biography
| name: |
Huygens, Constantijn
|
pronunciation:
[hoekhens]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1596–1687)
|
| biography:
| Poet, born in The Hague, W Netherlands. He received an excellent education, studied law at Leiden University, travelled as a diplomat to England on several occasions, and became a secretary to the Orange family, the stadtholders. His poems are intelligent, clever, and witty, showing his great erudition, and he was also knowledgeable in music and painting. Among his many international friends and correspondents were Descartes, Donne, Francis Bacon, and Pierre Corneille. His only play Trijntje Cornelis (1653) is considered one of the best Dutch comical plays of the 17th-c. In 1947 the Constantijn Huygensprijs literary prize was named after him. |
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