry collections.
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Simon Vestdijk (Simon Vestdijk)
(1898-1971)
He was considered a “living classic” during his lifetime. His pen belongs to novels, novels, lyrical and philosophical poetry. Numerous talents of the writer appeared in childhood - he played musical instruments and drew, but after graduating from the gymnasium he entered the medical faculty, where he was most interested in psychiatry. After serving briefly as a ship’s doctor, Westdake began writing poetry and in a short time released 6 poetry collections. He then turned to prose and wrote The Child and Four Women (1933), published only in 1972. It was from this novel that the famous series of his books about Anton Vakhter was born, after whom the entire epic was named (the first two volumes were published in 1939 and 1940). Separate volumes of this series continue and develop the tradition of the “novel of upbringing” characteristic of German literature, offering another story of the formation of a young man in the early XX century. A little later, Westdake wrote the book “The Descent into Hell of Mr. Fisser” (1936), which tells about the petty-bourgeois environment crushed by everyday life, in which the idea of strong power, suppression and humiliation of others so easily grows. The satirical elements of this book were even louder in another anti-fascist novel, Elsa Böhler, the German Handmaid (1935). This book takes place in Germany, which the author knew well. The translator of R. L. Stevenson into Dutch, Westdijk learned from this author the techniques of building a tense plot and created very successful historical and biographical novels, in particular about El Greco and Spain of the XVI century. “The Fifth Seal” (1937), about Rome I c. The Last Days of Pilate (1938), about Jamaica during the slave trade of the XVIII century. Along with these works, the writer has released another 20 collections of short stories, essays and poems. In the postwar years, his novels about the war “Pastoral of the Forty-Third Year” (1949), “Feast of Liberation” (1949), as well as five new books of the epic about Anton Wachter (1948-1960), the novel “Kelner and the Living” (1949), a philosophical parable about the meaning of life and human responsibility, and, finally, a trilogy about the fate of a talented musician “Symphony of Victor Slingeland” (1954-1958). The latter work is compared with “Dr. Faustus” by Thomas Mann. In the books about Holland - and in almost all of Westdike's novels it occupies a large place - the topic of the province, or rather, the philistines in a quiet backwater, leveling everyone who falls into this environment, is brought to the fore. It is the environment that often destroys those who are pure thoughts, talented and immediate, capable of love and action. A small provincial town often becomes a symbol of vulgarity and obscurantism. The anger of the publicist is replaced by irony and philosophical conclusions about the imperfection of the world and man, naturalistic scenes from the life of the inhabitants - descriptions of nature, legend - pure reality.